July 8, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
10:31
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| So I have on the line who's written a really important book and the the book is why Johnny Still Can't Read or Write or Understand Math and What We Can Do About It. | |
| Andrew Bernstein is the author. | |
| And I'm telling you, I'm looking through I've been looking through your book, uh Andrew Bernstein. | |
| It is really important. | |
| Why don't you tell a people uh let's go a little in the background if we can. | |
| Yes. | |
| How well educated was a k was an eighth grader in nineteen twenty versus twenty twenty. | |
| Well, the school system um certainly prior to the early twentieth century, the uh you know the school system was vastly superior to what it is is today. | |
| And certainly there were no there were no reading problems. | |
| There were no, you know, there was no there was no remedial reading problem until uh early to mid twentieth century in the United States. | |
| Rudolph Flesh in his uh 1955 book, Why Johnny Can't Read, a famous book, point pointed that out. | |
| Uh pri prior to the advent of progressive education, which could be called regressive education, uh the average eighth grade in the United States a hundred and twenty years ago probably had the equivalent of a college today. | |
| No question. | |
| Uh the un uh I only vaguely know this. | |
| I don't expect you to know this, but if you do comment on it, if not obviously we'll move on. | |
| But to the best of my recollection, the soldiers on either side in the civil war, their letters are Shakespearean compared to what a high schooler could write today. | |
| Yeah, I've read I've read that too, Dennis, and I and I and I I don't doubt it. | |
| The education in the United States prior to the imposition of government schools or you know, public school system, roughly in the mid 19th century, and certainly prior to the uh uh regresses or you know, so called progressives in the early twentieth, education in the United States was outstanding in the revolutionary period, uh you know, the in the colonial period before that, in the early nineteenth century. | |
| We have a lot of proxy data, you know, supporting that. | |
| But my favorite point, Dennis was um that uh the essays of the Federalists, which are very sophisticated political reasoning, you know, written by uh Alexander Hamilton, James Addison, John Jay, and support of uh constitution for the fledgling republic, those those Federalist papers were written largely as newspaper editorials to be read by you know every man and every woman. | |
| And uh unfortunately today, my college students would struggle with with those Your college students don't know the difference between it and it. | |
| Yeah, unfortunately, unfortunately, and they're good kids. | |
| You know, I wanna I want to point out these are good the college kids that I that teach at various New York New York area colleges, they're good kids, they're good American kids. | |
| They they're willing to work hard, you know, and they want to they want to be have a such a successful career, they want romantic love, they want to be happy, but the school system has just failed them abysmally, and they don't know the first thing about American history for the right. | |
| So now tell Amer tell my listeners about John Dewey and whether it is fair to isolate one person as the as the big culprit. | |
| I'll c I'll come back to you again. | |
| The book is why Johnny Still Can't Read, Andrew Bernstein, it is up at Dennis Prager dot com. | |
| Who was John Dewey and what damage did he do to American education? | |
| Well, Dennis, John Dewey was a philosophy professor for many years at Columbia University, and he and he um had a major influence on Teachers College at Columbia, which was training mu was was was the leading teacher training institute in the United States at that time. | |
| And his disciple, William Hurd Kilpatrick also the ill also has to get plenty of the blame here uh for spreading the ideas of progressivism through the uh teachers' colleges. | |
| But the main idea, and Dewey is largely Dewey and Kilpatrick, I think are the two main culprits here that the main idea was to severely cut down the academic program for for most students. | |
| Uh remember the I IQ testing had just come in at that time. | |
| So the idea is IQ test the kids, find the best in the brightest, they get the full academic program, you know, math, science, history, literature. | |
| And the rest of us, you know, we don't need that much academic training. | |
| We get vocational training so that we could work in the factories or work, you know, work as farmers. | |
| And the idea was that the few, the intellectual elite would get academic training, go to college, and they would govern in the legislature and in the classroom, and the rest of us would be good at our jobs and obey the wise rules of the state. | |
| And so they deliberately dumbed down, severely dumbed down this the educational program in the American schools, basically to push communism on us so that we could obey the, you know, we have an all-powerful state and that we would obey most of us would simply obey. | |
| And by the way, that it's Dewey, Kilpatrick and these guys in the 1920s, where did they pilgrimage? | |
| They went to the Soviet Union. | |
| I was just gonna ask you about that. | |
| Go ahead. | |
| Yeah, that's why doesn't that invalidate them at the outset? | |
| I mean, it does. | |
| For rational human beings, it does. | |
| I mean, I I can't even say this with a straight face, although it's not funny. | |
| They went to the Soviet Union under Stalin, and they praised the Soviet school system because you know the Soviet school system taught the kids that the state comes first, you live for the state, you obey the state, and you you don't pursue your own personal happiness, you're you're you're not selfish, you know. | |
| Uh, and and so yeah, that's uh they were supporters of the of the communist system, basically, and they wanted to they wanted the schools to train us to be obedient to the state. | |
| Well, and this was John Dewey. | |
| By the way, you mentioned I did not know that he was at Columbia Teachers College or even did he help start it? | |
| Is that what you said? | |
| No, do we do we taught in the philosophy department? | |
| I know that, but you what how how did that but he was a Columbia and Columbia's teachers' college, how does that connect to John Dewey? | |
| William Heard Kilpatrick considered himself Dewey's leading disciple, and he headed Columbia teacher college. | |
| Okay, fine. | |
| Okay, so that's how, through through his disciple, fair enough. | |
| So to this day, it is probably the worst teacher's college, and most teachers' colleges are destructive. | |
| But I I would say Columbia remains the the probably the worst in the country. | |
| The book, folks, is why Johnny Still Can't Read. | |
| In America today, I don't know if you'll know the answer, but I uh I I don't know who else to ask, but i i it do you get a better education in public school in Florida than in Minnesota? | |
| I I don't I don't know the answer to that, uh Dennis. | |
| I So I'm only out this is what I'm asking. | |
| The the the people who reject progressive ideas teach kids better. | |
| That's what that's that's really what I'm asking. | |
| I'm using Florida and Minnesota as paradigms. | |
| I would I would think so. | |
| I I would but I think the real the real issue is the homeschoolers generally Oh yeah. | |
| Well, who tend to be conservative? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, and they they generally reject the progressive ideas. | |
| They want their kids to learn math and science and literature and history. | |
| They have this funny idea they want the kids to be strong readers, you know, and they use phonics to teach reading. | |
| It may be uh that in the conservative states like Florida or Texas, the the government schools are less bad than in the Yeah, I am I am very curious about that. | |
| But anyway, I I I'm with you. | |
| I uh I passionately advocate the home homeschooling. | |
| People people are afraid to do it. | |
| So the the scores, the scores keep going down, don't they? | |
| Yes. | |
| So let me ask you another question. | |
| I I don't know the answer to this, it doesn't make sense to me. | |
| Since the scores are going down, and it's such a slap in the face of all the teachers' unions that advocate all these progressive policies. | |
| Why don't they just lower the standards so that it doesn't look like the kids aren't reading at uh at at below eighth grade level. | |
| Well, they have done that. | |
| The reading levels of the material taught in the English courses. | |
| I had the one example in the book where from Texas, high schools 100 years ago, the ninth grade reading list, they were reading, I forget, Nathan Hawthorne, James Fenimore, Cooper. | |
| The reading levels went from ninth to twelfth grade, whereas today the reading levels in the high schools in Texas, ninth grade, was like sixth grade to eighth grade. | |
| right so they have even with the cheapen standards they're falling below grade level yeah they don't use they they the look there's still a lot of really good dedicated classroom teachers in the in the public school system I want to stress that but they have to fight against the stifling bureaucracy and the the bureaucracy you know the teachers colleges the state departments of education and the federal departments of education with the real powers in the government school system militate against the use of phonics. | |
| They don't want the kids to read yeah I don't know I don't understand that I I other than just to be a wrecking bowl. | |
| Re readers up there will be thinkers and they may question the white Oh I didn't thought of that. | |
| All right my friend you did a great job folks the book is up at Dennis Prager dot com. | |
| Thank you. |
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