|
PREFACE
Coexistence on this tightly
knit earth should be viewed as an existence not only without
wars...but also without [the government] telling us how to live,
what to say, what to think, what to know, and what not to know.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from a speech given September 11,
1973.
For over a twenty-five-year period the research used in
this chronology has been collected from many sources: the United
States Department of Education; international agencies; state
agencies; the media; concerned educators; parents; legislators, and
talented researchers with whom I have worked for at least
twenty-five years. In the process of gathering this information two
beliefs that most Americans hold in common became clear:
1)
If a child can read, write and compute at a reasonably proficient
level, he will be able to do just about anything he wishes, enabling
him to control his destiny to the extent that God allows (remain
free).
2) Providing such basic educational proficiencies is
not and should not be an expensive proposition.
Since most
Americans believe the second premise-that providing basic
educational proficiencies is not and should not be an expensive
proposition-it becomes obvious that it is only a radical agenda, the
purpose of which is to change values and attitudes (brainwash), that
is the costly agenda. In other words, brainwashing by our schools
and universities is what is bankrupting our nation and our
children's minds.
In 1997 there were 46.4 million public
school students. During 1993-1994 (the latest years the statistics
were available) the average per pupil expenditure was $6,330.00 in
1996 constant dollars. Multiply the number of students by the per
pupil expenditure (using old-fashioned mathematical procedures) for
a total K-12 budget per year of $293.7 billion dollars. If one adds
the cost of higher education to this figure, one arrives at a total
budget per year of over half a trillion dollars. The sorry result of
such an incredibly large expenditure-the performance of American
students-is discussed on page 12 of Pursuing Excellence-A Study of
U.S. Twelfth Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement in
International Context: Initial Findings from the Third International
Mathematics and Science Study [TIMMS], a report from the U.S.
Department of Education (NCES 98-049). Pursuing Excellence
reads:
Achievement of Students, Key Points: U. S. twelfth
graders scored below the international average and among the lowest
of the 21 TIMSS nations in both mathematics and science general
knowledge in the final year of secondary school. (p.
24)
Obviously, something is terribly wrong when a $6,330 per
pupil expenditure produces such pathetic results. This writer has
visited private schools which charge $1,000-per-year in tuition
which enjoy superior academic results. Parents of home-schooled
children spend a maximum of $1,000-per-year and usually have similar
excellent results.
There are many talented and respected
researchers and activists who have carefully documented the "weird"
activities which have taken place "in the name of education." Any
opposition to change agent activities in local schools has
invariably been met with cries of "Prove your case, document your
statements," etc. "Resisters"-usually parents-have been called every
name in the book. Parents have been told for over thirty years,
"You're the only parent who has ever complained." The media has been
convinced to join in the attack upon common sense views, effectively
discrediting the perspective of well-informed citizens.
Documentation, when presented, has been ignored and called
incomplete. The classic response by the education establishment has
been, "You're taking that out of context!"-even when presented with
an entire book which uses their own words to detail exactly what the
"resisters" are claiming to be true.
The desire by
"resisters" to prove their case has been so strong that they have
continued to amass-over a thirty- to fifty-year period-what must
surely amount to tons of materials containing irrefutable proof, in
the education change agents' own words, of deliberate, malicious
intent to achieve behavioral changes in students/parents/society
which have nothing to do with commonly understood educational
objectives. Upon delivery of such proof, "resisters" are
consistently met with the "shoot the messenger" stonewalling
response by teachers, school boards, superintendents, state and
local officials, as well as the supposedly objective institutions of
academia and the press.
This resister's book, or collection
of research in book form, was put together primarily to satisfy my
own need to see the various components which led to the dumbing down
of the United States of America assembled in chronological order-in
writing. Even I, who had observed these weird activities taking
place at all levels of government, was reluctant to accept a
malicious intent behind each individual, chronological activity or
innovation, unless I could connect it with other, similar activities
taking place at other times. This book, which makes such
connections, has provided for me a much-needed sense of
closure.
the deliberate dumbing down of america is also a
book for my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I want
them to know that there were thousands of Americans who may not have
died or been shot at in overseas wars, but were shot at in
small-town 'wars' at school board meetings, at state legislative
hearings on education, and, most importantly, in the media. I want
my progeny to know that whatever intellectual and spiritual freedoms
to which they may still lay claim were fought for-are a result
of-the courageous work of incredible people who dared to tell the
truth against all odds.
I want them to know that there will
always be hope for freedom if they follow in these people's
footsteps; if they cherish the concept of 'free will'; if they
believe that human beings are special, not animals, and that they
have intellects, souls, and consciences. I want them to know that if
the government schools are allowed to teach children K-12 using
Pavlovian/Skinnerian animal training methods-which provide tangible
rewards only for correct answers-there can be no
freedom.
Why? People 'trained'-not educated-by such
educational techniques will be fearful of taking principled,
sometimes controversial, stands when called for because these people
will have been programmed to speak up only if a positive reward or
response is forthcoming. The price of freedom has often been paid
with pain and loneliness.
In 1971 when I returned to the
United States after living in the West Indies for three years, I was
shocked to find public education had become a warm, fuzzy, soft,
mushy, touchy-feely experience, where its purpose had become
socialization, not learning. From that time on, and with the
advantage of having two young sons in the public schools, I became
involved as a member of a philosophy committee for a school, as an
elected school board member, as co-founder of Guardians of Education
for Maine (GEM), and finally as a Senior Policy Advisor in the
Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) in the U.S.
Department of Education during President Ronald Reagan's first term
of office. OERI was, and is, the office from which all the
controversial national and international educational restructuring
has emanated.
Those ten years (1971-1981) changed my life. As
an American who had spent many years working abroad, I had
experienced traveling in and living in socialist countries. When I
returned to the United States I realized that America's transition
from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy
would not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through
the implementation and installation of the "system" in all areas of
government-federal, state and local. The brainwashing for acceptance
of the "system's" control would take place in the school-through
indoctrination and the use of behavior modification, which comes
under so many labels, the most recent labels being Outcome-Based
Education, Skinnerian Mastery Learning or Direct Instruction. In the
seventies I and many others waged the war against values
clarification, which was later renamed "critical thinking," which
regardless of the label-and there are bound to be many more labels
on the horizon-is nothing but pure, unadulterated destruction of
absolute values of right and wrong upon which stable and free
societies depend and upon which our nation was founded.
In
1973 I started this long journey into becoming a "resister," placing
the first incriminating piece of paper in my "education" files. That
first piece of paper was a purple ditto sheet entitled "All About
Me," next to which was a smiley face. It was an open-ended
questionnaire beginning with: "My name is _______________." My son
brought it home from public school in fourth grade. The questions
were highly personal; so much so that they encouraged my son to lie,
since he didn't want to "spill the beans" about his mother, father
and brother. The purpose of such a questionnaire was to find out the
student's state of mind, how he felt, what he liked and disliked,
and what his values were. With this knowledge it would be easier for
the government school to modify his values and behavior at
will-without, of course, the student's knowledge or parents'
consent.
That was just the beginning. There was more to come:
the new social studies textbook World of Mankind. Published by
Follett, this book instructed the teacher how to instill humanistic
(no right/no wrong) values in the K-3 students. At the text's
suggestion they were encouraged to take little tots for walks in
town during which he/she would point out big and small houses,
asking the little tots who they thought lived in the houses. Poor or
Rich? "What do you think they eat in the big house?...in the little
house?" When I complained about this non-educational activity at a
school board meeting I was dismissed as a censor and the press did
its usual hatchet job on me as a misguided parent. A friend of
mine-a very bright gal who had also lived abroad for years-told me
that she had overheard discussion of me at the local co-op. The word
was out in town that I was a "kook." That was not a "positive
response/reward" for my taking what I believed to be a principled
position. Since I had not been "trained" I was just mad!
Next
stop on the road to becoming a "resister" was to become a member of
the school philosophy committee. Our Harvard-educated, professional
change agent superintendent gave all of the committee members a copy
of "The Philosophy of Education" (1975 version) from the Montgomery
County schools in Maryland, hoping to influence whatever
recommendations we would make. (For those who like to eat dessert
before soup, turn to page ____ and read the entry under 1946
concerning "Community-Centered Schools: The Blueprint for Education
in Montgomery County, Maryland." This document was in fact the
"Blueprint" for the nation's schools.) When asked to write a paper
expressing our views on the goals of education, I wrote that,
amongst other goals, I felt the schools should strive to instill
"sound morals and values in the students." The superintendent and a
few teachers on the committee zeroed in on me, asking "What's the
definition of 'sound' and whose values?"
After two failed
attempts to get elected to the school board, I finally succeeded in
1976 on the third try. The votes were counted three times, even
though I had won by a very healthy margin!
My experience on
the school board taught me that when it comes to modern education,
"the end justifies the means." Our change agent superintendent was
more at home with a lie than he was with the truth. Whatever good I
accomplished while on the school board-stopping the Planning,
Programming and Budgeting System [PPBS] now known as Total Quality
Management [TQM] or Generally Accepted Accounting
Procedures/Generally Accepted Federal Funding Reporting
[GAAP/GAFFR], getting values clarification banned by the board, and
demanding five [yes, 5!] minutes of grammar per day, etc.-was tossed
out two weeks after I left office.
Another milestone on my
journey was an in-service training session entitled "Innovations in
Education." A retired teacher, who understood what was happening in
education, paid for me to attend. This training program developed by
Professor Ronald Havelock of the University of Michigan and funded
by the United States Office of Education taught teachers and
administrators how to "sneak in" controversial methods of teaching
and "innovative" programs. These controversial, "innovative"
programs included health education, sex education, drug and alcohol
education, death education, critical thinking education, etc. Since
then I have always found it interesting that the controversial
school programs are the only ones that have the word "education"
attached to them! I don't recall-until recently-"math ed.," "reading
ed.," "history ed.," or "science ed." A good rule of thumb for
teachers, parents and school board members interested in academics
and traditional values is to question any subject that has the word
"education" attached to it.
This in-service training
literally "blew my mind." I have never recovered from it. The
presenter (change agent) taught us how to "manipulate" the
taxpayers/parents into accepting controversial programs. He
explained how to identify the "resisters" in the community and how
to get around their resistance. He instructed us in how to go to the
highly respected members of the community-those with the Chamber of
Commerce, Rotary, Junior League, Little League, YMCA, Historical
Society, etc.-to manipulate them into supporting the
controversial/non-academic programs and into bad-mouthing the
resisters. Advice was also given as to how to get the media to
support these programs.
I left-with my very valuable
textbook, Innovations in Education: A Change Agent's Guide, under my
arm-feeling very sick to my stomach and in complete denial over that
in which I had been involved. This was not the nation in which I
grew up; something seriously disturbing had happened between 1953
when I left the United States and 1971 when I
returned.
Orchestrated Consensus
In retrospect, I had
just found out that the United States was engaged in war. People
write important books about war: books documenting the battles
fought, the names of the generals involved, the names of those who
fired the first shot. This book is simply a history book about
another kind of war: * one fought using psychological methods; * a
one-hundred-year war; * a different, more deadly war than any in
which our country has ever been involved; * a war about which the
average American hasn't the foggiest idea.. The reason Americans do
not understand this war is because it has been fought in secret-in
the schools of our nation, using our children who are captive in
classrooms. The wagers of this war are using very sophisticated and
effective tools:
* Hegelian Dialectic (common ground,
consensus and compromise) * Gradualism (two steps forward; one step
backward) * Semantic deception (redefining terms to get agreement
without understanding).
The Hegelian Dialectic4 is a process
formulated by the German philosopher Fredrich Hegel (1770-1831) and
used by Karl Marx's in codifying revolutionary Communism as
dialectical materialism. This process can be illustrated
as:
Synthesis (consensus)
Thesis Antithesis
The
"Thesis" represents either an established practice or point of view
which is pitted against the "Antithesis"-usually a crisis of
opposition fabricated or created by change agents-causing the
"Thesis" to compromise itself, incorporating some part of the
"Antithesis" to produce the "Synthesis"-sometimes called consensus.
This is the primary tool in the bag of tricks used by change agents
who are trained to direct this process all over the country; much
like the in-service training I received. A good example of this
concept was voiced by T.H. Bell when he was Secretary of Education:
"[We] need to create a crisis to get consensus in order to bring
about change." (The reader might be reminded that it was under T.H.
Bell's direction that the Department of Education implemented the
changes "suggested" by A Nation at Risk-the alarm that was sounded
in the early 1980's to announce the "crisis" in
education.)
Since we have been, as a nation, so relentlessly
exposed to this Hegelian dialectical process (which is essential to
the smooth operation of the "system") under the guise of "reaching
consensus" in our involvement in parent-teacher organizations, on
school boards, in legislatures, and even in goal setting in
community service organizations and groups-including our churches-I
want to explain clearly how it works in a practical application. A
good example with which most of us can identify involves property
taxes for local schools. Let us consider an example from
Michigan:
The internationalist change agents must abolish
local control (the "Thesis") in order to restructure our schools
from academics to global workforce training (the "Synthesis").
Funding of education with the property tax allows local control, but
it also enables the change agents and teachers' unions to create
higher and higher school budgets paid for with higher taxes, thus
infuriating homeowners. Eventually, property owners accept the
change agent's radical proposal (the "Anti- thesis") to reduce their
property taxes by transferring education funding from the local
property tax to the state income tax. Thus, the change agents
accomplish their ultimate goal; the transfer of funding of education
from the local level to the state level. When this transfer occurs
it increases state/federal control and funding, leading to the
federal/internationalist goal of implementing global workforce
training through the schools (the "Synthesis").5
Regarding
the power of gradualism, remember the story of the frog and how he
didn't save himself because he didn't realize what was happening to
him? He was thrown into cold water which, in turn, was gradually
heated up until finally it reached the boiling point and he was
dead. This is how "gradualism" works through a series of "created
crises" which utilize Hegel's dialectical process, leading us to
more radical change than we would ever otherwise accept.
In
the instance of "semantic deception"-do you remember your kindly
principal telling you that the new decision-making program would
help your child make better decisions? What good parent wouldn't
want his or her child to learn how to make "good" decisions? Did you
know that the decision-making program is the same controversial
values clarification program recently rejected by your school board
against which you may have given repeated testimony? As I've said
before, the wagers of this intellectual social war have employed
very effective weapons to implement their changes.
This war
has, in fact, become the war to end all wars. If citizens on this
planet can be brainwashed or robotized, using dumbed-down
Pavlovian/Skinnerian education, to accept what those in control
want, there will be no more wars. If there are no rights or wrongs,
there will be no one wanting to "right" a "wrong." Robots have no
conscience. The only permissible conscience will be the United
Nations or a global conscience. Whether an action is good or bad
will be decided by a "Global Government's Global Conscience," as
recommended by Dr. Brock Chisholm, Executive Secretary of the World
Health Organization, Interim Commission, in 1947-and later in 1996
by current United States Secretary of State Madeline Albright. (See
p. ___for quotes in entry under 1947.)
You may protest, "But,
no one has died in this war." Is that the only criteria we have with
which to measure whether war is war? The tragedy is that many
Americans have died in other wars to protect the freedoms being
taken away in this one. This war which produces the death of
intellect and freedom is not waged by a foreign enemy but by the
silent enemy in the ivory towers, in our own government, and in
tax-exempt foundations-the enemy whose every move I have tried to
document in this book, usually in his/her/its own
words.
Ronald Havelock's change agent in-service training
prepared me for what I would find in the U.S. Department of
Education when I worked there from 1981-1982. The use of taxpayers'
hard-earned money to fund Havelock's "Change Agent Manual" was only
one out of hundreds of expensive U.S. Department of Education grants
each year going everywhere, even overseas, to further the cause of
internationalist "dumbing down" education (behavior modification) so
necessary for the present introduction of global work force
training. I was relieved of my duties after leaking an important
technology grant (computer-assisted instruction proposal) to the
press.
Much of this book contains quotes from government
documents detailing the real purposes of American education: * to
use the schools to change America from a free, individual nation to
a socialist, global "state," just one of many socialist states which
will be subservient to the United Nations Charter, not the United
States Constitution; * to brainwash our children, starting at birth,
to reject individualism in favor of collectivism; * to reject high
academic standards in favor of OBE/ISO 1400/90006 egalitarianism; *
to reject truth and absolutes in favor of tolerance, situational
ethics and consensus; * to reject American values in favor of
internationalist values (globalism); * to reject freedom to choose
one's career in favor of the totalitarian K-12 school-to-work/OBE
process, aptly named "limited learning for lifelong labor,"7
coordinated through United Nations Educational Scientific and
Cultural Organization.
Only when all children in public,
private and home schools are robotized-and believe as one-will World
Government be acceptable to citizens and able to be implemented
without firing a shot. The attractive-sounding "choice" proposals
will enable the globalist elite to achieve their goal: the
robotization (brainwashing) of all Americans in order to gain their
acceptance of lifelong education and workforce training-part of the
world management system to achieve a new global
feudalism.
The socialist/fascist global workforce training
agenda is being implemented as I write this book. The report to the
European Commission entitled "Transatlantic Co-operation in
International Education: Projects of the Handswerkskammer Koblenz
with Partners in the United States and in the European Union" by
Karl-Jurgen Wilbert and Bernard Eckgold (May 1997) says in
part:
In June, 1994, with the support of the Handswerkskamer
Koblenz, an American-German vocational education conference took
place...at the University of Texas at Austin. The vocational
education researchers and economic specialists...were in agreement
that an economic and employment policy is necessary where a
systematic vocational training is as equally important as an
academic education, as a "career pathway."...The first practical
steps along these lines, which are also significant from the point
of view of the educational policy, were made with the vocational
training of American apprentices in skilled craft companies, in the
area of the Koblenz chamber. [emphasis added]
Under section
"e) Scientific Assistance for the Projects," one reads:
The
international projects ought to be scientifically assisted and
analyzed both for the feedback to the transatlantic dialogue on
educa- tional policy, and also for the assessment and qualitative
improvement of the cross-border vocational education projects. As a
result it should be made possible on the German side to set up a
connection to other projects of German-American cooperation in
vocational training; e.g., of the federal institute for vocational
training for the project in the U.S. state of Maine. On the USA side
an interlinking with other initiatives for vocational training-for
example, through the Center for the Study of Human Resources at the
University of Texas, Austin-would be desirable.
This
particular document discusses the history of
apprenticeships-especially the role of medieval guilds-and attempts
to make a case for nations which heretofore have cherished liberal
economic ideas-i.e., individual economic freedom-to return to a
system of cooperative economic solutions (the guild system used in
the Middle Ages which accepted very young children from farms and
cities and trained them in "necessary" skills). Another word for
this is "serfdom." Had our elected officials at the federal, state,
and local levels read this document, they could never have voted in
favor of socialist/fascist legislation implementing workforce
training to meet the needs of the global economy. Unless, of course,
they happen to support such a totalitarian economic system. (This
incredible document can be accessed at the following internet
address: http://www.kwk-koblenz.de/ausland/trans-uk.doc
)
Just as Barbara Tuchman or another historian would do in
writing the history of the other kinds of wars, I have identified
chronologically the major battles, players, dates and places. I know
that researchers and writers with far more talent than I will feel
that I have neglected some key events in this war. I stand guilty on
all counts, even before their well-researched charges are submitted.
Yes, much of importance has been left out, due to space limitations,
but the overview of the battlefields and maneuvers will give the
reader an opportunity to glimpse the immensity of this
conflict.
In order to win a battle one must know who the
"real" enemy is. Otherwise, one is shooting in the dark and often
hitting those not the least bit responsible for the mayhem. This
book, hopefully, identifies the "real" enemy and provides Americans
involved in this war-be they plain, ordinary citizens, elected
officials, or traditional teachers-with the ammunition to fight to
obtain victory.
1 Noted Soviet dissident, slave labor camp
intern, and author of The Gulag Archipelago and numerous other
books.
2 Statistics taken from The Condition of Education,
1997, published by the National Center for Educational Statistics,
U.S. Department of Education, NCES 97-388. Internet address:
http://www.ed/gov/NCES.
3 OBE/ML/DI or outcomes-based
education/mastery learning/direct instruction.
4Dean Gotcher,
author of The Dialectic & Praxis: Diaprax and the End of the
Ages and other materials dealing with dialectical consensus building
and human relations training, has done some excellent work in this
area of research. For more detailed information on this process,
please write to Dean Gotcher of the Institution for Authority
Research, 5436 S. Boston Pl., Tulsa, Oklahoma 74l05, or call (918)
742-3855.
5 See Appendix ___ for an article by Tim Clem which
explains this process in much more detail.
6 ISO stands for
International Standards of Operation for manufacturing (9000) and
human resources (1400), coordinated through the United Nations
Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
7
"Privatization or Socialization" by C. Weatherly, 1994. Delivered as
part of a speech to a group in Minnesota and later published in the
Christian Conscience magazine (Vol. 1, No. 2: February 1995, pp.
29-30).
|
|
|
|
|
|
