Jan. 2008Edition 101

This is where we hope to keep you thinking.  The site does not focus on diversionary minutia.  You get enough of that  incessant spin coming from mainstream media.

Part 5: The Dynamics of Power

A Chronological Paper Trail

Appendix XXIII

"Soviets in the Classroom: America’s Latest Education Fad" "Soviets in the Classroom: America’s Latest Education Fad" by Charlotte T. Iserbyt is a pamphlet published in 1989 (America’s Future, Inc.: New Rochelle, NY).*

Education Agreements with the Soviet Union Is the repugnant act of burning the American flag more damaging to our nation’s political integrity than letting the Soviets into our classrooms, in person, on video, or through U.S.-Soviet jointly developed curricula?

One would think so, considering the extensive establishment media coverage given the flag decision compared to the wall of silence built around the Soviet invasion of American classrooms.

Maybe America needs a Supreme Court decision similar to the flag-burning decision saying it’s legal to let the Soviets teach our children and to "put up statues of well known Soviet cultural figures in our parks," as called for in the General Agreement between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. on Contacts, Exchanges and Cooperation in Scientific, Technical, Educational,

Cultural and Other Fields, signed in 1985 and 1988 at Geneva and Moscow, respectively. The media might find it impossible to "cover up" a Supreme Court decision.

Perhaps if Americans knew about and understood the deep significance of these agreements, their outrage might even exceed that demonstrated over the flag decision. They might even call for a fully televised Congressional investigation leading to cancellation of all education agreements with the Soviets—government-initiated agreements as well as those with tax-exempt private foundations.

The agreements call for "cooperation in the field of science and technology and additional agreements in other specific fields, including the humanities and social sciences; the facilitation of the exchange by appropriate organizations of educational and teaching materials, including textbooks, syllabi, and curricula, materials on methodology, samples of teaching instruments and audiovisual aids, and the exchange of primary and secondary school textbooks and other teaching materials... [and] the conducting of joint studies on textbooks between appropriate organizations in the United States and the Ministry of Education of the U.S.S.R."

What do the Soviets—who kidnapped 10,000 Afghan children and shipped them to the Soviet Union for "re-education" and in the spring of 1989 used poison gas and sharpened shovels to disperse a nationalistic demonstration in Soviet Georgia, killing at least twenty persons and injuring 200—have to offer our children in the way of school materials? What does a country have to offer our children in the way of school materials which, according to an 1987 "out-of-print" book by American Federation of Labor—Council of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) entitled Cruel and Usual Punishment: Forced Labor in Today’s USSR, holds tens of thousands of political prisoners in Soviet prisons, labor camps, and psychiatric hospitals, including between four and five million non-political prisoners in slave labor camps? What does a country which publishes children’s books for disinformation purposes overseas—and in the case of books distributed in India, portrays America as "rich, uncaring, and prejudiced," and compares us with the Brahmin caste, which is the ruling caste much resented by the disadvantaged in India—have to offer our children in the way of school materials?1

Contrary to the media’s portrayal of political change in the Soviet Union, the August 1986 issue of Comparative Education Review published an article entitled "Aspects of Socialist Education: The New Soviet Educational Reform" which states that the Soviet reform movement recommends the "intensification of ideological education." A June 2, 1986 Washington Times article entitled "Russian Education Obsolete" says in a discussion of education reform, "The specialist of today should have a thorough Marxist-Leninist training." Professor Adam Ulam, the distinguished director of Harvard’s Russian Research Center, reports that

[O]ne of the principal goals of military patriotic education is to counteract any pacifist tendencies, to teach all Soviet citizens, from the youngest children to pensioners, that they must be prepared at any moment to fight for socialism.... The determination to instill explicitly military values in the schools comes through with equally striking clarity in textbooks and manuals used by teachers.

Soviet General Popkov wrote in August 1986 in a regional military paper, Sovetskiy Voin, that [T]he schools are taking on ever increasing importance in military and patriotic indoctrination. Party documents on school reform define an extensive, scientifically based program for this work.2

In light of the above information, which contradicts Gorbachev’s glasnost/perestroika propaganda, why has our government signed education agreements calling for extensive cooperation with the Soviets in curricula development, exchanges of educational materials and the conducting of joint studies?

Why are Soviet educators permitted to do what U.S. Department of Education educators are forbidden by law to do: involve themselves in curricula development?

Why did the U.S. Department of State authorize the unelected, tax-exempt Carnegie Corporation, a long-time and well funded advocate of disarmament and "world interdependence," to negotiate with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, known to be an A–138 intelligence-gathering arm of the KJB, regarding "curriculum development and the restructuring of American education"? Is it because "privately endowed foundations can operate in areas government may prefer to avoid" as stressed by psychiatrist Dr. David Hamburg, President of the Carnegie Corporation and chief negotiator for the exchange agreement, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times on June 12, 1987? (Colonel Oliver North’s "operations in areas government preferred to avoid" resulted in a fully televised multi-million dollar Congressional investigation.)

Representative Lee Hamilton (D-IN) said during the Iran-Contra hearings that "The use of private parties to carry out the high purposes of government makes us the subject of puzzlement and ridicule." Shouldn’t he be asked why the use by our government (State Department) of private parties (tax-exempt Carnegie Corporation and other foundations) to carry out the high purposes of government does not similarly make Congress the subject of puzzlement and ridicule?

A Few Examples

A complete listing of the many shocking exchange activities taking place as a result of the 1985 and 1988–1991 agreements would require volumes. A few concrete examples should suffice to convince the reader that all proposals called for in the agreements are being faithfully and fastidiously carried out.

1. Cambridge-based Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) project, "Educating for New Ways of Thinking: An American-Soviet Institute." Two such institute sessions have been held (one in Leningrad the summer of 1989) at which "Soviet and American educators examined classroom theory and practice in critical thinking about social and political issues and worked on recommendations and resources for improving the ways we teach about each other’s country, and on A Source-Book for New Ways of Thinking in Education: A U.S.-Soviet Guide for use by teachers and students in both countries."3

"Critical thinking" is the latest fad to hit our children’s classrooms. N. Landa’s Lenin:

On Educating Youth, published by the Soviet state-controlled Novosti Press, quotes Lenin on "thinking" as follows:

To pose a real question means to define a problem which demands a new approach and new research.... Sometimes accepted truth no longer answers as a solution for a serious and pressing problem. The school should cultivate in pupils the ability to perceive scientifically evolved truths as stages along the endless road of cognition—not as something stationary and set.

More recently, an article in Education Week (4–9–86) entitled "Are Teachers Ready to Teach Pupils to Think?" laments the fact that graduating college seniors show little evolution of alternative views on any issue, tending to treat all opinions as equally good, tending to hold opinions based largely on whims or unsubstantiated beliefs, and hesitating to take stands based on evidence and reason. Summing up a decade of research in the 1960’s, O.J. Harvey laments that very high percentages… [of educators] "operated in cognitive styles grounded in absolute assumptions—viewing reality in terms of good/bad, right/wrong, and either/or, while attributing goodness and truth to wise and all-knowing authorities."

One doesn’t have to have a Ph.D. to accurately predict what U.S.-Soviet jointly developed critical thinking curricula will look like. Do American parents want their children exposed to this type of education, especially when it will also be on computer where they can’t get their hands on it?

2. The Carnegie Corporation’s exchange agreement with the Soviet Academy of Sciences has resulted in "joint research on the application of computers in early elementary education, focusing especially on the teaching of higher level skills and complex subjects to younger children." ("Higher level skills" is often a euphemism for "critical thinking skills," or values, attitudes, etc.) Carnegie’s 1988 one-year, $250,000 grant is funding implementation of this program, coordinated on the American side by Michael Cole, Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego.4

3. The American-Soviet Textbook Study Project began in 1977, was suspended in 1979 when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, and resumed in 1985 under the Geneva Agreement. At a conference held in Racine, Wisconsin in November 1987, the U.S. representatives acquiesced to the Soviet insistence that American textbooks should present a more "balanced" (i.e., friendly) discussion of Lenin and should give the Russians more "credit" for their role in World War II. A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times said in a December 8, 1987 editorial that American educators solemnly discuss with Soviet educators the mutual need for textbook revision, just as if the state did not censor every single book published in the Soviet Union and the Russians could write as they pleased. That is comedy, if you like it real black.

4. Scholars from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Ministry of Education of the Soviet Union met in the United States in 1986 and agreed to establish a Commission on Education that will be responsible for joint scholarly relations in pedagogy and related fields between the United States and the Soviet Union. Some major joint U.S.-Soviet project themes are: Methods of Teaching and Learning School Science and Math Subjects Using Computers; Theory of Teaching and Learning; Psychological and Pedagogical Problems of Teaching in the Development of Pre-School and School-age Children, and Problems of Teaching Children with Special Needs.5

5. The Copen Foundation/New York State Education Department/Soviet Academy of Sciences agreement "links students, teachers, administrators in U.S. and Soviet schools by computer and video-telephone lines." Mr. Copen declared Soviet officials are especially interested in studying the effects of telecommunications on intercultural understanding, teaching methods, and learning outcomes, and that the Soviets have assigned five scientists to monitor the project.6

This agreement should be challenged on constitutional grounds since Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution says, "No State shall, without the consent of Congress,… enter into any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign power."

Under terms reached with the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the National Science Teachers Association will publish a Soviet science magazine in the United States. Copies of Quantum scheduled for publication in September 1989 will be distributed free of charge to gifted and talented children in this country.7

7. On December 8, 1987 the independent National Academy of Sciences pledged to help place more than a million computers in Soviet classrooms by the early 1990s.8 8. A $175,000 grant was made from the United States Information Agency (USIA) to the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the American Council of Teachers of Russian, and Sister Cities International. This grant will implement an expanded student exchange program, calling for up to 1500 American high school students to live and study in the Soviet Union each year and an equal number of Soviet students to come to the United States.9 Former Education Secretary William Bennett told the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce on January 21, 1986 that American students know little about their own history and heritage and we have forgotten that intellectual innocence is easily seduced and the price we pay is that some of our children can only nod their heads in agreement when confronted with standard Soviet propaganda.

They lack the knowledge to recognize it as propaganda, much less to refute it.

9. On March 4, 1989, fifteen Soviet teens and two adult teachers arrived in Aurora, Colorado as part of the Reagan-Gorbachev agreements. According to an article by Beth Peterson in the high school newspaper Raider Review A conflict arose when reportedly a Russian student, Farkhod (who was head of the Komsomol Young Communist League and spokesman for the group) told students in an honors history class, "You are all going to be Communists within fifty years. Just remember that every society must be ready for Communism—even America."

10. Students participated in the Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts student exchange with an elite Soviet prep school deep in Siberia. The students "agreed one characteristic was more striking than any other: an indefatigable commitment to Soviet communism." One student, Horovath, said, "I think in general young people are ore committed to the Party’s ideology than to their parents." Another student, Tom Clyde,  said, "They seem to think there is going to be a world revolution any day now and the Communist Party will overtake America."10 The Soviet Union: The Only Benefactor Does our government really believe that the Soviet government is participating in these student exchanges so that their students can be de-programmed and become good little capitalists eager for peace at any price?

Michael Warder of the Rockford Institute says that "Exchanges are allegedly designed to promote peace." However, he points out that, as currently devised most exchanges are of benefit only to the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1985 a group

Appendix XXIV

"Our Children: The Drones"

"Our Children: The Drones" by Ann Herzer, M.A., Reading Specialist. This two-part article was written in 1984 and is reprinted here with permission of the author.

Part I

With taxpayers’ money through a National Science Foundation grant, in 1968 Richard I. Evans wrote B.F. Skinner: The Man and His Ideas. The philosophy stated in this book should be of critical interest to all people that are interested in education and value the individual.

Following are some direct quotes from Skinner included in Evans’s book:

I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule. (p. 10) When I say a concept is irrelevant, I mean that it has no bearing on the kind of analysis I am trying to develop. (p. 23)

For the purpose of analyzing behavior, we have to assume man is a machine. (p. 24) You can induce him to behave according to the dictates of society instead of his own selfish interest. (p. 42) It is conceivable that a technique of control will be developed which cannot be discovered.

The word "brainwashing" is dangerous. (p. 54)

We want him [the student] to come under the control of his environment rather than on verbal directions given by members of his family. (p. 64) I predict that the curriculum of the future will be designed around various capacities and abilities rather than subject. (p 72)

I don’t believe in mental discipline as such.... I’m much more concerned with the student’s

so-called personality traits. (p. 72)

I should not bother with ordinary learning theory, for example. I would eliminate most sensory psychology and I would give them [the students] no cognitive psychology whatsoever. (p. 91)

It isn’t the person who is important, it’s the method. If the practice of psychology [operant conditioning] survives, that’s the main objective. It’s the same with cultural practices in general; no one survives as a person. (p. 96)

It does bother me that thousands of teachers don’t understand, because immediate gains are more likely in the classroom than in the clinic. Teachers will eventually know—they must—and I am more concerned with promoting my theories in education [operant conditioning]. (p. 106)

I should like to see our government set up a large educational agency in which specialists could be sent to train teachers [in operant conditioning]. (p. 109) Have the radical psychologists achieved their goals? Let’s take a look at exactly what they believe.

The study of human emotions, feelings, and individual worth are of no concern to these psychologists. They believe that by shaping behavior one can produce any "human machine" that society needs. Skinner proposes to achieve this utopian goal through the American school system.

Evans asked Skinner what would happen if a "hostile government were to gain control and proceed to shape the development of children, putting such techniques totally into use."

Skinner replied, "There’s no doubt about it, but what are you going to do? To impose a moratorium on science would be worst of all." Would it?

A Nation at Risk states that "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves."

Did we? Did the American people really know what was happening in education and to their children? The answer is no.

A naive and great nation of freedom-loving people has been deceived by a "technique of control" that cannot be discovered by the average American. By subtle means of mind manipulation from clever propaganda techniques to out-and-out lies, the American people have been sold these radical ideas, methods, and techniques that truly place our nation and our children at risk.

Skinner said, "You will teach your student as he wants to be taught, but never forget that it is within your power to make him want what you want him to want." In other words, a teacher can program and shape a child into being anything the radicals decide he should be.

Parents and American citizens should be aware of the government-sponsored programs being disseminated throughout the United States by the National Diffusion Network. The Network was established in 1974 to promote government-approved educational programs.

Many of these programs are subtly designed with behavioral psychology techniques that could train young children to aim for limited goals of common labor. These programs prey on the poor and minority children in our nation. Many of these programs started in the 1960’s.

You might wonder who selects these programs. A panel of twenty-two so-called "experts" selects the programs and approves them for dissemination by the Network.

They are promoted in a book called Educational Programs That Work published by the U.S. Department of Education.

A great number of programs being promoted by the Network state in the book that "No evidence has been submitted to or approved by the Panel." It seems that even these great experts are not willing to accept the responsibility if these government programs fail or succeed.

The radical behavioral psychologists believe in a totally planned society with so many elite to rule, while the drones follow like programmed robots.

Very few college professors, teachers, school board members, or the news media have ever heard of the National Diffusion Network, and certainly the average American citizen is not aware of the Educational Programs That Work book or the programs therein.

Every American should obtain this book and take a long look at just what their children are being taught or not taught.

One experimental program after another has been placed in the American classroom over the last twenty years. Many of these programs have been brought into the classrooms over the objections of teachers and parents—those teachers and parents who understood what was happening. These programs have proliferated to such an extent that the school child has become a human guinea pig for these radicals who propose to bring about the good life for the whole world by "brainwashing."

When is the last time you heard your children speak of the "American dream"?

An unfriendly, "hostile government" in action? Well, maybe.

Part II

At taxpayers’ expense, preparation of B. F. Skinner’s dehumanizing book Beyond Freedom and Dignity was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (grant number K6–MH–21, 755–01). Skinner suggested that "what is called for now is a ‘technology of behavior’—a systematic and scientific program to alter the nature of man."

The major theme in Evans’s book is that because of the complexity of the modern world we can no longer afford freedom and dignity; therefore, the scientific method of operant conditioning should be used to control and shape mankind for the good of the world.

Man is considered a "human machine" with no soul, no free will, just a number like "K6–MH–21, 755–01" to be manipulated by change agents—a group of self-anointed, radical behavioral psychologists proposing to brainwash man into submission to whatever they determine to be the best for mankind.

This is not a new theme in history. It is older than the Inquisition. What is new in history is that a scientific method of brainwashing does exist. The American soldier in Korea and [the Jones cult in] Jonestown, Guyana are only two recent examples of this fact.

If one were to attempt this radical change, the most logical place to start this step-by-step "technology of control" would be to start in the schools and the free marketplace.

A planned curriculum and a planned economy could strangle a nation like the United States within a few short years, and help to bring about "equality" for the whole world. This is conceivable if a technique of control could be developed that could not be detected by the average American. Has it happened? Just look at our schools and the economy. How many small companies have gone broke recently? How many small farmers are being forced out of business? Who controls the schools, the industries, the media, the natural resources, and, more importantly, who will control the land in the United States?

For the unread and skeptics, I’m going to suggest several books that give a comprehensive overview of American education and the extensive use of classical and operant conditioning in our society. Of course, one must first read Skinner’s books to fully understand what he has proposed.

Perhaps the best and most comprehensive book written that truly gives historical documentation for the decline of our system was written by Augustine G. Rudd in 1957 and called Bending the Twig. Mr. Rudd was chairman of the Educational Committee for the New York Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. Far too much blame has been placed on John Dewey, in my opinion. At least his educational theories were child-oriented, but of course the radical psychologists were not in vogue in 1957.

A Report of the Comptroller General of the United States, dated April 15, 1977 (HRD–7749) should be obtained from government records and read by all Americans. The title is "Questions Persist about Federal Support for Development of Curriculum Materials and Behavior Modification Techniques Used in Local Schools." It appears that nothing has been done about the questions.

Other titles that everyone should read are:

The Psychological Society, Martin Gross Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Robert Jay Lifton Mind Control, Peter Schrag The People Shapers, Vance Packard Change Agents in the Schools, Barbara M. Morris Behavior Mod, Philip J. Hils The Literacy Hoax, Paul Copperman Legal Challenges to Behavior Modification, Reed Martin Walden Two, B. F. Skinner The Suicide Cult, Marshall Kilduff and Ron Javers Snapping, Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman Below are direct quotes from Beyond Freedom and Dignity:

Why should I care whether my government, or my form of government, survives long after my death?...

Why should I be concerned about the survival of a particular kind of economic system?...

A remote personal good becomes effective when a person is controlled for the good of others, and the culture which induces some of its members to work for its survival brings an even more remote consequence to bear.... It is a matter of the good of the culture, not of the individual....

programmed sequence of contingencies may be needed. The technology has been most successful where behavior can be fairly easily specified and where appropriate contingencies can be constructed—for example, in child care, schools, and the management of retardates and institutionalized psychotics. The same principles are being applied, however, in the preparation of instructional materials at all educational levels, in psychotherapy beyond simple management, in urban design, and in many other fields of human behavior....

Such a technology is ethically neutral....

It is not difficult to see what is wrong in most educational environments, and much has already been done to design materials which make learning as easy as possible.

In Part I of "Our Children: The Drones" I quoted some of the change agents and how they proposed to bring about the change in society and education.

This next article will deal with actual enactment of the methods and programs, and how they are being promoted by the United States Department of Education through the National Diffusion Network.

The first program I’m going to tell you about is the one that started what I now refer to as my "search for freedom and dignity" for myself, children, and teachers. The first program is known as The Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction. The word "reading" is a misnomer.

This program is pure operant conditioning in the best tradition of B.F. Skinner.

In 1978, I was working in a Title I program in Phoenix, Arizona. Our program was one of forty that had been selected as outstanding programs in the United States. The government was doing a three-year study on forty programs. The study was called the "Sustaining Effects Study." I assumed that study was being done so our program and the other successful ones could be used as examples for the rest of the country.

Our program was based on an individualized diagnostic program for each child. The child’s reading and math needs were determined and we were taught to remediate the specific needs in each child’s area of weakness, while trying to build on the child’s strong areas as well. We were proud to have been selected as one of the innovative programs in the nation.

Part of our program also called for continuous training in our area of specialization. Mine was reading. I was also a member of the parent advisory committee.

In early 1978, our principal, Title I supervisor, and assistant superintendent of schools for the district met with the Title I teachers and proposed a week-long workshop based on a mastery teaching and learning theory. Quite a sales pitch was given for the method and the director. My principal said he had known her for several years and that she was a personal friend of a prominent church and business leader in our community. Since his daughter was a personal friend of mine and he is highly respected as a church and community leader, this was a good selling point from my point of view. Another selling point was the limited cost of the workshop, and the training would include the Title I aides and some of the classroom teachers as well.

The time arrived for the workshop, and substitute teachers were obtained for the teachers. The training session was held at the district office. Our trainer’s name was Mrs. Currington from Hawkins, Texas.

We were to meet from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every day, Monday through Friday. We were told that if we could not keep those hours and attend every day, not to attend the workshop.

A–148 I thought that was rather strange, but said nothing at the time.

One of our teachers, Sherri _____, had small children and was having a problem with adjusting the hours with baby sitters. Since her husband was a medical doctor, she could not depend on him for before and after school care. She asked if she could come late and leave early on some days. She was told no, and that it was her problem to work out. Somehow she did.

On Monday when we arrived at the district office, we found our tables arranged in a U shape with Mrs. Currington at the head. We were never introduced to her, nor were any words of welcome extended. She started to teach, and I started to take notes. My supervisor told me not to take notes, that all the information would be supplied later. I thought this was a very strange arrangement, but I stopped taking notes for the time being.

Two hours into the program I whispered to Sherri, "Just what in the [h— ] is this?"

By this time they had handed out a massive workbook that made no sense whatsoever. Sherri pointed out that no method or philosophy was stated in the book and asked me if I thought this was strange.

When we broke for lunch, I met one of our outstanding classroom teachers in the

restroom and she was in tears. She said, "Ann, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I have

never reacted to anything like this before." I said, "Deanna, this is the worst thing I have ever

been exposed to." She said, "Me too. I just thought it was me."

Several teachers had lunch together and we were all very alarmed about the workshop.

One old timer said, "This is just another program that we have to put up with—we have had one after the other for several years. We just learn one method and program, then they bring in another one. This will pass like all the rest."

Since two hours’ credit was being offered by UCLA at Davis, some of the teachers asked me if I was going to sign up for it. I said no, because I would not want such a thing on my transcripts. None of our teachers signed up for credit.

Daily, more and more of the teachers were raising their eyebrows and my friend Mary _____ was beside herself. Finally, I said, "Look, Mary, we bought a pig in a poke and none of the teachers are buying this."

We were pressured to memorize the word-by-word directives and pass the proficiency tests on a daily basis. Each teacher taking her turn, we were required to follow each directive exactly as the students would. Finally, the teachers and aides started asking questions.

Some became downright hostile toward the teacher-trainer. Our questions were deferred by intimidation. For example, when someone would question a portion of the teaching technique, the trainer would say, "Shame on you. Don’t you want to do what is best for children?"

When Deanna pointed out that the program did not take into consideration the learning styles of individual children, Mrs. Currington said, "The group is more important than the individual and we should raise our children to be people pleasers." That is when I really sat up to take notice. I recognized the philosophy right away, and I recognized this program as being political.

Children were required to master each and every small step before moving on, and only perfect penmanship was to be allowed from the child. Mary asked about small children whose fine motor skills had not developed. Mrs. Currington said, "All fine motor skills have developed by the age of one." Wow!

By this time Sherri was laughing. At one point an administrator from the district office came in and said, "We thought this was awful too when we attended the workshop last week, but it gets better as the week goes along." This was the first time we realized that the administrators had taken the workshop, also.

At one point in the training we were required to raise our arms to a 45-degree angle with our fingers pointed. The children were to do this whenever they completed an assignment and the teacher was to check for perfect penmanship, etc. If the work was not perfect, then the child had to start over. The rest of the class traced their word with their finger and said the word in unison while the others made the correction.

I kept asking, "What is this method?" I was somewhat more verbal than the rest. At one point my principal said they used this method in Germany. This is when I said to Sherri, "I recognize the salute: Sieg Heil! I’m not going to do this again."

At this point I sat with my arms folded and Sherri continued to chuckle. I was not laughing. This workshop was no longer funny. I was thinking that something was very amiss.

Sherri and I were sitting at the same table across from each other. Mrs. Currington came and moved our table out from the others and told us to work with the group across the room. Since this was impossible, I thought it was very strange. That’s when I noticed that our behavior was being monitored by the teacher-trainer, Mrs. Currington. I told Mary and Sherri to be careful of their actions because we were being monitored. They said, "Oh come on, Ann."

The next day our table had been moved to the end of the room, in direct view of the teacher-trainer.

On the last day of our workshop, Mrs. Currington said she had just returned from doing a workshop in Boston, and they drove her out of town with police escort. Someone asked her why, and she said it was because of a paper she had presented in the workshop. She said she would not present the paper again unless Dr. Reid (the program director) ordered her to. Deanna asked if she could see the paper and Mrs. Currington said yes if Deanna would return it right after lunch and promise not to show it to anyone.

The next day Deanna told me that the paper was the "Children’s Hour."1 I said, "I’m not surprised that they ran her out of Boston with police escort because that is where they threw the tea overboard!"

I am happy to report that I did not pass their fidelity or proficiency tests.

Endnote:

1. "The Children’s Hour" is a story by James Clavell which deals with the ability of a "new" teacher, brought to an elementary classroom as a result of a "hostile government’s takeover," who is able to completely subvert the values, beliefs and loyalties of the children in a half hour’s time. At the end of the story the children had cut up the American flag and thrown the flagpole

out of the window, and had been convinced that prayer was a waste of time because "what you receive always comes from soembody else," not God. (See pp. 70–71 of this book.)

Appendix XXV

(1) "The Truth about How We All Have Been Had" and

(2) "The Difference between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction" (1) "The Truth about How We All Have Been Had" by Charlotte T. Iserbyt was an alert sent out in late 1998, after the passage of Omnibus Budget Bill for 1999 which contained the Reading Excellence Act. (2) "The Difference between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction" by Tracey J. Hayes has been published in the January 1999 issue of The Education Reporter after having been distributed with Iserbyt’s alert.

(1) "The Truth about How We All Have Been Had"

Please bear with me. This alert is going to try to explain what happened on the slow road to teaching our children how to read. You may use this alert/article in any way you wish as long as you attribute it to the authors, Iserbyt and Hayes, and do not alter it or add to it in any way. The story is sad and should make American blood boil. Before you start reading, please take the time to read the last two pages of this alert containing an article entitled "The Difference between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction" by Tracey J. Hayes.

First, I want to thank the loop for alerting me about two years ago to the activities of Doug Carnine, director of the federally funded National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators (NCITE) at the University of Oregon. By the way, folks, that is a federally funded office which has dealt for a very long period of time with programs for special education children. Carnine’s name jumped out at me when mentioned in one of the loop’s communications supporting direct, systematic, intensive phonics (direct instruction), which, by the way, is NOT TRADITIONAL PHONICS INSTRUCTION.

I immediately thought, "Wait a minute. What’s going on here? Is this the same Doug Carnine who was involved with Siegfried Engelmann’s Follow Through DISTAR program (now known as Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons or Reading Mastery), about whom I had written in my 1985 book Back To Basics Reform or… OBE Skinnerian International Curriculum?" Of course it was, and from that time on I devoted much time trying to convince parents that "direct instruction," regardless of whether it is spelled with lower or upper case "d" and "i," is based on the operant conditioning experiments with animals carried out by the Russian Ivan Pavlov and the American professor B.F. Skinner.

In January of 1997 I wrote many memoranda on this subject which were included on the Internet Education Loop website, identifying Carnine and Engelmann with Ethna Reid’s learning program which Ann Herzer (a traditional phonics reading teacher opposed to Skinnerian operant conditioning) so valiantly fought in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. When Herzer objected to the training, she was asked, "Don’t you know we are training our children  to be people pleasers?" [See Appendix XVII of this book, ed.] I pointed out that my 1985 book Back To Basics Reform Or... discussed the ECRI/DISTAR method. Many of us have fought this method for twenty years and, sad to say, we have gotten nowhere. I suppose that is to be expected since we are not part of the national conservative leadership nor are we part of the education establishment leadership. No one listens to you unless you are well funded and have fancy letterhead. Follow the money, follow the money. We didn’t have the resources to make a difference.

However, all is not lost if those of you who read this alert will take the necessary action to stop the funding of the Reading Excellence Act at the local level. Millions of tax dollars will be gushing forth in your communities to implement this Skinnerian reading program under the guise of "scientific, research-based" phonics reading instruction.

Let me quote from an October 1997 letter Doug Carnine wrote to "concerned friends" asking them to support H.R. 2614, The Reading Excellence Act, which called for the use of "research-based" reading instruction programs; i.e., his and Engelmann’s program (ECRI/DISTAR). Obviously, use of these programs could be of financial benefit to those involved in the development of the program. Carnine’s letter encouraged the following:

As you know, significant reforms are in process in the bellwether states of California and Texas as well as in many other states. State lawmakers, education leaders, and concerned citizens are joining forces to ensure that the wealth of scientific research on reading conducted during the past three decades is fully transformed into effective classroom reading instruction.

Much of the "scientific research" to which he refers is the Skinnerian dog-training method used in DISTAR and ECRI. Whenever you see the word "effective" related to education, realize that it relates to the late Ron Edmonds’s Effective School Research (Harvard and Michigan State). It says "almost all children can learn" when taught to the test, provided the necessary environment for that individual child and enough time for the child to "master"

whatever the content (or workforce skills) is made available. That’s Skinnerian/behavioral

terminology, for those who are not initiated. The new term for "environment" is now "positive

school climate," which takes the place of the behaviorist term "psychologically manipulative

environment." Effective School Research calls for the elimination of the Carnegie unit,

norm-referenced testing, grade levels, etc. Effective School Research calls for outcome-based

education, which is mastery learning and can include direct instruction. Both are closely related

to Total Quality Management and Planning, Programming, and Budgeting Systems.

Of course, for those who don’t have any problem with this type of education/training,

STOP: you need read no further. For those who may have questions, please bear with me.

First, you will want to be sure I am correct in my claim that this is, in fact, Skinnerian dog training. The final piece of the puzzle, which should be the clincher and for which many of us are most grateful (God works in wondrous ways!) came in the publishing of What Works in Education, edited by Crandall, Jacobson, and Sloane (Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1997).1 The Center’s activities and publications can be accessed on their website (http://www.behavior.org). Following are some excerpts related to two of the nine programs discussed in this book:

What Works in Education is the result of a collaborative effort between two organizations:

The Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and Division 33 of the American Psychological Association.... We would like to extend our gratitude to Doug Carnine, Professor of Education at the University of Oregon, and Bonnie Grossen, Editor of Effective School Practices, for consulting on this project.

The chapter entitled "Mabel B. Wesley Elementary" states:

The Mabel B. Wesley Elementary School in Houston, Texas, has had a schoolwide Direct Instruction language arts curriculum since 1976, and has implemented other direct instruction programs and other programs based on related approaches in other subject matters.... Dr. Thaddeus S. Lott, Sr. is the Project Manager for the Northwest Charter District and Mrs. Wilma Rimes is the principal of Mabel B. Wesley Elementary School.

In 1975... in searching for a means of improving reading skills, Dr. Lott, then the new principal, visited a campus that was implementing the DISTAR reading curriculum (see Direct Instruction for Teaching Reading and Remediation, Carnine and Silbert, 1979), developed by Engelmann (reported in Becker, Engelmann and Thomas, 1975A and 1975B).

He was impressed by what he observed and began the implementation of DISTAR [now called Reading Mastery, ed.] in 1976.

The chapter entitled "Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction—ECRI" by Ethna R. Reid of the Reid Foundation states:

ABSTRACT: ECRI provides consulting and training for individual classrooms, grade levels, or entire schools in implementing a direct instruction model in language arts. The ECRI model is applied to and adapted for existing instructional materials. From these materials, structured lessons are developed to teach an integrated curriculum of phonics, oral and silent reading, comprehension, study skills, spelling, literature, and creative and expository writing. ECRI also includes rate building, mastery learning, and behavior management components.

ECRI identified effective teaching strategies later corroborated in the Follow Through Program (Stebbins, L.B., St. Pierre, R.G., Proper, E.D., Anderson, R.B., & Cerva, R.T., 1977) and now known as Direct Instruction (Jenson, Sloane & Young, 1988, pp. 335–336, 350–362). ECRI adopted a general direct instructional approach and expanded it... in ways that allowed application to existing subject material in any content area.

Can you not see that this is the necessary Skinnerian method for application to workforce training? Skinner said, "I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule."

The above ECRI connection with DISTAR (Reading Mastery), the direct instruction program being pushed all over the country (Thaddeus Lott’s Houston site is the best known) should come as no surprise since the developer of DISTAR, Siegfried Engelmann, has his work in Skinnerian operant conditioning cited several times in Ethna Reid’s Teacher Training Manual. Of interest is the fact that the U.S. Department of Education in 1981, when Ann Herzer tried to have ECRI shut down, lied in writing when it said ECRI did not use operant conditioning. I have all the correspondence regarding this controversy. A class action suit should be filed against the U.S. Department of Education for its role in promoting this type of training/ conditioning under the guise of "education" and for lying about the method.

In other words, ECRI and DISTAR are not just close cousins; they are, in fact, fraternal twins. The only difference between them is their name. They were both funded during the War on Poverty, Great Society 1960s, and since that time have been used on the most helpless members of our society, the underprivileged and minority children. Professors Benjamin Bloom and Lee Shulman’s 1968–1981 Chicago Mastery Learning Program was, according to a March 6, 1985 article in Education Week a tragedy of enormous proportions with almost one-half of the 39,500 public school students in the 1980 freshman class failing to graduate, and only one-third of those graduating able to read at or above the national 12th grade level.

Of interest is the fact that claims of effectiveness similar to those made regarding the Houston DISTAR program were made by the elitist change agents during the 1970s and early 1980s.

The Chicago Program crashed in 1981.

What happened to the students who participated in Chicago’s Skinnerian experiment?

What happened to Lee Shulman, who was involved in the Chicago Mastery Learning disaster?

Lee Shulman went on to become the Director of the Carnegie Foundation’s Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which is the architect of the performance-based (Skinnerian) teacher training model. Shulman, who had been a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a Fellow of the Center for the Advancement of Behavioral Sciences, later became President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The reader should refer to the fact that the book What Works in Education is a result of a collaborative effort between the American Psychological Association and the Cambridge Center for

Behavioral Studies. What rewards for such a disaster! The lives of the children involved in the experiment are not so decorously documented.

One simple question should be asked which should put this whole matter to rest:

Why haven’t the underprivileged, the minorities, etc., had more academic success if these programs (which have been used in most of our inner cities under the guise of effective schooling practices) are in fact so "effective"? Why is it that some very good anti-OBE people out there don’t even realize that this method is OBE? It is based on Bloom’s and Spady’s contention (which, by the way, is embraced by the Soviets in their polytechnical training as well) that "all except the most seriously handicapped" children can learn, if they work at their own pace with an individualized education plan, are taught to the test, do not have to compete with classmates, are subject to criterion-referenced testing rather than norm-referenced testing, and have as long as they want to "master" the controllers’ outcomes, results, or competencies. Outcome-based mastery learning/direct instruction is what the United Nations is talking about when it refers to Lifelong Learning. Everyone can take as long as needed to "master" what the corporate and international planners want as long as everyone "masters" it, even if it takes a lifetime. God forbid that you may not want to master certain things. And don’t forget, it’s not just students but all of us who will be involved in this lifelong learning—unless, of course, Americans wake up and do something.

Whether either program has produced the gains proponents of the "method" suggest is questionable. The basic skills test results from Mission, Texas, which used ECRI for a period of twenty years, certainly are dismal. Much more documentation is required in this regard.

By the time we have the sad truth regarding longitudinal test studies, including information on where the DISTAR-educated students are now or 10 years from now, and what they are doing, if anything, it will be too late. Norm-referenced testing will be a thing of the past.

Performance-based testing (portfolios, demonstrations, etc.) will be standard, and we will have highways plastered with "My Son/Daughter Is an Honor Student." We will never know how dumbed down our children are except when, instead of saying "Please, may I have the ketchup?" they simply grunt a certain number of times for ketchup and a certain number of times for butter, etc.

The basic question, however, aside from test scores, remains: Is it moral to use this method on children in the classroom without their informed consent, even if results show small and temporary gains? There are laws on the books which give prisoners protection against such behavior modification methods. Medical research is available showing that operant conditioning causes psychological, neurological, and medical problems. Children in the ECRI program have exhibited such symptoms. There are doctors’ statements to this fact.

For those who still don’t believe that DISTAR (Reading Mastery) is the same as ECRI, let me quote from a few pages of a dissertation by a top state department of education official who does not wish to have it attributed to him. The paper, written in 1986, entitled "The Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction—ECRI," states in part:

One of the major goals was to do a cost-effectiveness study to ascertain the most beneficial time to introduce academic skills to students. The only break the children had during their instruction was a snack time which was used as a language experience to discuss the various foods the children were eating. The main instructional unit was the SRA DISTAR Program. The results showed an increase in pupil IQ of approximately 20 points in the first year of the program and elimination of a great many behavioral problems. [emphasis added]

Facts Established

1. ECRI and DISTAR are fraternal twins, and both use Skinnerian operant conditioning.

2. Operant conditioning is based on Pavlov’s experiments with slobbering dogs.

3. The Right to Read Foundation, formerly headed by Robert Sweet, supports Teaching Your Children to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, which is SRA’s DISTAR (Mastery Reading). Sweet recently became a consultant to the House Education and Workforce Committee and helped draft and promote the Reading Excellence Act. Several years ago when Tracey Hayes, a researcher, brought her concerns regarding the Carnine/Engelmann program to his attention,

Sweet told her he saw nothing wrong with mastery learning. Good parents looking for traditional phonics-based reading instruction for their children have been had by the master manipulators’ use of the Hegelian dialectic. They (the internationalist change agents) created the whole language disaster (or took advantage of it) in order to get parents to scream so that parents could be offered the predetermined solution: the direct instruction Skinnerian program which can be applied to any other disciplines, including WORKFORCE TRAINING!

And the desperate parents have bought into this shameful scam, thinking that the educational establishment really cared about their children learning to read. The corporate sector, which supports direct instruction, does not really want educated workers. Thomas Sticht, a member of the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) said as much when he was quoted in an August 17, 1987 Washington Post article as follows:

Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poorly educated labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it can be managed and trained—not its general educational level, although a small cadre of highly educated creative people is essential to innovation and growth. Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low-income families into the middle class.

Sticht was also at one time associated with the "Hooked on Phonics" program. Oh, what a tangled web we weave! Harvard’s Professor Anthony Oettinger, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is bringing us STW, Free Trade and Global Governance, said in 1981:

The present "traditional" concept of literacy has to do with the ability to read and write.

But the real question that confronts us today is: How do we help citizens function well in their society? How can they acquire the skills necessary to solve their problems? Do we really have to have everybody literate—writing and reading in the traditional sense—when we have the means through our technology to achieve a new flowering of oral communication?

It is the traditional idea that says certain forms of communication such as comic books are "bad." But in the modern context of functionalism they may not be all that bad.

[emphasis added]

All that one must do to smell one big rat is ask the following questions:

1. Why would former California Commissioner of Education William Honig (who was at one time someone parents loved to hate) support something supposedly good for our children (DISTAR/ECRI) after years of implementing the progressive, humanistic agenda?

Why would the leadership of the two major teacher unions support a method which supposedly is in the best interests of your children unless all of them have been walking down the road to Damascus?

A–156 2. Why do the multinational corporations support ECRI/DISTAR? Ann Herzer lost her bid for Superintendent of Instruction in Arizona due to the corporate elite supporting the incumbent Carolyn Warner when they found out Herzer was opposed to the Skinnerian Mastery Learning method. Herzer had won the Republican nomination in a landslide and was on her way to victory over Warner, the Democrat.

3. Why did the U.S. Department of Education schedule President Reagan to go to the Bronx, New York to visit an ECRI classroom and to meet with Ethna Reid in 1981?

It’s up to the reader to answer these questions.

For those who are interested in additional in-depth research on this problem, Ann Herzer is putting her files on CD-ROM. My book the deliberate dumbing down of america will be out in 1999, and my 1985 Back to Basics Reform Or... OBE Skinnerian International Curriculum? is still available for those who want the history of this mess. Back to Basics Reform spells out clearly the Herzer story and how the U.S. Department of Education lied about ECRI in order to keep the Skinnerian method afloat. The Department knew it was necessary for global workforce training. Don’t forget: mastery learning/direct instruction is the preferred UNESCO method of instruction.

And for those who are opposed to OBE, please do not forget for one moment that OBE is mastery learning/direct instruction. The only difference between OBE and Direct Instruction is that OBE had very bad, outrageous (to use the words of the late Al Shanker) outcomes, and direct instruction (DISTAR/ECRI) has, for the moment, those peanut butter-and-jelly-sounding phonics outcomes. Remember how former Secretary of Education and "Mr. Virtues" William Bennett opposed OBE? He gave 4.5 million dollars to provide Skinnerian Effective School Training (OBE) while Secretary of Education. Do you also remember that he said, "I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water"? What he meant was that he didn’t want the "method" (ML/DI) to go down the drain with the "bad" outcomes. He ultimately headed up the Modern Red School House Charter School, which uses the "baby" (mastery learning/direct instruction).

And so, folks, that’s how we all were had.

Let me let you in on a personal secret:

Even I, who had written fourteen years ago on ECRI and who was knowledgeable about the Follow Through program and DISTAR being Skinnerian, fell for Siegfried Engelmann when he complained about whole language. The article I had published in the Congressional Record, October 23, 1989 entitled "Reading: The Civil Rights Issue of the 1990’s," which attacked whole language, even quoted Engelmann! I had forgotten he was the developer of DISTAR, and I was not at that time aware that DISTAR was ECRI.

I tell you this so you will understand that not just you, but I, also (until very recently)

was conned on this issue. I, too, fell for the words "direct, systematic, intensive phonics." I used those words in my article. I thought that was good stuff! Let’s stop the phonics wars, think about our children’s futures as free people, not trained animals, and work together to stop the funding of the inhumane Skinnerian method to teach reading and everything else, including workforce training skills.

Thanks for listening.

P.S.: Samuel Blumenfeld, in the Foreword to my new book, has taken a stand against direct instruction. He’s a very principled fellow! I hope this alert will get a lot more principled people to take a stand against this method before it’s too late.

Endnote:

1. What Works in Education can be ordered from the Cambridge Center by calling 1–978–369–2227.

(2)"The Difference Between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction" by Tracey J. Hayes The major difference between Traditional Education and Direct Instruction (DI) is the method in which the content is taught.

Traditional education focuses on content-rich curriculum in which a particular subject is "introduced, taught, and reviewed," moving from simple to complex, spiraling back to refresh and retain previously learned material while progressing in that subject. Some publishing companies make recommendations on what content is to be taught, but in most traditional education classrooms, the teacher decides "how" the "what" is to be taught.

To help determine student achievement in traditional education, weekly quizzes and end-of-chapter tests are administered. One hundred percent mastery is, however, not expected. The teacher knows that with time and review, retention of knowledge and test scores will improve. The object of traditional education is to offer students a broad foundation of information, based on facts and figures, that will be retained for future application on high stakes assessments, education and career objectives, and life-long wisdom.

Traditional education is sometimes described as "direct instruction." In traditional education the teacher stands in front of the classroom "directly instructing" the students in the subject matter. Direct instruction and teacher-directed instruction (used in traditional education) are examples of how words in our language can be perceived as being one and the same, when in fact they are very different from one another. Deceptive semantics has created much confusion among many educators as well as parents.

With traditional education, on Monday the teacher assigns her class a chapter to read on the subject of George Washington crossing the Delaware. She tells them they will be tested on this subject on Friday, but she doesn’t tell them exactly on what they will be tested. In other words, they must learn as much as they can about everything in the chapter—including the name of George Washington’s horse. When tested, the students might receive a 75% or 80% grade and some parents may be upset with what they consider a "low" grade. However, in fact, the students have done far better than students using mastery learning or direct instruction who are taught to the test, only learning that material on which the teacher tells them they will be tested and receiving a grade of 90–100%. The students in the traditional education class have actually learned many, many times more than the students in a mastery learning or direct instruction class, even though they did not have to use all they learned on their test. Professor Benjamin Bloom, the father of mastery learning, was certainly correct when he asserted that students could reach 85% mastery—of a limited or dumbed down curriculum.

Direct Instruction focuses on a narrow curriculum in which a particular subject is introduced via a stimulus, expecting a particular response from the student. Based on behavioral psychology and the work of B.F. Skinner, DI requires the teacher to use operant conditioning and behavior modification techniques. In a DI classroom the teacher must follow a prescribed set of lesson plans, sometimes in script form, and use certain cues such as clapping with the intent to incite a certain reaction such as unison chanting from the students. In many classrooms, rewards and tokens are also used to generate a predetermined response (S-R-S).

Direct Instruction is a teaching method that bypasses the brain and instigates a reflex that is not natural, but rather controlled and programmed. This kind of manipulation causes some students to become so stressed that they become sick or develop nervous tics. Many DI programs are designed for the computer with built-in bells and whistles to "control and pace the learning outcomes." With outcome-based education (OBE) already in many schools, Computer Assisted Learning (CAL), programmed with the ML/DI method, is also promoting affective/subjective goals.

Direct Instruction expects mastery (ML) to be achieved in each area of instruction before moving onto the next level. There are frequent tests, cramming, cranking, and drilling the skills to perfection, so test scores are usually high in the early years. Typical classrooms, however, consist of students with varying abilities, so the amount of content is decreased to accommodate the slowest learner. In some schools cooperative learning is used to appease the high achiever. Since review of previously learned materials is not encouraged, overall retention is less. SAT scores are low, and ultimate application is not achieved and in some cases stifled.

Direct Instruction has been used for decades in areas where poverty is prevalent because the method of teaching promotes order and discipline in the classroom. Since many parents want to discard whole language and implement phonics, schools across the nation are adopting DI programs without truly understanding the method behind the content. At the expense of destroying one’s free will, these schools are training students to become passive drones rather than educated citizens. As students plateau at a certain level because they cannot make sense of the knowledge they once were expected to recall on command, one must wonder if the pressure to perform like barking dogs is what students really need or what we really want.

Appendix XXVI

"Shamanistic Rituals in Effective Schools*"

"Shamanistic Rituals in Effective Schools*" by Brian Rowan, Senior Research Scientist, Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, April, 1984.

Asterisk in title is notation on bottom of title page which states, "Work on this paper was supported by the National Institute of Education, Department of Education, under Contract No. 400–83–003. The contents do not necessarily reflect the view or policies of the Department of Education or the National Institute of Education." Brian Rowan was involved in Bill Spady’s Far West Lab grant to the Utah State Department of Education to "put OBE in all schools of the nation."

This paper develops a theoretical perspective for analyzing the non-scientific uses of research in educational policy debates. A central focus is educational researchers’ use of shamanistic rituals to affect organizational health (cf., Miracle, 1982). A number of shamanistic rituals derived from research on "effective" schools are described here, and an analysis demonstrates the circumstances under which these rituals can be used to divine the unknown, cure ills, and control uncertain events.

Background

Miracle (1982) suggested that shamans and applied social scientists perform a number of similar functions in society. Shamans, the powerful medicine men of premodern societies, worked mainly to cure ills, divine the unknown, and control uncertain events, and they performed these functions by using a specialized craft obtained after a long period of formal initiation and training. Similarly, applied social scientists acquire a specialized craft after initiation and training, and they too are called upon to alleviate the vague ills of corporate groups, divine the unknown for organizational strategists, or bring order to the uncertain events that plague institutional affairs.

The analogy raises a number of important issues for applied social science. First and  foremost, shamans practice magic, whereas applied social researchers are thought to practice "science." To liken scientists to magicians raises interesting questions about the relationship of science to pragmatic action. An additional problem is that shamans are but one of the many practitioners of magic in societies, and they can be distinguished from others who employ magic in their rituals, for example, sorcerers, witches and wizards. This observation raises questions about the uses of research in modern policy analysis. If educational "science" functions as magic, who are the shamans, witches, and sorcerers of educational research?

Forms of Pragmatic Action

We begin with the problem of whether applied educational scientists practice magic.

A number of anthropologists have observed that magic is used for pragmatic purposes in premodern societies, but that magic is not the only form of pragmatism available to premodern practitioners. For example, both Malinowski (1948) and Evans Pritchard (1965) argued that premodern societies possessed sound technical logics that practitioners could use to successfully accomplish most work tasks. In addition, premodern people were able to sharply distinguish between these working, practical logics and magic. In premodern societies, when tasks were going well, the technical logic of everyday work dominated action. But as uncertainties increased, or as conflict and stress became more problematic premodern practitioners began to supplement technique with magic. Thus, Malinowski (1948) observed the fishing practices of Trobriand islanders and found that, in the safety of lagoons, practitioners made little use of magic and relied primarily on established technical routines to ensure good fishing. But as activities moved into the more dangerous open seas, magic was increasingly invoked as a supplemental technical aid.

Similar points can be made about the modern educational practitioner’s use of research.

It seems clear that schools have an established series of technical routines (Goodlad, 1983).

But these practices are not grounded in the highly stylized logics of modern science. Rather,

they exist in the more subtle and largely unarticulated logic of teachers and administrators (Jackson, 1968). Although some educational observers have likened this unarticulated logic to magic (e.g., Lortie, 1975), Malinwoski’s (1948) [sic] discussion suggests that it is more appropriate to think of educational research as magic. The educational practitioner appears to make wide use of the subtle and unarticulated logic of schooling, and this logic appears to have the desired technical effect on a large number of students (Hyman, Wright and Reed, 1975). Practitioners make much less use of the stylized "scientific" knowledge of applied social scientists. Indeed, like Malinowski’s Trobrianders, they appear to reserve the use of "science" for those sectors of schooling which are problematic or in "crisis."

Other arguments also suggest that educational "science" functions much like magic.

As Miracle (1982) noted, both applied social scientists and shamans utilize a "force" that derives from an other world (Mauss and Hubert, 1961). Shamans, for example, often travel to other worlds to communicate with spirits or accompany the dead to their supernatural resting places. As a result, they are said to inhabit both the real world and a spirit or supernatural world. Similarly, applied scientists appear to inhabit two distinct worlds, one the "real" world, the other the proverbial "ivory tower." It is widely recognized that knowledge gained in the ivory tower is not the same as that gained in the "real" world, an observation that endows "scientific" knowledge with a certain otherworldly nature. Thus, like shamans, applied educational scientists inhabit two worlds and practice a craft that has a special legitimacy in social affairs.

Types of Magic

If we perist [sic] in the analogy between educational "science" and magic, it becomes useful to classify various types of magic and magicians. In premodern societies, for example, there were numerous practitioners of magic, including not only shamans, but also various witches, wizards and sorcerers. Distinctions among these practitioners can be made on the basis of their actual magic practices. Wizards and witches often practiced forms of "black magic" that were used as weapons to defend interests or harm enemies, whereas the shaman’s magic was most often employed for benevolent purposes, including the curing of ills. There is also a need to look carefully at the rituals practiced by different groups. For example, shamans often engage in a common "spitting and sucking cure," but they also use other rituals from their "bag of tricks."

Educational researchers can also be classified by the types and functions of the rituals they perform. For example, policy analysts sometimes use the rituals of research to confound and weaken political or scientific opponents, a form of research that appears similar to the "black" magic of witches. But there are also research shamans who can be called upon by policy analysts to perform healing rituals. All types of research ritualists select from a common and well-known bag of research tricks, although in recent years there has been a rise of ritual specialists who exclusively work either qualitative or quantitative magic on policy audiences.

Shamanism and School Effectiveness Research

In this paper, we limit attention to a single type of research ritualist—the research shaman—and to a few related magic tricks used within a narrow policy domain. Our interest is in describing research rituals that heal and revitalize sectors of education and not in research that fans controversy, inflicts harm on ideological enemies, or demoralizes existing constituencies in a policy domain. Moreover, the analysis will be narrowed to a few research rituals used in one policy domain to better illustrate how research shamans operate.

Shamanism and Crisis

It is commonly observed that working practitioners in education remain detached from, even ignorant of, the findings and applications of applied research. Yet this observation is not entirely true. Educational policy makers and their research ritualists continue to generate research, and this research continues to play a role in certain sectors of educational practice.

Thus, a question emerges: in what sectors of educational institutions are the rituals of research shamanism most utilized?

Anthropological studies suggest some answers to this question. It has been argued that magic assumes its highest importance in institutional sectors plagued by three conditions: (a) high levels of technical uncertainty; (b) structural cleavages that create great stress among social groups; and (c) social disorganization that creates problematic mood states among participants (Malinowski, 1925; Gluckman, 1952; Wallace, 1956). The argument here is that research shamanism is most valued in sectors of education that contain these characteristics.

Thus, research in education is most numerous in areas where there is high technical uncertainty (do schools/programs/teachers make a difference to educational outcomes?). The rituals of research also take on great importance in areas where there is conflict among social groups (are new educational initiatives needed to redress past social inequities?).

And finally, research is increasingly directed at problems related to disorganization and dissatisfaction in institutional sectors of education (are urban/high schools better or worse than in the past?).

Research on Effective Schools

Research on effective schools has its origins in these problems. The research deals with a sector of educational institutions—the instructional core—which has long been the subject of uncertainty, conflict, and pessimism, and where the use of myth and ritual has been common (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; 1978). What is distinctive about "effective schools" research, in contrast to much past scientific work, is that it has taken a shamanistic approach to the problems of schooling. It has not fanned the flames of discontent and uncertainty like previous scholarly work (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Averch et al., 1972; Jencks et al., 1972), but instead has held out hope that the pervasive ills of modern urban schooling can be cured.

Edmonds (1979a), the most powerful of all effective schools shamans before his untimely death, seemed accutely [sic] aware of the need for healing in modern educational institutions, and a careful reading of his works reveals his strategy for effecting a cure for the problems confronting urban education. He argued that research must be used to counter the pessimistic view that schools have weak effects on student outcomes, and that as this occurred, practitioners could attain new expectation states that facilitated, rather than hindered, the achievement of disadvantaged children (see, especially, Edmonds, 1978; 1979b).

Thus, Edmonds saw that "science" could be used to confront the conflicts, uncertainties, and problematic mood states afflicting modern schooling.

That Edmonds’ [sic] approach possessed a special "force" in educational policy arenas is indisputable. Like the revitalization movements that swept the great plains during the period of indian [sic] decline (Wallace, 1966), the rituals of effective schools research diffused widely and rapidly. They were adopted by other shamans, who brought them to state departments of education and local school systems, and there these rituals were used as the cornerstone of ambitious revitalization ceremonials (see, e.g., Ogden et al., 1982; Shoemaker, 1982; Clark and McCarthy, 1983).

It is worth noting that the perspective being developed here does not necessarily imply that these shamanistic rituals are hoaxes. Indeed, just as many modern medical practitioners have come to recognize the wisdom and efficacy of shamans, there is at least some reason to think that the arguments of effective schools proponents possess some scientific merit (see, e.g., Rowan, Bossert and Dwyer, 1983). Nevertheless, for the moment, it is useful to suspend our empirical curiousity [sic] about whether these initiatives really "work," [sic] and to examine instead some of the concrete ritual practices that characterize this new educational movement.

Important Shamanistic Rituals

It has already been suggested that shamanistic rituals are designed to cure ills, divine the unknown, and control uncertain events. In this section of the paper, three prominent effective schools rituals are discussed and their relationship to the central functions of magic are illustrated.

Curing Ills with Literature Reviews

We begin with one of the most common shamanistic rituals in the effective schools movement, the glowing literature review that promises relief from the currently pervasive sense that educational institutions are in poor organizational health. Miller’s (1983: 1) review illustrates the general form of this ritual: "Not so long ago the conventional wisdom regarding American schools was that ‘schools do not make a difference.’ ...Yet today... the message of... research is primarily postive [sic] and upbeat: schools can make a difference" (Miller, 1983: 1).

A closer look illustrates the consistent dramatic form used by reviewers to affect the promise of a cure. First, the authors contrast the dismal tradition of school effects research with "more recent" and more positive studies of effective schools. This is followed by the citation of a host of previously unpublished and obscure studies which are often nothing more than other positive literature reviews. The final step is a grandiose concluding statement, which most often calls on practitioners to adopt the new discoveries.

We speculate that these rituals have their most dramatic effect on naïve individuals who have little time or inclination to follow-up footnotes or read works cited in the text, or on those who have little tolerance for the ambiguity that marks true scientific debate. Lacking a systematic understanding of the scientific pros and cons of effective schools research, naïve individuals are left only with the powerful and appealing rhetoric of the reviewers. Thus it is that research on effective schools has come to be seen as a "cure" for educational ills the less it has been published in scholarly journals and the more it has been disseminated in practitioner magazines. The experiences shaman knows to avoid the scrutiny of scholars,

for this can raise objections to the "scientific" basis of ritual claims and divert attention away from the appealing rhetoric. Instead, the shaman cultivates the practitioner who needs a simple and appealing formula.

Divining the Unknown Using Outliers

While the literature review ritual can be observed equally well by both qualitative and quantitative specialists, a second ritual, designed to divine the unknown, is the exclusive domain of quantitative ritualists. The ritual uses residuals from a regression analysis to identify "effective" schools and to contrast them with "ineffective" schools. The purpose is to divine an answer to two nagging questions in school effectiveness research: which are the effective schools in a system and what are these schools doing that makes them different?

The techniques involved in this ritual have been described before (see, Rowan et al., 1983). A regression equation predicting school achievement from school socioeconomic composition is tested, and errors of prediction are calculated. The errors (or residuals) are used to identify "effective" and "ineffective" schools and form samples for contrasted groups studies. The ritual almost always strongly supports the rhetorical posture of the ritual literature review. Since predictor variables never account for all of the variance in school-level achievement, an analysis of residuals will always demonstrate that schools differ in achievement even after controlling for socioeconomic composition. Thus any experienced shaman can find "effective" schools. Second, if a shaman asks a large number of questions, a number of structural and cultural differences between effective and ineffective schools can be found. Thus, the outliers ritual not only identifies the previously unrecognized "effective" schools, it also reveals for the first time why these schools attain effectiveness.

From a magician’s standpoint, this ritual’s power can be increased in a number of ways.

First, the worse the specification of the initial regression model, the more persuasive the ritual. For example, by failing to include all measures of school socioeconomic composition, a shaman can increase the residual achievement differences between schools. This, in turn, enhances claims that "effective" schools make a difference to achievement. Moreover, to the extent that school characteristics are correlated to omitted socioeconomic predictors, misspecification [sic] enhances the liklihood [sic] that differences in school characteristics will be found between "effective" and "ineffective" groups of schools. Thus, the worse the initial regression model, the more powerful the shamanistic ritual.

A related tactic is to use aggregate models. By using schools rather than individuals as the unit of analysis, proportions of variance in achievement explained by school management and culture are increased. In between-school analyses, schools can be seen to account for nearly 30% of the variance in achievement. But in between-individual analyses, this is reduced to about 5%. Thus, effective schools ritualists have been able to inflate their claims of school effects through a simple aggregation trick (see Alexander and Griffin, 1976).

The experienced shaman also avoids certain practices. For example, it is wise not to repeat the residuals ritual in the same population, for this highlights the low correlation of residuals over time and raises questions about measurement reliability. It is much wiser to demonstrate reliability by using the conventional, and cross-sectional, "split/half" procedure of psychometricians (see, Forsythe, 1973). Similarly, after a few performances of the residuals ritual and the associated contrasted group study, it becomes possible to ignore problems of validation. Thus, as time moves on, the wise shaman avoids achievement data and the residuals ritual entirely, and instead assesses schools on the degree to which their structures match those of previously identified "effective" schools.

Controlling Uncertainty through Measurement

A final shamanistic ritual in the effective schools movement requires the shaman to have advanced training in the art of psychometrics. The ritual is particularly suited to application in urban or low performing school systems where successful instructional outcomes among disadvantaged students are highly uncertain but where mobilized publics demand immediate demonstrations of success. The uncertainties faced by practitioners in this situation can easily be alleviated by what scholars have begun to call "curriculum alignment."

This ritual begins with an analysis of what is actually being taught in schools. The shaman conducting the ritual assembles a group of local practitioners and together they list instructional objectives for each grade level. The next step is to find achievement tests that ask questions related to these objectives. To the extent that test items matching local objectives are found, either in commerically [sic] prepared tests or in locally constructed ones, and to the extent that these items are used in achievement testing rather than the haphazard collection of items contained in most commerically [sic] prepared tests, the curriculum and testing systems of the local school are said to be "aligned."

Since it is known that at least some variance in student achievement is a function of students [sic] opportunity to learn what is tested in criterion measures (Cooley and Leinhardt, 1980), the alignment ritual can have immediate effects on perceptions of effectiveness. For example, a school system moving from an unaligned commercially prepared achievement test to an aligned one can expect that it will score higher on national norms than before. But this increased "effectiveness" does not occur because students are learning more or different things. In the typical alignment ceremony, only test items—not instruction—are changed.

Nevertheless, while student learning remains unchanged, alignment allows students to practice criterion measures and achieve higher test scores, thus giving them an advantage over comparable students in unaligned school systems.

An even more powerful demonstration of instructional effectiveness can be achieved if shamans avoid the standard psychometric practice of designing norm-referenced achievement tests and move instead toward criterion-referenced tests. As Popham and Husek (1969) discussed, the typical norm-referenced achievement test eliminates items that nearly all students in a population can answer correctly, since norm-referenced tests are designed to produce between-student variance in achievement scores. But if one neglects this practice and allows items that almost everyone can answer correctly to be included in achievement tests, a larger number of students will appear to be performing more successfully in their academics.

Thus, the art of measurement can be used as an aid to shamanism, espcially [sic] in urban schools plagued by the uncertainties of student performance. Student variability in performance can be reduced, and relative performance increased, not by changing  instructional objectives or practices, but simply by changing tests and testing procedures.

Conclusion

The analysis of specific shamanistic rituals in the effective schools movement raises a number of important questions about the relationship of applied science to pragmatic action.

Most importantly, it suggests that future studies of "science" as magic are needed. There is a need to begin to chart other rituals used by applied scientists to disarm enemies, cure ills, and divine the unknown. Moreover, there is a need to study the conditions under which these magical practices spread through practitioner populations. Using this perspective, much of the literature on organizational change and applied research can be rewritten from an institutional perspective (Meyer and Rowan, 1977).

At the same time, there is a need to carefully analyze the science of magic. There can be little doubt that Malinowski’s (10 ...when the sociologist approaches the study of magic... he finds to his disappointment an entirely sober, prosaic, even clumsy art, enacted for purely practical reasons, governed by crude and shallow beliefs, carried out in a simple and monotonous technique.

Yet this "clumsy" art sometimes achieves great effects in practitioner communities and may even have some empirical merit, and this raises the appealing promise that applied social scientists can someday develop shamanistic rituals that empirically "work."

References

Alexander, K. and L. Griffin. School district effects on academic achievement: a reconsideration. American Sociological Review, 1976, 41, 144–151.

Averch, H.A. et al. How effective is schooling? A critical review of research. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Educational Technology Publications, 1972.

Coleman, J.S. et al. Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1966.

Cooley, W.W. and G. Leinhardt. The instructional dimensions study. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 1980. 2, 1–26.

Clark, T.A. and D. McCarthy. School improvement in New York City: the evolution of a project. Educational Researcher, 1983, 12. 17–24.

Edmonds, R. A discussion of the literature and issues related to effective schooling. St. Louis:

CEMREL, Inc., 1978 [sic].

Edmonds, R. Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 1979a, 37, 15–24.

Edmonds, R. A conversation with Ron Edmonds. Educational Leadership, 1979b, 37, 12–15.

Evans Pritchard, E. Theories of primitive religion. London: Cambridge Press, 1965.

Forsythe, R.A. Some empirical results related to the stability of performance indicators in Dyer’s student change model of an educational system. Journal of Educational Measurement, 1973, 10, 7–12.

Gluckman, M. Rituals of rebellion in S.E. Africa. London: Oxford Press, 1954.

Goodlad, J.I. A Place called school. New York: McGraw Hill, 1983.

Hyman, H.H., C. Wright and C. Reed. The enduring effects of education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Jackson, P.W. Life in classrooms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968.

Jencks, C.L. et al. Inequality: a reassessment of the effects of family and schooling in America.

New York: Basic Books, 1972.

Lortie D. Schoolteacher. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Malinowski, B. Magic, science and religion. Glencoe: Free Press, 1948.

Mauss M. and H. Hubert. On magic and the unknown. In, Parsons, T. et al (eds.). Theories of society, II. Glencoe: Free Press, 1961.

Meyer, J. and B. Rowan. Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 1977, 83, 340–363.

Meyer, J. and B. Rowan. The structure of educational organizations. In M. Meyer et al, Environments and organizations. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Miller, S. A history of effective schools research: A critical review. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational research [sic] Association, Montreal, April, 1983.

Miracle, A.W. The making of shamans and applied anthropologists. Practicing Anthropology, 1982, 5, 18–19.

Ogden, E., W. Fowler and D. Kunz. A study of strategies to increase student achievement in low achieving schools. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research

Association, New York, March, 1982.

Popham, W. and H. Husek. Implications of criterion referenced measurement. Journal of Educational

Measurement, 1969, 6, 1–9.

Rowan, B., S. Bossert and D. Dwyer. Research on effective schools: a cautionary note. Educational Researcher, 1983, 12, 24–31.

Shoemaker, J. What are we learning? Evaluating the Connecticut school effectiveness project.

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,

New York, March, 1982.

Wallace, A. Revitalization movements. American Anthropologist, 1956, 58, 264–281.

[Ed. Note: We shall forever be grateful to Brian Rowan for crafting such an eye-opening  presentation of the process used by the change agent "shamans" to sell the damaged goods of Effective Schools Research—and many other programs, like OBE, mastery learning and direct instruction—through manipulated or "massaged" research data. His exposé of the use of alignment of curriculum to testing to create an illustion of improved performance of schools is quite phenomenal for someone so involved in the spread of OBE to "all schools in the nation."]

"Big Bad Cows and Cars:

Green Utopianism & Environmental Outcomes"

"Big Bad Cows and Cars: Green Utopianism & Environmental Quality," by Sarah Leslie from the Free World Research Report (Vol. 2 No. 6), June 1993. Reprinted in its entirety with permission of author.

The problem with cows and cars, it seems, is with their... well, er... emissions. Both are supposedly responsible for wreaking havoc on the planet Earth (spelled with a capital "E" to suggest respect and "reverence") because of their CO2 output—for one a matter of life, for the other a manner of mechanization.

They both have to go. This means tractors, too, of course. The goals for sustainability, according to the latest environmental craze (which we have dubbed "Green Utopianianism"), require an abandonment of modern material affluence, a transfer of wealth to third world countries and, unmistakably, a return to the manual plow accompanied by a vegetarian diet.

Where can one find such utopian nonsense? It is popping up with increasing frequency in mainstream publications and credible-sounding scientific documents. Jeremy Rifkin’s "Beyond Beef" campaign and Al Gore’s recent book, Earth in the Balance, have lent the necessary pizazz to launch a massive public relations campaign about the environmental hazards of these CO2 emissions (that’s "gas" for the folks in Rio Linda, California).

The education establishment, prone to jumping on the latest bandwagon, is going great guns for environmental education. Educators are frequently puzzled and amazed when parents object to environmental and global curricula and outcomes. What could be wrong with that? they ask. We recommend they read the literature.

The Rave Review

We found the abolishment of the cow and car through reading an Iowa Department of Education document. Several years ago, in a publication entitled Social Studies Horizons (Fall 1990), just such a utopian book was given a rave review. This book, originally entitled The

Future as If It Really Mattered, was recently re-issued under a new title—Toward A Sustainable Society: An Economic, Social and Environmental Agenda for Our Children’s Future by James Garbarino. The title says it all. It is quite an agenda!

Here is the rave review:

Excerpts from a book that is a class of practical wisdom on what a sustainable society is, why we need to move to a sustainable society, and what a sustainable society might look like. It is this kind of thinking we need to consider as we move toward transforming the social studies. It seems to me that teaching the "transformational economics" of sustainability would be a much more empowering and enlivening process for our students than the textbook-mires "dismal science" approach to economics that has been the norm.

(Social Studies Horizons, p. 4)

If you think sustainability is just a nice new term to describe more environmentally responsible farming methods, think again. Sustainability, at least to the new Green Utopians, is an entire restructuring of the way humans live on the planet, and is the new prime directive for the survival of species (man only somewhat included).

The Iowa DE publication quoted Garbarino:

This enjoyment of owning, having, spending, buying, and consuming is a serious threat. It threatens our relationship with the Earth and our relationships with each other, particularly in our families and in our efforts to preserve the resources necessary for social welfare systems. It cannibalizes the planet, undermines the spiritual order, and leaves us scrambling to fill the social and spiritual void with positions. It is an addiction pure and simple... and our chances of making the transition to a sustainable society depend upon our overcoming it. (p. 4)

The major chore for humans on Garbarino’s anthropomorphic Earth is to make the transition to sustainability. But, just what does HE mean by this? What is the agenda of the new Green Utopians?

Utopian Sustainability

Garbarino’s transition to sustainability is a process long on ideology and short on specifics, in typical utopian fashion. Garbarino states:

Our goal, remember, is the creation of a more sustainable human community based on competent social welfare systems, just and satisfying employment, reliance on the nonmonetarized economy for meeting many needs, and a political climate that encourages cultural evolution and human dignity. (p. 162) [emphasis added] Garbarino identifies himself as a utopian throughout the book. His optimistic view of the future is dependent upon his faith that the human race will accept stringent population control measures, severely limited transportation and trade, earth-friendly housing, local neighborhood food and energy production, and government-regulated health and social welfare services. The seriousness of "our common future" is enough to warrant this massive overhaul of the Western lifestyle.

Our Not-So-Rave Review

The preface of Garbarino’s book (page ix) gives credit to Aurelio Peccei and the Club of Rome for the "wealth of ideas and information about the prospects for a sustainable society."

The Club of Rome is best known for its earth-shattering GLOBAL 2000 report, Limits to Growth (1972), calling for massive world-wide population control measures and many other controversial plans. The Club of Rome is one of those international organizations that the extreme left esteems (including the national media) and the extreme right views as one of "those" conspiratorial groups.

The Club of Rome does not advocate for a mainstream, reasonable approach to environmental stewardship. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It is an indisputable fact that the Club of Rome is tied closely to the wacky international New Age groups known as Planetary Citizens. Planetary Citizens sponsored a "1990 World Symposium on Interspecies & Interdimensional Communication." (This means communicating with species not of this world!) Aurelio Peccei’s name has appeared on Planetary Citizens letterhead.

A Return to the Plow

Tractors will go the way of the car and the cow. Manual high-tech plows are the wave of the new utopian future.

The plow developed by the Schumacher-inspired Intermediate Technology Group is a good example [of appropriate technology]. It relieves the backbreaking burden of working an oxen-powered plow, but it is not a conventional tractor. In their clever arrangement, a small engine pulls a plow across a field using a wire, while two farmers use their skill and strength to guide it. The result is better plowing with a less expensive tool and provision of meaningful work. (p. 223)

This utopian vision of a new society includes agricultural cooperatives, a cashless economy, and women working at home at gardening chores to provide food for their households and communities. "Household and community gardens can successfully produce fruits and vegetables, and in some cases even grain." (p. 231–2) Concurrent with these recommendations is the elimination of most trade because of its relationship to transportation (which produces CO2). Everything must be produced locally.

Eating meat is not included in the book. "The massive concentrations of cattle excrement produce large amounts of methane," claims Garbarino in Rifkin-like fashion. Presumably the cow is regulated to a position of prominence in society, perhaps even veneration. If the cow isn’t good for food, and not an "appropriate" technological substitute for the tractor for use with plows, then perhaps the Green Utopians of the future will hang garlands of flowers about their necks!

Car Crimes

"Using a car to accomplish daily tasks that could be done without one is a misdemeanor against the Earth and posterity. Social policies that encourage driving and discourage walking are crimes against the planet." (p. 221) The term for this new kind of crime in Green Utopia is "bioeconomic crime" according to Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, who is further quoted on the matter of automobiles:

Every time we produce a Cadillac, we irrevocably destroy an amount of low entropy that could otherwise be used for producing a plow or a spade. In other words, every time we produce a Cadillac, we do it at the cost of decreasing the number of human lives in the future. (p. 135)

This type of logic, which ties Western consumption to the future destruction of the Earth, is the drumbeat of Garbarino’s book. It explains the reasoning behind the original version of the Iowa Global Education curriculum manual (Catalogue of Global Education Classroom Activities, Lesson Plans, and Resources), which contained a Social Studies exercise for grades 4–6 which linked eating red meat to the destruction of the tropical rainforest:

Calculate the amount of meat eaten by a person in the U.S. per year; translate to number of animals. How much energy and grain are used to produce this meat? How many trees in the tropical rainforest are destroyed to produce this meat? (p. 26)

For Garbarino and the Green Utopians, automobile-based urbanization is a major culprit in the anti-sustainable modern lifestyle. "Suburbs are not conducive to sustainable patterns." (p. 166) Suburbs allow people to live far away from where they work and shop. Suburbs depend upon the car, or other forms of transit. Suburbs are not an acceptable alternative. So what, then, is the utopian alternative?

The Abolition of Patriarchy

Garbarino would like to redefine the family in the context of community, what he terms social welfare systems for a sustainable society. His ideas parallel those of the social engineers.

He would make community be parent: "Communities should share joint custody of children with parents.... We can require ‘registration and inspection’ of young children so that the community can monitor child development and not lose track of the children for which it is responsible." (p. 245) Garbarino also calls for a parenting license.

Family roles are redefined, too. "We need to end masculine domination both in the family and in society, so that we can create a cultural climate in which the sustainable society can exist." (p. 66) Patriarchy is a threat to the planet, ac