ARTICLE FROM THE AMERICAN THINKER  PRESCHOOLS USING MARXIST THEORIES TO MANUFACTURE COLLECTIVISTS:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/preschools_are_using_a_marxist.html

Read the article on line, and then read the comments from some intelligent readers as copied below....

Preschools Are Using a Marxist's Theories to Manufacture Collectivists

Comments Rules

By Chuck Rogér

The room buzzes with little voices. Little children engage in "mature, dramatic play." An adult helps the children "regulate" and "monitor each other's compliance" with "rules and assigned roles."[1] Each child knows his or her place. Each child does the group's bidding, nothing else. Orwell's 1984? No, a scene played out in thousands of classrooms across America. The drumbeat of collectivism begins in preschool. And a long-dead Soviet psychologist helped define that drumbeat. Months ago, an email from a teacher spurred me to investigate the theories of... (Read Full Article)

Comments posted below this article from the American Thinker web site on April 1, 2011

This perverse education of pre-schoolers is going on at our state funded parent-child workshops right now in California for affluent professional parents. Training helicopter parents and waves of socialist pre-school children all on the California tax payer dime. The little kids speak like creepy automatons about global warming, only eat organic snacks with specially proscribed places the food must be purchased from and are not even allowed to eat raisins. (Organic or not).

They claim they are being exposed to a Montessori freedom to explore educational experience, but they come out dyed in the wool collective socialists who learn when playing musical chairs that no chair will ever be taken out of the game. They only explore collective socialist options. Wake up California taxpayers. Yet again, you are doing this to yourselves. They are never told their artwork is beautiful because that is a qualitative judgment creating a sense of competitive hierarchy which violates the collective brain-washing. They are praised they "used a lot of colors" or filled up the whole page with drawing. This is something anyone can do. But to say the art was good is to destroy the easily reached common denominator that leads to envy and threats to the precious ego that must be nurtured and massaged at all time.

Secretly, it is the parents who benefit most from these state supported collective pre-school brainwashing because by letting their precious spawn become undisciplined tyrants in the name of collective freedom, they are absolved of all parenting anxiety that real discipline might make their little tyrants unhappy and thereby identifying themselves as bad parents.  

This is already happening in California state funded parent-child workshops - Google them and see what is passing for pre-school education. (aka collective socialist mentality brain washing)Lou Grant Parent Child Workshop - read their parent education training manual and weep. It is already too late for California and this will explain why.

It seems to me that a major part of taking back our country is to take back our schools. But if polls show that "47 percent of Americans - 63 percent under age thirty -- are supportive of, or open to, socialism", then it may be too late. We already have a new generation coming up that has apparently been indoctrinated. They've been taught to believe that they know better than their parents' generation. In my personal life, however, I know many young families who believe in God, and are home schooling their children. These are young parents of honor and integrity, and they give me hope for the future. I have also learned that there are tea party movements arising in high schools comprised of brave teens who are taking a stand against the pressure of progressivism. Good people must stand up for what is right and hold their ground. I pray that the powers that be will not take away parents' rights to homeschool their children. And I pray for the safety and future of our children and grandchildren.  

Education for a Global Government: In 1994 alone, this effort received three major boosts, in the form of the Goals 2000 Educate America Act, the School-To-Work Opportunities Act (STW), and a bill known simply as HR6, a funding appropriations bill for most federal education programs. Bill Clinton signed all three. (More recently, of course, George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which we are led to believe superseded STW.) Taken together, these bills hand control over curricular content to federal educrats, resulting in the New Federal Curriculum: FedEd, for short. Quist identifies seven themes running through FedEd (p. 43, p. 100, pp. 131-32, etc.):

1. Undermining national sovereignty (moving us toward world government under the auspices of the United Nations).
2. Redefining natural rights (substituting for the American view a Marxist and internationalist view justifying massive redistribution of wealth).
3. Minimizing natural law (essentially by neglect).
4. Promoting environmentalism (emphasizing the global nature of environmental issues, including promoting the pagan pseudo-religion of Gaia, Mother Earth).
5. Requiring multiculturalism (including acceptance of homosexuality).
6. Restructuring government (toward the idea that we live in a "global village," defining citizenship in global terms).
7. Redefining education as job skills (preparing "human resources" for the global workforce).  
this has been going on for quite some time, and if you match up the education system and the goals of the U.N., it gets really scary  

I notice that many of the kids I've come across in recent years have no problem commenting on and even correcting (or attempting to correct) the adults around them. This includes their attempts to "train" me and believe me when I say that I'm not the type that invites that kind of BS from kids. I assumed that parents today don't teach their kids not to be so rude. After reading this piece, however, I think I now know why they've taken it upon themselves to correct adults...and it might not be because of their parents at all.  

Socialism, at its core, is the fraudulent offer made possible using government coercion, that we each can and must live at the expense of others. Anyone familiar with the Ten Commandments should recognize how it violates those that forbid lies, coveting and theft.  

"Little children engage in 'mature, dramatic play.'"
I read that and the first thing that came to mind was Brave New World. While the children are not engaged in quite the same sort of activity in that book (yet...), the mentality is still the same. Remember the young boy in the book who didn't want to engage in "sex play" and how he was whisked off for punishment? I get the same sort of vibe with this class of teaching. Sick.  

These theories match up pretty well with those of John Dewey, the "father" of modern American education. Dewey was a socialist who wanted to use public schools to make socialists of the children. An example of Dewey's philosophy about education: "Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent." It's been a long time coming, but the Marxists are at last beginning to see the fruit of their labors.  

Great , informative comments by all. The article should read "Schools are using Marxist theories..... I would like to add that the International Baccalaureate or I.B. schools endorse the teachings of Lev Vygotsky. A few years ago an I.B school was built in our neighborhood in Bellingham, WA. During the rollout presentation, an information pamphlet was passed out listing endorsements by the I.B., with only the last name Vygotsky. After researching, and concluding Lev was the Vygotsky, I confronted the Principal about the author of the Marxist child psychology theory, only to have him deny knowing who Lev Vygotsky was. Unbelievable! There are over 600 of these schools in the U.S., public schools, that impose this doctrine , mandatory for those that attend these elementary schools or I.B. labeled "Primary years Program". The website "Truth About I.B." or TAIB is A very informative source for anyone interested about the platform this evil program operates off. PSYCHOSIS post is basically A very good overview of this operation. In conjunction with the U.N., this is a very grave threat to the sovereignty of our country. It is very diabolical, and very difficult to expel from a community.  

The history of America’s past
They want buried in darkness and shadows cast
Erased through all eternity
No more hope for humanity
‘Tis when the Hurdy Gurdys
Come singing children songs of Marxist love
‘Tis when the Hurdy Gurdys
Come singing children songs of Marxist love  

The Marxists may start brainwashing/indoctrinating our children in preschools; but, it continues in K-12 and "so called" higher education "politically correct", "social justice", and "redistribution" camps called Colleges and Universities. This is all supported and reinforced by a Marxist owned and controlled Global Media. The book publishing Industry is filled with Marxist and Muslim editors intentioned to denigrate America and Capitalism in favor of "social justice" and "politically correct" memes designed to group everyone into lockstep grievance groups for further exploitation--community organizing on a massive scale. All of this is sanctioned by Big Government through the Dept. of Education at the Federal level, and both major political parties support Federal control over America's school system either out of their ideology or out of fear of being called racists, child haters, Union busters, or right wing extremists. This brainwashing/indoctrination of our children is the top reason why America now is facing its death by its own hand. (47% open to socialism; under age 30, 63% favor socialism) Everything from redistribution of wealth (In my opinion, all redistribution of wealth ends up going to the world's Billionaires. But that's a Federal Reserve story for another day.) to lost morals are the result that historically always ends the same--the existing society ends and a new one begins. Historically, this new society is always worse than the one it replaced as the players causing the previous society to collapse are power hungry, corrupt, and evil to their core. So America, here we are; are there enough of the non-brainwashed to stand up to this self inflicted disease of Marxism permeating throughout our Republic (can we keep it) or is the American dream of a self governed free people lost forever.  

Solid, well documented article, Mr. Roger. It has been long observed this is important. We need this intel to counter the enemy within. Take action at your local school boards, AT readers. Also get places on your local Junior College, State College boards, in order to correct the education schools. We can't just read about this, take action. Dr. Bill Bennett often quotes Plato: "The most important thing is, who is teaching the children, and what are they teaching them?"  

I was one of the 63%. Web sites like AT woke up my sorry soul. There is hope. We can change the 63%'s view. It takes confrontation using ridicule, socialism's Achilles' heel. That's why Progressives hate being laughed at. Young people love mockery as humor.....  

I do not like the term "capitalist". Not only did Marx use the term derisively, his emphasis on money-grubbing exploitive plutocrats ignores the human capital that is the source of all wealth and superlative achievement. Money is merely a way of keeping score. A better term is "competition". Competition is at the root of all excellence, from the local high school football team to the formerly mighty American industrial base. Obama socialized Government Motors (Item 5 in Marx's Communist Manifesto) because GM could no longer compete with Toyota and other foreign-owned auto factories in the USA.

The Soviet Union existed for seventy years, alternating in massive waves of physical destruction and death and economic waves of recession and depression. There was actually no shortage of competition in the USSR but it was not productive competition such as once existed in the USA; it was political competition for the top dog spot, and this Soviet competition was internecine warfare between Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Trotskyites, and a host of other factions. The main function of the dumbed-down citizenry was to feed the political plutocracy, support the plutocracy's Byzantine plots, and die in its political purges. Ultimately, the Soviet Union could not compete, and it collapsed, at horrific human cost over the years.

For all its specific accomplishments in space and in the Olympics, the Soviets devoted too much of their limited human capital to showcase projects. Entrepreneurs are the driving force in competitive economies. Whatever else Vygotsky accomplished, his methods deliberately retarded entrepreneurship, and there is virtually nothing from the Soviet era that was original in the fields of science and industry.

The whole question is whether we choose to re-establish a productive Constitutional system by and for the people or do we opt for the inefficient, corrupt, destructive system that Obama is currently installing on our behalf. After all, Marxism was always on behalf of the workers, wasn't it?  

I believe it was Lenin who said: "Give me your children."  

I have a grand daughter in a California public school. She told me the other day that the oceans were drying up and the fish disappearing from it. I asked her if her teacher told her that and she said no. Where did you learn such nonsense I asked? "I don't know" and kept on insisting it was true despite my protestations and request for proof. I certainly think kids have been made into green zombies by all the propagandizing going on... but not just in the schools, but from anything green loving tv, cartoons and billboards We have got to seriously push back against such propaganda disguised as truth as well as the attack on individualism and achievement.  

"Education for a Global Government, In 1994 alone..."

I suspect that its real damage was done in the revolution of the 1960's "against all authority -civic and moral." I recall being part of what few realized was the "nuclear" bomb against the nuclear family - "values clarification" whereby the parent's values and authority (hence God's) was replaced by the vacuous mind of the child -whatever their infantile values were, became as good as their parents, turning western civilization's primary mode of passing on Judeo-Christian thought in the home to the next generation, on its head. Never underestimate a Marxist - even those with large ears.  

Well, when I was a kid, my parents taught me about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny too. Then I grew up. All this hopeless teaching of socialism might benefit us in the long run. Try being a socialist in the real world, doesn't work. Nothing teaches better than life itself.

I wonder how these plays work anyway? Are all the parts of equal value? Are there any lead roles?? I should hope not! Does every child get to play every part so no one feels left out? If a child shows real acting ability, are they disciplined so as not to appear "better" than any other child?  

End the public school systems in America. Use school taxes to fund private secular and private religious schools. Defund the Marxists! Start in our local public school districts.  

Ask a Marxist if they believe in "human nature" and you might be surprised like I was: "No. I don't believe in God". But...study how they seek to pervert human beings and realize they study human psychology inside and out. Through and through. So..on the one hand you disparage and dismiss that perhaps God created humans with a "natural inclination, a set of characteristics which are hardwired into his being but you then create a science of studying what you dismiss in order to pervert it? Marxism is a form tolerated insanity because it is the only form of mental illness that leads to power and riches. Unlike the schizophrenic who claims his IS God, the Marxist gets to be a god, as long as there are others who can tag along for the spoils. Marxists who dismiss human nature exploit it to achieve power. Used to be a time when those who inhabited a realm of fantasy and make-believe were candidates for a rubber room and medication. Now they qualify for higher office and power over children.  

"The truth is that there is simply no trustworthy proof that Vygotskyian techniques develop superior cognitive skills in children."

Certainly there is proof. Not proof of developing superior cognitive skills, but exactly the opposite. Everywhere socialist techniques -- the type supported by Vygotsky -- have flourished, results have been disastrous. Look at Europe, which started using these techniques in the 30's. What was once the fountain of Western civilization is now on its last legs as a socialist wasteland. Look at America, which started using these techniques in the 70's. The world leader for the last 70 years, it is now only a few years behind Europe in what will turn out to be a dismal failure. Before public schools attempted to turn every Johnny and Janie into good little communists, children in this country flourished in an environment of individualism and creativity. Why is it that Americans invented the telegraph, the electric light bulb, the airplane, the automobile assembly line, the integrated circuit, and thousands of other marvels while people in Asia who have lived under tyranny for centuries have produced nothing, but the ability to create perfect copies of someone else's design? What have the Chinese invented since gunpowder? The public schools are doing damage. They draw most of their teachers from the lowest rank of students in college. It's a living embodiment of those that can't do, teach. They've put up barriers to entry in the field of education by demanding that teachers be "certified." What good is a worthless certification when it produces mediocrity? There are millions of Americans who have the knowledge of the subject, the ability to teach it, and none of the collectivist baggage that cripples young minds. It is past time they be allowed to do so.  

Drugs! We Americans, doctors, parents, and the other "educated" adults "guarding" the minds of the young PUSH drugs onto the kids like candy. Psychotropic mind and mood altering drugs for every type of behavioral misstep of the kids, prescribed by doctors, produced by corporations for profit, forced into kids for control of mind and body, Now What Do We Do About That? Doctors are the drug pushers. Teachers are the thought police. Government pays for it on credit and EXCISE tax. And We the People sit on our FAT spoiled lazy asses and do nothing but listen to the propaganda of TV. Its time for some redress 0f grievance and States west of the Mississippi river to secede and run the show as is the design of the constitution.  

No wonder the Democrat Party bristles whenever there's a move to eliminate the NEA! This is the nations incubator of Marxist ideology in the schools, and when these utopians are done they send off the young minds to colleges and universities to further distort the brain into the collective mindset of obedient robot leftist drool. And of course, teacher's unions are nothing more than tributaries of the river called the NEA all bowing and praying to the socialist gods like lemmings. Each county school system must be purged of these infections. The disease has already spread very far in the body of the nation. The steady stream of 3rd worlders feeds that system too, and that is another treachery of the left. The continued overwhelming of the system by devout socialists whose only interest is keeping power and grabbing your money so they can live like kings while you serfs work the land!  

In "The Captive Mind", Czeslaw Milosz said, regarding life under the oppression of the Soviet annexation of Poland in 1951 when the Polish thought was reeducated into the Central Party line, the "New Faith": "Still, it is not hard to imagine the day when the millions of obedient followers of the New Faith may suddenly turn against it. That day would come the moment the Center lost its material might, not only because fear of military force would vanish, but because success is an integral part of this philosophy's argument. If it lost, it would prove itself wrong by its own definition; it would stand revealed as a false faith, defeated by its own god, reality. The citizens of the Imperium of the East long for nothing so much as liberation from the terror their own thought creates."

And in "Witness", Whittaker Chambers speaks of the sound of the "scream" from his own soul, and the sounds of "screams" coming out of the Soviet Union are what finally drove him to flee the Communist Party. I refer to these writings after reading about efforts to brainwash our children with Marxism as evidence that - while we must fight such efforts tooth and nail - no matter how hard they try, they can't defeat the human spirit.  

The State schools certainly bear a huge blame in all this, but it actually starts at home. One example around here is a pizza joint in Santa Clarita, Ca.. The manager says it is literally impossible to hire American kids to work there: they tend to have never been taught the fine art of responsibility, obligations and hard work by their parents (or, in many cases, their single Moms), and their weekly allowances surpass what they would take home working at the pizza joint. Being in the construction business all my life (59 yrs. old), I have seen the huge shift in demographics concerning hiring. When I was a kid, most boys my age were running over each other to learn the manual trades, but the onslaught of affluence, moral decay and pleasure-madness has transformed most of the young males into its own image, complete with the idea that they are geniuses and should start out at $25.00 an hour out of high school- and that's the ones who aren't obsessed with becoming "stars", becoming ambulance chasers, being "educated" (brainwashed) university students, and all the rest of what Robert Bork referred to as "the new work". This has provided the Leftists, Feminists and sodomites much of the fertile ground they want to do their destructive work in our schools.  

In colonial America, children first learned to read at home from the book that was most prevalent -- the Bible. I think that says it all.  

Complaints above are harbingers of votes against Democrats in 2012, but one of the DemoMarxists chief instruments of power will remain after the election--the public school system. Work to replace the public school system in your state and local school district with private secular and private religious schools. Contact your state and federal senators and representatives to enact laws to replace ALL public schools with private schools. Here is your chance to DO something specific. Lamenting is good, but our discontent needs action to defeat the Marxist Fifth Column in our midst.  

Lev Vygotsky was teaching children to "Stay In Step With The Group" , to "Regiment Each Other's Behavior", and to let peer pressure do the rest. Also, this training was used on adults to build a New Soviet Man. The Soviet Press ran constant praise (in religious terms) about Joseph Stalin being the great Bolchevik father, savior, Marxist redeemer. They mounted huge pictures of Stalin in all the main squares that looked like church icons. When Stalin died in 1953 non- Bolchevik Russians experienced intense grief and deep depression. Some people even killed themselves. Soviet Propaganda and social pressure overcame the simple fact that most families had lost a relative, friend or family in Stalin's Gulags.

Like the Soviet Press, CBS, NBC, ABC and the New York Times is praising Obama 24/7 for being brilliant, wonderful and soooo caring for the American people. If you fail to believe that Barry is brilliant you are called a racist. Trump is articulate and very much a political realists. He fires people for silly fantasies. Trump simply asked to see Barry's Birth Certificate Long Form which every American Citizen must have to get a Federal job and he was shouted down on the View for being crazy, stupid, and ignorant. I predict that American schoolchildren will be singing Soviet Style songs about Barry and worshiping Barry for giving us HOPE and CHANGE just before the 2012 elections. I have stopped watching CBS, NBC and ABC evening news because I am tired of the constant liturgy praising Barry's brilliance. I propose a Karl Marx Journalism Award to be granted each year to an American Journalist or News Group that comes up with the most outrageous lie about how much Barry cares for the American People.  

These are the insidious guidelines that have inspired social justice curriculum writer Professor Emeritus Billy The Bomber Ayers. His wife Bernadine is an ardent admirer of Charles Manson's Kill the Pigs methodology. Sir William ("a small 'c' communist") stated that the revolution begins in the schoolyard. His stench now pervades American education. The Tucson shooter reportedly was a graduate of one of Comrade Bill's innovational experimental high schools where he had his mind molded. The old Highlander School in 1930's Tennessee was the first attempt by the San Francisco CPUSA to establish a Soviet style youth academy in the USA and to radicalize disgruntled black intellectuals like Obama's Uncle Frank. The pdf of their FBI file makes for some interesting reading. They still exist and now indoctrinate teachers on their summer vacations. The woman who engineered the "Barack Hussein Obama Hmm Hmm Hmm" chant in NJ was an attendee.  

I was in a private grade school yesterday for a community event and while walking down the hall I saw pictures of students who were awarded with ribbons or plaques or something for being "tolerant". Awards for TOLERANCE. Liberal @#$%& to make our young accept the unacceptable.
I am sickened by this. 

Interesting analysis of what Vygotsky was really up to. The New Soviet Man idea makes sense. Don't forget that in the Soviet Union babies spent their days in nurseries from the age of 1, when their mothers went back to the workplace. And in Soviet schools, the entire class was responsible for the performance of each student--they would be collectively punished if one student failed. Just wanted to throw the name of Maria Montessori into the mix. Yes, many Montessori teachers do talk a great deal about peace and tolerance. But take a look at a well-run traditional Montessori preschool and you see the complete opposite of the Soviet model. Montessori education is individualized and it works. It develops children with fine skills and knowledge, self-confidence, inner motivation, poise, and ability to cooperate with peers. In a Montessori preschool, a wide range of available "work" is arranged on low shelves around the room, usually on trays.

The three to five-year old child decides which work to choose, takes the tray to an individual table or mat, and engages in the activity. (The activities are to develop motor skills, math or language. Children are free to choose work that has earlier been demonstrated for them by a teacher.) Here is the key. The child is free to work on the activity as long as he chooses. If another child wants to join, he may ask, but the first child is under no obligation to share his work. Hmmm. I've been wondering for years why Montessori doesn't catch on in publicly funded schools throughout the country. I does produce children who read and write usually by the age of 5 and have a well-developed number sense, usually adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing by the age of 6. Maybe because it is an anti-collectivist program?  

I'm a reporter for our local paper and I often cover what the school board is up to. A few years ago several parents raised holy heck when the district replaced traditional A-F grading with "standards based grading". The district touted the superiority of this method, claiming it ensures that children are learning the state standards; the "grades" (now a scale of 1-4) eliminate competition and achievement-- a kid who misses one answer on a test and another who misses 5 may both end up with a "3" score. It's the grand equalizer of students in the classroom, and by teaching to the standards it's the district who gets to compete against neighboring districts who gets the best scores on state tests. Anyway, when I interviewed the superintendent about it, I told him I'd never send my kids to school in his district because I fundamentally disagreed with this new grading.

This same district is now trying to roll out the IB program, to the anger of many teachers. I didn't know until reading the above post that it was just another Marxist ploy disguised under a prestigious name, and I suspect that the teachers' consternation has less to with Soviet-style indoctrination and more to do that they fear the IB teachers will get preferential pay... And that won't sit well with the union. I can't wait to read up on IB-Marxist link and confront the superintendent about it.  

It never ceases to amaze me how the people around me act like automatons. In other words, these people have been taught what to think. I, on the other hand, firmly believe we should teach how to think and not what to think. I no longer wonder why I've been a lifelong rebel who refuses to conform to the BS the politically correct (the elite) establishment wishes to impose upon me.

I've also been very cognizant for some time about the collectivist teaching rampant at all levels of our educational system. I'm determined to erase whatever "programming" my children may be exposed to in public schools. And I'm not beyond having a "conference" with the school authorities if I perceive they're exceeding their mandate to educate and instead engage in indoctrination.

Preschool at all is a Marxist/Socialist activity. It's the biggest scam in America and even alleged conservatives (and even more shockingly conservative Christians) buy into it hook, line and, sinker. Your child needs to be at home in a family learning morality from parents and learning to get along with siblings until the child is ready for formal academics. Play with other children and exploring the world around them should be done under parental supervision and infused with moral values. The younger years are for learning right and wrong and a work ethic from Mom and Dad-not some alleged "experts" on young childhood development.

Individualism is a tenant of traditional Americanism. Children should be educated as individuals, not "on the conveyor belt" in an institutional setting (public or private.) We need to return to various forms of Classical Education rather than staying with the lock step of the modern era's age based, scope and sequence, textbook/workbook, fill in the blank, multiple guess, educational method. Public school could not be more socialist in structure if we tried to make it so. Fight socialism by fighting to end government (taxpayer) funded and government run education.

Phase 1 Cut all public education classes and staff that are not English, Math, Science, History, Civics and PE.

Phase 2 Choose an income level where Americans are no longer eligible for public education. Announce that that income level cut off will drop every year at a steady pace until only the children of prisoners and foster children are eligible for government education.  

The author is limited in what he can say in the AT format. Pity. I have long been aware of Antonio Gramsci and of Gramsci's contribution to our current calamity, and of Gramsci's destructive and self-destructive role in our educational, media, and political institutions. But Vygotsky is a new one on me.

A quick read of the conventional reference material does not disclose an ideological role for Vygotsky, much less a Marxist role. You have to go down to Roger's #5 footnote to learn what happened, and it is a rather long read. Vygotsky was unquestionably brilliant, and became caught up in the turmoil of the times, Lenin's accession to power in 1918 and the establishment of the Soviet Union.

After taking stabs at studying medicine, law, linguistics, and philosophy, Vygosky became an accidental psychologist when Lenin wiped out much of the educational hierarchy. The role suited him well, and, as very young man, Vygotsky accumulated some very talented followers, known as the Kharkov School. Vygotsky's work has been compared and contrasted with the work of Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, with whom I am much more familiar.

It is true that much of Vygotsky's efforts were channeled into the creation of The New Soviet Man, but this was in keeping with the times, and Vygotsky did not live to see the failure of the concept. Vygotsky was subject to much criticism from lesser minds, and Stalin took exception to Vykotsky's most famous work "Thought and Language". Combined with his bad health and the threat of repression, Vykovsky died at an early age, and his followers decamped to the Ukraine. Vygotsky is a much more sympathetic creature than the raw data indicates.

I trust we live to see the failure of the concept and the collapse of the Marxists' lesser minds house of cards.  

@ maxim 6:30 AM -- Thanks. All should read the the Truth About I.B. site, especially for the Soros, Obama, Duncan, Annenberg (Ayres) connection. Your $$$ at work.  

The best alternative is for many women to leave their jobs, come home to homeschool (and take care of Grandma),thereby freeing up jobs for men. This will lead to a more stable, family-centered society. As a stay-at-home mom, I find it outrageous that women , families, and husbands like mine are discriminated against to provide affirmative action jobs for working mothers. The ideal percent of jobs allocated to women should be much fewer than 50 percent, because of the many women like me who stay home, or should be staying home.