Corrupt Education
As part of the Corrupt Education series, Sentry
over America presents the first two parts of a series by
Alan Caruba
The Subversion of Education in America
Subverting the US Education
System: Lesson #1
I’ll bet you think that the problems with our nation’s schools
are a fairly recent phenomenon. Wrong. It dates backs to the
1960’s. Those that have implemented the subversion of our
educational system have sought to fly well below the radar
of public awareness, depending on stealth and duplicity to
achieve the wreckage that has already stunted the lives of
thousands who have passed through it.
No other topic has evoked as much email as did last week’s
Warning Signs commentary, "Indoctrination, Not Education."
Good. Time to wake up America!
For the next few weeks I will walk you through the history
of the problem with the help of an extraordinary book, "The
Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Thomson
Iserbyt. The facts I will share with you are found in a fat
compendium of research by this former senior official with
the US Department of Education who discovered the mother lode,
copied it, and fled. She is one of America’s unsung heroes.
As Iserbyt points out, in the 1960’s "American education
would henceforth concern itself with the importance of the
group rather than with the importance of the individual."
The purpose of education would shift to focus on the student’s
emotional health, rather than academic learning. Remember
the 1960’s? Sex, drugs and rock’n roll? Drop out, tune in,
and turn on? Just about everything that is wrong with America
today had its genesis in this pathetic decade of youthful
self-indulgence."
In 1965, there were two major federal initiatives developed
with funding from The Elementary and Secondary Education Act
passed that year. One was the 1965-1969 Behavioral Science
Teacher Education Program and the other was the publication
by the government of "Pacesetters in Innovation", a 584-page
catalogue of behavior modification programs to be used by
the schools.
Let me repeat that: a catalogue of behavior modification
programs! We’re not talking of programs to teach students
anything. We are talking about programs to indoctrinate children
passing through the system to believe in values contrary to
those on which this nation was based.
In brief, the intention was to create a generation or two
of Americans who would accept the United Nations, not the
United States, as their new "nation", a global nation, one-world
government. The last thing the conspirators wanted was a nation
of individuals who could or would actually think for themselves.
This is how we ended up with Bill Clinton, the classic student
achiever of the 1960’s.
Iserbyt writes that, "In 1960, the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Convention Against
Discrimination was signed in Paris. This convention laid the
groundwork for control of American education—both public and
private—by UN agencies and agents."
Now connect the dots. In 1960, "Soviet Education Programs:
Foundations, Curriculums, Teacher Preparation" was published
under the auspices of the US Department of Health, Education
and Welfare. It was the blueprint for the US school-to-work
restructuring that would take place and it would rely on the
"Pavlovian conditioned reflex theory." The mastermind of mind
control and conditioning was a psychologist, Dr. B.F. Skinner
who was the guru of the mess that passes for education in
America today.
Though hard to believe even now, the US adopted the Soviet
Communist approach to education. In 1961, Rep. John M. Ashbrook
tried to alert Congress to what was happening. Citing a document
published by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare
called "A Federal Education Agency for the Future, " he called
the new education programs "a blueprint for complete domination
and direction of our schools from Washington. Guess what?
He was right.
That is why the educational reform this nation really needs
is the complete elimination of the US Department of Education.
It won’t happen. For the same reason we are now only learning
that those "Red baiters" of the 1950’s were right to assert
the Department of State was shot through with Communists,
no one in 2001 is going to believe that the US Department
of Education is modeled on Communist theories.
The Subversion
of Education in America: Lesson #2
Just how did education in America
turn from being a system that imparts knowledge to one that
uses behavior modification techniques to influence the attitudes
and beliefs of those passing through it?
To achieve this, beginning
in the 1960’s, the perpetrators of the subversion have employed
deception to achieve their goals. Earlier this month, a New
Jersey daily newspaper ran an editorial, "Let board members
speak", noting that members of a local school board had been
restricted from speaking to the press to avoid "confusion"
about the board’s programs and objectives. "But this isn’t
about ‘confusion’," said the editorial. "It’s about control",
adding "And it is insulting to the public and the idea of
open local government."
There is nothing "open" about
the effort to subvert education in America. It only has that
appearance because it takes place at presumably local school
boards or in a state education department. Always, the vehicle
is a governmental agency. The controlling player, however,
is the US Department of Education.
The objective of those who
control our educational systems has long been to produce poorly
educated, little world citizens, ready to forego the liberties
guaranteed by the oldest living Constitution. The system introduced
into American schools mirrors the Soviet and Communist Chinese
systems that produce a compliant and complacent population.
To achieve this, they have
had to dumb-down the students passing through the system.
On February 17th, the Los Angeles Times
reported that the president of the University of California
"wants to eliminate the SAT as a requirement for admission
to all eight of the university’s undergraduate campuses."
What a great way to further dilute all standards for academic
achievement!
In January, the Times
reported that the University of California kicked out 2,009
students, six percent of last year’s freshman class, for failing
to master basic math and English skills in their first year
of classes. These are skills that should have been mastered
in their first twelve years in California schools! It means
that the diplomas they received are worthless pieces of
paper.
This pattern repeats itself
from state to state because it is the educational system
that is failing
American students. The President’s emphasis on testing misses
the point entirely!
In the January/February issue
of The American Enterprise, devoted to why some few
schools succeed while the majority fail, Karl Zinsmeister
writes that "it’s extremely interesting how many common traits
are shared by the successful schools we profile. A remarkably
similar basic formula applies in almost all of these places:
high demands on students, strict discipline, a strong and
unapologetic moral component, including a respect for religion,
an emphasis on teaching intellectual basics, a preference
for time-tested books and curricula, clear standards of dress,
grooming, and comportment, and an insistence on politeness,
respect and courtesy."
Compare that to schools in
your area where the way students dress is an offense to decorum,
the language they use is replete with profanities, and their
chief complaint is that they have too much homework.
President Bush has bought into
the Education Establishment’s systematic stupification of
students. He is not the first President to fall prey to this
effort. To learn the facts, you must read "The
Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" by Charlotte Thomson
Iserbyt.
The President
has proposed a five billion-dollar program to help children
learn to read. Please! Please, please, will someone explain
to me why spending even more money will answer the
question of why our schools, soaking up billions a year, are
NOT teaching this already?
One need only look at the realities
of education in Texas to see why the call for national testing
standards is a deception. An excellent article by Jerry Jesness
in the November issue of Reason magazine blows away
the hype about the test scores of Texas students. Despite
apparent improvements, a closer look at the test scores of
basic skills places young Texans in 39th place
for SAT scores.
In 1984, the State adopted
the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimal Skills that established
minimal standards for graduation. The result has been that
a considerable amount of time is spent "teaching to the test"
in schools throughout Texas. Students are taught strategies
to pass the text. For example, the acquisition
of real arithmetical skills is sacrificed to methods that
include drawing and counting sticks! This is not progress
and the test is, essentially, meaningless.
All this
was foretold back in the 1970’s as the "educrats" continued
their efforts to undermine the teaching of basic knowledge.
In 1976, Catherine Barrett, then president of the National
Education Association, gave a speech in which she said, "First,
we will help all of our people understand that school is a
concept and not a place. We will not confuse "schooling" with
education. The school will be the community, the community
the school." This predates Hillary Clinton’s "it takes a village"
concept, but it reflects a communist view that all of society
must be employed to form the views of students. Individualism
is bad. Conforming to the group is good.
Barrett
went on to say "We will need to recognize that so-called ‘basic
skills’ which currently represent nearly the total effort
in elementary schools, will be taught in one quarter
of the present school day. The remaining time will be devoted
to what is truly fundamental and basic---time for academic
inquiry, time for students to develop their own interests,
time for a dialogue between students and teachers…more than
a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor
of values, a philosopher. Students will learn to write love
letters and lab notes."
You may
want to read this again. The then-head of the NEA was talking
about turning the school day into one devoted to just about
everything other than the teaching of reading, writing
and arithmetic. Teachers were, instead, to become "agents
of change."
The change incorporated into
today’s educational programs is intended to change the entire
social structure of our society and the values that had
made it great. Competition and achievement in the acquisition
of basic knowledge and the skills to implement that knowledge
are jettisoned in favor of changing attitudes about family,
patriotism, religion, and sexuality. Look around you and ask
yourself why we now accept all forms of "families." Look around
you and ask why we live in a cultural environment drenched
with sexuality without responsibility. Ask yourself why millions
fail to vote. Look at the way the expression of religious
values is continually derided.
In 1972, Dr.
Chester M. Pierce, MD, of Harvard University wrote an article
entitled "Becoming Planetary Citizens: A Quest for Meaning"
that appeared in the November issue of Childhood Education.
He was concerned that children, by the age of five, "already
have a lot of political attitudes", among which were "a tenacious
loyalty to his country and its leader." What he wanted was
a child who entered kindergarten "with the same kind of loyalty
to the earth as to his homeland…"
This is
a formula for degrading patriotism and loyalty to everything
for which this nation stands in favor of creating citizens
of the "global government" being pursued by the United Nations
and the environmentalism that preaches against the use of
the earth’s natural resources.
All throughout the 1970’s,
the Federal government funded these goals. Local educational
systems were taken over by programs designed to destroy local
control. I do not want President Bush’s education proposals
to succeed because they reflect the continued subversion of
our nation’s schools by the Department of Education.
The process dates back to the
1960’s, continued through the 1970’s, and in next week’s discussion
of education in America, we will see how they increased through
the 1980’s.
Copyright © 2001 Alan
Caruba
All Rights Reserved.
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