Something to Clearly Think About
The Early End (Goal) of Education in America
	America's Original Philosophy of Education from The Mainspring of Human Progress , 1947, Henry Grady Weaver	Before he was sixteen, the philosophy and history of the entire European past had been pounded into his head. Thus when he was old enough to begin thinking things out for himself, he had in his own mind a storehouse of knowledge, covering thousands of years of human experience. Also he was drilled in logic and the accurate meaning of words as a protection against fallacies of fancy rhetoric!" p.192 (A description of a founding father's education)

The key to "Clear Thinking" is a mind filled with knowledge and facts.

Rudolf Flesch in The Art of Clear Thinking , 1951, states "here is your definition of thinking: It is the manipulation of memories." But what are memories?

Memories are the recordings of knowledge, facts and experiences in the mind. Minds can not function in a vacuum.

J.Gresham Machen in Christianity and Liberalism , 1923, notes "The schools of the present day are being ruined by the absurb notion that education should follow the line of least resistance, and that something can be "drawn out"of the mind before anything is put in."

Hy Ruchlis in Clear Thinking , 1962, makes the connection of facts to problem solving by observing "a body of facts accumulates and makes it possible for people to solve many more problems than they could ever hope to handle successfully solely by their own thinking processes."

Filling the mind with knowledge and facts is, in fact, the special task given to education.

Thus, the most amazing "orthodoxy" which dominates the educational establishment "leviathan" today is the slighting of "facts and knowledge" for emphasis on problem-solving and critical thinking. Problem solving and critical thinking are secondary skills. Before one can think and solve he must first have something to think about.

Surgeons must be drilled and saturated in the facts of anatomy before they problem solve with a scalpel. Yet today there is a real bias in the public schools to de-emphasize knowledge and facts.

Again, for a child, the years before puberty are the golden time to learn, to be exposed to myriads of facts, to be trained in arithmetic, grammar and spelling.

In spite of this, each of these areas have been a battleground at the State level where the dogmatic "orthodoxies" have been challenged by the "back-to-the-basics" advocates.

What we need in our schools is a real commitment to filling our children's minds with knowledge, facts and experiences; this is the school's job; no one else is going to do it; it is what parent's expect.

"Clear Thinking" will be the result.