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The Leipzig Connection:
Sabotage of the US Educational System
by Paolo Lionni
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Chapter 3. Positioning
"While G. Stanley Hall had been Wundt's first American student, his compatriot
James McKeen Cattell had the distinction of being Wundt's first assistant and, later, the
most effective publicist and promoter of the revised psychology."
"Cattell was born in 1860 in Pennsylvania, and received his bachelor's degree from
Lafayette College in 1880. He then spent a short period of time in Germany, where he met
Wundt and saw his laboratory. Returning to Germany in 1883, Cattell went to Leipzig and
told Wundt that he was going to be his assistant. Wundt acceded and Cattell spent the next
three years experimenting in Wundt's lab, receiving his Ph.D. from him in 1886. Cattell's
primary interests lay in mental testing and in individual differences in ability."
"One series of experiments Cattell performed while at Leipzig examined the manner
in which a person sees the words he is reading. Testing adults who knew how to read,
Cattell found they could recognize words without having to sound out the letters. From
this, he reasoned that words are not read by compounding the letters, but are perceived as
"total word pictures." He determined that little is gained by teaching the child
his sounds and letters as the first step to being able to read. Since they could recognize
words very rapidly, the way to teach children how to read would be to show them words, and
tell them what the words were. This breakthrough of Cattell's led to the adoption of a
sight-reading method in many school systems throughout the United States. Its failure to
produce an expected increase in literacy ... applied by teachers ... (turned) into a
national crisis."
| This approach has reared it's ugly head in recent times as the "look-see" method of reading. It never works and
the result is always impaired reading ability of students, yet the education establishment
demands its use and prohibits the more successful phonics
approach to reading. The problem is simple. Of course grown adults don't sound out
words. Cattell tested adults in his study. Adults have long since learned the sound
of words and have associated these sounds and meaning with the "picture" or
"shape" of the word they view on a written page. But when they were learning
to read they did sound out words using traditional phonics methods, and only later
learned the visual "total word picture" through repetition and experience. Using
the look-see method, the student has absolutely no tools to figure out how to say new
words, and his vocabulary is limited to the words he has specifically been taught and
memorized. Leave it to psychologists to "deduce" 5 year old children and grown
adults perceive and read the same way. It would be laughable if the results weren't so
disastrous to the children. This is only one example of many where their gross dullness
and stupidity camouflages itself with such catch words as "science",
"innovative", "caring" and "progressive". One thing we
must each all learn to do; examine results only and base your knowledge upon what
you observe as real existing results. People can always be convincing and sell us. Almost
anything can be made to seem logical or "make sense". Disregard all the yapping,
references to studies, arguments, and complex theories, and simply look at the results.
What does the application of the theory in actual practice produce? What are the visible,
observable results of applying the ideas? Nothing else matters. Education before 1917
was largely successful and produced much better "products" (graduated students
who could think and do) than today's educational methods. Who cares about all the details.
The methods don't work and they produce poor results.
Honestly, if a carpet cleaner cleaned your carpets, and they looked worse than when he
started, would you listen to all his "reasons", theories and arguments for the
superiority of his method of cleaning? Of course not. You probably wouldn't pay him and
you would tell him to get lost. You would most likely tell your friends not to use this
cleaner. Why act any differently with the education of the entire future generation? Why
act any differently with psychiatric drugging, electric shock and lobotomy? Just look
at the results, the products, the effects of the applications of psychiatry's or modern
psychology's methods. They don't work, and they produce harmful and damaged
results. Don't pay them, don't support them, and tell them to get lost!
See: Results - Observe and Decide For Yourself. |
"In 1887, he left the country again to lecture at Cambridge, where he met and was
deeply impressed by Charles Darwin's cousin, the English psychologist Francis Galton.
Galton's theories held that "a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance,
under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole
organic world." Cattell quickly absorbed Galton's approach to eugenics, selective
breeding, and the measurement of intelligence. Cattell was later to become the American
leader in psychological testing, and in 1894 would administer the first battery of
psychological tests ever given to a large group of people, testing the freshman and senior
classes at Columbia University."
"In 1891, Cattell joined the faculty of Columbia University as professor of
psychology and head of Columbia's new psychology department, a critical position for the
union of psychology and education."
"At Columbia, Cattell shone as an organizer and publicist. To promote the new
"science" of experimental psychology Cattell created publications which would
carry the new subject to educators and scientists across the country. First he began a new
journal, in 1894, called The Psychological Review. Then he purchased from Alexander
Graham Bell the weekly publication Science, which later became the official journal
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1900 he began Popular
Science Monthly, continuing to publish it after 1915 as Scientific Monthly;
that same year he began yet another publication, the weekly School and Society. He also
began a series of well-known reference works: American Men of Science, Leaders in
Education, and The Directory of American Scholars; with publications such as
these, he positioned the revised psychology within the mainstream of American thinking,
the proponents of this new field taking their places alongside our leading scientists,
educators, and scholars in the pages of these reference books."
"During his twenty-five years at Columbia, Cattell supervised 344 successful
doctoral candidates in psychology. In 1895 he was elected president of the American
Psychological Association, and in 1900 he became the first psychologist elected to the
National Academy of Sciences. Although he never wrote a textbook, and was the author of
only a few papers in his field, he publicized experimental psychology broadly, organized
his colleagues, and promoted their accomplishments, enabling them to consolidate their
positions in the departments of philosophy (and, later, psychology) at major universities
across the country."
"James Earl Russell, a student of Wundt's who received his doctorate from Leipzig
in 1894, came to Columbia University in October, 1897, five years after the New York
College for the Training of Teachers had received its permanent charter as Columbia's
Teachers College. Russell had already occupied positions of administrative responsibility
having been, while at Leipzig, an official European Agent for the Federal Bureau of
Education (then located in the Department of the Interior). Appointed head of the
department of psychology and general method, Russell directed the central department at
Teachers College. That same year, Russell became dean of the College. He would run it for
the next thirty years, building the largest institution in the world for the training of
teachers."
"Thus, in 1897, the stage was about to be set for the propagation of Wundt's
laboratory psychology throughout American education."
(end of chapter 3)
Analysis/Comment
It is vital to realize that a tremendous amount of money, time and energy has been
invested in promoting and securing the acceptance of this new psychological approach over
the past century. This subject cannot stand on its own merits. It stands ONLY because it
has been propped up by years of investment, PR, miseducation and (intentional and
unintentional) deception.
Genetics is the flip side of the coin I call the "disgusting duo" of modern
psychological theory. On the one side you have the concept of stimulus-response and man as
the sum total of environmental experiences (see chapter
2). On the other side there is genetics (see above - Francis Galton), the idea that
all intelligence, capability, and natural propensities are inherited in one's chromosomes.
This viewpoint opens the door to selective breeding, selective genocide, and the general
oppression of anyone who doesn't satisfy the current standard of who and what are
"strong, intelligent, moral or pure". There are physical traits, such as
body size, hair color, muscle tone, strength and agility that are to a large degree
genetic and inherited. The problem arises, again, when these charlatans so casually
transpose a physical phenomena to the realm of mental phenomena, where it simply does not
apply.
Nazi Germany took these ideas of genetics and selective breeding to their diabolical
logical extreme. German psychiatrists worked closely with the SS and Nazi elite spreading
their ideas of racial superiority (and inferiority), genetic supremacy, "good
genes", "bad genes", and "racial cleansing". Why give
psychological tests? To ascertain who is "dumb", "unable to learn",
"inferior" and a strain on the society. And then, since they can't be
"fixed" or "improved", the only solution is to get rid of them and
their "harmful" genetic line. Off to the showers.... It amazes me how certain
segments of the Jewish community have embraced modern psychiatric theory and practice
failing to realize its actual beginnings in German experimental psychology and the
affiliation with Nazi Germany and its methods of extermination of the "unfit".
The lie here is that mental aptitude, IQ, and imaginative ability are NOT unchangeable
genetic physical traits like hair color or body size and can be improved.
Anybody can learn and better at anything if given a workable method of study and a
positive environment of living, caring, aware people. Modern genetic theories wed to
psychology, are, in fact, mere opinions parading
as scientific facts, and deny the possibility of improvement and enforce
limitations.
Here's the way these guys "think". They observe a rock, or a molecule or a
star and say, "gee, this thing is what it is, it isn't anything else, it never
changes, and that's the way it is". They look at a flower, or a tree or a dog or a
cat, and say, "these things are what they are, and reproduction with similar related
forms results in more of the same". They look at body forms, types, races, and notice
how the physical characteristics stay pretty much the same from generation to generation.
This is all physical stuff, matter and energy. So far, no problem. But then then
begin to deal with minds, emotions, thought and intention and they, first, fail to ever
look at and examine these things in themselves, and then second, make the huge error
of assuming these things are similar in any way to all the physical things they previously
observed. They are not! They follow completely different and unique laws. And worse of
all, if you enforce upon a mind practices according to the laws of energy and matter, it
deteriorates and begins to mimic energy and matter. How so?
Matter and energy tends to stay the way it is unless acted upon. In good shape, a human
being is creative, originates things, changes his environment and is basically a real pain
in the ass (at least to status quo, conformist types). He is a causative agent. He
sets things in motion. He puts new things there that weren't there before. He initiates
change upon the environment, instead of conforming to the environment, which
is the modern behavioral "scientific" approach. He is the cause and not the
effect.
Modern psychology and psychiatry can't improve anyone's mind or ability. They simply
don't know how. They now don't even try. Apparently, because they can't do it and have
failed miserably at the task for so long, they assume man is incapable of changing for the
better and that no alternative approach to the mind can or would ever produce positive
change. They attack as frauds and quacks any group saying it can help and improve minds
and mental ability. They are the true quacks and frauds.
Various proponents of "logic" and "modern science" have repeatedly
criticized any and all subjects implying anything other than their strictly materialistic
approach to man and his possibilities. Strangely, modern psychology has nothing to do with
the very definition of "psychology".
Anyone with an open mind, can do some quick research into any number of areas, experiment
some, and find various methods for addressing and improving the capability of a mind.
Minimally you will discover it does surely exist and is not explained by modern
psychological and psychiatric theories. Far from a complete list, a few are: Yoga, various meditation techniques, Dianetics, applied Tibetan Buddhism, Scientology, Rosicrucian
methods, P.D. Ouspensky's Fourth
Way, Science of Mind, Unity, New Thought and visualization
techniques. It is a sad commentary on our modern society that these subjects are
viewed with a jaundiced eye. This attitude has been inculcated by the media, certain
organized religions, who these alternative approaches threaten, rigid rationalists,
atheists, humanists and modern education; to the detriment of us all.
I am not endorsing any specific alternative approach and I will be the first to say
there are problems, confusions, and hurdles to be jumped with each, and none are
all-inclusive. It can be very difficult to separate raw basic data about the mind from
religious associations, opinions, theories, and bias. But they each do tread upon
areas that current psychological theories and practices fail to address, explain or
handle. I am not talking about strange things like extra-sensory perecption or
telekinesis, but only common abilities of any mind, such as concentration, attention,
imagination, intention, and will.
Examining and investigating the realm of the "mind" with careful
"scientific" methods could reap untold benefits. It has never been done
by the modern field of psychology. The mind is largely ignored, and the only concerns are
behavior, the environment, genetics and biochemistry.
In fact, honestly examining and investigating the mind threatens the entire current
educational, psychological and psychiatric paradigms. They will never support an honest
look at the "mind" or any alternative workable methodology, no matter how
legitimate or successful it might be, and will fight all attempts to do so. |
Continue with Chapter 4. Mice and Monkeys
Back to Chapter 1. The New Domain - Index Page
Get The Book!
The
Leipzig Connection by Paolo Lionni - the complete book with more details &
facts about the scam known as modern education and psychology.
Suggested Reading List - the Demise of the Educational
System - OBE (Outcome-Based Education), NEA (National Education Association),
educational psychology, German psychology & influences, demise of public education,
educational sabotage, Wundt, Pavlov, Dewey, Skinner, Watson.
Say NO To Psychiatry!
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