Here’s why:

I’ve been studying Rudolph Flesch, the reading wars, the ed wars, John Dewey, and all points in between. Along the way I learned a lot about Montessori, and her losing, bruising battle with America’s top educators. Mainly, I learned that she deserved to win.

Montessori was the first female doctor in Italy, graduating in 1896. You know she was extremely smart and determined; you know she thought for herself.

She got into education along an odd tangent. She wanted to help retarded children (at a clinic in Rome). She devised her own techniques and was soon producing miracles: these retarded children were beating the so-called normal kids! Now, that right there is an amazing and wonderful story. But it gets better.

Montessori next asked the very questions that would obsess me: what the heck were the public schools doing to Italy’s children that they lagged behind her retarded children? How could she, a medical doctor, come along and beat those schools at their own game?

Long story short: she applied her techniques to ordinary kids and, soon, she was the talk of Europe and then the world. Her ideas swept through enlightened circles in the USA. She came here to speak in 1913.

And then comes one of the most shameful moments in American education. John Heard Kilpatrick, a crony of John Dewey, wrote a piece in the New York Times (1914) that devastated Montessori. Her reputation in the USA collapsed. Montessori schools closed. Her name disappeared until the 1960s. (Both she and Dewey died in 1952.)

Now, if you want to study the differences between Dewey and Montessori, here’s a long and thorough article: “The Egg Man and the Empress,” on Looksmart.com. But I warn you, you might study the material for a semester, and still be confused. So many platitudes, abstractions, details, generalizations. Finally, it comes down to what an educator is REALLY trying to do.

Maria Montessori was trying to set kids loose, make them smart, tap into all their resources, explore (and explode) their potential. That’s what I believe in.

John Dewey and his gang were all too willing to settle for mediocrity. They were Socialists and they believed that too much learning and knowledge got in the way of producing the cooperative, interdependent children they wanted. John Dewey specifically says in “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897) that he didn’t believe in too much history, science, math, geography, literature, and so on in the early grades. That is, ages 6 to 9 when, according to Montessori and common sense, kids are on fire, eager to learn, growing every day. No, John Dewey says that he wants to emphasize social activities, including “cooking, sewing, manual training, etc.” (his words). He wants to slow kids down, to retard them. The pay-off is supposed to be that they will grow up to become good little Socialists. (Even Antonio Gramsci, a real Communist, said that if you want to help poor kids, you had better give them lots of basic academic skills.)

Here’s what I’ve figured out: you have to look at motives. Montessori was obsessed with making slow children fast. That’s a pedigree I can trust. Dewey was obsessed with making all kids Socialists. So, from day one, Dewey was not an educator in the traditional sense. He believed in conditioning. He was a social engineer, trying to build the Brave New World he saw in his head.

A century later, we are still paying for Dewey’s bad ideas. Dewey, I submit, is the Father of Dumbing Down. He and his gang specifically did not like too much literacy. That is, they were comfortable with more illiteracy. And they got it. By promoting whole word, which does not work, they made sure that this country’s literacy rate would steadily drop. This pedagogy is also, I believe, responsible for all the dyslexia and reading problems we hear about. (Want to eliminate dyslexia? My guess is that the simplest way is to eliminate sight words. Every last one. Once children start to see word-shapes, they become doomed, no longer able to perceive sounds in print.)

The problem with Dewey and Kilpatrick is that they were trying to pull off a silent coup. They wanted a Socialist America. You think they can speak candidly about their goals or strategies? Never. That’s why anything Kilpatrick, Dewey or their allies say about Montessori will be bull and balderdash. It will, more formally, be disingenuous.

Bottom line: Let’s don’t get stuck in the details. Montessori was a real educator. She always INTENDS to educate. Dewey was a real Socialist. He always intends to create Socialists. As most people understand the term “education,” Dewey was actually anti-education. Or, to be charitable, he was remarkably cavalier about it!

This paper deals with the question: Why is the shift toward online education happening? This is a complex issue that involves questions of educational access, paradigms for teaching and learning, competition and globalization among universities, the development of new and better online technologies, and the financial pressures facing higher education. A huge transition is underway. The same networking and computing technology that has revolutionized global commerce, and many other facets of modern life, is now being targeted at education. Partnering the Internet with modern course management systems makes it possible for universities to offer online coursework on a global basis. The critical task that lies ahead is to create and disseminate curricula of high quality that students can embrace and educators can sustain. For more details visit to www.guardadsense.com .The overall objective of José’s Online Education Forum is to examine the realities of college and university online teaching, and the processes of education using today’s information technologies. Collectively, the authors of this paper have taught over a hundred different university-level courses online, both graduate and undergraduate, mostly using the Internet. The issues and insights discussed in this Forum will provide educators with important tools and the understanding needed to effectively embrace the world of online education.

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Sloan Consortium

In a Sloan-C survey of 1170 Provosts and Academic VPs, more than half indicated a belief that online education would be ‘critical for the long-term’ in higher education. Surprisingly perhaps, the same percentage said that they believe success in achieving learning outcomes is already equivalent between online and traditional teaching methods. And there was also a consensus of opinion among these respondents that the quality of online courses would continue to improve, with a third of them believing that online teaching quality will soon surpass the quality typical of conventional teaching. These opinions may be surprising for many of us in the teaching profession, coming as they do from such high level and influential administrators. They signal a fundamental change in perceptions about the potential of online education in the immediate future.

1.2 Overview

The objective in this paper is to investigate and assess why this shift to online education is happening. Several factors can be cited beginning with improvements in access to educational services using online technologies and changing paradigms for teaching and learning that integrate well with these technologies. Other factors include heightened educational competition and globalization, the ongoing and often dramatic improvements in online systems capabilities, and the underlying economics of providing online education versus conventional means. The following sections of this paper explore each of these factors individually.

2. ACCESS TO EDUCATION

2.1 Access for the Masses

The ability to use information technologies effectively is one aspect of achieving success in today’s society, both for individuals and for organizations as a whole. The current job market requires educated workers who are capable of changing and adapting as business and cultural realities shift and evolve in today’s fast-paced, global economy (Kantar, 2001). Information technology is enabling the development of this kind of economic world structure. For more information logon to www.instant-adsense-dollars.com .It is also making possible the education of the workforce that this new economy requires by providing new capabilities for teaching and learning online.

Online education offers the promise of increased access to high quality education for the masses. Exactly how this is going to occur is not clear yet, but there is no doubt that online education is rapidly becoming an established modality. The development of the modern world economy demands an educated workforce. Places like the three It’s (India, Indonesia, and Ireland) and more recently China, are finding that the need for an educated workforce is overwhelming the capabilities of their traditional educational systems .In America and Western Europe, the same economic and political pressures associated with ‘equality of opportunity’ contribute to demands for equal access to a quality education for all who seek it.