America's Secret Establishment

An Introduction to The Order of Skull and Bones (condensed edition)
-- by: Antony C. Sutton, 1986, source: Liberty House Press
MHP hypertext version for non-profit educational use only

2.  How The Order Controls Education

Collectivist educational philosophy imported from Germany

It All Began at Yale

In the 1850s, three members of The Order left Yale and working together...made a revolution that changed the face, direction and purpose of American education. It was a rapid, quiet revolution, and eminently successful. This notable trio were all initiated into The Order within a few years of each other. All three went to study philosophy at the University of Berlin, where post-Hegelian philosophy had a monopoly.

Timothy Dwight (1849)

Student at Universities of Berlin and Bonn, 1856-58

Professor in the Yale Divinity School and then 12th President of Yale University

Daniel Coit Gilman (1852)

Student at University of Berlin, 1854-55 under Karl von Ritter and Friedrich Trendelenberg, both prominent "right" Hegelians

First President of the University of California, first President of Johns Hopkins University and first President of the Carnegie Institution

Andrew Dickson White (1853)

Student at University of Berlin, 1856-58

First President of Cornell University and first President of the American Historical Association

Notably also at the University of Berlin in 1856 (at the Institute of Physiology) was none other than Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experimental psychology in Germany and the later source of the dozens of American PhDs who came back from Leipzig, Germany to start the modern American education movement.

Daniel Coit Gilman is the key activist in the revolution of education by The Order. [His] uncle Henry Coit Kingsley (1834) was Treasurer of Yale from 1862-86. James I. Kingsley was Gilman's uncle and a Professor at Yale. On the Coit side of the family, Joshua Coit (1853) and William Coit (1887) were members.

Gilman returned from Europe in late 1855 and spent the next 14 years in New Haven, Connecticut -- almost entirely in and around Yale, consolidating the power of The Order. His first task in 1856 was to incorporate Skull & Bones as a legal entity under the name of The Russell Trust. Gilman became Treasurer and William H. Russell, the co-founder, was President. It is notable that there is no mention of The Order, Skull & Bones, the Russell Trust, or any secret society activity in Gilman's biography, nor in open records.

Gilman's brother had married the daughter of chemistry Professor Benjamin Silliman Jr. (1837). Gilman and other members of The Order reorganized the Sheffield Science School at Yale, and received the very first "land grant" from the Federal government to finance it. In February 1871 the School was incorporated and the following became trustees:

• Charles J. Sheffield
• G.J. Brush, Gilman's close friend
• Daniel Coit Gilman (1852)
• W.T. Trowbridge
• John S. Beach (1839)
• William W. Phelps (1860)

Out of six trustees, three were in The Order. In addition, George St.John Sheffield, son of the benefactor, was initiated in 1863, and the first dean of Sheffield was J.A. Porter, also the first member of Scroll & Key.

After 1871, the Yale Presidency became almost a fiefdom for The Order:

Presidents of Yale University:

Timothy Dwight (1849)

President, 1886-1899

Arthur Twining Hadley (1876)

President, 1899-1921

James R. Angell

President 1921-1937

Not a member. Came to Yale from the University of Chicago where he worked with John Dewey, built the School of Education, and was past President of the American Psychological Association.

Charles Seymour (1908)

President, 1937-1950

Alfred Whitney Griswold

President, 1950-1963

Not a member, but both the Griswold and Whitney families have members in The Order.

Kingman Brewster

President 1963-??

The Brewster family has had several members in The Order.

The Look-Say Reading Scam

Look-say reading methods were developed around 1810 for deaf mutes by a truly remarkable man, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet... [His] original intention was to use the look-say method only for deaf mutes who have no concept of a spoken language and are therefore unaware phonetic sounds for letters. For this purpose, Gallaudet founded the Hartford School for the Deaf in 1817. In 1835, "The Mother's Primer" [a look-say textbook] was published, and the Massachusetts Primary School Committee under Horace Mann immediatedly adopted the book on an experimental basis. By 1840, there was a backlash and the look-say system was dropped.

Towards the end of the 19th century, The Order came on the scene and the look-say method was revived. Two of [Gaullaudet's grandsons] went to Yale and became members of the order: Edison Fessenden Gallaudet (1893), who became an instructor of physics at Yale, and Herbert Draper Gallaudet (1898) who attended Union Theological Seminary and became a clergyman.

Then the method was adopted by Columbia Teachers College and the Lincoln School. The thrust of the new Dewey inspired system of education was away from learning and towards preparing a child to be a unit in the organic society. Look-say was ideal for Deweyites. It skipped one step in the learning process...and de-emphasized reading skills.

The Illuminati Connection

We want to briefly trace the influence of Johann Friedrich Herbart... Herbart was an educational theorist as well as philosopher and psychologist, and strongly influenced by Wilhelm Wundt. For Herbart, education had to be presented in a scientifically correct manner, and the chief purpose of education is to prepare the child to live properly in the social order of which he is an integral part. Following Hegel, the individual is not important.

Johann Herbart studied at the University of Jena and came under the influence of Johann Herder, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Fitche and Johann Goethe. Later in Switzerland, Herbart came into contact with Johann Pestalozzi. What is interesting about these names -- and they comprise the most important influence on Herbart -- is that they are either known members of the Illuminati or reputed to be close to the Illuminati Order.

Johann Gottried Herder (1744-1803)

Was "Damascus Pontifex" in the Illuminati

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)

Was "Abaris" in the Illuminati

Johann Fitche

Close to the Illuminati, and pushed by Goethe for the post at the University of Jena

Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)

Known in the circle, but not reliably recorded as an Illuminati member

Johann Pestalozzi (1746-1827)

Was "Alfred" in the Illuminati

The Illuminati was founded May 1, 1776 by Professor Adam Weishaupt of the University of Ingolstadt. It was a secret society, but in 1785 and 1787 several batches of internal documents came to the Bavarian Government. Subsequent investigation determined that the aim of the Illuminati was world domination, using any methods to advance the objective... Each member had a pseudonym to disguise his identity. During its time, the Illuminati had widespread and influential membership. After suppression by the Bavarian government in 1788, it was quiet for some years and then reportedly revived.

The significance for this study is that the methods and objectives parallel those of The Order. In fact, infiltration of the Illuminati into New England is known... So far as education is concerned, the Illuminati objective was as follows:

"We must win the common people in every corner. This will be obtained chiefly by means of the schools, and by open, hearty behaviour, show, condescension, popularity and toleration of their prejudices which we shall at leisure root out and dispel."

(For more on the Illuminati, see "Final Warning" --ed)

The Leipzig Connection

Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig was undoubtedly the major influence on [American psychologist] G. Stanley Hall. Modern education practice stems from Hegelian social theory combined with the experimental psychology of Wilhelm Wundt. Whereas Karl Marx and von Bismarck applied Hegelian theory to the political field, it was Wilhelm Wundt, influenced by Johann Herbart, who applied Hegel to education, which in turn was picked up by Hall and John Dewey and modern educational theorists in the United States.

Wundt established in 1875 the world's first laboratory in experimental psychology to measure individual responses to stimuli. Wundt believed that man is only the summation of his experience...that man has no self will, no self determination.

Students from Europe and the United States came to Leipzig to learn from Wundt the new science of experimental psychology. These students returned to their homelands to found schools of education or departments of psychology, and trained hundreds of Ph.D.s in the new field of psychology.

Wundt's work was based on Hegelian philosophical theory and reflected the Hegelian view of the individual as a valueless cog in the State [machinery], a view expanded by Wundt to include man as nothing more than an animal influenced solely by daily experiences.

The Baltimore Scheme

While G. Stanley Hall was in Leipzig working under Wilhelm Wundt, the revolutionary trio Gilman-Dwight-White were moving events back home. In 1872, Daniel Gilman was offered the Presidency of the newly established University of California, [which] he accepted.

Johns Hopkins, a wealthy Baltimore merchant, left his fortune to establish a University for graduate education (the first in the United States along German lines) and a medical school. In 1874 the trustees invited three university presidents to come to Baltimore and advise [them] on the choice of a President. These were Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, Andrew Dickson White of Cornell, and James R. Angell of Michigan. Only Andrew Dickson White was in The Order.

After meeting independently with each of these presidents, half a dozen of the trustees toured several American Universities in search of further information -- and Andrew D. White accompanied the tour. The result was [the recommendation of] Daniel C. Gilman of California. The truth is that Gilman not only knew what was going on in Baltimore, but was in communication with Andrew White on the "Baltimore scheme" as they called it.

Gilman became first President of Johns Hopkins University and quickly set to work. Dr. William H. Welch (1870), a fellow member of The Order, was brought in by Gilman to head up the Hopkins medical school. Welch was [later] President of the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research for almost 25 years (1910-34).

Let's return to G. Stanley Hall who was in Leipzig while Johns Hopkins was acquiring its new President. [He returned to the United States and in 1881 received an position as a lecturer at Johns Hopkins]. At the end of the lecture series, Gilman offered Hall the chair of Professor of Psychology and Pedagogy. This puzzled Hall because others at Johns Hopkins were "older and abler" that himself. Hall was given a psychological laboratory, a thousand dollars a year for equipment, and with the encouragement of Gilman, founded The American Journal of Psychology. And what did Hall teach?

"The psychology I taught was almost entirely experimental and covered for the most part the material that Wundt had set forth in the later and larger edition of Physiological Psychology."

Doctoral students from Wundt and Hall fanned out through the United States, [and] established departments of psychology and education by the score: 117 psychological laboratories just in the period up to 1930. Prominent among these students were John Dewey, J.M. Cattell and E.L. Thorndike -- all part of founding of Columbia Teachers College and Chicago's School of Education -- the two sources of modern American education.

So, from the seed sown by Daniel Coit Gilman at Johns Hopkins grew the vast network of interlocking schools of education and departments of psychology that dominates [U.S.] education today.

The Troika Spreads Its Wings

In 1886, Timothy Dwight had taken over from the last of Yale's clerical Presidents, Noah Porter.

Andrew Dickson White was secure as President of Cornell and alternated as U.S. Ambassador to Germany. While in Berlin, White acted as recruiting agent for The Order. Not only G. Stanley Hall came into his net, but also Richard T. Ely, founder of the American Economic Association.

Daniel Gilman was President of Johns Hopkins and used that base to introduce Wundtian psychology into U.S. education. After retirement from Johns Hopkins, Gilman became the first President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C.

Andrew Dickson White founded and was first President of the American Historical Association and therefore was able to influence the constitution and direction of the AHA. This has generated an official history and ensured that the existence of The Order is never even whispered in history books, let alone school texts.

The collectivist nature of present day college faculties in economics has been generated by the American Economic Association under influence of The Order. The principal founder and first Secretary of the AEA was Richard T. Ely. In 1876 Ely went to University of Heidelberg and received a Ph.D. in 1879. When Ely arrived home, Daniel Gilman invited [him] to take the Chair of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins. Ely accepted at about the same time Gilman appointed G. Stanley Hall to the Chair of Philosophy and Pedagogy, and William Welch (a member of The Order) to be Dean of the medical school.

Richard Ely left an autobiography...which he dedicated to none other than Daniel Coit Gilman, [and] on page 54 is the caption "I find and invaluable friend in Andrew D. White". The reader has probably guessed what Ely didn't know -- White was The Order's recruiter in Berlin.

Ely rejected classical liberal economics, including free trade... Just as G. Stanley Hall had adopted Hegelianism in psychology from Wundt, Ely adopted Hegelian ideas from his prime teacher Karl Knies at University of Heidelberg. And both Americans had come to the watchful attention of The Order.

Daniel Coit Gilman invited Richard Ely to Johns Hopkins University. From there Ely went on to head the department of economics at University of Wisconsin... [which] has been a center of statist economics down to the present day. Financing for projects at U. of Wisconsin came directly from The Order -- from member George B. Cortelyou (1913), President of New York Life Insurance Company.

Ely also tells us about his students, and was especially enthralled by Woodrow Wilson: "We knew we had in Wilson an unusual man. There could be no question that he had a brilliant future."

Colonel Edward Mandell House, Woodrow Wilson's mysterious confidant... went to school at Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven, Connecticut. House knew The Order from school days. In fact, one of House's closest classmates at Hopkins Grammar School was member Arthur Twining Hadley (1876) who went on to become President of Yale University (1899-1921). House's novel "Philip Dru, Administrator" was written in New Haven, Connecticut and in those days House was closer to the Taft segment of The Order than Woodrow Wilson. In fact, House was The Order's messenger boy.

The impetus for reorganizing medical education in the United States came from John D. Rockefeller, but the funds were channeled through a single member of The Order. One day in 1912, Frederick T. Gates of Rockefeller Foundation had lunch with Abraham Flexner of Carnegie Institution. [Flexner advised Gates that his funds] "could most profitably be spent in developing the Johns Hopkins Medical School".

William H. Welch, dean of the Johns Hopkins Medical School and member of The Order, was President of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research from [1910], and a Trustee of the Carnegie Institution from 1906.

The Order's Objectives for Education

We can deduce The Order's objectives for education from evidence already presented and by examining the work and influence of John Dewey, the arch creator of modern educational theory...

The philosophy and practice of today's system has been achieved by injection of massive private funds by foundations under influence, and sometimes control, of The Order... In fact, the history of the implementation of Dewey's objectives is also the history of the larger foundations, i.e. Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Peabody, Sloan, Slater, and Twentieth Century.

John Dewey worked for his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University from 1882-86 under Hegelian philosopher George Sylvester Morris. Morris in turn had his doctorate from University of Berlin and studied under the same teachers as Daniel Gilman... Neither Morris nor Dewey were members of The Order, but the link is clear; Gilman hired Morris.

John Dewey's psychology was taken from G. Stanley Hall, the first American student to receive a doctorate from Wilhelm Wundt at University of Leipzig. Gilman kenow exactly what he was getting when he hired Hall. With only a dozen faculty members [at Johns Hopkins], all were hired personally by the President. In brief, philosophy and psychology came to Dewey from academics hand-picked by The Order.

From Johns Hopkins, Dewey went as Professor of Philosophy to University of Michigan, and in 1886 published "Psychology", a blend of Hegelian philosophy applied to Wundtian experimental psychology... In 1894 Dewey went to University of Chicago and in 1902 was appointed director of the newly founded -- with Rockefeller money -- School of Education.

The University of Chicago itself had been founded in 1890 with Rockefeller funds... The University of Chicago and Columbia Teachers College were the key training schools for modern education.

[Dewey] can be recognized as the pre-eminent factor in the collectivisation, or Hegelianization, of American schools... And it is in the work and implementation of the ideas of John Dewey that we can find the objective of The Order.

Here's a quote from John Dewey in "My Pedagogic Creed":

"The school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life...that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."

The Dewey educational system does not accept the role of developing a child's talents but, contrarily, only to prepare the child to function as unit in an organic whole... Whereas most Americans have moral values rooted in the individual, the values of the school system are rooted in the Hegelian concept of the State as absolute.

For Hegel, the individual has no value except as he or she performs a function for society:

"The State is the absolute reality and the individual himself has objective existence, truth and morality only in his capacity as a member of the State."

John Dewey tried to brush the freedom of the individual to one side:

"Freedom is the participation of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together."

-- "Democracy and Educational Administration", (School & Society, XVL, 1937, p. 457)

In other words, for Dewey man has no individual rights. Man exists only to serve the State... What then is the purpose of education, if the individual has no rights and exists only for the State?

For Hegel, every quality of an individual exists only at the mercy and will of the State. This approach is reflected in political systems based on Hegel whether it be Soviet Communism or Hitlerian national socialism. John Dewey follows Hegel's organic view of society. For example:

"Education consists either in the ability to use one's powers in a social direction or else in ability to share in the experience of others and thus widen the individual conscienceness to that of the race."

-- "Lectures For the First Course in Pedagogy"

What is this "widening the individual conscienceness"? Stripped of the pedantic language it is a new world order, a world organic society...

It's difficult to see what the new world order has to do with education of children, but it's there in the literature. Fitche, Hegel's predecessor from whom many of his philosophical ideas originated, had a definite concept of a League of Nations...Fitche asserted:

"As this federation spreads further and gradually embraces the whole earth, perpetual peace begins, the only lawful relation among states..."

The National Education Association, the lobby for education, produced a program for the 1976 [U.S.] Bicentennial entitled "A Declaration of Interdependence: Education for a Global Community":

"We are committed to the idea of Education for Global Community. You are invited to help turn the committment into action and mobilizing world education for development of a world community."

The generally held understanding of the Constitution on the relationship between the individual and the State is that the individual is supreme, the State exists only to serve individuals and the State has no power except by express permission of the people.

The proposals of John Dewey and his followers are un-constitutional. They would never have seen the light of day in American schoolrooms unless they had been promoted by The Order with its enormous power.

Summary

By the 1870s, The Order had Yale University under its control. Every President of Yale since Timothy Dwight has either been a member of The Order or has family connections to The Order. It also appears that some Yale graduates who are not members of The Order will act towards objectives desired by The Order.

"Look-say" reading originated with Thomas Gallaudet...[who] was not a member of The Order, but his two sons Edison and Herbert Gallaudet were initiated in 1893 and 1898. Horace Mann, a significant influence in modern educational theory and first promoter of "look-say", was not a member. However, Mann was President of Antioch College and the Tafts (members of The Order) were the most powerful trustees of Antioch.

We traced John Dewey's philosophy, that education is to prepare a person to fit into society rather than develop individual talents...

Member Daniel Coit Gilman is the first President of Johns Hopkins and he handpicked either members of The Order or Hegelians for the new departments. G. Stanley Hall, the first of Wilhelm Wundt's American students...established the first experimental psychology laboratory for education in the United States with funds from Gilman, and later started the Journal of Psychology.

John Dewey was one of the first doctorates from Johns Hopkins (under Hall and Morris), followed by Woodrow Wilson, who was President of Princeton University before he became President of the United States.

At key turning points of G. Stanley Hall's career the guiding hand of The Order can be traced. Hall also links to another member of The Order, Alphonso Taft.

The core of The Order's impact on education can be seen as a troika: Gilman at Johns Hopkins; White at Cornell (and U.S. Minister to Germany); and Dwight followed by member Hadley at Yale.

Andrew White was first President of the American Historical Association. Richard T. Ely, not a member but aided by The Order, became a founder and first secretary of the American Economic Association.

John Dewey, the originator of modern educational theory, took his doctorate at Johns Hopkins under Hegelians. Dewey's work is pure Hegel in theory and practice...Children do not go to school to develop individual talents but to be prepared as units in an organic society. Experimental schools at University of Chicago and Columbia University fanned the "new education" throughout the United States.

If teachers are not teaching basics, then what are they doing? They appear to be preparing children for a political objective which also happens to be the objective of The Order. The emphasis is on global living, preparing for a global society. It is apparently of no concern to the educational establishment that children can't read, can't write, and can't do elementary mathematics -- but they are going to be ready for the Brave New World.