As more light is being shed on today’s “education” system, the words written in The Leipzig Connection, remains relevant and applicable. Read the book review written by Janice McLain for Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A Price Society.
20210820 Wise Traditions – Book Review
Basics in Education
The Leipzig Connection By Paolo Lionni
Published by Heron Books
While this small but great book looks into the roots of the insanity in our education system, it also touches on our health, including that of our youth. Having read it in the 1980s, Leipzig certainly retains its relevance.
| Prior to the onslaught described in the book, we had an excellent, wide-spread system of education. In the late 1800s, it was changed (engineered) to where it consider man an animal worthy only of stimulus designed to mold him in the direction dictated by elitists who considered themselves far wiser than us. |
| Wilhelm Wundt, born in Germany in 1832, studied Psychology when it was still in the field of Philosophy. The word had “meant simply the study (ology) of the soul (psyche), or mind.” In about 1875, he “accepted a chair in philosophy at the University of Leipzig” and remained there throughout his career, founding experimental psychology and disseminating it throughout the western world. He passed in 1920. Wundt, considered the father of modern psychology, “asserted that man is devoid of spirit and self-determinism.” He “was convinced that perceptions and experiences could be understood through measurable physiological reactions.” Of his students, two “applied electrical stimulation to the brain to determine the relationship of brain functions to behavior.” This may have been among the roots of Shock Treatment (Electro-Convulsive “Therapy,” or ECT), which is still in use today, enjoying a resurgence as being new and ” improved” (same high voltage but it doesn’t appear as horrendous due to the use of muscle relaxants). However, it took “hundreds of millions of dollars” to change America’s education system. Meanwhile, Standard Oil Company’s John D. Rockefeller, Sr. suffered from a tarnished reputation. Partnering in the 1880s with Frederick Taylor Gates, who had previously worked for George A Pillsbury and his flour empire, turned out to be a philanthropical marriage made in, well, hell. Gates, tasked to best utilize (launder) the elder Rockefeller’s wealth, turned Rockefeller’s “greedy” image into that of a benefactor for humanity, greatly contributing to “Progressive Education.” “Gates was strongly interested in German medicine, and was opposed to the traditional homeopathic medicine used by Rockefeller’s personal physician, Dr. H.F. Bigger, with whom he often had heated arguments. …” Progressive Education’s “… attack on American medical education … resulted in the number of medical schools in the United States dropping from 147 to 95. Naturopathic medicine was on the decline in this country.” “Over the years (until 1960), the General Education Board would give a total of over $96 million to medical schools which, like Johns Hopkins, disregarded naturopathy, homeopathy, and chiropractic in favor of medicine based on the use of surgery and chemical drugs.” Voila! A way to turn health into illness-for-profit. Genius! “The Board’s sponsorship of chemical medicine on the one hand and psychology on the other would culminate in 1963 when a group of researchers at Johns Hopkins developed the use of Ritalin to “treat” children who were regarded as “troubled” or too active. The effects of this merger of chemical medicine and Wundtian psychology upon Americaneducation are thoroughly documented in The Myth of the Hyperactive Child and Other Means of Child Control, by Divoky and Schrag.” “Compulsory universal government psychotherapy is not education.” Oh, the roots of our current-day troubles do run deep. All Thumbs up on this one. |
| Review by Janice McLain |
Note: A pdf of the book can be downloaded at https://archive.org/details/TheLeipzigConnection
