Never Limit Democracy to a Select Few A FREE lesson your learners will always remember! A New DVD Film, Death March from Bataan to Manchuria: Raising a Survivor’s Voice Back to main Power Problem Solving What are America's Strongest Links? Teachers and Power Problem Solving Inquiry and Democracy A Revolution in Learning by Jean K. Bruce The principles of property ownership are some of he main ideas that found a home in America from the Scottish Enlightenment: property as resource. People in the thirteen colonies recognized the possibilities related to the huge amount of land out west. Vast resources would be the footing a new and economical society needed. The consequences of citizens owning their own property and its general administration by a municipal government--those ideas placed the thinking coming from the Enlightenment scholars in the driver's seat of a new kind of progress. The scholars of the Enlightenments called the resulting economic social order, a commercial society, inside a free country. This commercial culture caused an independence of mind at all levels of this free country. The independence of mind raised the liberated peoples' assessment skills. The assessment skills produced evaluation skills keen enough to make insightful judgments. Insightful judgments filtered through society permitting average citizens to make decisions for themselves. Add it all up and it begins to equal a well-equipped democracy. America's Founders recognized that we must never limit democracy to a select few. We must offer the same prospects to all society members, especially the underprivileged. A democracy, they realized by history's examples, would decay without the principles of commercial and educational prospects. Democracy and its economic keystones must maintain an educational system that promotes a multitude of problem solvers to keep dictatorship out and keep democracy within. Enlightenment: From There to Here In 1696 the Parliament of Scotland passed the "Act for Setting Schools." Nearly every parish in Scotland included a school, within a generation, a free school. Although the Scottish Highlands fell behind, by the end of the 18th century, the Scottish literacy rate ranked higher than that of any other country. The male literacy rate stood at around 55 percent by 1720, in Scotland. By 1750, the records show the male literacy rate moved to about 75 percent, contrasted against England's only 53 percent. England caught up in the 1880s. Scotland became Europe's first modern literate society. Schools and reading changed this nearly economically primitive country into a culture that motivated economic, social, and intellectual changes universally. The Enlightenment's ideas reached all parts of the world, and eventually influenced people in surprising ways. One focal point of the Enlightenment centered on reason and individualism instead of custom and precedent. Philosophers, as Locke, Descartes, and Newton also influenced the Enlightenment. Other Enlightenment individuals included Voltaire, Goethe, Kant, Rousseau, Adam Smith, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and Thomas Reid. The Enlightenment also focused on the power and goodness of human rationality. Here are a few typical doctrines of the Enlightenment: 1. Reason 2. Logic 3. Liberated thought brings liberated actions 4. Humanity can be found through philosophical and scientific progresses 5. All humans are equal, thus, deserving of equal liberty and action by the law 6. Authoritative traditionalism or priestly beliefs should be weighed only on the basis of reason 7. All human undertakings should search for knowledge to convey and extend, over feelings. Thomas Jefferson seized the life and spirit of Enlightenment thinking. Explore Jefferson's words at the following PBS site. PBS, Jefferson, The Enlightenment" American democracy. Is democracy fading, in a typical classroom? Back to main Power Problem Solving What are America's Strongest Links? Teachers and Power Problem Solving Inquiry and Democracy A Revolution in Learning by Jean K. Bruce Free Discrepant Event, Friends, anti-smoking & tobacco Professor William C. Bruce Jean K. Bruce Mindtronics! and Inquiry Alive! Amazon Download Movie Battlefield Britian One of the best, A #1, shows you'll ever see, if you like history or not. Now, you'll understand the battles! Season Year: 2004 Executive Producer: Mary Cranitch; Jane Aldous Note: You can rent individual episodes from this season by selecting episodes from the list and choosing.

Two Wolves