The Leipzig Connection (Basics in Education) - Softcover

This report details the origins of a national metamorphosis, yet it is hardly definitive. Major changes in American education, along the same lines as those described herein (and, in many cases, overlapping them), were wrought by the great Carnegie and Ford "philanthropies" and by a host of individuals (i.e., Col. Parker, Goddard, Terman, Yerkes, Binet, Piaget, Watson, Skinner, Freire, Illich, et. al.). Agencies other than those mentioned in the book also played major roles. Foremost among these undoubtedly is the august and hyperactive NEA with its National Training Labs, publisher of the "Journal of Applied Behavioral Science." Special mention should also be made of UNESCO's International Bureau of Education (formerly the Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau), born in 1925 of a generous grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

These initial and somewhat unexpected findings, however, incomplete, are released in order to help others analyze more clearly this tragic transformation of the national character. Further research has simply substantiated and enlarged upon the thesis of this work.

The ongoing debasement of philosophy and ethics, and its social consequences, is a tangled tale and, where references are not pursued or fully detailed, it is not because of an unwillingness to answer the questions raised rather it is from a desire to suggest a broader context within which the story unfolds. Those who contend, with Wilhelm Wundt, that history and its processes are responsible for the formation of individuals and their views (rather than the reverse) will undoubtedly find this approach unpalatable; then again, not everyone would want this tale untangled.