Jonathan Gruber has been roundly reprimanded in the press, blogging sites, and everywhere in between for his candid comments regarding “the stupidity of the American voter” being his assumed premise for the passage of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare). As viewed from Gruber’s academic pedestal, this was a most natural and fair assumption. His own education surely indoctrinated him with the elitist attitude of the privileged. A short review of the history of government education policies and goals ought to give Gruber a measure of sympathetic understanding for his natural assumptions as a government-employed sycophant.
The 1960 Godkin Lectures, delivered at Harvard by Sir C.P. Snow, were introduced with this candid pronouncement: “One of the most bizarre features of any advanced industrial society in our time is that the cardinal choices have to be made by a handful of men: in secret: and, at least in legal form, by men who cannot have a first-hand knowledge of what those choices depend upon or what their results may be.” Snow was an English chemist turned novelist, and had served in the British Civil Service and UK government. Gruber was not yet around to be in that audience, but surely some of his future Harvard mentors were.
As part of this process, academia now functions to supply the technocrats needed to run the behind-the-scenes “scientific” mill essential to the elected politicians. The ordinary public is deemed smart enough to elect its representatives, but “too stupid” to meaningfully question the actions of the politico-academic establishment. Voters turn over their future governance to politicians, who in turn delegate scientific issues to selected scientists in government-subsidized universities and favored think tanks. Politicians select the scientific source required to justify a political cause; no other dissenting voices need apply. My scientist is on my side…“the science is settled.”
The roots of presumptive American “stupidity” can be dated to John Dewey’s efforts to reform the public education system in the early 1900s and beyond. A reshaping of American culture was underway as a result of the transition from an agrarian-based society to the machine-age industrialization. Waves of immigration added a diversity of cultural backgrounds to the American persona and public school classrooms. Home-based education and religious traditions were transitioning into a mass-production educational model tuned to produce reliable factory workers… the cogs in the wheels of production, aptly captured by Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 movie Modern Times.
Against this zeitgeist, the expressed aims of John Dewey to restructure public education had a beguiling appeal. As expressed in his 1899 series of lectures and published as The School and Society, Dewey made his case that the existing educational system treated children as passive entities in a one-way flow of didactic material from teacher to student, that the physical rigidity of the classroom environment impeded learning, and that the educational process should become student-centered with the student participating in meaningful classroom decisions. Dewey considered education to be foremost a societal process, and he minimized the tradition of learning facts, historical tradition itself, and religious belief. Learning was to be a social-centered, ongoing empirical procedure, in a learn-to-learn experimental class environment. The disciplinary role of the authoritative teacher would be minimized. A blend of old and these new pedagogic ideas might have had merit, but in practice, Dewey’s view alone permeated the public education establishment in the ensuring years. The 2006 book by Henry Edmondson, John Dewey and the Decline of American Education provides an in-depth analysis of Dewey’s heritage from a conservative’s view point of view.
Rudolf Flesch’s 1955 Why Johnny Can’t Read was another milestone in the educational wars. Phonics versus whole word reading became a contentious issue nationwide, and foreshadows today’s Common Core Curriculum push.
Why Johnny Still Can’t Read (2011) by Sam Blumenfeld contains these excerpts: “As a transactional process reading is not a matter of “getting the meaning” from text, as if that meaning were in the text waiting to be decoded by the reader Rather, reading is a matter of readers using the cues print provide and the knowledge they bring with them to construct a unique interpretation.… This view of reading implies that there is no single “correct” meaning for a given text, only plausible meanings.” The progressives’ view of the world is one open to individual whim and cohort consensus, and one not necessarily founded on the traditional guides of established fact and custom. Traditional science would soon become “post-normal science” in which solutions become matters of expediency, emotion, and popular opinion.
Blumenfeld continues: “The progressive educators, who had introduced the new reading programs, were not about to give up their crusade to use the schools to create a socialist America. Their view, as first stated by their leader John Dewey, was that traditional phonics produced independent, individualistic readers who could think for themselves, while the new whole-word approach produced readers dependent on the collective for meaning and interpretation and were thereby easier to collectivize and control.” Individual freedom of thought, initiative, and responsibility were to be early casualties of Rousseau in France and of the American socialists drive to conformity and the nanny state..
Gruber’s inherent academic assumption of (ordinary) Americans’ stupidity is elucidated by Charlotte Iserbyt’s 1999 The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. She served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration. Gruber’s matter-of-fact pronouncement of the “stupidity” of Americans reflects his academic assumption of the success of government education, and validation of Iserbyt’s investigations into the education establishment.
From Iserbyt’s book’s preface: “In 1971 when I returned to the United States after living abroad for 18 years, I was shocked to find public education had become a warm, fuzzy, soft, mushy, touchy-feely experience, with its purpose being socialization, not learning. From that time on, from the vantage point of having two young sons in the public schools, I became involved — as a member of a philosophy committee for a school, as an elected school board member, as co-founder of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM), and finally as a senior policy advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education during President Ronald Reagan’s first term of office. OERI was, and is, the office from which all the controversial national and international educational restructuring has emanated.”
Another excerpt: “I realized that America’s transition from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy would not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through the implementation and installation of the “system” in all areas of government—federal, state and local. The brainwashing for acceptance of the “system’s” control would take place in the school — through indoctrination and the use of behavior modification, which comes under so many labels: the most recent labels being Outcome-Based Education, Skinnerian Mastery Learning or Direct Instruction.”
Americans’ incremental molding into dumbed-down collectivists is a “given” in Gruber’s academic world. He probably meant no insult by his comments, and was just stating an academic fact… a sort of insider’s joke. Are we all “too stupid” to see that?
Charles Battig, MD, Piedmont Chapter president, VA- Scientists and Engineers for Energy and Environment (VA-SEEE). His website is www.climateis.com
“you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.” There are wise and good men among the educated scientists on this, and other skeptic blogs. As Mr. Watts points out, there are fewer and fewer educated Americans in the West who have the ability to think rationally and reach conclusions which make sense. It is a good thing to publicize the fact that our “elites” think so little of their “stupid” electorate that they verbalize it without fear of repercussions. Nancy Pelosi denied knowing of Gruber’s role in writing Obamacare, and when she was confronted with a video of her acknowledgement of his role prior to its implementation, she brushed it off without even acknowledging it. Pandering to the socialists/ communist mobs for a vote will destroy the fools who think they are beyond the reach of the consequences. The barbarians are already inside our gates, and “Irish monasteries” are in need today to save Western Civilization again, as the next dark age descends. Real science and scientists are buried in a landslide of PC social justice nonsense, moving ever leftward to their totalitarian egalitarian nightmare. Ala Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, future “engineers and technicians” will polish the brightwork and scavenge what is still running to run the generator plants or replace the infrastructure; the cities will go dark and the morlocks will run amok (hopefully eating all the elite Eloi first). Let us pray for a citadel to keep the candle of science going here or there.
They are not technocrats. They merely profess a scientific basis to their agenda.
Dewey didn’t preach not teaching facts, maybe you should actually read what he wrote and said rather this poor pastiche.
@ur momisugly Karl Bently: [John Dewey] read what he wrote and said.
As an insight to that termite of the American Tradition, John Dewey, readers including the astute expert on Dewey, K.B., may enjoy this exegesis of the words of the august Dewey: The Concept of Democracy and John Dewey by Clarence B. Carson here or http://www.unz.org/Pub/ModernAge-1960q2-00180 or http://www.unz[DOT]org/Pub/ModernAge-1960q2-00180
Dan Kurt
Like I said, try reading what Dewey said, not what other folk with a political axe to grind think he said. It’s called original sources. Something any critical reader should go to, not rehashed data, sound familiar?
.
I retract what I said above concerning K.B. enjoying the Carson essay. My dear K.B. is one who apparently reads Aristotle’s logic in the original Greek. Unlike we of the hoi polloi, K.B. needs no help in understanding an author’s work. K. B. being an autodidact par excellence drinks directly from the oracle.
Dan Kurt
“If you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in … and sick people get money, it would not have passed,”
Well, there’s an awful lot (thousands) of very intelligent. highly educated, very experienced people who were adamantly opposed to Obamacare, and to the best of my knowledge, not one of them tried to characterize it that way. So seems to me that Gruber may think that he bamboozled a bunch of dumb people, but clearly he bamboozled a lot of smart people too.
I man I had a lot of respect for was a politician for 20 years. He confided in me that before he got into politics, he was universally thought of as objective, honest and sincere. After he won his first election, he was repeatedly accused of being “just like the rest of them”. The problem, he lamented, is that before being elected, he had little appreciation for the complexity of the issues. Afterward he did, because he was face to face with the (at times) folly of his position and the potential consequences of it. But how, he asked, do I explain why I changed my mind in a 30 minute press conference on an issue it took me 4 months to understand in detail?
That’s the way politics is. You either pick your poison on the basis of a few sound bites, or you invest an enormous amount of your own time in understanding the issue at the same level of detail as the politicians and their advisers. Since most of us don’t have that kind of time on our hands, we live with an unsatisfactory result, often not knowing if the alternative was better or worse. As Churchill lamented, it is a terrible way to run a country, just so much better than anything else.
A lot of smart people as well as not as smart people DID point this out. Unfortunately, you have the MSM which essentially got behind the ram that our wonderful Congress was pushing it with.
Mark
“Well, there’s an awful lot (thousands) of very intelligent. highly educated, very experienced people who were adamantly opposed to Obamacare, and to the best of my knowledge, not one of them tried to characterize it that way.”
I submit that almost all of those were Republicans especially the wealthy, and the Republican congress, who are stridently and irrationally 100% against anything that ‘Bama is for. Many of those right wing claims about the ACA should peg the BS meter of any one that has used the health care system. Fo example the claim that it will increase costs. Well it will for those now having to pay in for insurance, but hospital and some doctors costs should fall. Example: a recent visit to the emergency room by my wife would have cost $2505 for someone walking in off the street with no insurance, but because of hospital and doctor “double booking” the negotiated rate for the insurance company was $477 of which we owed $188. Simarly for diagnostic pathology tests at the doctors office, submitted charges: $438, allowed by insurance company $164, we paid $78. I suspect that much of the “inflation” in hospital costs are rather artificial and based on the uninsured’s rates. I can see why doctors and hospitals may be upset because they will have fewer inflated charges for the uninsured but the insurance companies should be happier as they will have a bigger, and healthier customer base which should provide more profit margin. The only insurance companies unhappy will be those with too small a customer base to cover the really sick or long term ill as they will no longer be able to cancel policies or rapidly raise those rates. Those companies will fail, which, after all, is the way private enterprise is suppose to work.
what you just said is that by design this will lead to a single government payer, because no insurance company is large enough to sustain those losses for long.
The medical device tax means that anyone who needs a pacemaker will pay much more for it. Most smaller hospitals will not be able to afford the additional cost for the diagnostic equipment and as a result won’t replace old and broken equipment. People will die of stupidly simple things to cure because they will be put on VA style waiting lists for simple screening as only the large centers in big cities will have equipment. Companies won’t research the next radiation therapy breakthrough or drug breakthrough because the market will be too small to recover their investment. Sell thousands of units and you can get back your investment, sell hundreds and watch your company go up in smoke. It is already bad that socialized medicine countries like Canada and the UK (and most of the EU countries) are getting a free ride on American pharma development by issuing price controls that don’t cover R&D costs leaving the US to effectively subsidize all their drug costs. If the US tries to put the same sorts of controls in place, the last pharma breakthrough in history will have occurred on that day.
The government NEVER makes ANYTHING less expensive. Some regulation for safety is necessary, but no agency on Earth ever stopped making new regulations when its original mission was accomplished. Bureaucracies have to grow or die, so mission creep is inevitable. When bureaucracies grow, freedom dies. It is a universal trade off.
Owen in GA, I agree with most of what you said but please do a little more work on the Canadian health system it is not free, we have a monthly fee and neither are the drugs, visits to dentists ( and their results), physio, optometrist ( and glasses), ambulance, etc etc none for free. I have said this before and sadly so many Americans keep on thinking every thing is free up there, it is not. Oh a question for you and your family, are your medical cost a write off in the USA? I am not being sarcastic just learning.
There are a few towns in Mexico, on the border, that cater to “snow birds”. Retirees mostly that summer south in RVs. The provide cheap drugs, booze, eye and Dental care. One such place is Los Algodones. And the clients are as much Canadian as American,. so your narrative sounds about right.
asybot, first, Owen in GA didn’t say that Canada medical was free, read what he actually said. As to “deductability” in the US of health expenses, you don’t pay income tax on the portion of those expenses that EXCEDE 7.5% or 10% of you adjusted gross income. So at best you only reduce your tax burden IF you have an exceptional health care cost.
@aysbot
I know it isn’t free, neither is the UK’s National Healthcare. I am more familiar with the UK because I lived there for 3 years. Their system is funded off a separate payroll tax that they call a National Insurance payment.
The drug comment on Canada and the other centralized health systems is because of the controls placed on price. There are drugs in the US that a 90 day supply is $1,000 that goes for about $100 in Canadian pharmacies. That is why so many Americans in the northern border towns will drive to Canada to pick up prescriptions (illegal though the practice may be.) That difference in price is because the Canadian government will not allow the pharmaceutical companies to charge for the R&D in the cost of the medicines. (or a ridiculous pittance that would amortize the investment over a century or more – patents don’t last that long in most jurisdictions thus meaning the company will never recover its investment) Similar policies are in place in Europe. If all were paying for the R&D the price would be closer to $500 for a 90 day supply. It also means that there are effective drugs with fewer side effects that are not allowed into the Canadian and European markets because the pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell at a loss. (Less so in Canada more in Europe.) Most of the governments prefer to say that the treatment is unavailable due to excessive cost compared to the benefit. That is the problem with the system as a whole and because the government controls what comes in and at what price, other treatments simply aren’t available at any price. This also means wait lists for more specialized care is common. This is particularly critical in the early diagnosis and treatment of most types of cancer.
In Britain I know a number of firms are starting to offer private insurance as a supplement for the NHS and a parallel private medical system is beginning to emerge, but the pharmaceutical issues remain. I haven’t asked any of my Canadian relatives if that is the case in Canada. I haven’t been to BC in years though maybe it is time for a visit.
It goes back to an adage older than the American education system. The fool is he who does not know he knows not. While America may be ignorant (ignorance is the lack of knowledge, stupidity is the rejection of knowledge), most are not fools like Gruber.
Remember that Gruber not only helped get Obamacare passed but he made $6 million in “consulting fees” to assist states in implementing the law! I suppose he is just your average elite, corrupt, left-wing academic…
I don’t think that people are stupid, unless trusting in certain government and academic groups reflects being stupid. I agree that they are miss informed, uninformed, or deceived.
Gruber admits they were dishonest and not transparent because they knew if they were honest and transparent they could not pass the ACA, Obamacare. Also we now know his economics was flawed possibly intentionally which could cause him more problems when investigated by the Congress after Obama leaves office.
The other problem, we have a MSM, academia, and the education system that has become an advocate for any agenda the Administration wishes to push while covering up for wrongdoing and inappropriate or poor decisions. Ergo we have badly uninformed citizens.
Historically, the citizens of the USA have had reasonable trust in their government, although not perfect, because we depend on a free press, the 4th estate which traditionally has keep the government in check. Many probably got lazy to get the straight facts. Presently the frees press has an agenda and no longer overseas the government unless it it is controlled by a Republican.
If you look at the last election, it is clear that some of the electorate have caught on, and that they no longer believe the government representatives or the information provided by the MSM. The drop in sale of newspapers and loss of viewership means more and more no longer buy the “agenda” they sell. This is also reflected in the drop of citizens that buy into the climate change/global warming agenda.
Finally we have seen two long term loyal Democratic Senators recently admit that pushing through Obama care was a huge mistake. They have found out that the electorate is not as stupid as Gruber thought, and they now are afraid of their jobs.
.
“They have found out that the electorate is not as stupid as Gruber thought, and they now are afraid of their jobs.”
—————————
They are probably afraid of more than that. One small indicator of what is really in the minds of US citizens is the fact that on Black Friday, requests for police background checks for firearms purchases were happening at the rate of 2 per second, or over 175,000 requests for the day, which is not the record.(set in Dec. 2012.) Widespread ammo and hand loading component shortages (bullets, powder, primers, etc) have been plaguing gun owners since December 2012, as demand is far outstripping supply, although firearms are again on store shelves and available for purchase after similar shortages. American citizens have been stockpiling arms and ammunition at high rate for two straight years…
correction: NCIS checks average @rate of 3/sec.
Romney was right, but light, on his 47% assessment. Just ask Gruber.
I was not particularly offended by Gruber’s comments, as I never bought into the snake oil he was selling- I figured that the “stupid people” were the ones who would.
That said, perhaps Gruber really thinks people are stupid- that makes him a ridiculous elitist, bereft of common sense- when what I think he really meant was that people are ignorant.
Ignorance is curable… stupid people are a core Democrat constituency (please pardon my partisanship).
No need to ask for a pardon when speaking the truth.
What boggles the mind is that Chief Justice Roberts, who presumably had worked his way though his fair share of phonics as a child, failed to recognized the distinct outlines of a tax (or of outright fraud), and voted to strike it down when he had the chance. I have to wonder if he regrets his decision in light of Gruber’s recent public comments.
To clarify, Roberts should have voted to strike down the individual mandate of the ACA.
Bill, I would counsel patience. It is quite possible that Roberts ACA opinion is another Marbury v. Madison, which has not yet borne fruit. Discussed elsewhere in re Commerce clause limitations, new requirements to call taxes taxes, and articulated states unalignable rights.
Read the whole thing again, carefully, in context of pre-existing Con Law.
Roberts also reaffirmed that Congress alone has the power to tax. It also means that Congress alone has the power to remove a tax. It was an open invitation to change the “penalty” (tax) which would effectively derail Obamacare without the Supreme Court interfering with an established Congressional power. Congress has not yet taken the invitation but with Republican control of both the Senate and House you may well see it happen. Of course Obama will veto that legislation but he will do so at the peril of Democrat Senators and Members of the House up for reelection next time around, not that he actually cares anymore.
Reblogged this on Louis Hissink's Crazy World and commented:
The idiocy of this progressive agenda is that in order to cope with this new world, we are told to “innovate”, but if your thinking skills have been socialised, how is that possible. The stupids are now running the system, and the mess we find ourselves in, in an economic sense, the direct outcome of these educational policies in the Anglo-American sphere.
Obama Wants Kids to Learn About Global Warming
The administration wants students and teachers to toe the line on climate change.
Perhaps unable to convince older Americans of the severity of global warming, President Barack Obama is hoping to have better luck with the next generation by turning to the classroom.
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Wednesday announced it will launch a new initiative aimed at climate education and literacy that will distribute science-based information – in line with the administration’s position on the issue – to students, teachers and the broader public.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/12/03/obama-administration-to-launch-global-warming-education-initiative
How interesting that your linked US News article has a companion photo taken inside a classroom, with a picture of Che Guevera on the wall, above the children’s heads.
Global Warming, Mass Extinction, and Bigfoot
http://thefederalist.com/2014/12/03/global-warming-mass-extinction-and-bigfoot/
As a Meteorologist I find this talk about Climate Change (AGW-type) to be a bunch of hooey. For over 30 years I have watched climates around the world. What is remarkable is that there is nothing remarkable outside of the process of entropy. Hell, most of the ‘supporters’ blithely follow each other off the cliff…. for politics..
Where ya, I say, where ya been boy? What kept ya, son? You just come back anytime, I say anytime, Mr. Leghorn.
Hahahah thanks but I lost that damn chicken hawk!!!
I don’t know if the American public is stupid. If by this you mean that they can’t do their various jobs, some of it very well then no they are not stupid. But Americans are 330 million and most know little outside their narrow circle. They are not widely read, are not exactly linguists, don’t know history. But worst of all they project themselves on to the rest of the world believing that basically we are all like them. But we are not. They have demonstrated this by electing a muslim Marxist twice.
I am not a product of the US schools – but I would like to see Pamela’s take on this article. Can anybody compare John Dewey to G.B.Shaw?
Spelling Nitpick
para 5 penultimate sentence: “ensuring,” should be “ensuing.”.
Another mental picture .. a quote from E.M.Remarque’s book Three Comrades (a pig translated this title; it should have been Three Friends): Have you ever considered working in garments? Ladies or gentleman’s? – Souls .. I wanted to be a teacher.
I recently saw an article about Harvard Students failing the 1964 Louisiana literacy tests originally given to would-be voters who couldn’t prove they had at least completed 5th grade. Of course the University used this to legitimize a preexisting radicalized political opinion slanted with the false claim that the ‘literacy test’ somehow gave weight to the political opinion. Alleging that the tests were designed by evil white racists who allegedly did not want Blacks to vote. And “stupid” voters will believe it, instead of dismissing what some pseudo-intellectual from Harvard says, because Harvard produces students that are “stupider” than 5th graders.
Paraphrasing the late Frank Zappa, “The common building block of everything throughout the entire universe is Human Stupidity.”
I recently came across in our rare books collection two grammar school text books from the late 1800s, One was on Rhetoric and the other was on Algebra. These were meant for 12 year old students and most of my students would not be able to grasp the contents of the books. The Algebra text (the one I am more qualified to judge) was much more thorough than the ones we use in the College Algebra program, but I am afraid the large words with precise definitions would be beyond all but the brightest college freshman. I wish we would go back to using material like this to teach 12 year olds. Our students would be far more qualified for the STEM fields when they got here.
There are some others in Greek and Latin that I am not able to evaluate as my Latin is elementary and rusty and other than the alphabet I have no understanding of ancient Greek at all. All of these books came to us from the collection of a man who died in the 1920s who was a private tutor for wealthy families.
Education has really gone downhill in the last 120 years.
+1
Gee; I thought the Germans beat the French twice in the twentieth century.
I’d read Dr. Battig’s article earlier today, but I was well-pleased to see it recapitulated on Watts Up With That?. His reference to Dr. Snow’s Godkin Lectures (1960) was particularly pertinent to the Ur-underpinnings of the gulf between the hard sciences and the squishy “social” pseudosciences, a reality which I’ve found to bear upon the issue of climate catastrophism in the public sphere ever since the AGW bogosity began to float more than three decades ago.
The health care bill is like 2,000 pages long.
It covers the governments ass, and leaves others like my Blue Cross Blue Shield to fend for themselves.
They don’t know what the bill says, or what might charged to them for non-compliance of any of the provisions.
It is a ______ fire drill, with the taxpayers picking up any expenses.
Life is good for the bureaucrats, crack heads, illegals, and scammers.
It’s all “free”.
I’d like to,give him a break, but his femur would be too humerus. But he would have Obamacare.
“Gruber’s matter-of-fact pronouncement of the “stupidity” of Americans reflects his academic assumption of the success of government education….” ~Charles Battig
This is probably true!
If you look at the most wonderful inventions we have, they were brought to us by determined, independent people. What did Charles Goodyear, and his son by the same name, and the Wright brothers have? They were just young people who came from good, solid homes, could read, and were very determined to make something of value and use – and a profit. And from them we have flight, tires, and rubber soled shoes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goodyear “self-taught chemist”
We showed the world that equality before the law and literacy unlocked the wonderful initiative and intelligence of the citizens. What we have never did come from education alone – there has to be a foundation of genuine love and respect, self-control, integrity, and personal diligence and focus, or it is all in vain. Education does not provide that. Quite the contrary it turned out. “Because iniquity will abound, the love of many will grow cold.”
Sadly Gruber is fundmentally correct. Leaders and governments everywhere relie on this one fundamental fact to control the will of their people.
97% of all populations are THICK. Just watch the TV interviews on the street and yes I know they are chosen because they look wierd or stupid. That’s the way it is with the media.