The Leipzig Connection: Sabotage of the US Educational System by Paolo Lionni

Chapter 8. A Showplace (Excerpts)

Abraham Flexner

Abraham Flexner was an able fund-raiser, an experienced educator, and an organizer who felt he had the solution to both the supposed failure of American education and to the need of the General Education Board to disburse the Rockefeller millions. Educated at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Berlin, he apparently had little contact with the Wundtian psychologists at each institution. Flexner's experience in education came from fifteen years of running his own preparatory school in Louisville, Kentucky, and from his studies in German and American education while a researcher at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in New York City. In 1913, Flexner left the Carnegie Foundation and went to work for the General Education Board, first as assistant secretary for four years, then as secretary (principal executive officer) running the operations of the Board for eight years in partnership with its president, Wallace Buttrick.

The resident intellectual and educator on the Board, Flexner's forte was in digesting large amounts of information and making them palatable to others: his specialty was education. While Rockefeller and his son wanted only the relative peace and tranquility of millions in the bank, divorced from the manner in which those millions had been gained and safe from governmental and public attacks, Flexner saw more clearly than any other how that money could be used to further Progressive Education in the United States.

Flexner's first impact on American education had taken the form of "Germanizing" American medical education. While at the Carnegie Foundation, Flexner was asked to do a major study of medical schools in the United States and Canada. In eighteen months, Flexner visited each of the 155 medical colleges in the U.S. and Canada. He was appalled by conditions which he considered inexcusable when compared with the medical schools he had seen in Germany. Nonetheless, he did find several medical schools of which he approved, most notably his alma mater, Johns Hopkins, which he considered to be "the one bright spot, despite meager endowment and missing clinics."

Support for the "modernization" of American medical colleges rapidly developed in the General Education Board, which was looking for ways to expand its philanthropy beyond the narrow band of assistance to rural Southern education. Carnegie, who had fostered the study initially, would have nothing to do with medical funding, as "the practical Scot could see no point in helping institutions which had allowed themselves to get into so abysmal a situation." But at the request of the Carnegie Foundation, Flexner took off again, this time to survey medical schools in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and Austria. It was while he was writing up his final report that Gates invited him to have lunch with him. Gates was strongly interested in German medicine, and was opposed to the traditional homeopathic medicine used by Rockefeller's personal physician, Dr. H.F. Bigger, with whom he often had heated arguments. In the short meeting, Gates asked Flexner what he would do if he had $1 million to work with in developing medical education in the United States. Flexner replied that he would give it to Johns Hopkins. Gates sent Flexner off to his alma mater with the agreement that if Flexner could make a convincing case for the donation, it would be given by the Board. It was several years before Flexner finally cashed in, securing a $1.5 million gift from the Board to the German-oriented Johns Hopkins University. That same year (1913), he left Carnegie and joined the Board to direct the allocation of Rockefeller millions to the development of chemically oriented medicine in the United States.

By the time Flexner joined the Board, his attack on American medical education, which had been front-page news across the country, had resulted in the number of medical schools in the United States dropping from 147 to 95. Naturopathic medicine was on the decline in this country, as it was proving particularly unsusceptible to Rockefeller funding. Over the years (until 1960), the General Education Board would give a total of over $96 million to medical schools which, like Johns Hopkins, disregarded naturopathy, homeopathy, and chiropractic in favor of medicine based on the use of surgery and chemical drugs. The Board's sponsorship of chemical medicine on the one hand and psychology on the other would culminate in 1963 when a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins developed the use of Ritalin to "treat" children who were regarded as "troubled" or too active. The effects of this merger of chemical medicine and Wundtian psychology upon American education are thoroughly documented in The Myth of the Hyperactive Child, and Other Means of Child Control, by Divoky and Schrag.

Flexner's second major contribution to the transformation of American education and society came in 1916, with his plan to create an experimental laboratory school, backed by Rockefeller money, which would be a showplace for the Progressive Education practices of Dewey and Thorndike. Flexner presented his views to the public in a short tract called "A Modern School." In it, Flexner attacked traditional American education and proposed a sharp break with workable educational practices. His experimental school would eliminate the study of Latin and Greek. Literature and history would not be completely abolished, but new methods would be instituted for teaching these subjects, classical literature would be ignored, and formal English grammar would be dropped. Flexner wasn't just throwing out the baby with the bath water; he was blowing up the tub.

(end of chapter 8)

Analysis/Comment There is nothing inherently wrong with studying people, their behavior, their minds and activities coupled with a sincere desire to ascertain truth and the intention to help people achieve happiness, success, and responsibility for themselves and others. This is not an anti-science rant. Studying and experimenting could lead to benefits, but it hasn't at all in this case with modern psychology and psychiatry, and in fact, it has directly damaged education, many people individually, and society in general. Obviously the intentions of the people and groups involved have not been to help people per the above simple statement. Or if it has, they are incredibly stupid. There is no other way to correctly state it. Years of study at colleges and universities implies nothing more than the ability of the students to learn what is taught to them. If what is taught is inherently flawed, then they have simply been indoctrinated into, believe and re-enforce a false system of knowledge. This is also not an anti-education rant, as education into valid information is extremely useful. But education into psychiatry and modern psychology are NOT this at all. I double majored in psychology in college and completed 9 courses at Clark University (a major psychology school in Massachusetts). I was one course short of a psychology degree. After getting mainly A's and a few B's, it was clearly obvious to me that the "science" of modern psychology was a hoax. Sadly, too few students seem to possess the observational abilities necessary to see through the charade, or simply lack the personal moral integrity necessary to discard the false education, and instead accept the information due to financial and social reasons. Largely though, the students and public go along with the views unquestioningly assuming "it must be right" because "scientists and professionals say so". The modern psychologist and psychiatrist will try to explain away their failures by convincing us that the subject of human behavior is "so incredibly complicated", that "there are so many formidable barriers to understanding human behavior and applying it in real life", "we don't get enough funding" (that's a laugh) and blah-blah-blah. The subject is an observable failure to people and society because it is simply BOGUS. It's not a problem of "science" or scientific methods, it's the failure of these fools to honestly use the methods of science while completely pretending to be doing so. As an example, the founder of Dianetics and Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, came up with a fairly simple technology of study in the 1960s, called the Basic Study Manual. Despite what you may think about Hubbard or the subjects he created, there is nothing even slightly like his study methods in the field of educational psychology despite 100 years of study and millions (billions?) of dollars spent. Hubbard's study method is clear, easy to understand and without a doubt assists anyone to learn any subject better and faster than they would otherwise. (Note: The study manual has absolutely nothing to do with religion, Scientology or Dianetics - Hubbard came up with it because the members of Dianetics and Scientology couldn't learn his subjects properly and this was his solution) How did this one guy come up with it, especially considering he wasn't supported by any special interest group or financial empire? Obviously, the goals of modern psychology and education have never been to discover workable study methods, curricula or to train people into intelligence, ability and success otherwise they would have done so by now. Public education, which is declining in results, is in the hands of the education (psychology) establishment. Is it any wonder the Home Schooling movement is sweeping the country? Recall the purpose of the General Education Board defined clearly in Gates' Occasional Paper No. 1. (in chapter 6, Molding Hands). Edward Griffin says it well in his book, World Without Cancer: The objective of this "philanthropy" was not to raise the general level of education, as many thought at the time, but to convert the American people into a docile herd of content and uncomplaining workers. It is interesting to note that the basic ingredient for almost all chemicals is coal tar or crude oil. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company naturally could and would supply the crude oil for the drugs the new doctors and medical schools would religiously promote. The Rockefeller group would also later become involved in many major drug companies and cartel agreements thereby directly profiting from drug sales within the new drug-oriented medical field it supported and helped create. Sadly, there is much evidence that illnesses such as cancer and alzheimer's are largely caused by chemical food additives, cosmetics, pesticides, solvents and chemical poisons which permeate our modern environment (these organic chemical substances are also derived largely from crude oil) . The chemical (and oil) companies profit first by poisoning us, and then profit again when we need the drugs they produce to "manage" the diseases their other chemicals caused! It's bad enough if all this is due to simple greed, faulty education, stupidity and going along with the status quo. But if certain people actually anticipated and planned some or all this ..... Then, God help us all, because the large mega-corporate financial interests, which have been involved in and are still involved in all this, continue to expand and consolidate their power and control across the planet. One must not underestimate the magnitude of money we are discussing here. Rockefeller was tossing around millions when an apartment rental was $5 per month! Common wages were $4-5 per week! What was a very large amount then has been invested and re-invested, diversified, spread around and multiplied considerably over the past 100 years. The amount of money (and control) we are talking about is really quite unimaginable. Written in 1966, according to Ferdinand Lundberg (The Rich And The Super Rich): One percent of the population owns more than seventy percent of the nation's industry, and ten percent own all of it. About half of this, in turn, is held in trust by the ten leading Wall Street banks, which in turn, are heavily influenced by a group so small that they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. This, stated in plain English, represents the greatest and most intense concentration of wealth and power the world has ever seen. Quantities of money such as these can literally buy anything. Recall from chapter 5, Rockefeller's biggest problem was what to do with the large amounts of excess money which kept pouring into his financial empire. A select group of these top people could choose, at whim, any theory or ideology, and using their nearly unlimited funds, promote it, saturate the media, gain it's acceptance, garner outside support, form "professional" societies, get it into major colleges and universities, create an air of "professionalism" about it, support it in all it's applied forms, and thereby infiltrate an entire society with whatever notions they choose. Whatever the motive behind it, and whether intentionally evil or not, this is what was done with the subjects of modern psychology, education and psychiatry (and also medicine) - psychiatry is simply "medicalized" psychology. Psychiatry has become predominantly a drug-oriented field. Is there any wonder why when the philosophies behind it, German psychology and German medicine, both received direct support with Rockefeller money? It's not easy to confront the fact that entire modern institutions, such as modern education, psychiatry, and medicine, which we have come to believe in and trust, are founded on simple greed, and not on any sincere interest to discover and promote truth and benefits to mankind. Always keep in mind that the driving motive behind everything Rockefeller and his groups did was to make money. He didn't have an altruistic bone in his body. The continuing Rockefeller involvement with medicine, education, drugs, oil and psychiatry wasn't then and isn't now done out of a noble desire to help mankind (contrary to their individual and organizational posturing); it's done only for profit (and much likely also to control the populations they feel it's their right and duty to manage...). While John D. Rockefeller, Snr. may not have actually intended or planned social control, educational demise, the subversion of workable medical methods, and widespread legal drug addiction (modern psychiatric drugs), the use of his money did have this effect. His offspring John D., Jr., and his wunderkind, David Rockefeller, did each take a much more personal interest and involvement in these subjects. Neither of them can be declared innocent or ignorant of the disastrous results which have followed wherever the Rockefeller money and power has gone. Note: There are many honest and sincere people in the fields of medicine, education, and psychology. I am sure they also feel frustrated and helpless with the difficulties and failures which confront them daily in their fields. They have been misled, miseducated and sold a bad bill of goods. But there comes a time when they must each confront the truth about their respective fields, make a decision, get out and stop contributing to bogus fields which will never solve the problems these fields pretend to seriously address. I don't extend any excuses for the psychiatrists - I personally believe someone must be stupid, neurotic, psychotic, or covertly evil to even enter into the field in the first place. It does far too much obvious damage and is overtly barbaric in it's practices.

Continue with Chapter 9. Favoring Breezes

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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.

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