Posted on 06/04/2002 9:22:48 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
"politically correct educrats" indeed
That's unbelievable and it says it all. What a crock!
The slogan E pluribus unum sums up the strength that is the United States. It is this very strength that the socialist left seeks to undermine by turning our melting pot stew into a mixed salad.
One of the goals of the Communist Party, as stated in the Congressional record of 1963 was to downplay American history and the role of the founding fathers in the public schools, as well as dumbing down the curricula. The whole purpose is to surpress national pride, raise doubts about the moral quality of US gov't and create an unquestioning, malleable following for the leftist educators.
Huge Gatto BUMP!! Freepers, get thee to a library!
The same thing happened at my son's school. The school had a high Hispanic population, so every Mexican holiday in the calendar appeared to be acknowledged, taught on, and celebrated. However, when it came to Independence Day, Columbus Day, Memorial Day, and our presidents' birthdays, little if any thing was done. I would ask my son again and again if these holidays were discussed in class. And the answer was alway "no". What really got to me the most however, was that Mexican Independence Day was celebrated, but not the American Independence Day. And this was in a year-round school, so there was not even the excuse that the 4th of July occurred when school was not in session.
First-class idiot Gerald Bracey saith:
"In the U.S., we avoid discussing the implication of overeducation because we fear that we may reach conclusions that clash with our idea of equal opportunity for all. But until everyone owns a humanoid robot, as well as a car and a color television, some person will have to do the 'dirty jobs.' Until then, however, loath we are to admit it, we must continue to produce an uneducated social class…"
Don't get distracted, though. Dewey, the NEA, and a whole slew of others were funded by private corporate foundations, primarily Carnegie and Rockefeller.
Tax Exempt Foundations: Report of the Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations, House of Representatives, 83rd Congress, Second Session, on H. Res. 217 (House Report #2681). Pay particular attention to the section Foundations and Education, pp 134-168. Check it out.
The dumbing down is a labor saving device for the teachers and administration. Anyway, if education were ramped up, students would bevome better educated than the teachers. No surprises here.
[Congressional Record: May 16, 1997 (Extensions)]
E X T E N S I O N S O F R E M A R K S
BACKGROUND OF SCHOOL TO WORK CONCEPT
______
HON. HENRY HYDE
of illinois
in the house of representatives
Thursday, May 15, 1997
Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, no one doubts that education is a vital
importance to our country. The question that must be answered is what
role should the Federal Government play in supporting education? We
have seen more and more legislative efforts to increase the Federal, as
opposed to the local role, and this trend concerns many Americans,
including myself.
As we engage in debate, it is useful to understand the context, the
historical background, of some efforts to increase the central
government's intrusion into what has been a largely local
responsibility. Dr. D.L. Cuddy, a former senior associate with the U.S.
Department of Education, has written an interesting historical
commentary on the school to work concept which I believe warrants the
attention of Members.
Background of `School-to-Work' Concept
(By Dr. D. L. Cuddy)
With ``School-to-Work'' (STW) legislation (H.R. 1617/S.
143) soon going to conference committee in Congress, it's
important to look at the background of this concept. Plank 10
of Marx's Communist Manifesto provides for a ``combination of
education with industrial production,'' and in 1913 when
Stalin was having difficulty getting his Marxist cadres into
key positions for the ``class struggle,'' he described a
``regionalism'' strategy (e.g., NAFTA, later) against
nationalism and used the slogan ``workers of the world
unite.''
Self-described American communist Scott Nearing in The Next
Step (1922) described how a world economic organization
(e.g., GATT and World Trade Organization, later) would be the
first step toward world government, but first in The New
Education (1915) he applauded ``breaking away from the 3 Rs''
and Cincinnati's ``half time in shop, half time in school''
system.
In the Oct. 12, 1917 New York Times, Judge John Hylan wrote
about a letter by Dr. Abraham Flexner (Secretary of the
Rockefeller General Education Board and formerly of the
Carnegie Foundation) describing a ``secret conference'' of
New York City Board of Education members to elect a Board
president who would institute a type of STW/OBE (Outcome-
Based Education) program. Hylan became Mayor of New York and
``pitched out the Rockefeller agents, . . . the kind of
education the coolies receive in China . . . for the mill and
factory,'' William McAndrew, who had been in charge of the
``new-program schools,'' admiringly referred to the
``polytechnic institute'' (which the Soviets would adopt).
And in Raymond Fosdick's memorial history of the General
Education Board (GEB), he described the Board as part of
Rockefeller's effort toward ``this goal of social control.''
After Hylan's expose of this STW/OBE plan, it wasn't until
the ``Eight-Year Study'' (1933-41) funded by the Carnegie
Corporation and the GEB that another major attempt was
evident. Research Director for the study's Evaluation Staff
was Ralph Tyler, who would later conduct a project for the
Carnegie Corporation that would in 1969 become the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). One of Tyler's
associates in the ``Eight-Year Study'' was ``values
clarification'' originator Louis Raths, and another associate
was Estonian ``change agent'' Hilda Taba.
In the early 1950s, Ford Foundation president H. Rowan
Gaither told Congressional committee Research Director Norman
Dodd that they were operating under directives from the White
House ``to make every effort to so alter life in the U.S. as
to make possible a comfortable merger with the Soviet
Union.'' And in 1960, HEW published Soviet Education
Programs, stating ``wherever we went, we felt the pulse of
the Soviet government's drive to educate and train a new
generation of technically skilled citizens. ... USSR plans to
bring all secondary school children into labor education and
training experiences through the regular school program.''
By 1970, Americans were coming to be thought of as ``human
capital'' (note Lester Thurow's 1970 book, Investment in
Human Capital), and in 1971 UNESCO'S Secretariat asked George
Parkyn to ``outline a possible model'' for an education
system that resulted in Towards a Conceptual Model of Life-
Long Education describing how students would choose a
vocational field and work part time, and receive
``certificates'' of educational attainment.
Two years later, Michael Lerner (who would become an
important advisor to Hillary Clinton) wrote The New Socialist
Revolution, proclaiming: ``Education will be radically
transformed in our socialist community ... the main emphasis
will be on learning how to ... live and work collectively ...
The next level is learning some series of skills, for one's
first set of jobs.'' And in Vladimir Turchenko's The
Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Revolution in
Education (1976) imported into the U.S. is described
``linking instruction with productive labor.''
In the early 1980s, neither the Soviet nor German socialist
education systems had been adopted nationwide in the U.S., as
Prof. Eugene Boyce in The Coming Revolution in Education
(1983) wrote that ``in the communist ideology ... education
is tied directly to jobs ... No such direct, controlled,
relationship between education and jobs exists in democratic
countries.'' However, in 1985 two things happened. At the
beginning of the year, the Carnegie Corporation gave $600,000
to establish the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy;
and later that year the Carnegie Corporation negotiated the
Soviet-American Exchange Agreement for the U.S. government,
whereby Soviet educators became involved in planning
curricula for some U.S. schools. In the Winter 1987/1988
edition of Action in Teacher Education, Professors Martin
Haberman and James Collins wrote in ``The Future of the
Teaching Profession'' that ``schooling is now seen primarily
as job training and, for this reason, quite comparable to
schooling in non-democratic societies. Once education is
redefined as a personal good and as emphasizing preparation
for the world of work as its first purpose, our schools can
appropriately be compared with those of the USSR.''
The next year, the National Center on Education and the
Economy (formerly the Carnegie Forum) with Marc Tucker as
president was asked to help in developing the National
Education Goals upon which ``America 2000'' and ``Goals
2000'' would be based. Then in June 1990, NCEE (with Board
members Hillary Clinton and David Rockefeller, Jr.) produced
America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages? (proposing a
``Certificate of Initial Mastery''), which greatly influenced
the establishment of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving
Necessary Skills (SCANS) by the Department of Labor. In
September, Polytechnical Education: A Step (funded by the
U.S. Department of Education) by Robert Beck was published,
stating: ``The Soviet Union. . . (has) developed a curriculum
known as polytechnical education. . . . rooted in Marxist-
Lennist ideology. . . . The German Democratic Republic has
accomplished a good deal with its polytechnical education . .
. The ideology of Soviet education has blessed the melding of
restructured academic studies . . . and the preparation of
students for skilled labor. . . . That this should be
carefully monitored for possible adaptation in American
public education is not a farfetched idea.'' (Polytechnical
Education: A Step was published by the National Center for
Research in Vocational Education at the University of
California at Berkeley just 3 months after America's Choice:
High Skills or Law Wages?, a report by the NCEE's Commission
on the Skills of the American Workforce which included Laura
D'Andrea Tyson, the Director of Research for the Berkely
Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of
California at Berkeley, who has been a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations and would become Chairman of President
Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers.)
In June of the next year (1991), the SCANS report
recommended establishing a national system for certifying
competency, similar to Germany's ``certificate of mastery.''
Also in 1991, Carnegie Foundation chairman David Hornbeck's
so-called Human Capital and America's Future was published
describing an approach he admitted might be subject to the
charge of ``big brotherism.''
On Aug. 2, 1992, Assistant Labor Secretary Roberts Jones
announced that the federal government was preparing to deny
aid and student loans to schools that fail to prepare their
graduates with the skills needed to compete for jobs in the
modern workplace, saying ``this is a touchy subject.''
Shortly thereafter, Marc Tucker wrote a letter to Hillary
Clinton saying he had just come from David Rockefeller's
office where they were ``celebrating'' Bill Clinton's
election as president, as that will allow putting into place
their agenda to integrate education into a national system of
``human resources development . . . from cradle to grave . .
. (for) everyone. . . . We propose that Bill (Clinton) take a
leaf out of the German book'' (regarding required)
``apprenticeship slots.'' Relevant to this, however, was a
paper commissioned by the School-to-Work Transition Team
in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement
(OERI) within the U.S. Department of Education (one of a
set of commissioned papers published by
[[Page E946]]
OERI in June 1994). In this paper, ``Determinants and
Consequences of Fit Between Vocational Education and
Employment in Germany,'' Professors James Witte and Ame
Kalleberg stated that ``the German apprenticeship's system
is so expensive. . . Germany's contemporary vocational
education system is closely linked to its secondary
educational system. At age 10, students are tracked in a
rigid educational system. . . . After initial assignment,
movement between tracks is rare''
NCEE Board member Hillary Clinton had been promoting the
Certificate of Initial Mastery concept, and in April 1994
NCEE's Tucker had published The Certificate of Initial
Mastery: A Primer. The same year, Senator Ted Kennedy's
School-to-Work Opportunities Act was passed, and a national
campaign is underway to promote the concept. Recently, Miss
America 1996, Shawntel Smith in Michigan spoke about ``our
investment in human capital. That's what School-to-Work is
all about.''
Currently, students have the most to say about what career
paths they take. But as ``human capital,'' their paths
increasingly will be directed by society via STW/OBE
educational programs so that they ``demonstrate certain
skills.'' A leading OBE consultant today, Harvard University
Professor Howard Gardner, (who was involved in the infamous
MACOS project), wrote Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple
Intelligences, in which he proposed that ``ultimately, the
educational plans that are pursued need to be orchestrated
across various interest groups of the society so that they
can, taken together, help the society to achieve its larger
goals. Individual profiles must be considered in the light of
goals pursued by the wider society; and sometimes, in fact,
individuals with gifts in certain directions must nonetheless
be guided along other less favored paths, simply because the
needs of the culture are particularly urgent in that realm at
that time.'' Student ``profiles'' are an important part of
certain STW initiatives, with employers having continual
access to these as part of a permanent file on all
individuals who are now considered to be ``lifelong
learners.'' In Communist China, the file is called a
``Dangan'' and describes the value of the individual (``human
capital'') to the State. Gardner has also written To Open
Minds: Chinese Clues to the Dilemma of Contemporary
Educations. If Americans aren't careful, STW/OBE educational
programs will pave the way toward an ominous techno-feudal
world of the future.
____________________
Nevadan:However, when it came to Independence Day, Columbus Day, Memorial Day, and our presidents' birthdays, little if any thing was done. I would ask my son again and again if these holidays were discussed in class. And the answer was alway "no". What really got to me the most however, was that Mexican Independence Day was celebrated, but not the American Independence Day.
Please tell me you took those kids out of those schools or if that isn't possible that you took it upon yourselves to at least teach to the gaps of their education.
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