Topic: John Dewey

Klyzik traces the influence of the Rockefeller family in education from modern partnerships with public television to the early 20th-century work of John Dewey. He explains how Dewey’s functionalist psychology, funded by the Rockefellers, evolved from the stimulus-response traditions of Wilhelm Wundt. This historical lineage is presented as the foundation for modern adaptive learning software and behavioral education.

An anecdote is shared about a math teacher, Mr. Nelson, who was allegedly told by John Dewey and other "big shots" that his effective teaching methods were exactly what the establishment did not want. Iserbyt traces the origin of modern "goals-based" education to the Northwest Regional Lab in 1971. She argues these standards are designed to bypass the brain in favor of behavioral conditioning.

Attorney Horace Mann brought the Prussian education model to the United States around 1850 to serve the interests of industrial railroad owners. Massachusetts established the first privately funded Board of Education to implement mandatory schooling, despite violent riots from parents who viewed the system as state-sponsored kidnapping. The model eventually spread globally, with John Dewey later implementing similar structures in post-revolutionary China.