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Thursday, June 02, 2005

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Human Events online ("The National Conservative Weekly") has published its list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. It's not clear what the decision procedure was, but the authors who are lumped together include Marx, Mao, Hitler, Darwin, Nader (Nader!? Nader is as "harmful" as Hitler!?), Nietzsche, Kinsey, Dewey, and Keynes. Actually, Darwin, Mill, and Nader are only on the Honorable Mention list, along with Freud and the anthropologist Margaret Mead. What did the Samoans ever do to Anne Coulter?

Even better are the explanations. My favorite concerns Dewey: "in pompous and opaque prose, he disparaged schooling that focused on traditional character development and endowing children with hard knowledge, and encouraged the teaching of thinking 'skills' instead. His views had great influence on the direction of American education--particularly in public schools--and helped nurture the Clinton generation." Ah yes, those dangerous thinking skills!

1 Comments:

At 5:51 PM, MIMALEE said...

Since I have read all of these authors I should expect to have thinking skills. However I was a college student at the time and actually I was paying more attention to the girls than books. I was impressed with and understood Mr. Keynes and his economic theories. And I believe it is because of Mr. Keynes that I'm financially comfortable today.

 

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