[John Dewey said:] ‘[T]he child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction. It is a continuous reconstruction, moving from the child’s present experience out into that represented by the organizing bodies of truth that we call studies.’ The various school studies, such as arithmetic, geography, language, and botany, said Dewey, ‘are themselves experience — they are that of the race. They embody the cumulative outcome of the efforts, the strivings, and successes of the human race generation after generation. They present this, not as a mere accumulation, not as a miscellaneous heap of separate bits or experience, but in some organized and systematized way.’

The above passage by John Dewey is from “The Child and the Curriculum,” in Dewey on Education, ed. Martin S. Dworkin (New York: Teachers College Press, 1959), 97, and quoted from Diane Ravitch, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 141.

President George W. Bush affirmed in his State of the Union Address on 01.29.02 that:

"America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture, but America will always stand firm for the non- negotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice and religious tolerance."

For the first time in human history we have a means through the Internet to allow ALL children to engage the accumulation of what is known. To make that happen is to respond to the rights of every young mind.

John Dewey would be dazzled by these links, and kids can learn a lot from each of them:

Arithmetic
Geography
Language
Botany

Tens of thousands of learning links