What teachers seem to be taught to think about children.?

[tiffntwins]

I am a homeschooler. My children have never set foot in a public school except to visit my family members who are teachers while visiting them. I use a VAST and ecclectic collection of books. I collect antique books in the "education" category and use many of these books to read to my children from about all the subjects available at my hands. Last night I was reading in a book called "windows into Alaska" by Gertrude Chandler Warner, The Teachers Edition @ 1928. I was reading the preface, all seemed well. Then I ran into the section designed to help the child relate to the instructor and also the subject matter.
I was taken aback at statements like "In just this way a teacher's first duty is to get herself listened to".
The paragraph that preceeded this one is as follows ( the part I am MOST offended by is in all caps LOL) "This Primary Course on Alaska i sbased on the fur-boot idea. Children six, seve, and eight years old are........The teacher may present Alaksa (cont)
"she may present Alaska as a brand-new thought. But of course any teacher who is any sort of psychologist knows that this cannot be done-NO CHILD IS INTERESTED IN AN ENTIRELY NEW THOUGHT. And because of this fact the child MUST BE DEVIOUSLY LED FROM THE POINTwhere the teacher finds him to a point of interest and knowledcge which is not at all common in the average well-informed adult of this present generation"

I am aghast. First that these statements even were written, and second that it is SO painfully obvious that present day PS teachers ( and yes some homeschoolers) still believe these stmnts to be true! Our children ARE indeed capable of being interested in a NEW idea and DO NOT need to be deviously led to be interested. They present education as something we must trick our children into enjoying IF they are even capable of understanding. Not to mention that the adults doing the teaching MUST be above average to handle these dim wits. WHY is it this way?
Kate... I didn't group them together based on info from 80 years ago... I said that PS teachers (and some HS's also) TODAY seem to have and strive to achieve for the SAME attitudes reflected in this book (sense of adult and educator elitism, idea that children cannot possibly be interested in a new idea on their own because they need adult intervention ( as opposed to guidance), the employment of purposefully "devious" tactics).

Please read the statements and questions more carefully next time.
After reading my own statements and question, I have concluded that this question is INDEED rhetorical as no one could possibly explain to me how this ( then or now) could be justified. I especially appreciate the "dumbing down" site. It seems to describe accurately what I know about the PS system.