The battle for kids' minds {Education/brainwashing by/for the "elite"}

From From EdWatch...

The battle for kids' minds

his column from Sunday's Star Tribune and the one that will follow are witness to the intense battle over new academic standards in Minnesota.

Minnesota's set of National Standards, the Profile of Learning, was repealed in statute, last May. The educational elite is intent on replacing it with standards that are not substantively different.

Incredible pressure is being brought to bear on the Commissioner, the Governor and legislators to keep the integrated, process-based, radical content of the Profile in place. The entrenched Profile crowd has staying power. They are accustomed to having their way. They have untold financial and political support from the embedded federal infrastructure, anti-American political forces, and willing media alliances.

The federal curriculum has been developed and integrated through federal Goals 2000 directive (1994) and federal grants. A national regional network of federal agencies develops, trains and distributes curricular content to every state to comply with the federal curriculum. Federal education grant money for all sorts of activities is "discretionary," leaving them subject to political leveraging.

When EdWatch stated last May that repealing the Profile of Learning in Minnesota statute was the beginning, not the end, it was this battle that we anticipated.

Critics would teach about an oppressive America

Katherine Kersten

(Published November 9, 2003 - Star Tribune)

Minnesota is adopting new social studies standards, which will replace those of the discredited Profile of Learning. These standards will specify, for the first time, what Minnesota students must know about American and world history. Is it any surprise, then, that they are the subject of controversy?

The new standards' most vocal critics hail (predictably) from the educational establishment. Recently, 32 history professors from the University of Minnesota grabbed the media spotlight with a blistering 13-page letter to Education Commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke. The letter -- which sums up many critics' complaints -- expresses "grave concerns" about the standards, and demands sweeping changes.

The professors' first gripe is a familiar one. (Indeed, it's been a hallmark of "progressive" educators since 1920.) The new K-8 standards, they say, stress "lower level skills" like knowing and understanding, at the expense of higher level skills like debating and analyzing. How can students debate or analyze something that they don't yet know or understand? The professors fail to explain.

But the professors' central objection is ideological. They insist that the new standards paint too rosy a picture of America, and fail to focus sufficiently on the "tragedies and injustices" of our nation's history.

What would our children's history classrooms look like, if the "U" professors, and like-minded critics, got their way? One thing's sure: Every day, our kids would walk out of class hanging their heads for shame at being Americans. The professors' letter makes clear that they see America -- first and foremost -- as a nation that has oppressed women, enslaved blacks, and exploited the poor. They want our children to see it that way, too. That's why their letter is full of recommendations like this: When Minnesota 8- and 9-year-olds study colonial America, they should focus on "the genocidal impact of European incursions, the extinction of numerous species and the destruction of whole environments." When third-graders study the Pledge of Allegiance, they should learn that its author was "forced by the political climate of Jim Crow and xenophobia" to omit the mention of equality, along with liberty and justice.

The professors reject the new standards' Government and Citizenship benchmarks along with its history benchmarks. They object, for example, to a first-grade standard that encourages "good citizen traits" like "honesty, courage, patriotism and individual responsibility." Why? Portraying such traits as important components of citizenship is tantamount to teaching patriotism as a "reflex action of blind obedience or conformity."

Why is the standards battle in Minnesota so contentious? It's an important front in our nation's culture wars. At stake, as the new standards' critics well know, are the hearts and minds of the next generation.

Fortunately, most Americans don't want the sort of social studies standards that the "U" professors propose. That's because most Americans view the United States as a noble experiment which, despite its flaws, is eminently worthy of their love and loyalty. In a 1998 Public Agenda poll, 84 percent of parents agreed that the United States is "a unique country that stands for something special in the world." Eighty-three percent of parents overall and 81 percent of African-American parents reported that they would be "upset or somewhat concerned" if their children were "taught that America is a fundamentally racist country."

According to Public Agenda, parents of all demographic groups "embrace with pride a common agenda they expect the public schools to teach about what it means to be an American," and endorse "the use of traditional ideals and stories" in this effort.

Many prominent educators and liberal politicians agree. Recently, the Albert Shanker Institute of the American Federation of Teachers issued a consensus document called Education for Democracy. "As citizens of a democratic republic," the document proclaimed, "we are part of the noblest effort in history." Our nation's schools, it went on, must encourage "a deep loyalty" to American political institutions and prepare students to "protect and extend this precious inheritance." The document's signers spanned the ideological spectrum, and included former President Bill Clinton, Sen. Edward Kennedy and Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association.

The new Minnesota standards are not perfect. They are too lengthy, and in some cases, too repetitive. These flaws are being corrected.

The important point is this. At the heart of the standards debate are two contending visions of public education. The "U" professors' letter is revealing in this respect. Minnesota's new standards, the professors charge, "feed into the ignorance, prejudice, and misperceptions of many Americans [that's us, folks!] about much of the world, rather than offering a basis for changing these assumptions." Most Americans see the public school as an institution dedicated to the transmission of knowledge. Critics like the professors view it as something quite different: an agent of radical social change.

Katherine Kersten is a board member of the Center of the American Experiment.

For more information on how you can help fight for the preservation of freedom, please visit: The EdWatch websites at: www.EdWatch.org, and www.EdAction.org. Also, visit Michael Chapman's web site at: www.AmericanHeritageResearch.com.

Editor's note: Bob Hillmann's book, Reinventing Government, describes and documents how the educational elite worked behind the scenes to re-write the text books to achieve the goals described in this article. A review of his book is here.

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THIS article at Eco-Logic / POWERHOUSE

Blame it on the wackos who run the ed schools:

Ed School Cults

Martin Kozloff

University of North Carolina at Wilmington

April, 2001

The problem with ed schools is not simply that teacher candidates spend too much time in "math methods" classes gluing mung beans on popsickle sticks, when they should be learning the logic of instructional design; or that teacher candidates in "literacy" courses develop odd "personal literacy philosophies" ("Learning to read is as natural as learning to speak.") when they ought to be learning exactly how to teach reading; or that teacher candidates in social studies methods courses chant mantras of multiculturalism ("All values are relative. You cannot judge another culture.") when they ought to be learning the difference between reality and rhetoric and about the origins and nurturing of the rare social arrangements in which freedom is possible. These are problematic to be sure, but they are examples of something larger--and more difficult to change; namely, that many schools of education are organized as cults, and appear to serve the same functions as other sorts of cults. These functions include: (1) personal identity as a member of a group; (2) a readily understandable way of making sense of a complex world (dogma); and (3) a cohesive social group that provides security in an environment perceived as threatening.

Features of ed schools as cults include the following.

1. Insularity. Schools of education are generally not connected to other academic departments, such as economics, history, or political science. This means that the dominant ed school belief system (which consists largely of constructivist, postmodernist notions such as "There are no truths," "Knowledge is a social construction," "External authority inhibits personality development") is unchallenged by more scientific disciplines. In addition, when ed schools have connections with other departments, it is with departments and faculty who share the ed school belief system (e.g., constructivist math professors and postmodern literary critics in English departments).

2. Cultivation of likemindedness. As with other cults, ed schools cultivate unity of belief; e.g., in what the aims of ed schools are; in what constitutes knowledge, verification, and developmental appropriateness; in how to organize curricula and classrooms; in what constitutes learning and achievement. This uniformity is produced and sustained in several ways.

a. Conceptual frameworks (e.g., "By teaching we learn") that appear in syllabi and other documents are to be learned by faculty and students, and are (in the form of icons) displayed on stationery and banners.

b. Hiring faculty who already subscribe to the dominant beliefs--who will fit in.

c. Awarding tenure not solely on the basis of productivity and contributions related to improving outcomes for students, but on the basis of conformity to the dogma.

d. Periodic ritual celebrations (e.g., conferences) where the conceptual framework (as a banner or poster) is displayed and/or read and/or discussed ("We at the Byzantine School of Education believe that diversity should be celebrated."), and then receives collective approval.

These ritual affirmations bind members to the icon and to each other.

3. The typical ed school belief system is a shallow, nonlogical canon consisting of repeated phrases whose concepts and propositions have virtually no empirical referents. Examples include "Instruction should be developmentally appropriate," "Correcting errors hurts children's self-esteem," "Teachers should be guides on the side," and "Worksheets are drill and kill." These beliefs are easy to understand; they conjure up simple imagery. They are easy to recite and communicate. And since the concepts generally are intellectual fictions, they are impossible to refute. This adds the strength and security of infallibility to the collective credo and makes it possible for members to see themselves as "reflective scholars guided by rich theory."

4. The ed cult uses a variety of signs of recognition, loyalty tests, and curses--in the form of shibboleths, such as "Do you believe in best practices?" or "Do you use authentic assessments?" and "She advocates direct instruction! Can you believe it?!" These enable members of the dominant progressivist-constructivist belief system to share and affirm their common bias, and to place invidious social distance between themselves and persons whose beliefs and activities are threatening; e.g., persons (heretics) who believe that the job of teacher is to ensure that students master subjects—with mastery defined by precise statements of what students actually do with concepts, rules relationships, and cognitive strategies that constitute classical knowledge systems such as mathematics, history, and literature.

5. The ed school cult is impervious to possibly threatening information and beliefs. This is accomplished in the following ways.

a. Selective disattention and mislabeling. Constructivist epistemology dominates the ed school cult. This epistemology asserts that all truths are relative to situations and reflect the interests of believers. However, as with other cults, ed schools do not see their own as merely one belief system, but as THE correct belief system. All others are, for the ed school cult, fatally flawed—not developmentally appropriate, not child-centered, not democratic—and therefore not tolerated. However, by excluding its own constructivist doctrine from critical analysis, the ed school cult is able to disguise what is obviously rigid orthodoxy behind high sounding words and phrases—in a manner identical to other sorts of cults.

b. Not basing verification on the necessity of falsifying the null hypothesis. Instead, verification of a proposition or speculation or "innovative practice" generally consists merely of gathering information or "expert" testimonials that support it. Since supporting information can always be found, no proposition, speculation, or "innovative practice" ever needs to be rejected. For example, instead of testing the null hypothesis that a Professional Development System has no significant beneficial effect on public schools connected to a school of education, PDS administrators merely collect information that supports their PDS; e.g., anecdotes on how PDS teachers have become more "reflective."

c. Claiming that quantitative data and experimental methods are contrary to humanistic values ("Persons are more than numbers.") or are essentially invalid ("You can do anything with numbers." "Experiments are not natural."); and therefore should be rejected out of hand. In this way, a century of experimental research on learning and instruction, and large longitudinal studies (e.g., Project Follow Through) can be ignored entirely, without producing a sense of irony when the word scholarship is used to describe ed school activities. This imperviousness helps to sustain the essential ed school belief system—constructivism/progressivism--that is at least 80 years old.

6. Socialization of new members (ed students) is easily understood as indoctrination.

a. Undergraduates seldom take courses in logic and research methods, and rarely examine meta-analyses and literature reviews on what they are taught; e.g., that it is best when children are not taught elementary reading skills in a focused, systematic fashion. For, skill at identifying logical fallacies (overgeneralization, equivocation, ad hominem) and access to the preponderance of scientific research would make it easy for ed students to challenge the ed school belief system.

b. Courses and overall curricula present one point of view. When Direct Instruction or more traditional (research based) instruction is presented, it is generally for purposes of demonization--drawing and affirming the lines between the in-group and out-groups.

c. As in other cult groups, members are obliged to examine their beliefs, reveal deviance, and expiate wrong thinking (heresies). In some cults, this takes the form of public confession. In some ed schools, it takes the form of "reflective journals." This also operates outside of ed schools, when state departments of public instruction require initially licensed teachers to include "reflective pieces" graded according to educationally correct "rubrics."

7. Messianism. As with other cults, ed schools have messianic visions that include the notion that they are stewards of America's children, are adversaries of the forces of social injustice, and seek to deliver public school children and ed students from the "oppressive authority" or tyranny of "external forms of authority" (such as books and knowledge systems; e.g., history and math).

8. Transformation. As with other cults, ed schools incorporate and transform external events into things that support the cult. For example, instead of considering a state mandated PRAXIS exam as something anathema to the cult, the ed school transforms the PRAXIS exam into another ritual celebration--more evidence of the quality of the school ("Ninety percent of our students pass!"); or the ed school transforms the matrix of NCATE "standards" into another feature of the ed school belief system.

The easiest method of challenging the dogma that guides many ed schools is merely to expose their cult nature.

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