[sidelights on mullins] origins of educational decline

Mullins has been over-quoted and yet this was an interesting aside about the origins of the current educational malaise, sort of a Genesis of the Daleks in a way:

One of the most far-reaching consequences of the General Education Board's political philosophy was achieved with a mere six million dollar grant to Columbia University in 1917, to set up the ''progressive'' Lincoln School.

From this school descended the national network of progressive educators and social scientists, whose pernicious influence closely paralleled the goals of the Communist Party, another favorite recipient of the Rockefeller millions.

From its outset, the Lincoln School was described frankly as a revolutionary school for the primary and secondary schools of the entire United States. It immediately discarded all theories of education which were based on formal and well-established disciplines, that is, the McGuffey Reader type of education which worked by teaching such subjects as Latin and algebra, thus teaching children to think logically about problems.

Rockefeller biographer Jules Abel hails the Lincoln School as ''a beacon light in progressive education ''.