Guess who said it: Quote for the day

January 26, 2007

The first step to maintained equality of opportunity amongst our people is, as I have said before, that there should be no child in America who has not been born, and who does not live, under sound conditions of health; who does not have full opportunity for education from the kindergarten to the university; who is not free from injurious labor; who does not have stimulation to ambition to the fullest of his or her capacities. It is a matter of concern to our government that we should strengthen the safeguards to health. These activities of helpfulness and of cooperation stretch before us in every direction. A single generation of Americans of such a production would prevent more of crime and of illness, and give more of spirit and progress than all of the most repressive laws and police we can ever invent — and it would cost less.

Who said it? Who prescribed such a “socialist” plan for our children? John Dewey?  Hillary Clinton?  Answer below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Accuracy, Education, Herbert Hoover, Leadership, Lesson plans, Politics, Presidents, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

After the end, Hoover showed the way for Bush

December 28, 2006

Herbert Hoover, White House Portrait

Herbert Hoover, White House Portrait

Herbert Hoover is one of the great foils for U.S. history courses. The Great Depression is on national standards and state standards. Images from the dramatic poverty that resulted win the rapt attention of even the most calloused, talkative high school juniors. Most video treatments leave students wondering why President Hoover wasn’t tried for crimes against humanity instead of just turned out of office.

In most courses, Hoover is left there, and the study of Franklin Roosevelt‘s event-filled twelve years in office (with four elected terms) takes over the classroom. If Hoover is mentioned again at all in the course, it would likely be for his leading humanitarian work after World War II.

But there is, hiding out in California, the Hoover Institution. Hoover’s impact today? Well, consider some recent fellows of the Hoover Institution: Condaleeza Rice, Milton Friedman, George Shultz, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Gary Becker, Diane Ravitch, Chester Finn. The Hoover Institution, “at Stanford University,” is the conservatives’ anchor in the intellectual and academic world.

Hoover’s legacy is being remade, constantly, through his post-Presidential establishment of an institution to promote principles of conservatism (and liberalism in its old, almost archaic education sense). The Hoover Institution has carried Hoover’s ideas and principles back into power.

Dallas has been wracked recently with the shenanigans and maneuvers around the work of Southern Methodist University to be named as the host for the George W. Bush Presidential Library. In a humorous headline last week the Dallas Morning News (DMN) said such a library could lead Dallas’s intellectual life in the future (the headline is different in the on-line version — whew!).

Humor aside, there is grist for good thought there. Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Business Ethics, Dissent, Economics, Franklin Roosevelt, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, History, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell