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Nov. 2007Edition 99

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Part 3: The Dynamics of Power

This is a full length book and will be presented in four installments.

Part 4 Will be Posted In December

A Chronological Paper Trail

Chapter 6

THE SERIOUS SEVENTIES

"Concerned with grave, important, or complex matters, problems" and "giving cause for concern" are two out of five definitions given in Webster’s Dictionary for the word "serious" which definitely apply to this chapter, "The Serious Seventies." Unfortunately, since the average American was purposely kept in the dark about what was taking place, being able "to be concerned" was an impossibility. To the change agents roaming the education landscape, "change" was the goal, and the end justified the means, even if it meant misleading through semantic deception the parents and taxpayers who paid the bills and provided the resources—the children and teachers upon whom the change agents would experiment.

"The Serious Seventies" contains excerpts from important government documents, education journal articles, professional papers, and critiques by key educationists regarding the major components of reform planned for the end of the century as a result of federal legislation passed in the 1960s. From a study of the key documents one detects a vigorous tug-of-war taking place at the highest decisionmaking levels in education. Stringent debate was carried on regarding the pros and cons of the use of systematic planning and technology in an area of human endeavor (education) which until this time had had relatively little interference from political, social and economic planners (social engineers).

State commissioners of education, local education agency superintendents, and especially teachers and school boards had been able to make decisions at the state and local level—decisions which they considered to be in the best interest of students and the communities in which they lived and worked.

But "change" was the name of this serious new game.

A careful reading of "The Serious Seventies" documents, especially the 1972 Association for 94 Educational Computing and Technology (AECT) report entitled The Field of Educational Technology:

A Statement of Definition (October, 1972), has convinced this writer that significant resistance to goal setting, systems management, computer-assisted instruction, etc., which existed at the beginning of the 1970s was, unfortunately, overcome. For instance, the above-referenced document contained the following most important warning regarding the use of technology in the classroom; a warning that, evidently, was not heeded in the years to come. The warning read in part:

It should be clear that the concerned professional does not have to be a "liberal," or a "conservative." The concerned professional must, however, show moral sensitivity to the effect of what he or she does [in the field of technology]. It does not matter what position an individual comes to as long as it is not "I’ll do it because it can be done."

The above recommendation relating to the ethical use of technology in the classroom was evidently ignored by the change agents who decided instead that "We’ll do it because it can be done."

In 1971 Phi Delta Kappan published a paper entitled Performance-Based Teacher Education [PBTE]: What Is the State of the Art? This paper spelled out the raison d’etre for the transition from teacher education based on knowledge of subject matter to teacher education based on the ability to "perform" in the classroom. Skinnerian methods adopted by Madeline Hunter and others would become the foundation for future teacher training and accreditation, and ultimately the method for workforce training. This paper makes it all too clear that the purpose of PBTE was to "lower standards" so that the teaching profession could be more "inclusive"—or so "they" said. However, this writer believes inclusion was more than likely the cover (excuse acceptable to those who believed in equal opportunity) to install the performance-based system necessary for the eventual implementation of the school-to-work polytech system planned in 1934 and activated in the 1990s. From this time forward, the deliberate dumbing down would proceed with a vengeance.

During "The Serious Seventies" the ship of education set a new course. Navigating these new waters would require a new chart, one entirely different from that used in the past.

1970

A PROHIBITION AGAINST FEDERAL CONTROL OF EDUCATION, SECTION 432,GENERAL EDUcation Provisions Act (GEPA), was enacted in 1970 and reads as follows:

Sec. 432. No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources,

textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance. (20 U.S.C. 1232a) Enacted April 18, 1970, P.L. 91–230, Title IV, sec. 401(a)(10), 81 Stat.169.

[Ed. Note: The interpretation of the above prohibition lies in the eyes of the beholder. Parents and traditional teachers have held that all curriculum and teaching based on the federally funded Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Goals Collection, National Diffusion Network Programs, and "scientific research-based" reading programs funded under the Reading Excellence Act of 1998 should be covered by GEPA and are consequently illegal. Educrats, on the other hand, have held that the only way for a program to be covered by GEPA would be for the secretary of education to sit on the sidewalk outside the U.S. Department of Education, developing curriculum, and passing it out to interested passersby.]

THE SHREVEPORT [LOUISIANA] JOURNAL OF JANUARY 20, 1970 CARRIED AN ARTICLE ENtitled "And t Came to Pass" in its Views from Other Newspapers section in which the author asked:

JACKSON (MISS.) DAILY NEWS—Has HEW Replaced NRA [National Recovery Act]?

Thirty-seven years ago an unbelieving editor sat down and wrote an editorial for his paper, The Monroe Evening News of Monroe, Michigan, USA. The date was Wednesday, September 13, 1933.

Under the Lead Line, "Not That!", that incredulous American newspaper editor went on to ask his readers of three decades ago, "Are the schools of America to be used as a propaganda agency to mould public opinion into conformity with the policies of the administration?"

Still in a tone of utter disbelief that editor went on to quote from an interview with one Louis Alber, chief of the speakers division of the National Recovery Act. "Just read these stounding utterances by Mr. Alber," the editor challenges his subscribers.

The rugged individualism of Americanism must go, because it is contrary to the purposes of the New Deal and the NRA which is remaking America.

Russia and Germany are attempting to compel a new order by means of their nationalism- compulsion. The United States will do it by moral persuasion. Of course we expect some opposition, but the principles of the New Deal must be carried to the youth of the nation. We expect to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force.

Mr. Alber went on to explain that a "primer" outlining methods of teaching to be used, along with motion pictures on the subject, were being prepared for distribution to all public and parochial schools and commented that: "NRA is the outstanding part of the President’s program, but in fact it is only a fragment. The general public is not informed on the other parts of the program, and the schools are the places to reach the future builders f the nation."

From our vantage point in history we know that the notorious NRA was laid to rest early in its incubation period by the United States Supreme Court.

What is important to each and all of us today is what has transpired in the intervening years since 1933. That editor of long ago remarked, "So as sweeping and revolutionary as NRA is, it is only a fragment of a greater program of which the public knows nothing, and his unknown program is to be inculcated into the minds of pupils in the schools everywhere, by official efforts and at government expense.... Now our schools are to become—like those of Germany and Russia—an agency for the promotion of whatever political, social, and economic policies the administration may desire to carry out. And the taxpayers, whether they like it or not, are to pay for having their children converted to those policies."

The Editor closed by stating: "The whole proposition is so amazing, and so alarming in its implications, that we refuse to take it seriously."

Take a look about you today, with the Washington-directed school policies. Is the Health, Education and Welfare Department doing exactly what the defunct NRA started out to do?

REPORT OF THE STUDY, TITLE III, ESEA BY EMERY STOOF WAS PRODUCED BY THE EDUCAtional Innovation Advisory Commission and the Bureau of Planning and Development of the California State Department of Education in 1970. Excerpts follow:

Origin of the Bureau... An Instructional Program Planning and Development Unit was established by State Board action in 1965 and was funded through a Title V, ESEA project.

 This unit was comprised of persons responsible for the state level administration of Title III, ESEA, and co-ordination of Title V, ESEA. A general conceptual model for effective planned change n education, as well as a management model for the administration of Title III, ESEA, was submitted to the State Board’s Federal Aid Committee in 1965, with November 10, 1965 as the first deadline for receiving applications for funds.…

Two significant developments early in the state administration of Title III, ESEA, were

(1) the project to Prepare Educational Planners (Operation PEP), and (2) the funding of twenty-one regional planning centers. "PEP" sessions trained administrators in systematic planning procedures, systems analysis techniques, "planning, programming and budgeting system" and cost-benefit analysis. PACE (Projects to Advance Creativity in Education) was to encourage school districts to develop imaginative solutions to educational problems, to utilize more effectively research findings, to translate the latest knowledge about teaching and learning into widespread educational practice, and to create an awareness of new programs. Through the regional centers, the Bureau has endeavored to (1) encourage the development of creative innovations, (2) demonstrate worthwhile innovations in educational practice through exemplary programs, and (3) supplement existing programs and facilities.

[Ed. Note: This is an example of how the Federal government began its takeover of all state and local education agencies, removing any semblance of what could be considered local control. The California report explains exactly what happened in every single state due to our elected officials’ inability to resist taking federal money and their trust of education change agents (administrators, principals, superintendents, etc.). How many American children have been severely handicapped academically and morally by experimental, "innovative" programs which had absolutely nothing to do with academics, but everything to do with attitude, value nd belief change?]

IN 1970 LEONARD S. KENWORTHY, PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE OF the City of New York, wrote The International Dimension of Education: Background Paper II Prepared for the World Conference on Education (Asilomar, California, March 5–14, 1970), edited by Norman V. Overly. The conference was sponsored by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, National Education Association, and the Commission on International Cooperation in Education. Excerpts from the report follow:

III. The International Dimensions of Our Schools: Some Overall Considerations Here and there teachers have modified individual courses.... Schools have rewritten syllabi or added courses.... But nowhere has there been a rigorous examination of the total experiences of children and/or youth in schools and the development of a continuous, cumulative, comprehensive curriculum to create the new type of people needed for effective living in the latter part of the 20th century....

…All the work we do in developing internationally minded individuals should be directed to improved behavior.

That means that all the efforts in this dimension of education must be predicated on the research in the formation, reinforcement, and change of attitudes and on the development of skills. Knowledge is tremendously important, but we should be clear by now that it must be carefully selected knowledge, discovered by the learners rather than told to them, and organized by them with the help of teachers or professors around concepts, generalizations, r big ideas. Teaching, therefore, becomes the process of helping younger people to probe, discover, analyze, compare, and contrast rather than telling.

There is a rich mine of data now on attitude formation, change, and reinforcement which teachers need to study carefully and apply to this dimension of education as well as to others. For example, we know that most basic attitudes are learned very early but that attitudes can be changed at any age. We know that times of personal and societal crisis are the best times to bring about change. But we also know that people must not be threatened by changes. They must be relatively secure and much of their resistance to change recognized and tolerated as a manifestation of an inner struggle to reject the old and accept the new.

Therefore, the acceptance of the old views with equanimity is important, so that the threat to a person is minimal. We know, too, that appeals to pride and self-interest may be helpful in bringing about change. So are the statements and actions of prestige persons. Membership in new groups is often helpful in insulating a person from slipping back into old patterns.

We also know that changing a total group is easier and more likely to produce results than trying to change individuals. And it is clear that concentration upon specific areas of change rather than general approaches is usually most effective....

Changed behavior is our goal and it consists in large measure of improved attitudes, improved skills, and carefully selected knowledge—these three—and the greatest of these is attitudes....

The program emphasizes feelings as well as facts. In some parts of the world in the field of education today, the emphasis is upon cognitive learning or intellectual development.

This is especially true in the United States.… But in the international dimensions of education, as in other dimensions, the affective domain or emotional development is just as important....

We need to get at the "gut level" in much of our teaching. We need to use music, art, powerful literature, films and other approaches which get at the feeling level of learning.

For example, the writer has found tremendously effective a 10-minute film on the United Nations, entitled "Overture." There is no narrative in this film; the pictures are shown against a background of music, with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra playing the Egmont Overture. It is a powerful learning device and moves its viewers in a way few other approaches touch them. (pp. 23–39)

1971

EDUCATION: FROM THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE TO PROGRAMMED, CONDITIONED REsponses was submitted by Assemblyman Robert H. Burke (70th California Assembly District) to the California Legislature in 1971. An excerpt follows

INTRODUCTION

Several months ago, my office began accumulating material which had particular significance The Serious Seventies : c. 1971 98 in the area of Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems because of its potential use as a tool of fiscal accountability in the field of education. As we searched into the information available on the application of this subject in education, it became increasingly difficult to see any relationship between the proposed programs and fiscal accountability. It was apparent after a study of the methods proposed for use by the schools for accountability purposes that fiscal accountability was being minimized and that techniques were being promoted for achieving behavioral objectives. Other seemingly unrelated organizations, projects, and programs were uncovered because of their influence on the application of accountability methods. They were as parts in a puzzle—analyzed by themselves, each of these projects appeared to be either harmless or an expression of someone’s "dream." When linked together with other "harmless" programs, they were no longer formless but could be seen as an entire package of plans outlining methods of implementation, organization structures (including flow-charts), computerization, use of behavioral profile catalogs, and goals and objectives determination.

CONTROVERSIAL SEXOLOGISTS LESTER A. KIRKENDALL AND RUTH F. OSBORNE DEVELOPED in 1971 a program entitled "Sex Education—Student Syllabus No: 216786, correlated with M.I.P. 180800" which was one of the first sex education programs to use a mastery learning approach. This program was published by the National Book Company, owned by Carl W. Salser, executive director of Educational Research Associates, a non-profit educational research corporation in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Salser is also the owner of Halcyon Press and is a long-time advocate of individualized instruction and mastery learning.

Carl Salser is the author of a pamphlet entitled "The Carnegie Unit: An Administrative Convenience, but an Educational Catastrophe" and is a supporter of outcome-based education/ mastery learning. Full implementation of OBE/ML calls for the removal of the Carnegie Unit—the "seat time" measure of subject exposure for students which determines graduation and college entry eligibility. Salser was a member during 1981–1982 of the presidentially appointed National Council on Educational Research which had oversight of the activities at the former National Institute of Education of the U.S. Department of Education.

IN 1971 THE SECRETARIAT OF THE UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CULtural Organization (UNESCO) called upon George W. Parkyn of New Zealand to outline a possible model for an education system based on the ideal of a continuous education process throughout the lifetime of the learner—a means of bringing an existing national school system into line with lifelong learning. The result of this effort was a book entitled Towards a Conceptual Model of Life-Long Education, published in 1973 by UNESCO (English Edition ISBN 92–3–101117–0).

The preface of the book contained the following interesting biographical sketch of the littleknown Dr. Parkyn:

The Secretariat called on George W. Parkyn of New Zealand to prepare this first study. Dr. Parkyn has rendered extensive service to education in many parts of the world: in New Zealand, as a teacher in primary and secondary schools, as a senior lecturer at the University of Otago, and as director of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, 1954–1967; at UNESCO, where he made substantial contributions to the World Survey of Education; at Stanford University, California, as a visiting professor; in New Zealand again, as a visiting lecturer in Comparative Education at the University of Auckland; and as Professor of Comparative

Education at the University of London, Institute of Education.... Dr. Parkyn was asked to review the available literature in this field and to involve several of his colleagues at Stanford University, California, in discussions on the basic concept. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists, as well as professional educators took part in the conceptual stage, contributing a rich variety of views. Among those who helped the author in the preparation of the study were his research assistants, Mr. Alejandro Toledo and Mr. Hei-tak Wu, and his colleagues, Dr. John C. Bock, Dr. Martin Carnoy, Dr. Henry M. Levin and Dr. Frank J. Moore.

[Ed. Note: The Dr. Henry M. Levin mentioned above is the same Henry Levin whose K–8 Accelerated Schools Project is one of the seventeen reform models that schools may adopt to qualify for their share of nearly $150 million in federal grants, according to the January 20, 1999 edition of Education Week (p. 1). The article "Who’s In, Who’s Out" listed Accelerated Learning as being used in urban schools. It is based on a constructivist philosophy which has echoes of and references to Maria Montessori’s and John Dewey’s philosophies of education and incorporates the controversial Lozanov method of Superlearning.]

PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO TEACHING BY ROBERT F. BIENTER (HOUGHTON MIFFLIN CO.: BOSton, 1971) was published. This popular psychology text was recommended for use in Introduction to Educational Psychology courses in universities in the early 1970s. Chapter 5, under the subheading of "S-R Associationism and Programmed Learning," is excerpted here:

Watson [John B.] (who did the most to popularize Pavlovian theory in the United States) based one of his most famous experiments (Watson and Rayner, 1920) on the observation that young children have a "natural" fear of sudden loud sounds. He set up a situation in which a two-year-old boy named Albert was encouraged to play with a white rat. After this preliminary period, Watson suddenly hit a steel bar with a hammer just as Albert reached for the rat, and the noise frightened the child so much that he came to respond to the rat with fear. He had been conditioned to associate the rat with the loud sound. The success of this experiment led Watson to believe that he could control behavior in almost limitless ways, by arranging sequences of conditioned responses. He trumpeted his claim in this famous statement:

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well formed, and my own special world to bring them up in, and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select—doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and yes, even beggarman and thief—regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestry. (pp. 152–3)

Later on in the chapter, Skinner’s contributions are discussed:

An even more striking example of Skinner’s overwhelming enthusiasm for programmed learning is his claim that mere manipulation of the teaching machine should be "reinforcing enough to keep a pupil at work for suitable periods every day."... Thus it is apparent that Skinner’s enthusiasm has prevented him from seeing some of the deficiencies of programmed instruction. Many critics have been especially dissatisfied with his attempt to refute the charge that programs limit creativity. Clearly when the person composing a program decides in advance what is to be learned and how it is to be learned, a student has no opportunit0y The Serious Seventies : c. 1971 100 to develop in his own way. He is limited by what the programmer knows and by how the programmer learned....

It is true that the student might use the material in an original way after he had finished the program, but there is the possibility that programmed instruction interferes with this process. For example, some students who have completed programs report that although they have progressed quickly and satisfactorily and feel that they have learned something, they aren’t sure where to go from here. Typically, the next step is to take an exam, usually of the multiple-choice type, which is highly similar to the program in which that stimuli are presented and responses are chosen. But what happens after the exam? If the student cannot respond unless he is stimulated in the same way he was in the program or exam, he will rarely be able to apply what he has learned to real life situations.

What we are dealing with here is the subject of transfer… which is basic to education.

Ellis has pointed out that little research has been done on the transferability of programmed learning; in almost all studies the experimenter determines the degree of learning solely on the basis of each child’s performance on a test given immediately after the completion of the program. Skinner maintains that the student can be taught to transfer ideas through separate programs designed for this purpose and that a properly written program will wean the student from the machine, but there is little evidence to back up this contention. On logical grounds alone it seems reasonable to question the transfer value of programmed instruction.

Markle notes that in order to ensure that approximately 95 percent of the answers will  lowest common denominator—the slowest students in the group. This eventually leads to programs which most students can complete fairly easily, but it also leads to programs which are oversimplified and repetitious. (pp. 168–171)

THE INDIVIDUALIZED LEARNING LETTER (T.I.L.L.): ADMINISTRATOR’S GUIDE TO IMPROVE Learning; Individualized Instruction Methods; Flexible Scheduling; Behavioral Objectives; Study Units;

Self-Directed Learning; Accountability, Vol. I (February 22, 1971: T.I.L.L., Huntington, N.Y.)1 was published and circulated. Excerpts follow:

Opting to become a greater force in promoting I.I. (Individualized Instruction), The Northeast Association for Individualization of Instruction (Wyandanch, N.Y.) has gone national—by substituting the word "national" for "northeast.".... The enlarged 2–1/2 day convention is geared to give registrants more time to watch I.I. in action in live classrooms. Several of the nation’s I.I. leaders already lined up to run workshops include: Dr. Lloyd Bishop, NYU; Dr. Sid Rollins, Rhode Island College; Dr. Robert Scanlon, Research for Better Schools [Research for Better Schools and University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center (Robert Glaser) were instrumental in development of IPI in the early 1960s, ed.]; Dr. Edward Pino, Superintendent of Cherry Creek Schools (Englewood, CO); Dr. Robert Anderson, Harvard University; Dr. Leon Lessinger, Georgia State University; Dr. Robert Sinclair, University of Massachusetts; Jane Root, Stanford Research Associates; and Dr. Glen Ovard, Brigham Young University. Representatives of USOE, NEA, NY State Department of Education will be present. (The latter supports the conference with an annual grant.)....

QUOTES YOU CAN USE:

DOWN WITH BOOKS. "Textbooks not only encourage learning at the wrong level (imparting facts rather than telling how to gather facts, etc.), they also violate an important new concern in American education—individualized instruction.... Textbooks produce superficially knowledgeable students... who know virtually nothing in depth about anything.... A good start would be to... declare a moratorium on textbook use in all courses." Dwight D. Allen, Dean of Education, University of Massachusetts, writing on "The Decline of Textbooks, Change."2

RECOMMENDED BOOKS: Behavioral Objectives: A Guide for Individualized Learning. Fourvolume set covering more than 4000 objectives representing four years’ work of more than 200 teachers. Arranged by subject area. Covers language arts, social studies, math and science.

A comprehensive collection. Westinghouse Learning Corp., 100 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017.

MEETINGS STRESSING INDIVIDUALIZED INSTRUCTION: Ninth National Society for Programmed Instruction Convention, March 31–April 3, 1971. University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y. Heavy emphasis on applying principles and processes of individualized instruction.

Session on redesigning schools of tomorrow. Contact Dr. Robert G. Pierleone, College of Education, University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y. First Educational Technology Conference.

April 5–8, 1971. Americana Hotel, N.Y. City, N.Y. Conference seminars and workshops will cover curriculum design, use of computers, programmed instruction, simulation, innovation theory, etc.

IN FORTHCOMING ISSUES: Update of 46 Case Studies of Individualized Instruction as originally reported by Jack V. Edling, Oregon State System of Higher Education.

"REVISED REPORT OF POPULATION SUBCOMMITTEE, GOVERNOR’S ADVISORY COUNCIL ON Environmental Quality" for the State of Michigan, to be used at the April 6, 1971 meeting of the subcommittee, was filed in the Library, Legislative Service Bureau in Lansing, Michigan. Excerpts from this disturbing report follow:

I. Concept of a Population Goal In general, the Subcommittee was in agreement with U.S. Senate Resolution No. 214, as follows:

That it is the policy of the United States to develop, encourage, and implement at the earliest possible time, the necessary policies, attitudes, social standards, and actions which will by voluntary means consistent with human rights and individual conscience, stabilize the population of the United States and thereby promote the future well-being of the citizens of this Nation and the entire world.

It was the feeling of the Subcommittee that the intent of the above Resolution should be encouraged by voluntary means and due consideration given to human rights. However, in order to accomplish the above goal, state and federal legislation must accompany this intent to provide disincentives.

II. Optimum Goal

An optimum goal is to be considered in preference to a maximum carrying capacity. As a starting point, zero population growth is the recommended goal for the citizens of Michigan.... That the human population on a finite "space ship" cannot increase indefinitely is The Serious Seventies : c. 1971 102 obvious. What is not so obvious is what constitutes an "optimum" level of population and the methods by which it is to be limited.... III. How Does Society Obtain Population Control?

Constraints on population size can be divided into two types, biological and social. Biological constraints include the limitation of those energies and chemicals required to drive human society as a biological system.... Societal constraints are more appropriate since the human  population explosion is basically a social problem. There are three classes of social institutions which can be utilized to obtain population control. These are the political, economic and education systems. Each of these represent powerful control systems which help to regulate the behavior of our society.

A wide range of public policies are available by which man can affect population size. Some policies can seek to change man’s basic values and attitudes with respect to the issues of population size. Other policies can seek to directly affect man’s behaviors which have consequences for population size. Some suggested policy goals are listed.

General Public Understanding

Having children is a public interest as well as a private interest. Likewise, the use of the environment must be understood to be a collective responsibility rather than a private or individual responsibility, since the costs and the benefits of the use of the environment are indivisible to all members of the collectivity. This idea runs counter to the underlying ethic of individualism and privateness of our society, but is basic if we are to mobilize the collective will which is necessary for social action. To change such a basic set of attitudes and values requires cooperation from the full range of opinion leaders in the society. A program of education for leaders in all sectors of society, such as religious, economic, political, educational, technical, etc., is therefore called for.

Since basic attitudes and values are formed early in life, and since it is the youth of society who are yet capable of determining the size of future families, a program for all levels of formal education can be a powerful way to change society’s attitudes and values on the question of population size as outlined above.

The idea that family size is a collective, social responsibility rather than just an individual responsibility can be fostered both directly by exhortations by opinion leaders and in the schools, and indirectly by the actions that government and other institutions in society take. For example, the proposal to eliminate the income tax exemption for children in excess of the two-child family limit can be a powerful way for government to symbolize its determination that family size is a collective responsibility.

Public understanding of the interdependent nature of our natural and man-made environment is also important for enlightened public support for population control policies.

A state-wide education program concerning ecology and population biology is needed for both student and adult segments of our society. This will require vigorous action to remove the topic of sex from the closets of obscurity in which conservative elements in our society have placed it....

Cultural Changes

Two types of cultural changes are needed in order to reduce the population increase: reduce the desired size of families, and reduce the social pressure to marry and have a family.

Large families can be changed from an economic asset to an economic liability if all members of society can be offered the prospect that through work, saving, and deferred spending they can achieve economic security for themselves and their children. For the  lready affluent middle class, larger families can be made an economic liability by increasing the incentives for and the costs of advanced education for their children....

Cultural changes to reduce the social pressure to marry and have a family can be pursued by changing educational materials which glorify married life and family life as the only "normal" life pattern, by granting greater public recognition to non-married and non-family life styles, by facilitating careers for single women....

[Ed. Note: The above recommendation regarding reducing the social pressure to marry and have a family was successfully carried out over a period of 25 years according to an article entitled "Institution in Transition" by Michelle Boorstein which appeared in The Maine Sunday Telegram’s August 30, 1998 issue, Home and Family Section, G–1. This Associated Press article said in part:

They [Pam Hesse and Rob Lemar] share a home and a future but not a formal vow—just one couple caught up in the seismic shifts taking place in American attitudes toward marriage and childbearing.

A soon-to-be-released Census Bureau report shows Hesse is far from an exception; in fact, she’s in the majority. The report, the bureau’s first compilation of all its 60 years of data on childbearing and marriage, finds that for the first time, the majority of "first births"—someone’s first child—were either conceived by or born to an unmarried woman.

That is up from 18 percent in the 1930s.

This is connected to an erosion of the centrality of marriage, said Stephanie Coontz of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, who studies the family and its role in history.]

Returning to the Population Subcommittee’s report:

Direct Behavior Changes

Two general types of public policies are distributive policies and regulative policies. Distributive policies involve the distribution of resources and opportunities to people who choose to modify their behavior to conform with the socially desired patterns. They thus operate as incentives rather than as official constraints. Examples include the elimination of tax incentives for larger families, monetary incentives for sterilization or adopted families, and removing the income tax discrimination against single citizens....

Regulative policies involve direct constraints on behavior and necessarily generate greater political conflict than distributive policies. This is because regulative policies eliminate the element of voluntary choice and apply automatically and categorically to a whole class of people or of behaviors. Examples of such regulative policies designed to control population growth include forced sterilization and restrictive licensing procedures to marry and to have children. However, it does not seem necessary, desirable, or feasible to involve regulative policies for population control at this time. One regulative type policy which is now in effect and which allows population increase is the law forbidding abortion. Restrictions against abortions should be removed to allow individual choice in the use of this back-up method of birth control....

A general acceptance of birth control to obtain population stability will create a more static ethnic, cultural and racial structure in society. Minority groups will continue to stay at a numerical minority. Minority problems are basically social and should be solved in that manner. An equilibrium condition will also alter the structure of our economic relationship both within our society (a shift from an expanding economy to a competitive displacement economy) and between other countries that will still be experiencing increasing popula-

Immediate consideration must be given to (1) the development of an integrated social control of our population size and growth, and (2) the impact of a steady stable condition on our society. The scope and complexity of this task requires the attention of a highly professional team whose talents and professional training are equal to the challenge. It is the recommendation of the Council that such a team be brought together and charged with the prompt development of the details of this program and reporting back to the Council.

Approved by the Population Subcommittee, March 30, 1971.

Present: Dr. C.T. Black, Mr. Robert Boatman, Professor William Cooper, Dr. Ralph MacMullan, and M.S. Reisen, M.D., Chairman.

Surely it is no coincidence that the above-mentioned Michigan and U.S. Senate recommended policies on population control were being discussed at the same time (1971) that the United States was engaged in "Ping Pong" diplomacy with Communist China, the international leader in mandatory population control. Some excerpts follow from "The Ping Heard Round the World" which appeared in the April 26, 1971 issue of Time magazine:

Dressed in an austere gray tunic, Premier Chou En-Lai moved along a line of respectfully silent visitors in Peking’s massive Great Hall of the People.... Finally he stopped to chat with the 15-member U.S. team and three accompanying American reporters, the first group of U.S. citizens and journalists to visit China in nearly a quarter of a century. "We have opened a new page in the relations of the Chinese and American people," he told the U.S. visitors.

...Yet in last week’s gestures to the United States table tennis team, the Chinese were clearly indicating that a new era could begin. They carefully made their approaches through private U.S. citizens, but they were responding to earlier signals that had been sent by the Nixon Administration over the past two years.

...Probably never before in history has a sport been used so effectively as a tool of international diplomacy.

[Ed. Note: Back to family planning, Michigan-style. Population and Family Planning in the People’s Republic of China, 1971, a book published by the Victor-Bostrom Fund and the Populaion Crisis Committee, has a table of contents that includes: "A Letter from Peking" by Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China; "Family Planning in China" by Han Suyin, M.D.; and "Why Not Adopt China’s Population Goals?" In other words, it looks like Ping Pong Diplomacy may have been used to open up the dialogue between Communist China and "private" American groups supporting population control. These would, in turn, lobby in Congress for more liberal family planning policies and for the legalization of abortion as recommended in the U.S. Senate Journal Resolution #214 and the Michigan paper. Here again, as was the case with the 1985 Carnegie Corporation-Soviet Academy of Sciences education agreement, diplomacy is being conducted by private parties: table tennis teams and groups such as the non-profit Victor-Bostrom Fund and the Population Crisis Committee.]

PERFORMANCE-BASED TEACHER EDUCATION: WHAT IS THE STATE OF THE ART? BY STANLEY Elam, editor of Phi Delta Kappa Publications (AACTE Committee on Performance-Based Teacher 105

Education, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education: Washington, D.C., 1971), was published. This paper was originally prepared in 1971 pursuant to a contract with the U.S. Office of Education through the Texas Education Agency, Austin, Texas. Excerpts follow:

The Association is pleased to offer to the teacher education community the Committee’s first state of the art paper.... In performance-based programs... he [the teacher] is held accountable, not for passing grades, but for attaining a given level of competency in performing the essential tasks of teaching.... Acceptance of this basic principle has program implications that are truly revolutionary.

The claim that teacher education programs were not producing people equipped to teach minority group children and youth effectively has pointed directly to the need for reform in teacher education.... Moreover, the claim of minority group youth that there should be lternative routes to professional status has raised serious questions about the suitability of generally recognized teacher education programs.

[Ed. Note: The above paper was one of the first—and perhaps the most influential—professional papers setting the stage for full-blown implementation of Skinnerian outcome-based/ performance-based education. The definitions, criteria, assessment, etc., are identical to those found in present professional OBE literature. (See Appendix VII for fuller excerpts from this paper.)]

CONCERN REGARDING THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA IS NOT CONFINED TO this author according to an article entitled "Young People Are Getting Dumber," by David Hawkins, editorial staff writer, in the August 26, 1971 issue of The Dallas Morning News. Excerpts from this interesting article, which discusses the importance of acquiring a large vocabulary, follow:

John Gaston, who bosses the Fort Worth branch of the Human Engineering Laboratory (half his clients are from Dallas), dropped a bomb on me as we discussed aptitude testing.

"Do you know," he said, "that the present generation knows less than its parents?"

"You mean to say that young people aren’t smarter than we are—that all we’ve heard about this generation being the last and best isn’t so?"

Gaston nodded solemnly: "Young people know fewer words than their fathers. That makes them know less." He fixed me with a foreboding eye: "Can you imagine what a drop in knowledge of 1 per cent a year for 30 years could do to our civilization?"

The question answered itself. And though I could hardly believe what Gaston was saying, I knew it wasn’t instant sociology.

What he says is based on hundreds of thousands of tests given in several parts of the country since 1922 by what is probably the most prestigious non-profit outfit in the field of vocational research. The Human Engineers don’t even advertise.

But Gaston wasn’t through: "We also believe," he was saying, "that the recent rise in iolence correlates with the drop in vocabulary. Long [range] testing has convinced us that crime and violence predominate among people who score low in vocabulary. If they can’t express themselves with their tongues, they’ll use their fists."

"We test many gifted people who are low in vocabulary and we tell them all—we tell the world—to learn the words. Swallow the dictionary. Brilliant aptitudes aren’t worth much without words to give them wings."

Gaston paused and then dropped another bomb. "The one thing successful people have in common isn’t high aptitudes—it’s high vocabulary, and it’s within everybody’s reach. uccess actually correlates more with vocabulary than with the gifts we’re born with."

"Aptitudes will only show them which road to take. Vocabulary will determine how high they climb. Right now, the present generation is headed downwards."

SOME IMPORTANT STATEMENTS BY PROFESSOR JOHN I. GOODLAD, PRESIDENT OF EDUCAtional Inquiry,  Incorporated, appeared in A Report to the President’s Commission on School Finance (Schooling for the Future: Toward Quality and Equality in American Precollegiate Education) October 15, 1971. Goodlad makes the following comments under "Issue #9—Educational Innovation:

What changes in purposes, procedures or institutional arrangements are needed to improve the quality of American elementary and secondary education?":

The literature on how we socialize or develop normative behavior in our children and the populace in general is fairly dismal.... [T]he majority of our youth still hold the same values as their parents.... In the second paradigm... the suggestion is made that there are different targets for the change agent. For example, in a social system such as a school probably five to fifteen percent of the people are open to change. They are the "early majority" and can be counted on to be supportive. A second group, sixty to ninety percent, are the resisters. They need special attention and careful strategies need to be employed with them. Also, there are the leaders, formal and informal, and their support is critical. In his research, for example, Demeter noted some time ago the special role of the school principal in innovation:

Building principals are key figures in the (innovation) process. Where they are both aware of and sympathetic to an innovation, it tends to prosper. Where they are ignorant of its existence, or apathetic if not hostile, it tends to remain outside the bloodstream of the school.

Few people think in these ways today. Rather, as a people, we tend to rely upon common sense or what might be called conventional wisdom as we make significant decisions which, in turn, seriously affect our lives.... More often than not, school board members, parents and the public make important decisions about what should happen in their schools based upon these past experiences or other conventional wisdom.... The use of conventional wisdom as a basis for decision-making is a major impediment to educational improvement....

The child of suburbia is likely to be a materialist and somewhat of a hypocrite. He tends to be a striver in school, a conformist, and above all a believer in being "nice," polite, clean and tidy. He divides Humanity into the black and white, the Jew and the Christian, the rich and the poor, the "smart" and the "dumb." He is often conspicuously self-centered. In all these respects, the suburban child patterns his attitudes after those of his parents.... If we do not alter this pattern, if we do not resocialize ourselves to accept and plan for change, our society may decay. What may be left in the not too distant future is what other formerly great societies have had, reflections on past glories....

In the social interaction model of change, the assumption is made that the change agent is the decision-maker about the innovation. That is, it is assumed that he decides what the adopter will change to. This is a serious problem for two very good reasons. First, as we have shown, people cannot be forced to change until they are psychologically ready.

Thus, at every stage, each individual is, in fact, deciding how far he is ready or willing to move, if at all.

[Ed. Note: As a former school board member, this writer can relate to the above quote. Principals who resisted innovation eventually ended up being forced out of the system undergoing radical change. Their trials and tribulations were known only to them, and what they underwent during the change agents’ activities in their schools could be described as inhumane treatment.]

THE TRI-COUNTY K–12 COURSE GOAL PROJECT, THE RESULTS OF WHICH WERE LATER PUBlished by the Northwest Regional Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Education and used extensively throughout the nation as the formulaic sample for "goals setting," was initiated in 1971. In the appendix entitled "Classification System for the School Curriculum" for her Practitioner’s Implementation Handbook [series]: The Outcome-Based Curriculum (Outcome Associates:

Princeton, N.J., 1992), Charlotte Danielson, M.A., a prominent educator and proponent of outcome-based education, said: "The knowledge and inquiry and problem-solving skills sections of this taxonomy were first developed by the Tri-County Goal Development Project, Portland, Oregon."3 Assistant superintendent Victor W. Doherty, Evaluation Department of the Portland Public Schools in Portland, Oregon, in a November 2, 1981 letter to Mrs. Opal Moore, described this Goal Development Project as follows:

The Tri-County Goal Development Project was initiated by me in 1971 in an effort to develop a resource for arriving at well-defined learning outcome statements for use in curriculum planning and evaluation. At that time the only language available was the behavioral objective, a statement which combined a performance specification with a learning outcome often in such a way as to conceal the real learning that was being sought. By freeing the learning outcome statements from performance specification and by defining learning outcomes of three distinctly different types (information, process skills, and values), we were able to produce outcome statements that served both the planning and evaluation functions.

The project was organized to include 55 school districts in Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington Counties and writing was done initially by teachers whose time was donated to the project by member districts.

[Ed. Note: The writer believes that this very controversial project which provided the goals framework for OBE was illegal—in clear violation of the 1970 GEPA prohibition against federal government involvement in curriculum development.]

1972

THE NEWPORT HARBOR ENSIGN OF CORONA DEL MAR, CALIFORNIA CARRIED AN ARTICLE entitled "Teachers Are Recycled" in its January 20, 1972 issue. The following are excerpts from this important article:

Education in California is finally going to catch up with the "innovative" Newport-Mesa Unified School District. With the passage of the Stull Bill, AB 293, all school districts are mandated to evaluate their classroom teachers and certificated personnel through new guidelines. Another portion of the bill will allow a district to dismiss a teacher with tenure, without going to court.

A teacher will no longer have the prerogative of having his own "style" of teaching, The Serious Seventies : c. 1972 108 because he will be held "accountable" to uniform expected student progress. His job will depend on how well he can produce "intended" behavioral changes in students.

"School districts just haven’t had time to tool up for it," explained Dr. William Cunningham, Executive Director of the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA).

Until recently, he was superintendent of the Newport-Mesa district.

The Newport-Mesa district, under the guidance of Dr. Cunningham, accomplished this task years ago. In fact we have warned of this appraisal plan in many of our columns throughout the past 2 years. Its formal name is "staff performance appraisal plan," at least in this district, and was formulated as early as 1967.

In 1968 five elementary schools in our district (California, Mariners, Presidio, Victoria, Monte Vista) and one high school (Estancia) were selected from schools that volunteered for the project. They were accepted on the basis that at least 60% of the teachers were willing to participate in the "in-service training sessions" and to "apply" the assessment processes learned at these sessions in their own classroom situations. A total of 88 teachers participated in all aspects of the pilot study....

FORMAL TRAINING SESSIONS: participants attended two 2–1/2 hour sessions to acquire the prerequisite tools. Evidence was collected to show that by the end of the final training session, 80% of the participants had acquired a minimal level of ability to apply these competencies.

PREREQUISITE TOOLS: Teachers learning how to identify or diagnose strengths and weaknesses, learning to write and use behavioral objectives, learning new teaching techniques and procedures, etc. Teachers learn these through workshops and in-service training, having acquired these skills, teachers had to go through the "appraisal" technique.

APPRAISAL TECHNIQUE: During the observation phase, observation teams composed of teacher colleagues and a resource person from UCLA or the District collected data regarding the execution of the previously planned lessons. The observation team recorded both the verbal behavior of pupils and teacher (e.g., teacher questions and pupil responses) and non-verbal behavior which could be objectively described....

What all this amounts to is "peer group" analysis. Group dynamics would be the term used in other circles. To be more blunt, others would call it sensitivity training in its purest form—role-playing, to say the least....

The teacher must cooperate and learn the new methods of teaching, writing behavioral objectives, playing psychologist.

THE NEW YORK TIMES CARRIED A LENGTHY FRONT PAGE ARTICLE ON APRIL 30, 1972 BY William K. Stevens entitled "The Social Studies: A Revolution Is on—New Approach Is Questioning,

Skeptical—Students Examine Various Cultures." This article explained the early history of the twenty-six-year controversy which has raged across the United States between those desiring education for a global society versus those desiring education in American History and Western Civilization; i.e., the question of "social studies" versus traditional history, and "process" education versus fact-based education. Excerpts follow:

When C. Frederick Risinger started teaching American History at Lake Park High School near Chicago, he operated just about as teachers had for generations. He drilled students on names and dates. He talked a lot about kings and presidents. And he worked from a standard text whose patriotic theme held that the United States was "founded on the highest principles that men of good will and common sense have been able to put into practice."

That was ten years ago, but it might as well be 50. For the social studies curriculum at Lake Park has changed almost beyond recognition. The 32-year-old Mr. Risinger, now head of the department, has abandoned the traditional text and set his students to analyzing all revolutions, not just the American, and from all points of view, including the British one that George Washington was both a traitor and an inept general.

AN ARTICLE ENTITLED "PEOPLE CONTROL BLUEPRINT" BY CAROL DENTON WAS PUBLISHED in the May, 1972 issue (Vol. 3, No. 12) of The National Educator (Fullerton, CA).

Recommendations made in the top secret paper discussed in this article echo those mentioned in the April 6, 1971 Michigan Governor’s Advisory Council on Population paper. Excerpts follow:

A "Top Secret" paper from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, now in the hands of The National Educator, reveals a plan for total control of the people of the United States through behavioral modification techniques of B.F. Skinner, the controversial behaviorist author of Beyond Freedom and Dignity....

According to the "Dialogue Discussion Paper," marked "Top Secret" across the bottom of the cover page, a conference was held at the Center on January 17 through 19, 1972, at which time a discussion on "The Social and Philosophical Implications of Behavior Modification" was held. The paper in question is the one prepared [by] four individuals for presentation at that conference entitled "Controlled Environment for Social Change." The authors are Vitali Rozynko, Kenneth Swift, Josephine Swift and Larney J. Boggs....

The second page of the paper carries the inscription, "To B.F. Skinner and James G. Holland."... Page 3 of the paper states that the "Top Secret" document was prepared on December 31, 1971....

The authors of this tome are senior staff members of the Operant Behavior Modification Project located at Mendocino State Hospital in California and the project is partially supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse....

On page 5 of this blueprint for totalitarianism, the authors state that "we are presently concerned with controlling upheavals and anarchic behavior associated with social change and discontent."... The authors go on to say that they believe an "Orwellian world" is more likely under presently developing society than under the kind of rigorous controls of a society envisioned by Skinner....

On page 6, the authors deplore the growing demands for "law and order," stating that the population is now more apt to support governmental repression than previously, in response to "their own fears."...

They add that "with the rising population, depletion of natural resources, and the increase of pollution, repressive measures may have to be used to guarantee survival of our species. These measures may take the form of forced sterilization, greatly restricted uses of energy and limits on population movement and living location."...

Skinner, on the other hand, they allege—"advocates more sophisticated controls over the population, since punishment (by the government) for the most part works only temporarily and only while the punishing agent is present."...

On the other hand, the authors allege, operant conditioning (sensitivity training) and other behavioral techniques can be used to control the population through "positive reinforcement."

MARY THOMPSON, SECRETARY AND MEMBER OF THE SPEAKERS’ BUREAU OF THE SANTA CLARA, California Republican Women’s Federation, gave a very important speech regarding Planning,

Programming, Budgeting Systems (PPBS) on June 11, 1972. Following are key excerpts:

When I was first asked to speak to you about PPBS (Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems), I inquired whether it was to be addressed to PPBS as applied to education. I shall deal with it at the education level today, however you should remember that PPBS is a tool for implementing the very restructuring of government at all levels in every area of governmental institutions. What is involved is the use of government agencies to accomplish mass behavioral change in every area....

PPBS is a plan being pushed by Federal and State governments to completely change education....

The accountability involved in PPBS means accountability to the state’s predetermined education goals....

One leader of education innovation (Shelly Umans—Management of Education) has called it "A systematic design for education revolution."...

In a systems management of the education process, the child himself is the product.

Note: the child... his feelings, his values, his behavior, as well as his intellectual development....

PPBS is the culmination of the "people planners" dreams....

Then in 1965 the means for accomplishing the actual restructuring of education was provided in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). President Johnson has said that he considered the ESEA the most significant single piece of legislation of his administration. Recall that it was also the same year of 1965 when the presidential order was given to introduce PPBS throughout the entire federal government. 1965 was the year which unleashed the actual restructuring of governmental processes and formally included education as a legitimate Federal government function....

PPBS is the systems management tool made possible by technology of computer hardware to affect the planned change....

In order to make an explanation of PPBS intelligible, you must also know that education itself has been redefined. Simply put, it has become the objective of education to measure and diagnose the child in order to prescribe a program to develop his feelings and emotions, values and loyalties toward predetermined behavioral objectives.... Drawing it right down to basics, we are talking about conditioned responses in human terms. Pavlov experimented on dogs!...

Taking each element of PPBS will show how the process is accomplished. PLANNING —Planning phase (please note that the process involved with a systems approach is always described in terms of "phases") always includes the establishment of goals committees, citizens committees, needs assessment committees.... These are referred to as "community involvement." The committees are always either self appointed or chosen—never elected.

They always include guidance from some trained "change agents" who may be administrators, curriculum personnel or local citizens. Questionnaires and surveys are used to gather data on how the community "feels" and to test community attitudes. The ingeniousness of the process is that everybody thinks he is having a voice in the direction of public schools.

Not so... for Federal change agencies, specifically regional education centers established by ESEA, influence and essentially determine terminology used in the questionnaires and surveys. The change agents at the district level then function to "identify needs and problems for change" as they have been programmed to identify them at the training sessions sponsored by Federal offices such as our Center for Planning and Evaluation in Santa Clara County. That is why the goals are essentially the same in school districts across the country.

It also explains why three years ago every school district was confronted with the Family Life Education issue at the same time....

Unknowing citizens’ committees are used by the process to generate acceptance of goals already determined. What they don’t realize is that professional change agents are operating in the behaviorist’s framework of thought and Mr. or Mrs. Citizen Parent is operating in his traditional education framework of thought. So, the local change agents are able to facilitate a group to a consensus in support of predetermined goals by using familiar, traditional terms which carry the new behaviorist meanings....

Another name for this process is Participatory Democracy, a term by the way, which was coined by Students for a Democratic Society in their Port Huron Manifesto to identify the process for citizen participation in destruction of their own political institutions....

Richard Farson of Western Behavioral Sciences Institute made a report to the Office of Education in Sacramento in 1967. He said it this way:

The application of systems analysis is aided by several phenomena that would be of help in almost any situation of organizational change. First, it is relatively easier to make big changes than to make small ones—and systems changes are almost always big ones.

Because they are big, it is difficult for people to mount resistance to them, for they go beyond the ordinary decision-making, policy-making activities of individual members of an organization. It is far easier to muster argument against a $100 expenditure for partitions than against a complete reorganization of the work flow....

Teachers, you have professional organizations to protect your professional interests. Use them to protect your personal privacy and professional integrity. Encourage organizations of teachers to take positions publicly in opposition to PPBS....

We believe the time has come to establish private schools to keep our children from falling victim to the behaviorists while there is still opportunity to do so. BE AWARE OF THE FACT THAT THE VOUCHER SYSTEM IS LURKING IN THE WINGS TO BRING THE PRIVATE SCHOOLS INTO THE NATIONAL CONTROL [emphasis in original].

THE LEDGER OF TALLAHASSEE FLORIDA ON JULY 27, 1972 IN AN ARTICLE ENTITLED "SCHOOLS to Try New Program" quoted Florida state education officials as saying that a new program being field-tested in Florida will tell teachers and parents not only why Johnny can’t read, but why the school can’t teach him and how much it’s costing to try. Excerpts follow:

"We’re putting all the various components together now," said Associate Education Commissioner Cecil Golden. "What we’re doing should soon become very visible." However, he estimates it will take seven to ten years before the program is completely operational....

Golden says it may sound like a lot of gibberish at this point, but "when we bring it all together" it should produce a more flexible and relevant educational system....

He said many people in the State Department of Education are working independently on various facets and aspects of the program and, like those assembling the atom bomb, "very few of them understand exactly what they are building, and won’t until we put all the parts together."

[Ed. Note: This article refers to PPBS/MBO—the early years. The Atlanta Constitution published an article entitled "Georgia Schools OK Tracking System" in its July 1, 1998 issue which describes later PPBS implementation and which is included in this book’s entry of the same THE DON BELL REPORT OF SEPTEMBER 8, 1972 REPORTED ON A WHITE HOUSE CONFERence on the Industrial World held February 7 of that year. The conference title was "A Look at Business in 1990." Excerpts follow:

As one of the participants in that conference, Roy Ash, President of Litton Industries and Chairman of the President’s Advisory Council on Executive Organization, later appeared before the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce to tell West Coast businessmen what was decided at the White House Conference. The billing for this latter event is impressive reading:

The Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce and the White House Staff, is presenting The White House Conference, The World Ahead: A Look at Business in 1990, Thursday, May 18, 1972. Los Angeles Hilton. 3:00–6:30 p.m.

Following is part of what Roy Ash told his Los Angeles audience:

The answer is that increasing economic and business interdependence among nations is the keynote of the next two decades of world business—decades that will see major steps toward a single world economy....

Some aspects of individual sovereignty will be given over to international authority....

As importantly, international agreements between the socialist and the private property economies add a different dimension to the problems for which solutions need to be found over the years ahead. But as Jean Frere, Managing Partner of Banque Lambert, Brussels, forecasts, the socialist countries will take major steps toward joining the world conomy by 1990. He goes so far as to see them becoming members of the International Monetary Fund, the sine qua non for effective participation in multilateral commerce.

Then also, by 1990 an imaginative variety of contractual arrangements will have been devised and put into operation by which the socialist countries and the private capital countries will be doing considerable business together, neither being required to abandon its base idea....

These powerful factors of production—that is, capital, technology and management —will be fully mobile, neither contained nor containable within national borders....

As a framework for their [multinational corporations] development and application will be the establishment of more effective supranational institutions to deal with intergovernmental matters and matters between governments and world industry. A key intergovernmental institution that needs to work well in a world economy is the International Monetary Fund. The IMF will become, in Robert Roosa’s [Brown Bros. Harriman & Co.] words, the most advanced embodiment of the aspirations that so many have for a world society, a world economy. The IMF, he forecasts for 1990, is going to be the source of all of the primary reserves of all the banking systems of the world....

For, in the final analysis, we are commanded by the fact that the economies of the major countries of the world will be interlocked. And since major economic matters in all countries are also important political matters in and between countries, the inevitable consequence of these propositions is that the broader and total destinies—economic, political, and social—of all the world’s nations are closely interlocked. We are clearly at that point where economic issues and their related effects can be considered only in terms of a total world destiny, not just separate national destinies, and certainly not just a separate go-it-alone destiny for the United States.

"THE FIELD OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY: A STATEMENT OF DEFINITION" BY DONALD P. Ely, editor and chairman of the Definition and Terminology Committee of the Association for Educational Computing and Technology (AECT, a spin-off of the National Education Association), was circulated in October, 1972. In this paper leading specialists in the field of educational technology warn of the potential dangers of computers and the need for ethics in programming. One of the participants in the production of this position paper said: "If it is decided the work will bring about negative ends, the concerned professional refuses to perform it." (See Appendix VIII for fuller excerpts.)

DR. CHESTER M. PIERCE, M.D. OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY WROTE AN ARTICLE ENTITLED "Becoming Planetary Citizens: A Quest for Meaning" which appeared in the November 1972 issue of Childhood Education. Excerpts follow which include alarming recommendations for "education":

Creative Altruism

In the past forty years social science experimentation has shown that by age five children already have a lot of political attitudes. Regardless of economic or social background, almost every kindergartner has a tenacious loyalty to his country and its leader. This phenomenon is understandable in the psychological terms of loyalty to a strong father-figure and of the need for security. But a child can enter kindergarten with the same kind of loyalty to the earth as to his homeland....

Systems Analysis

Children can be taught to integrate knowledge of systems in ever-widening circles. I don’t know how to tell you to do it, but as professionals you will be challenged to find ways. Just because no one yet knows how doesn’t mean it can’t be done....

New Views of Parenting

Another essential curricular decision you will have to make is what to teach a young child about his future role as a man or a woman. A lot will depend on what you know and what your philosophy is about parenting.... Already we are hearing about experiments that are challenging our traditional views of monogamous marriage patterns....

Learning to Relinquish

Finally—perhaps most difficult of all—you will have to teach children how to unlearn, how

to re-learn and how to give up things....

Public Problem Number One

If we truly accept that today’s child must grow [up] to be a cosmopolite and "planetary citizen," we face major problems. How do you get a child to see that the whole world is his province when every day on television he sees people who can’t live next door to their neighbors, who argue about things like busing?... Before the horizon I think the major problem to be solved in America if we are to enable people to grow as super-generalists and "planetary citizens" is the elimination of racism. Paradoxically, both the two chief deterrents and the two chief facilitators to this goal are the public school system and the mass media....

Early childhood specialists have a staggering responsibility but an unrivaled importance in producing "planetary citizens" whose geographic and intellectual provinces are as limitless as their all-embracing humanity.

BRUCE JOYCE AND MARSHA WEIL OF COLUMBIA TEACHERS’ COLLEGE WROTE MODELS OF Teaching (Prentice Hall, Inc.: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972). The book was the product of research funded by the U.S. Office of Education’s Bureau of Research under a contract with Teachers’ College, Columbia University, in 1968. Models of Teaching’s importance lay not only in the fact that the book itself would be used extensively for in-service teacher training in behavior modification, but that the book would serve as the foundation from which Joyce would develop his "Models of Teacher Repertoire Training," which has been used extensively (since the 1970s to the present) in order to change the teacher from a transmitter of knowledge (content) to a facilitator of learning (behavior modifier). Several excerpts from Models of Teaching follow:

Principles of teaching are not conceived as static tenets but as dynamically interactive with social and cognitive purpose, with the learning theory underlying procedures, with available support technology, and with the personal and intellectual characteristics of learning groups. What is emphasized is the wide range of options the teacher may adopt and adapt to his unique situation.

In the preface, which has a subtitle, "We Teach by Creating Environments for Children," Joyce and Weil explain:

In this book we describe models which represent four different "families" of approaches to teaching. Some of the models focus on the individual and the development of his unique personality. Some focus on the human group and represent ways of teaching which emphasize group energy, interpersonal skills, and social commitment. Others represent ways of teaching concepts, modes of inquiry from the disciplines, and methods for increasing intellectual capacity. Still others apply psychological models of operant conditioning to the teaching-

learning process. For the teacher we provide some advice on how to learn the various models based on our experiences in the Preservice Teacher Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. For curriculum and materials designers we include chapters on systematic planning using a variety of models of teaching. For both, we present a system for deciding what approaches to teaching are appropriate for what ends and how models can be selected to match the learning styles of children. (pp. xiii–xiv) Excerpts from the table of contents of Models of Teaching include:

(2) Group Investigation—Democratic Process as a Source. The school is considered as a model of an ideal society. This chapter explores a variety of democratic teaching designed by Herbert Thelen to bring about a new type of social relationship among men.…

(5) The Laboratory Method—The T-Group Model. The National Training Laboratory has developed approaches to train people to cope with change through more effective social relationships. This model is the father of the encounter-group strategies.

(6) Concept Attainment—A Model Developed from a Study of Thinking. This model was developed by the authors from a study of work by Jerome S. Bruner and his associates.

[Bruner will be encountered in a later entry as a developer, along with B.F. Skinner, of the humanistic social studies curriculum, Man: A Course of Study, ed.]

(7) An Inductive Model—A Model Drawn from Conceptions of Mental Processes and General Theory-Building. The late Hilda Taba developed a series of models to improve the inductive thinking ability of children and adults. Her strategies are presented in this chapter.... [In 1957 a California State Senate investigative committee exposed the work of Hilda Taba as harmful to children, ed.]

(12) Non-Directive Teaching—Rogerian Counseling as a Source. From his studies of counseling and therapy, Carl Rogers has developed a flexible model of teaching emphasizing an environment which encourages students to create their own environments for learning.

(13) Classroom Meeting Model—A Model Drawn from a Stance toward Mental Health. Another therapist, [William] Glasser, has also developed a stance toward teaching—one which emphasized methods easily applicable to the classroom situation.... [In 1971 the Citizens Committee of California, Inc., presented "A Bill of Particulars" for the abolition of Dr. William Glasser’s theory from the Orange County Unified School District which stated in part: "Dr. Glasser has developed a method of education which negates a desire to achieve and compete; destroys respect for authority; expounds a ‘situational ethics’ philosophy; and develops group thinking." William Glasser’s philosophy is a component of Outcome-Based Education, ed.]

(15) Awareness Training—A Model to Increase Human Awareness. Gestalt therapists and other humanistic psychologists have focused on strategies for increasing the awareness and sense of possibilities of individuals. A number of models for sensitivity training have been developed by William Schutz.

(16) Operant Conditioning—The pioneering work of B.F. Skinner has been followed by a mass of approaches to teaching and training based on the shaping of learning tasks and use of reinforcement schedules. Several such models are explored here.

(17) A Model for Matching Environments to People—The psychologist David Hunt has  generated a "model of models"—an approach to teaching which suggests how we can match teaching styles to learning styles so as to increase growth toward personal flexibility.

(18) The Models Way of Thinking—An Operational Language. The chapter explores the philosophical and practical implications of a stance toward education and includes a spectrum of models which have different uses for different students.

One finds the following information in chapter 16 under the title "Operant Conditioning":

The person most responsible for applying behavioral principles to education is B.F. Skinner, whose Theory of Operant Conditioning provided the basis for programmed instruction.

The Theory of Operant Conditioning represents the process by which human behavior becomes shaped into certain patterns by external forces. The theory assumes that any process or activity has observable manifestations and can be behaviorally defined, that is, defined in terms of observable behavior. Either or both of the theory’s two major operations, reinforcement and stimulus-control, are emphasized in the educational applications of operant conditioning theory.

Conditioning refers to the process of increasing the probability of occurrence of existing or new behavior in an individual by means of reinforcement. In operant conditioning the response (behavior) operates upon the environment to generate consequences.

The consequences are contingent upon the emission of a response, and they are reinforcing.

For example, the response "Pass the butter" operates upon the environment, another The Serious Seventies : c. 1972 116 person, to obtain the butter. The response is reinforced by the receipt of the butter. In other words, the probability that a future desire for butter will elicit the same response is increased by its initial success.... The stimulus and reinforcement are independent variables upon which the response is dependent. As Skinner phrases it "the stimulus acting prior to the emission of the response, sets the occasion upon which the response is likely to be reinforced."

(1) A stimulus is "any condition, event or change in the environment of an individual which produces a change in behavior." (2) It may be verbal (oral, written) or physical. A response may be defined as a unit of behavior.... According to Skinner, reinforcement must immediately follow a response if it is to be effective. Delayed reinforcement is much less effective in modifying behavior. (pp. 271–273)

An official overview of the "Models of Teacher Repertoire Training" program, made available to the author while working in the U.S. Department of Education, states under "Brief Description of Intervention" the following:

The objective of the intervention is to prepare teachers who can choose from a number of available alternatives the most appropriate strategy to be used with a particular group of students in a particular situation at a particular time. "Most appropriate" refers to the effectiveness of the strategy selected vs. the alternatives in terms of the probability that the students will learn what the teacher has predicted for them. The feasibility of achieving this objective in a clinical, or controlled situation has been long established. This intervention establishes that feasibility in the real world of the elementary and secondary school settings and offers a reliable, cost effective plan to do so.... The models which have been selected for this system are ones for which there is empirical evidence and/or theoretical grounding which supports the probability that students will learn what is predicted from them. Teachers learn to select the models and match them to the objectives they seek.... The families include: (1) Behavior Modification and Cybernetic Models which have evolved from attempts to develop efficient systems for sequencing learning tasks and shaping behavior by manipulating reinforcement.... Clinical analysis guides are useful to provide feedback about performance and to support on-site coaching. In addition to print material there are more than thirty hours of video tapes to support the training system.... The principal criterion of effectiveness rests upon existing empirical evidence that pre-specified changes in teaching behavior will produce predictable changes in pupil performance.

This information suggests that Skinner—and, evidently, Joyce and Weil—believe that man is truly only a response organism with no intrinsic soul or intellect, definitely a product of evolution. During a U.S. Department of Education Joint Dissemination Review Panel meeting at which Bruce Joyce and Jim Stefansen submitted application for funding, some of the participants made the following statements:

JOYCE: "It has been difficult in the past to bring about curriculum change, behavior change. In California we are establishing a network of 100 school districts. New strategies for teaching and exporting programs."

COULSON: "Couldn’t agree more that what you are doing needs to be done. Maybe we are not ready yet to talk about selective use of repertoire. You must gather data supporting selective use of methods."

STEFANSEN: "Primary claim is we do know how to train teachers to make ultimate choices so that when those behaviors take place students are affected. Question is, can you train teachers to accept strategies each of which we know are the better of two or more choices?"

JACKSON: "No question in my mind that Joyce is onto something of great importance.

Problem here has to do with claims of effectiveness rather than evidence of effectiveness.

Relationship between teacher behavior and student achievement."

(UNKNOWN PANEL MEMBER) "There are thousands of investigations to support Skinner strategies."

The following excerpt from the "Models of Teacher Repertoire Training"—which includes most of the highly controversial behavior modification methods in existence—is taken from Models of Teaching by Joyce and was furnished to this writer by the Maine Facilitator Center in Auburn, Maine in 1985.4

(1) Information Processing—how do students acquire and act on information?

Concept Attainment—Jerome Bruner, Goodnow, Austin Inductive Thinking—Hilda Taba Direct Instruction—Benjamin Bloom, Madeline Hunter, James Block and Ethna Reid [How interesting that Joyce identifies the four most influential developers and promoters of Skinnerian "Mastery Learning/Teaching" with "Direct Instruction," which is the method attributed to Siegfried Engelmann and called for in the Reading Excellence Act of 1998, ed.]

(2) Personal Family—How does each person develop his/her unique possibilities?

Nondirective Teaching—Carl Rogers

Synectics—Thomas Gordon

Classroom Meetings—William Glasser

(3) Social Models—How does the individual relate to society or other people?

Jurisprudential Inquiry—Oliver and Shaver

Role Playing—Shaftel, Chesler and Fox

(4) Behavioral Models—How is visible behavior changed?

Training Model

Stress Reduction—Decker

Assertiveness Training—Wolpe, Lazarus

[Ed. Note: The writer has given extensive coverage to Models of Teaching since these teacher behavior modification training programs have been in effect for thirty years and are probably the most inclusive. It includes many, if not all of the controversial methods about which parents complain, if they are lucky enough to find out they are being used. Most parents are unaware of these manipulative methods intended to change their children’s behavior. Considering the prevalence of behavior modification in the schools it is a wonder our schools and our children are not in worse shape than they are. There has obviously been immense teacher and student resistance to this type of manipulation.]

PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON CREATED THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION (NIE) IN 1972.

Serving as a presidential assistant at that time, Chester Finn (who would later be appointed assistant secretary of education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement under The Serious Seventies : c. 1972

Secretary William Bennett in the Reagan administration) was one of the principal authors of Nixon’s proposal for NIE. The December 8, 1982 issue of Education Week contained an  interesting article on the history and purpose of NIE entitled "Success Eludes 10-Year-Old Agency."

An excerpt which pertains to the redefinition of education from academic/content-based to scientific, outcome-/performance-based follows:

"The purpose of a National Institute of Education," said Daniel P. Moynihan who was the agency’s principal advocate in the Nixon Administration, "is to develop the art and science of education to the point that equality of educational opportunity results in a satisfactory equivalence of educational achievement."

For those who have difficulty understanding Daniel Moynihan’s education jargon, "develop the art and science of education to the point that equality of educational opportunity results in a satisfactory equivalence of educational achievement" means that education from that time on would be considered a "science." In other words, with education becoming a "science," behavioral psychology (Pavlov/Skinner) would be used in the classrooms of America in order to equalize results which would be predictable and could be scientifically measured. The teacher and student would be judged not on what they know, but on how they perform—like rats and pigeons—facilitating the "redistribution of brains." Professor James Block, a leader in Skinnerian/mastery learning circles, discussed this redistribution of brains in an article published in Educational Leadership (November 1979) entitled "Mastery Learning: The Current State of the Craft." Block explained that:

One of the striking personal features of mastery learning, for example, is the degree to which it encourages cooperative individualism in student learning as opposed to selfish competition. Just how much room is there left in the world for individualists who are more concerned with their own performance than the performance of others? One of the striking societal features of mastery learning is the degree to which it presses for a society based on the excellence of all participants rather than one based on the excellence of a few. Can any society afford universal excellence, or must all societies make most people incompetent so that a few can be competent?

Returning to the Education Week article referenced above, the story of NIE continued:

Among the serious, continuing obstacles to the Institute’s attainment of its goals, those interviewed for this article cited the following three: Understanding, Funding, and Leadership....

Under "Understanding" one reads: "Because educational research is a relatively young area of social science, it does not enjoy wide respect among scholars, and its relationship to teaching and learning is poorly understood by many of those who work in the schools."

The first director chosen by the current [Reagan] Administration to head the institute, Edward A. Curran, articulated the conservatives’ position in a memorandum to the President last May that called for dismantling the institute. "NIE is based on the premise that education is a science whose progress depends on systematic ‘research and development.’

As a professional educator, I know that this premise is false," wrote Mr. Curran, who was dismissed from the agency shortly thereafter.

[Ed. Note: Ed Curran was the first "shoe to drop"; he would be followed by some of the nation’s finest academic teachers who also held Curran’s view that education is not a science.

Of interest to this writer is the extensive influence NIE’s research has on local classroom practice considering its rather paltry budget. The reason for this lies in the fact that 90% of all education research is federally funded, thus guaranteeing that NIE controls 90% of the national research product—teaching and learning. When the National Institute of Education was finally abolished none of its functions were eliminated since it was subsumed by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

"Equivalence of educational achievement," described by Patrick Moynihan, equals Performance-

Based Education (PBE) and Outcome-Based Education (OBE), which in turn equal a deliberate dumbing down of American teachers and youth—necessary in order to implement the performance-based workforce training agenda planned since the early nineteen hundreds.

Good academic- and content-oriented teachers understand that education is not social science. In 1999 efforts are being made to encourage these good teachers to get out of the way so that teachers trained in performance-based Skinnerian teaching and Total Quality Management can be hired to replace them.]

1973

SCHOOLING IN THE UNITED STATES BY JOHN GOODLAD, M. FRANCES KLEIN, AND JERROLD M. Novotney (Charles F. Kettering Foundation Program: McGraw-Hill Co., New York, 1973) was published. Excerpts follow:

CONDITIONING OR BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION:

Several experimental preschool programs make extensive use of behaviorist theory (now called "operant conditioning" or "behavior modification") as a means of instruction in both the cognitive and socioemotional realms. [Professor Lawrence] Kohlberg notes:

In general, such a program implies a play for shaping the child’s behavior by successive approximation from responses. At every step, immediate feedback or reward is desirable and immediate repetition and elaboration of the correct response is used. A careful detailed programming of learning is required to make sure that (a) each response builds on the preceding, (b) incorrect responses are not made since once made they persist and interfere with correct responses, and (c) feedback and reward are immediate.

The Liverpool Laboratory School at the Research and Development Center in Early Childhood Education at Syracuse University is a program based directly on reinforcement theory.… The school is to determine whether children can learn cognitive skills during the preschool years and to identify techniques which will be successful in bringing about such learning. The program is built around a highly detailed schedule of reinforcement. Skills to be taught are broken down into specific components, each of which is immediately reinforced when it appears correctly. Teachers reinforce in four steps: in the first, raisins or candies are awarded for each correct response; in the second, the candies are replaced by tokens which can be traded for a small prize; the third involves distributing tokens which can be exchanged for more valuable tokens. Two or more of the latter may be traded for a prize. In the fourth step, four valuable tokens are required to receive a prize....

Bereiter and Engelmann [Direct Instruction/DISTAR/Reading Mastery (SRA)] also use operant conditioning in their program. Their reinforcement program contains both verbal and tangible rewards. Weber describes a rapid-fire sequence in language training in which the teacher verbally reinforces each response of the students:

Teacher: What is the same as beautiful?

Children: Pretty.

Teacher: Good. You are so good. If someone is beautiful they are pretty. What is the

opposite of pretty?

Children: Ugly.

Teacher: I’ll have to shake everyone’s hand....

She also speaks of an arithmetic lesson in which the children were given a cracker for each correct response....

Teaching and managing behavior by means of operant conditioning does not appeal to all and raises several moral issues. In the first place, it postulates an image of the learner as passive and receptive and leaves little room for individuality and creative thinking. According to William E. Martin in Rediscovering the Mind of the Child:

A science of behavior emphasizes the importance of environmental manipulation and scheduling and thus the mechanization and routinization of experience. Similarly, it stresses performance in the individual. Doing something, doing it efficiently, doing it automatically —these are the goals. It is the mechanization of man as well as the mechanization of the environment. The result is the triumph of technology: a push button world with well-trained button-pushers. (pp. 40–43)

[Ed. Note: Surely, if American parents understood this dehumanizing method being implemented in the nation’s schools under whatever label—OBE, ML, DI in conjunction with computers —they would see the many dangers to their children. One of those dangers being that after twelve years of rewards for correct answers, will their children ever have the courage or be motivated to do anything on their own—to take a stand when what is left of their "principles" is challenged? If this method is implemented in all schools of the nation, and I mean ALL—public, private, religious and home school (in many cases due to the use of computers or "Skinner’s box") as is happening right now—our nation will become a nation of robotic drones responding to whomever wishes to control them for whatever purpose.]

RONALD G. HAVELOCK’S THE CHANGE AGENT’S GUIDE TO INNOVATION IN EDUCATION WAS published (Educational Technology Publishing: Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1973). This Guide, which contains authentic case studies on how to sneak in controversial curricula and teaching strategies, or get them adopted by naïve school boards, is the educator’s bible for bringing about change in our children’s values. Havelock’s Guide was funded by the U.S. Office of Education and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and has continued to receive funding well into the 1980s. It has been republished in a second edition in 1995 by the same publishers.

[Ed. Note: Why is it that the change agents’ plans and their tools to "transform" our educational system never change, while parents and teachers are told, repeatedly, that they must be ready and willing to change?]

FOUNDATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH, SECOND EDITION BY FRED N. KERLINGER OF New York University (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.: New York, 1973) was published. Describing the purpose of writing this textbook, Dr. Kerlinger wrote in his preface:

The writing of this book has been strongly influenced by the book’s major purpose: to help students understand the fundamental nature of the scientific approach to problem solution....

All else is subordinate to this. Thus the book, as its name indicates, strongly emphasizes the fundamentals or foundations of behavioral research [emphasis in original].

To accomplish the major purpose indicated above, the book... is a treatise on scientific research; it is limited to what is generally accepted as the scientific approach.

Kerlinger’s treatise on scientific research, from which the writer quotes, would have been strengthened considerably had he included the following description of Wilhelm Wundt’s theory:5

A thing made sense and was worth pursuing if it could be measured, quantified, and scientific cally demonstrated. Seeing there was no way to do this with the human soul, he proposed that psychology concern itself solely with experience.

Hence, behavioral psychology and scientific research were born. With such a heavy emphasis on quantifiable, measurable, and scientifically demonstrable performance as a base for psychological research, the writer felt it important to use an instructive text which would help the reader understand the complexities of what is known as "the scientific method," since it is being so widely proclaimed as the be-all and end-all of educational curriculum development and methodology today. Fred Kerlinger states in his Foundations of Behavioral Research textbook that:

Scientific research is a systematic, controlled, empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical propositions about... the presumed relations among natural phenomena.... If such and such occurs, then so-and-so-results....

The scientist... systematically builds his theoretical structures, tests them for internal consistency, and subjects aspects of them to empirical test. Second, the scientist systematically and empirically tests his theories and hypotheses.

These statements lead one to believe that the true scientific method so often employed by scientists dealing with experimental material which can be replicated and tested is being employed by behavioral psychologists. However, the following quotes from Kerlinger’s textbook will quickly dispel this misconception:

Many people think that science is basically a fact-gathering activity. It is not. As M. Cohen says:

There is... no genuine progress in scientific insight through the Baconian method of accumulating empirical facts without hypotheses or anticipation of nature. Without some guiding idea we do not know what facts to gather... we cannot determine what is relevant and what is irrelevant. [From A Preface to Logic (Meridian: New York, 1956) by M. Cohen.]

The scientifically uninformed person often has the idea that the scientist is a highly objective individual who gathers data without preconceived ideas. Poincare pointed out how wrong this idea is. He said:

It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is mpossible. Not only would it make every experiment fruitless, but even if we wished to do so, it could not be done. [From Science and Hypothesis (Dover: New York, N.Y., 1952) by H. Poincare.] (p. 16)

In other words, if we as parents and citizens believe that the same "scientific, research based" standards applied to research in education and psychology are those applied to medicine,

geology, or engineering, we are sadly mistaken. If we believe that objective criteria are employed when evaluating educational curriculum or behavioral analysis, we are likewise mistaken. Therefore, when presented with proposals in academic curricula that purport to be founded in "scientific, research-based" evaluation, we should take them with a grain of salt!

For instance, Kerlinger, as a psychological researcher, wrote about "Science and Common Sense":

Common sense may often be a bad master for the evaluation of knowledge…. [One] view would say that science is a systematic and controlled extension of common sense, since common sense, as [J.] Conant points out, is a series of concepts and conceptual schemes satisfactory for the practical uses of mankind. But these concepts and conceptual schemes may be seriously misleading in modern science—and particularly in psychology and education.

It was self-evident to many educators of the last century... to use punishment as a basic tool of pedagogy. Now we have evidence that this older common sense view of motivation may be quite erroneous. Reward seems more effective than punishment in aiding learning.

The reader by now may recognize the fact that B.F. Skinner’s behavioral theories have conclusively influenced psychological and educational theory, based on the last statement above—the fact that "rewards are more effective than punishment in aiding learning." This is vintage Skinner, who also did not believe in punishment. Skinner thought that a person could be controlled by the environment—psychologically facilitative "school climate"—to do what is best for him. Bad behavior should be ignored, according to Skinner. Good behavior should be rewarded. A very good method of dog training!

Kerlinger went on to point out that:

A final difference between common sense and science lies in explanations of observed phenomena.

The scientist, when attempting to explain the relations among observed phenomena, carefully rules out what have been called "metaphysical explanations." A metaphysical explanation is simply a proposition that cannot be tested. To say, for example, that people are poor and starving because God wills it, that studying hard subjects improves the child’s moral character, or that it is wrong to be authoritarian in the classroom is to talk metaphysics.

The New World Dictionary (Merriam Webster: New York, 1979) defines "metaphysics" as follows: "the branch of philosophy that deals with first principles and seeks to explain the nature of knowledge, nature of being or reality; metaphysical; beyond the physical or material; incorporeal, supernatural, transcendental." Most parents and even teachers are very well acquainted with what behavioral scientists call "metaphysics" in this context. The fact that behavioral researchers discount this important aspect of man’s personality and being is  consistent with what this writer perceived when gathering the research for this book—particularly in the chapter entitled "The Fomentation of the Forties and Fifties" when Kinsey, Bloom and Skinner brought together the powerful tools for the deconstruction of the God-fearing, educated man of the early twentieth century. There is no place for this brand of "science" when dealing with educational theories and methods which will influence forever the character and concept of man.

The bottom line for understanding this conflict between science and psychology is that the application of statistical methods to human behavior in the name of science is misdirected and inappropriate. When we measure natural phenomena, we get results that will vary depending upon the environmental factors affecting the thing being measured. For example, we can measure the speed at which a rock falls from a certain height. Although the rock’s speed may be affected by external factors, such as air resistance, there is nothing the rock can do, no decision it can make that will change the speed at which it falls. However, when we attempt to measure a person’s attitudes or opinions, that person can change his or her attitude, opinion, or belief at any time—often because of a conscious, deliberate decision to do so, as an act of will. Such deliberate assertion of a person’s will is extremely difficult, if not impossible to measure.

The social "sciences" and psychology have long yearned for the respectability of scientific disciplines, and have touted themselves as science for many decades. However, both fields emerged from the same humanistic cesspools of the last century. In discussing the shift to modern "naturalistic" or "materialistic" science, the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer warned:

When psychology and social science were made a part of a closed cause-and-effect system, along with physics, astronomy and chemistry, it was not only God who died. Man died. And within this framework love died. There is no place for love in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. There is no place for morals in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. There is no place for the freedom of people in a totally closed cause-and-effect system. Man becomes a zero. People and all they do become only a part of the machinery.6

1974

THE NATIONAL DIFFUSION NETWORK (NDN), THE TRANSMISSION BELT FOR FEDERALLY FUNDED and developed innovative and/or behavior modification programs, was established in 1974. This network, which bears much of the blame for the dilution of absolute values of those children and parents exposed to NDN programs from the mid-seventies to the present, was created to facilitate the adoption by local schools of innovative programs which had been approved by the Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP), a federal panel of educators.

Most, if not all, states received funding from the U.S. Department of Education to set up Facilitator Centers staffed by educators familiar with NDN programs. These individuals who had contacts in school districts throughout the individual states promoted the programs and arranged for the "developers," or other staff associated with the program, to visit the state to conduct in-service training at schools which had adopted the programs.

Often these programs were described in benign NDN program terms and flew under the banner of "basic skills." Local school boards accepted them since they were subsidized and less expensive to implement than programs developed by private sector textbook companies.

The NDN’s penetration of the national educational landscape in the early 1980s is exemplified by the fact that Texas alone had approximately seventeen NDN offices which facilitated the adoption of programs. The State of Maine received some sort of "gold medal" for being the number one state in its number of program adoptions.

There is no question that the National Diffusion Network programs have caused more controversy among parents than any other programs developed with federal funds. The  regional hearings held by the U.S. Department of Education in 1984 to take testimony from citizens regarding the need for regulations to enforce the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) consisted of emotional and angry testimony from teachers and parents regarding the value destroying programs in the NDN. The two most destructive programs developed prior to 1984 were Curriculum for Meeting Modern Problems, which contained The New Model Me for the high school level, and Positive Attitude toward Learning. Both of these curricula employed behavior modification techniques, values clarification, role playing and, specifically, such games as "The Survival Game"—sometimes known as "The Lifeboat Game"—where students were enlisted to decide who is worthy of survival in a shipwreck: the priest, the lawyer, the pregnant mother, angry teenager, etc.—pure humanistic curricula.7

[Ed. Note: Critiques of many of the most controversial NDN programs can be found in the testimonies given during the hearings for proposed regulations for the Hatch Amendment in 1984 contained in Child Abuse in the Classroom edited by Phyllis Schlafly (Pere Marquette Press: Alton, Illinois, 1984).8 Mrs. Schlafly took it upon herself to publish these important testimonies due to the U.S. Department of Education’s unwillingness to do so. As late as 1994 the NDN continued to list The New Model Me as an "exemplary program" in its Educational

Programs that Work, the catalog of the National Diffusion Network.9 Such blatant continuation of programs designed to destroy children’s values, no matter which administration is in office, is shocking.]

A PERFORMANCE ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM FOR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS (PARKER PUBlishing Co., Inc.: West Nyack, N.Y., 1974) by T.H. Bell, Ph.D., was published. T.H. Bell later served as secretary of education during President Ronald Reagan’s first term in office, 1981–1985.

Excerpts from Bell’s book follow:

USE OF TESTS IN NEEDS ASSESSMENT:

The economic, sociological, psychological and physical aspects of students must be taken into account as we look at their educational needs and accomplishments, and fortunately there are a number of attitude and inventory scales that can be used to assess these admittedly difficult to measure outcomes. (pp. 33–34)

Most of these efforts to manage education try to center in one place an information center that receives reports and makes available to all members of the management team various types of information useful to managers. (p. 45)

[Ed. Note: There is no question in this writer’s mind that this one man bears much of the responsibility for the deliberate dumbing down of our schools. He set the stage for outcome based education through his early support for systems management—Management by Objectives and Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems. These systems later evolved into full-blown Total Quality Management for education, having gone through the initial stage of Professor Benjamin Bloom’s Mastery Learning and ending up in 1984 as William Spady’s Transformational OBE. Outcome-Based or results/performance/competency-based education requires mastery learning, direct instruction, individualized instruction, systems management and computer technology.

Bell’s earlier activities in the 1970s as U.S. Commissioner of Education, including his role in promoting and supporting dumbed-down life role competencies for K–12 (see 1975 Adult Performance Level Study and the 1983 Delker article) and his testimony before the U.S. Congress in favor of a U.S. Department of Education, should have kept his name off of any list of potential nominees presented to President Reagan. Concerns regarding this nomination expressed by Reagan supporters were proved well-founded when: Bell spearheaded the technology initiative in 1981 (see Project BEST, Better Education Skills Through Technology); funded in 1984 William Spady’s infamous Far West Laboratory (Utah OBE) grant which promised to (and did!) put OBE "in all schools of the nation"; predicted that schools would be bookless by the year 2000; recommended that all students have computers; and fired Edward Curran, the director of the National Institute of Education, when Curran recommended to President Reagan that his office (the NIE) be abolished.

According to a former member of the Utah Education Association who was a close friend of Bell’s in the 1970s, had the Senate Committee that confirmed T.H. Bell as secretary of education read Bell’s book, A Performance Accountability System for School Administrators, it is unlikely he would have been confirmed. (See Appendix IX quotes from Bell’s book.)]

"PARENTS FEAR ‘BIG BROTHER’ ASPECT OF NEW CONCEPT" BY MONICA LANZA WAS WRITten for the Passaic, New Jersey The Herald News on March 20, 1974. Excerpts follow from the first of a two-part series:

Questioning the purpose of modern educational goals by parents has brought to light the possibility that a new curriculum ultimately could force all school children to fit a preconceived mold or norm by computerized evaluation [emphasis in original]. And, students who don’t could be branded misfits and sent to a school psychologist for therapy. The threat, they say, is in the form of a bill before the state legislature that would take effect July 1, if passed. This bill would provide for two new Educational Improvement Centers in New Jersey, bringing the total of such centers in the state to four. The centers are currently being used by the federal government to reach the grass-roots level through its Elementary and Secondary Education Act.... Under the stated aim of developing "critical thinking skills" in children, the centers, as agents for the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System (PPBS), have been charged with using behavior modification and sensitivity training to develop those skills....

At the Cedar Knolls center in Morris County, Joseph T. Pascarelli, program developer, recently conducted a workshop which was attended by a number of teachers who reviewed one method of sensitivity training, known as the "Who Shall Survive" game.9 Participants in the game are given the sexes, backgrounds and capabilities of 15 people in a bomb shelter that supports only seven people, and are asked to decide which seven are the best equipped to re-populate the earth. The answer that none should be put to death is not accepted. This type of training, according to opponents, changes the values of the students who may have been taught at home that murder is wrong under all circumstances.

From the second article in the series, "Teachers Taught to Be ‘Agents of Social Change,’" the reader is informed that:

Educational Improvement Centers (EICs) provide training to prepare teachers to become agents for social change....

A publication entitled Education: From the Acquisition of Knowledge to Programmed  Conditioned Response states: "Teachers who are seemingly impervious to change will be sought out and trained on an individual basis, and forces which block the adoption of new ideas will be identified and ways to overcome these forces will be explored."…

Behavior modification was the theme of a learning center at a workshop at the Northwestern New Jersey EIC recently. A teacher rattled off the three domains of behavior modification as propounded by a Benjamin Bloom, who more than a dozen years ago, redefined the purpose of education as "behavior modification."....

The multitude of programs available is mind-boggling. Programs filter down from entities like the Educational Resource Information Center [ERIC] and are presented to local school systems with a flourish. They are praised by gullible administrators and put into action by unwitting teachers....

One of the reasons for their current success is that the language used in the presentation of new programs is almost unintelligible. There are teachers who will admit to not understanding the jargon, but not publicly—and those who do see underlying dangers say nothing for fear of losing their jobs....

The father of the myriad federally financed programs is "Projects to Advance Creativity in Education" (PACE). The PACE programs are described in a 584–page publication entitled Pacesetters in Innovation which lists such "subjects" as psychotherapy, sensitivity training, behavior modification, and humanistic curriculum....

According to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) Catalog of Assistance, the PACE program reached seven million children during 1971 and 1972 at a cost of $250 million. The Office of Education has more than 100 such programs, and HEW funded 70,000 behavioral research programs—some among prison inmates which were soundly criticized and are being withdrawn from the prison system....

Mr. Thomas Hamill of the EIC Northwest, said that funds for "specific kinds of research and development" are channeled to 16 national laboratories attached to colleges and universities, a dozen national laboratories studying "individually prescribed instruction," and a number of Educational Resource Information Centers, for delivery to the EIC’s.

[Ed. Note: Whenever and wherever individualized education is mentioned in professional educational literature, parents should realize that Mastery Learning/OBE/DI is the required instructional method. Homegrown individualized instruction, non-programmed kitchen table type instruction, with a parent instructing his/her child using traditional textbooks and tests, is not the same thing as institutionalized individualized instruction with its programmed, computer-assisted instruction or programmed reading from a script, which often provides immediate reinforcement with tokens, candy—rewards. Also of interest is the fact that prison inmates are protected from subjection to behavior modification techniques and workers in government offices are protected from subjection to training programs which are violations of their religious liberties, but prohibition of the use of behavior modification techniques on normal, American school children is non-existent. (See 1988 Clarence Thomas, chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and present U.S. Supreme Court Justice, ruling concerning employment protection.)]

IN 1974 INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS AND THE FEDERAL ROLE IN BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION: REPORT of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights from the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate,

Washington, D.C. was prepared under the chairmanship of North Carolina’s late Senator Sam Ervin, who, unfortunately, was unable to continue his work on this important issue due to his being called to serve as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee investigating the Watergate break-in. Ervin stated in the preface to the report:

[T]echnology has begun to develop new methods of behavior control capable of altering not just an individual’s actions but his very personality and manner of thinking as well. Because it affects the ability of the individual to think for himself, the behavioral technology being developed in the United States today touches upon the most basic sources of individuality, and the very core of personal freedom. To my mind, the most serious threat posed by the technology of behavior modification is the power this technology gives one man to impose his views and values on another. In our democratic society, values such as political and religious preferences are expressly left to individual choice. If our society is to remain free, one man must not be empowered to change another man’s personality and dictate the values, thoughts and feelings of another.

IN 1974 A CURRICULUM FOR PERSONALIZED EDUCATION BY ROBERT SCANLON, FORMER Pennsylvania Secretary of Education, was published by one of the U.S. Department of Education research laboratories, Research for Better Schools in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Predicting the future,

Scanlon stated:

The emphasis in schools in 1985 will be to free the individual from subject matter as bodies of knowledge and provide him or her with higher order skills.... One type is values clarification N A SPEECH GIVEN TO AND RECORDED BY THE ASSOCIATION FOR SUPERVISION AND  CURriculum Development in 1974,10 Dr. Leon Lessinger, superintendent of schools in Beverly Hills, California and former associate commissioner of education in the U.S. Office of Education, called for the implementation of Skinnerian behavior modification and discussed environmental influence when he said:

Would that we had such a system; a system of accountability. Do we have a hog cholera vaccine? Three ingredients of such a vaccine:

1. Target the experience in terms of outcomes;

2. Self-paced learning. We have the technology now. Modules. Small groups working on common learning targets. Free learner from having to be there always in front of teacher. If we know the target, we can do beautifully if we know the target.

3. Use of contingency rewards. May make you feel uncomfortable. Does me, but he who shirks this responsibility does a disservice to the children of the United States. Behavior Modification is here. Better for us to master and use wisely. Powerful ... powerful... powerful.

Carolina Inn exists right across from my school. In the restaurant, rug is red; in the bar, rug is orange. I know that because I happen to pass by!… Red in the restaurant—because The Serious Seventies : c. 1974 128 you feel uncomfortable and it keeps you from dillydallying around dinner. Ah, but in the bar, it’s [warm, comfortable] orange!

MAN, EDUCATION & SOCIETY IN THE YEAR 2000, WRITTEN BY GRANT VENN, DIRECTOR OF the Chief State School Officers Institute and professor of education at Georgia State University, was a report or summary of discussions which took place at the Fifth Annual Chief State School Officers Institute at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, July 25–August 2, 1974. The report of the Institute was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education in cooperation with the Council of Chief State School Officers, funded by the Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. There is a notation on the back cover which states: "The availability of this report is limited. A single copy may be obtained free on request to the U.S. Office of Education as long as the supply lasts." Dr. Venn’s best known publications are Man, Education and Work (1963) and Man, Education and Manpower (1971). Excerpts from Dr. Venn’s introduction to the Summary Report of the Institute follow:

Seven days of intensive study and discussion with the top leadership of the U.S. Office of Education and specialists invited to speak to the Chiefs reached an apparent consensus regarding issues that are facing Man, Education and Society: The Year 2000....

The seven topics chosen for study by the Executive Committee of the Council of Chief State School Officers, the U.S. Office of Education and the Institute Director... follow:

1. The Role of the Future in Education—Alvin Toffler

2. Education and Human Resource Development—Willard Wirtz

3. The International Situation: The Role of Education—Frederick Champion Ward

4. Economic Matters: Public Dollar Availability—Allan K.Campbell

5. The Shape of Democracy: The Citizen Role—Forbes Bottomly

6. The Public and Private Life of the Individual—Harold Shane

7. Energy, Natural Resources and Growth—Charles J. Ryan

Excerpts from the body of Dr. Venn’s summary follow:

We have reached a point where society either educates everyone or supports them.... Technological change has, suddenly and dramatically, thrown up a challenge to our nation’s political, economic, and education institutions. If it is to be solved, it is going to demand a massive response on the part of American education. Technology has, in effect, created a new relationship between man, his education and his society....

The home, the church, and the school cannot be effective maintainers since the future cannot be predicted....

The clearest overall approach to finding better ways seemed to be a new role for the state departments of education....

From the question of finances to the question of values that should be taught in the schools, the consensus was that leadership and priority changing by state departments was the most important step to be taken....

After all the questions had been asked and all the dialogue ended, it appeared that the most difficult matter would be one of instituting new approaches to education....

Toffler’s belief that the schools have been a "maintaining" institution for a static predictable society was not agreed to by all, but there was agreement that education for the future had to end its reliance on the past as predictor of the future....

The traditional cluster of knowledge, skills, values, and concepts will not help our young face the future in their private life, the international situation, their citizen role, their work role, nor in the area of energy, national resources or growth....…Individuals need more learning about social process with a greater emphasis on participation in group decision making. Again we come face to face with the fact that many problems of the future must be solved based on values and priorities set by groups. Many of these values will have to be enforced by group action and will need the involvement of many individuals in order that hard decisions can be implemented. Many of the future problems cannot be solved by individual decision or action. The heavy emphasis on individual achievement and competition may need to include learning about cooperation and group achievement....

As learning becomes more tied to the future, personal and societal change "values" come to the foreground. It is doubtful that we shall ever return to the concept of values in the same way we saw them in the past.... Perhaps there is a need for the clarification of new values needed to solve future problems. They may become clear as we begin a deliberate search for values we wish to teach and provide experiences for our young in using these values in solving real problems....

It would appear that our young have become isolated from the "real work" of society and from the real decision making of society. Decision making [values clarification] may become the subject of the learning process if there are greater opportunities for "action learning" and group learning by teachers and students....

The over emphasis on knowledge, information, and theories have caused our youth to be freed from the testing of their beliefs in a non-controlled environment—the real world.... Conclusions

In addition to the three R’s, the basic skills would appear to include group participation, environmental relationships and planning for the future!... Organization, structure, role and purpose, methods, content, financing, relationships among school and society, leadership and time frames must all be evaluated and changed. The greatest danger seems to be that simple improvement rather than basic change might be attempted....

The following conclusions seem to be suggested as approaches which might bring about major change!... The states collectively should establish specific minimal competencies in each of the basic tool skill areas and each state should make them the first priority for funding, staffing and organizing....

Annual state reports should be devised to replace the normative achievement test in the future with competency achievement.... The states should convene a task force to study and report the ways that are being tried and ways that might be used to provide alternatives to earning the high school diploma....

Students achieving minimal credits ought to be encouraged to develop their unique aptitudes and to test these in the community, workforce, and the school systems.... There should be a policy devised in each of the states that ends the long held basic of "time in place" [Carnegie Unit] as the evaluation of learning for credit.

Regulations must be developed which encourage the use of the community, adults, students and other learning sites than the classroom and teachers.... Full-time attendance from grades one through twelve may have become a barrier to learning—what are the alternatives?...

Educational credit should be available to students for activities related to their studies in work, volunteer action, community participation, school volunteer programs and other programs contributing to the betterment of the home, school, community and society.... The time traps of learning for the young, earning for the middle-aged and yearning for the retired must be changed to a concept of continuous learning [UNESCO’s lifelong learning, ed.].

Greater use of adults and students from other countries and cultures should be emphasized.... It is obvious that the schools alone cannot educate our youth. State Departments should encourage, through policies and financing, the use of other societal agencies and resources to be part of the planned educational program of high school and older youth....

Since the future indicates a smaller share of the public dollar for education, states should develop regulations and policies which use the entire year and the entire society as educational resources....

The fifty states should organize a commission to establish the values that are significant in approaching problems that must be faced in the future.... Since change is so great and problem solving the necessity of the future, the state should establish a study which would define the essential skills, understandings and approaches that our young should learn in order to participate in the social decisions that must be made in the future....

Knowledge and information is not the only basis for solving problems; our schools need to help our youth gain experience in group decision making as a basis for future citizenship....

Each state ought to look at the problem of the role of the school in making the entry job a means rather than an end.... Would a placement function for the schools help motivate youth?... Every high school student ought to devote a portion of their time to the development of a career related to the future and sensible public and private life....

Most research in education has looked at parts and pieces rather than the total relationship of man, education and society. The CCSSO should establish a long-range planning and policy group to look at societal issues and the implications for education. At present, there is no such body looking at this problem. Can the education Chiefs afford to let others do all the directing of the future?

[Ed. Note: The reader cannot help but see that the above highly controversial recommendations made in 1974 have been implemented with hardly a hitch.]

PROFESSOR LAWRENCE KOHLBERG’S MORAL DEVELOPMENT APPROACH CURRICULUM, "ETHIcal Issues in Decision Making," was developed in the early 1970s and was used extensively in law education courses in public and private schools. In 1974 Kohlberg was still developing his classifications of "Stages of Moral Development" to include a Seventh Stage—that of "Faith." Kohlberg’s program was listed in the National Diffusion Network’s catalog Programs that Work as an exemplary program. Kohlberg’s Moral Development Approach includes education in the following "stages of moral development":

Stage 1—"Avoid punishment" orientation: decisions are based on a blind obedience to an external power in an attempt to avoid punishment or seek reward.

Stage 2—"Self-Benefit" orientation: decisions are based on premise of doing something for others if they reciprocate.

Stage 3—"Acceptance by others" orientation: decisions are based on whether or not their behaviors perceived as pleasing to others.

Stage 4—"Maintain the social order" orientation: decisions are based on fixed rules which are "necessary" to perpetuate the order of society as a whole.

Stage 5—"Contract fulfillment" orientation: decisions are based on the individual respecting impartial laws and agreeing to abide by them while society agrees to respect the rights of the individual.

Stage 6—"Ethical principle" orientation: decisions are based on "conscience" and respect for each person’s individuality is paramount with the values believed to be valid for all humanity.

After Stage 6, the individual experiences despair. He or she has developed principles of justice, yet is faced with an unjust world. Moral philosophy cannot solve the problem.

Stage 7—"Faith" orientation: decisions are concerned with "what is the ultimate meaning of life?"

This "Faith" orientation stage does not conflict with the principles developed through the first six stages; rather, it integrates those stages and provides a perspective on life’s ultimate meaning. In Stage Seven the individual advances from an essentially human to a cosmic point of view. With Stage Seven there is a modification to a wider view of life. Emphasis changes from the individual to the cosmos.

1975

SUPERINTENDENT RAY I. POWELL, PH.D., OF SOUTH ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA PUBLIC SCHOOLS spoke out regarding values clarification and sensitivity training in 1975, saying, "It’s all brainwashing!"

Excerpts follow from a memorandum to "All Administrators from Ray I. Powell" concerning Center Bulletin No. 39: 1974–1975, dated February 26, 1975:

1. Parents have the prime responsibility for the inculcation of those moral and spiritual values desired for their children in the areas of abortion and birth control. Indeed, this is an inherent right of parents and must not be denied....

Effective immediately, the teaching, advising, directing, suggesting, or counseling of students in these two (2) areas cannot be/shall not be the responsibility nor the task of the South St. Paul Public Schools.

Rather, the efforts of the public schools, henceforth, shall be directed towards expanding those complimentary learning experiences in other areas of the total curriculum that will enhance these two (2) parental values, i.e.:

• preservation of the family unit.

• feminine role of the wife, mother, and homemaker.

• masculine role of guide, protector, and provider.

• advocacy of home and family values.

• respect for family structure and authority.

• enhancement of womanhood and femininity.

• restoration of morality.

2. There are more and more concerns and questions being registered today regarding the questionable results and the true intent of SENSITIVITY TRAINING, as well as its germaneness to the goals and objectives of public education, the training of educators, and the learning experiences of students.

Consider these two (2) definitions of SENSITIVITY TRAINING (sources furnished upon Sensitivity training is defined as group meetings, large or small, to discuss publicly intimate and personal matters, and opinions, values or beliefs; and/or to act out emotions and feelings toward one another in the group, using the techniques of self-confession and mutual criticism.

It is also "coercive persuasion in the form of thought reform or brainwashing."

Is the prime concern in education today not to impart knowledge, but to change "attitudes," so that children can/will willingly accept a controlled society? Are the public schools being unwittingly re-shaped to accomplish this and without realizing it?

[Ed. Note: Dr. Powell then lists 54 terms which can all be included under Sensitivity Training, a few of which are: T-Group Training, Operant Conditioning, Management by Objectives, Sex Education, Self-Hypnosis, Role Playing, Values Clarification, Situation Ethics, Alternative Life Styles, etc. Had all our schools had superintendents with Dr. Powell’s character and courage, most of the problems facing our children and families today would not exist.]

CONGRESSMAN JOHN CONLAN OF ARIZONA ISSUED A PRESS RELEASE REGARDING THE CONtroversial federally funded program for ten-year-old children called Man: A Course of Study (M:ACOS) (Education Development Center: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975). On April 9, 1975 Conlan said that the $7 million National Science Foundation-funded program was designed by a team of experimental psychologists under Jerome S. Bruner and B.F. Skinner’s direction to mold children’s social attitudes and beliefs along lines that set them apart and alienated them from the beliefs and moral values of their parents and local communities. As a matter of fact, fifty commercial publishers refused to publish the course because of its objectionable content. The following gory story of cannibalism is excerpted from M:ACOS (Vol. 1):

The wife knew that the spirits had said her husband should eat her, but she was so exhausted that it made no impression on her, she did not care. It was only when he began to feel her, when it occurred to him to stick his fingers in her side to feel if there was flesh on her, that she suddenly felt a terrible fear; so she, who had never been afraid of dying, now tried to escape. With her feeble strength she ran for her life, and then it was as if Tuneq saw her only as a quarry that was about to escape him; he ran after her and stabbed her to death. After that, he lived on her, and collected her bones in a heap over by the side of the platform for the purpose of fulfilling the taboo rule required of all who die. (p. 115)

OCTOBER 24, 1975 THE WORLD AFFAIRS COUNCIL OF PHILADELPHIA ISSUED "A DECLARAtion of Interdependence" written by well-known historian and liberal think tank Aspen Institute board member Henry Steele Commager. This alarming document, which called to mind President Kennedy’s July 4, 1962 speech calling for a "Declaration of Interdependence," was written as a contribution to our nation’s celebration of its 200th birthday, and signed by 125 members of the U.S. House and Senate. Excerpts follow:

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HISTORY the threat of extinction confronts mankind, it is necessary for the people of The United States to declare their interdependence with the people of all nations and to embrace those principles and build those institutions which will enable mankind to survive and civilization to flourish....

Two centuries ago our forefathers brought forth a new nation; now we must join with others to bring forth a new world order....

WE AFFIRM that the economy of all nations is a seamless web, and that no one nation can any longer effectively maintain its processes of production and monetary systems without recognizing the necessity for collaborative regulation by international authorities.

[Ed. Note: In 1976 the National Education Association produced a social studies curriculum entitled A Declaration of Interdependence: Education for a Global Community which Congresswoman Marjorie Holt (R.-MD) described as "an atrocious betrayal of American independence."

It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that the relationship between "interdependence" or "new world order" and America’s education of children became prominent in outcomes in each state. Interdependence is also an undergirding concept in global education.

In 1976 a coterie of internationalists thought their plans would have smooth sailing, not the resistance they encountered at the grassroots level which set them back a good twenty years. What we are experiencing in 1999 (American soldiers being deployed world-wide as part of United Nations "peace-keeping" operations, and UN land confiscation through executive orders, etc.) was delayed by the activism of courageous Americans to whom we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude.]

U.S. COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION T.H. BELL MADE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT IN A U.S. Office of Education (HEW) press release on October 29, 1975, dealing with results of the University of Texas Adult Performance Level (APL) Study. The study, headed by Dr. Norvell Northcutt, was funded at approximately $l million under Sec. 309 of the Adult Education Act. T.H. Bell’s statement follows:

One out of five American adults lacks the skills and knowledge needed to function effectively in the basic day-to-day struggle to make a living and maintain a home and family, according to a four-year investigation of adult functional competency released today by HEW’s Office of Education. Referring to the results of the Adult Performance Level (APL) study as "rather startling," U.S. Commissioner of Education Terrell H. Bell said that they call for some major rethinking of education on several levels. "To begin with," Dr. Bell added, "adult education has to be reshaped so that students receive the kind of information that will make modern life easier for them. I also think that State and local education agencies will want to examine what they are teaching, even at the elementary levels, and perhaps reconsider their requirements for high school graduation." APL research defines functional competency as "the ability to use skills and knowledge needed for meeting the requirements of adult living."

[Ed. Note: Secretary Bell’s recommendations were adopted by Oregon and Pennsylvania one year later. In 1976 Pennsylvania commenced implementation of its controversial "Project ’81" which, according to its 1976 State Department of Education informational materials, "restructured Pennsylvania’s Goals of Quality Education and developed a new program of basic skills and initiated studies designed to help in developing comprehensive programs in general and specialized education." The same informational materials also stated that "Pennsylvania’s Contemporary Family Life Competencies were taken from an outline of a course being implemented at Parkrose High School in Oregon which focused on consumer economics competencies and makes use of both school and community resources."

There is no question in this writer’s mind that the "pre-determined" results of the Texas APL Study set the stage for all state education agencies to commence dumbed-down continuous progress competency-based education, which is just another label for Benjamin Bloom’s and William Spady’s outcome- /performance- /results-based, school-to-work "education"—all of which use Skinnerian pigeon-training methods (mastery learning and direct instruction)—and that the initial thrust for this type of "all children can learn/redistribution of brains" lifelong education came straight out of the United Nations.]

THE DAILY WORLD OF NOVEMBER 8, 1975 CARRIED A VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE ENTITLED "Planning Is Socialism’s Trademark" by Morris Zeitlin. The Daily World (newspaper of the Communist Party USA) was formerly known as The Daily Worker and was founded in 1924. The importance of this article lies in its blatant admission that regionalism, which is gradually becoming the accepted method of unelected governance in the United States (unelected councils and task forces, participatory democracy, public-private partnerships, etc.) is the form of government used in democratic socialist and communist countries. The following are excerpts from this article:

Cities in industrially advanced countries develop complex economic, social and political interaction. In this process, major cities tend to consolidate neighboring smaller cities and settlements into metropolitan regions. Rationally, metropolitan regions should constitute governmental units having comprehensive planning and administrative powers within their boundaries.

In our country (the United States), rival capitalist groups, jealously guarding their special prerogatives, have rigidly maintained the traditional boundaries of states and counties while national economic and social development has created metropolitan regions that overlap those boundaries. We have no regional government and no comprehensive regional planning to speak of. Regional government and planning remain concepts our urban scholars and planners have long advocated in vain....

In socialist countries, metropolitan regions enjoy metropolitan regional government and comprehensive planning. Of the many regions on the vast territory of the Soviet Union, the Moscow Region commands special attention, for it has been, since the 1917 Revolution, the country’s economic and political center.

The economic and functional efficiencies and the social benefits that comprehensive national, regional and city planning make possible in socialist society explain the Soviet Union’s enormous and rapid economic and social progress. Conversely, our profit-oriented ruling capitalist class makes comprehensive social and economic planning impossible, causing waste and chaos and dragging the entire nation into misery and suffering as its rule deteriorates and declines.

PROJECT INSTRUCT ANOTHER MASTERY LEARNING PROGRAM MODELED ALONG THE LINES OF the Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI), was approved for dissemination throughout the nation by the U.S. Office of Education’s Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP) May 14, 1975. The final evaluation of Project INSTRUCT stated that:

The intent and emphasis in 1970 was on behavioral indices and concrete ways of showing accountability; and the data would suggest that the reading of the students themselves may not have increased, but the impact of Project INSTRUCT in the Lincoln, Nebraska Public Schools seems to be very extensive and influential.

[Ed. Note: According to the final evaluation of Project INSTRUCT, Ronald Brandt, former executive editor of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s publication Educational Leadership, was involved in the project.]

1976

CHILDHOOD IN CHINA, A BOOK EDITED BY WILLIAM KESSEN (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS: New Haven, Connecticut, 1976), was reviewed by Kent Garland Burit of The Christian Science Monitor.

The following excerpts from Burit’s review provide insight into the similarities of education in Communist China in 1973 and Skinnerian Effective School Research used in American restructuring in the 1980s and 1990s:

They were well-behaved, non aggressive with peers....

The immediate yielding to a teacher’s request seemed remarkable to the Americans....

The strategies and communication style of the teachers is also described. They initiate, supervise closely, and terminate all activities. They teach by repetition and by formula. Their verbal and nonverbal indications of approval are in a high ratio to indications of disapproval.

They discipline through persuasion and moralistic reasoning rather than punishment. They exude a confident expectation of their pupils’ compliance and cooperation....

The curriculum is saturated with ideological goals, the team reported. The child is exposed to repeated exhortations to serve the society.

[Ed. Note: The foregoing quote with its behavioral terminology could come from an issue of The Effective School Report, from which this writer has repeatedly quoted throughout this book. Education in non-violence, tolerance, peer resolution, cooperative learning, and politically- correct curriculum—all of which will modify the behavior of American children so that they will be like the above Communist Chinese children—is taking place in American schools in 1999. (See April 21, 1982 Spady quote calling for the above "compliance.")]

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES OF MAY 21, 1976 (PART 1–B) CARRIED AN ARTICLE ENTITLED "Cuban Children Combine Studies, Work" which clearly explained the communist work-study system and the impact of community service, both of which are being implemented in the United States in the 1990s. Important excerpts follow:

HAVANA (AP)—The door to the side room of an old cigar factory had been left ajar, and a small knot of children could be seen preparing boxes of cigars for export. "It’s part of our education system," a Cuban tobacco official explained. "They are helping and learning."

The children, elementary school pupils about 9 to 11 years old, were examples of the unique Cuban educational system of combining studies with physical work. The system, started in 1967, applies to all schools, including the island’s four universities....

The Cubans say the idea is to produce well-rounded citizens capable of manual labor.

But the system also provides extra hands for an economy that urgently needs more production....

Says Prime Minister Fidel Castro, "This helps to temper them from early childhood in the habits of creative work, without running the risk of possible deformation through the exclusive exercise of intellectual activity."...

One example of the system is found at Havana’s 1,639 pupil U.S.S.R.-Cuba technical school, so named because the Soviet Union equipped the school and trained the instructors.

The students, mainly boys 14 to 17, learn how to melt metal and to mold it into machine parts. They are taught how to cast, weld, grind and operate a lathe. Girls work in laboratories, learning to operate testing equipment for metals and machine parts. The parts, produced while learning, are sent to factories that make machinery. The students themselves spend part of their time working inside the factories. The school also teaches language, culture, sports, political philosophy and ordinary school subjects....

Those who study for two years become what are called general workers for the factories, while four-year students become skilled technicians. All are guaranteed factory jobs upon graduation....

At the University of Havana, there are 54,000 students this year. Full-time students study four hours a day, six days a week and work another four hours daily in fields, factories or at jobs related to their future careers.... Many older students fill their work requirement by teaching, to offset the teacher shortage created when hundreds of thousands of Cubans emigrated after Castro’s 1959 revolution.... This commitment to working for the good of the country remains after graduation. Graduates must serve anywhere in Cuba for three years, then are allowed to return home to continue their careers.

LAWRENCE C. PIERCE DELIVERED A PAPER IN 1976 ENTITLED "SCHOOL SITE MANAGEMENT" to a meeting of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies in which he referred to site-based management as an "intermediate structure between centralized school management and education vouchers." An excerpt follows:

On January 6, 1976, San Francisco School Superintendent Robert F. Alioto proposed an organizational redesign of the district that included a shift from school district to school site management. He said, in part:

I recommend that we move toward a school site management model that values staff and a community involvement and stresses accountability. We must recognize the principal as the instructional leader of the school. We must expand the budgeting and fiscal control at each school site.... We must establish at each school site one active advisory committee which includes parents, students, and staff representatives of the school’s ethnic population....

Further support for proposals to decentralize school management arises from the desire to increase public participation in school governance policies. Local control of the schools, originally instituted to make them responsive to the people, nevertheless proved to be cumbersome, and it frequently obscured the state’s responsibility for providing every child with a basic education. In pursuit of greater accountability and higher professional standards, the pendulum of school government, which in the early days of this country swung toward representativeness and local control, later swung back toward greater professional autonomy and stronger executive control....

...School site management is an intermediate structure between centralized school management and educational vouchers.

[Ed. Note: Read that last statement again. Twenty-one years later the carefully laid plans of the internationalist Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies are being implemented under the guise of unaccountable choice/charter schools, funded by the taxpayers. School-site management is an early term for site-based or school-based management promoted by the National Education Association in the 1980s and 1990s. Of extreme importance is the unambiguous call for the use of (need for) vouchers, which will supplant "choice," essential for the implementation of the international school-to-work agenda. The dollar amount of the voucher will depend on the school council’s determination of how much it will cost to train your child to be a janitor (very little) or doctor (a lot).]

LAWRENCE P. GRAYSON OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Education, wrote "Education, Technology, and Individual Privacy" (ECTJ, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 195–208) in 1976. The following are some excerpts from this important paper which serves as a clear warning regarding the indiscriminate use of behaviorist methods and technology:

The right to privacy is based on a belief in the essential dignity and worth of the individual.

Modern technological devices, along with advances in the behavioral sciences, can threaten the privacy of students. Fortunately, invasions of privacy in education have not been widespread. However, sufficient violations have been noted to warrant specific legislation and to promote a sharp increase in attention to procedures that will ensure protection of individual privacy. Technology that can reveal innermost thoughts and motives or can change basic values and behaviors, must be used judiciously and only by qualified professionals under strictly controlled conditions. Education includes individuals and educational experimentation is human experimentation. The educator must safeguard the privacy of students and their families....

Privacy has been defined as "the right to be let alone" (Cooley, 1888) and as the "right to the immunity of the person—the right to one’s personality" (Warren and Brandeis, 1890).

Individuals have the right to determine when, how, and to what extent they will share themselves with others. It is their right to be free from unwarranted or undesired revelation of personal information to others, to participate or withdraw as they see fit, and to be free of unwarranted surveillance through physical, psychological, or technological means.

Justice William O. Douglas expressed the concerns of many people when he stated:

We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy; when everyone is open to surveillance at all times; when there are no secrets from the government.... [There is] an alarming trend whereby the privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen—a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a man’s life at will. (Osborn v. U.S., 1966, pp. 341–343)

Behavioral science, which is assuming an increasing role in educational technology, promises to make educational techniques more effective by recognizing individual differences among students and by patterning instruction to meet individual needs. However, behavioral science is more than an unbiased means to an end. It has a basic value position (Skinner, 1971) based on the premise that such "values as freedom and democracy, which imply that the individual ultimately has free will and is responsible for his own actions, are not only cultural inventions, but illusions" (Harman, 1970). This position is contradictory to the basic premise of freedom and is demeaning to the dignity of the individual. Behavioral science inappropriately applied can impinge on individual values without allowing for personal differences and in education can violate the privacy of the student....

Reflecting on the ethical values of our civilization in 1958, Pope Pius XII commented:

There is a large portion of his inner world which the person discloses to a few confidential friends and shields against the intrusion of others. Certain [other] matters are kept secret at any price and in regard to anyone. Finally, there are other matters which the person is unable to consider.... And just as it is illicit to appropriate another’s goods or to make an attempt on his bodily integrity without his consent, so it is not permissible to enter into his inner domain against his will, whatever is the technique or method used....

Whatever the motivations of the teacher or researcher, an individual’s privacy must take precedence over effective teaching, unless good cause can be shown to do otherwise. Good cause, however, does not relieve the teacher or school administrator from the responsibility of safeguarding the privacy of the student and the family. Yet, many teachers and administrators remain insensitive to the privacy implications of behavioral science and modern technology in education....

Intent on improving education, educators, scientists, and others concerned with the development and application of technology are often insensitive to the issues of privacy raised by the use of their techniques. For example, many psychological and behavioral practices have been introduced on the ground that they will make education more efficient or effective.

However, improvements in efficiency through technological applications can reinforce these practices without regard to their effects. What is now being done in education could be wrong, especially if carried out on a massive scale. As the use of technology becomes more widespread, we may reach the point where errors cannot be detected or corrected. This is especially important because technology interacts with society and culture to change established goals and virtues. Propagating an error on a national level could change the original goals to fit the erroneous situation. The error then becomes acceptable by default.

In developing and applying technology to education, potential effects must be analyzed, so that negative possibilities can be identified and overcome before major resources are committed to projects that could produce undesirable long-term social consequences.

In matters affecting privacy it is better to err on the side of the individual, than on that of research or improved educational practice. Violations of privacy can never be fully redressed.

Ftnt. No. 14. Privacy is a constitutionally protected right; education is not. The Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut (decided in 1965) that the right of privacy is guaranteed by the Constitution.

In Rodriguez v. San Antonio Independent School District (decided in 1973), the Court ruled that education is not a protected right under the Constitution.

UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION (UNESCO) IN Paris,

France published The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED–COM.75/WS/ 27) in 1976. This publication revealed efforts at the highest international level to set up a classification system which will be available for use by planners assigned to the management of the global economy. Some quotes from the introduction to this 396-page document follow:

The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) has been designed as an instrument suitable for assembling, compiling, and presenting statistics of education both within individual countries and internationally. It is expected to facilitate international compilation and comparison of education statistics as such, and also their use in conjunction with manpower and other economic statistics....

ISCED should facilitate the use of education statistics in manpower planning and encourage the use of manpower statistics in educational planning. For this purpose, the most closely associated classification system in the manpower field is the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO), prepared by the International Labour Office.

CATHERINE BARRETT, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (NEA), GAVE a speech at the 1976 NEA Annual Conference in which she made the following comments concerning the change in the role of the teacher:

At this critical moment no one can say with certainty whether we are at the brink of a colossal disaster or whether this is indeed mankind’s shining hour. But it is certain that dramatic changes in the way we raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated particularly in terms of schooling, and that these changes will require new ways of thinking. Let me propose three.

First, we will help all of our people understand that school is a concept and not a place.

We will not confuse "schooling" with "education." The school will be the community, the community, the school. Students, parents, and teachers will make certain that John Dewey’s sound advice about schooling the whole child is not confused with nonsense about the school’s providing the child’s whole education....

We will need to recognize that the so-called "basic skills," which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one quarter of the present school day. The remaining time will be devoted to what is truly fundamental and basic—time for academic inquiry, time for students to develop their own interests, time for a dialogue between students and teachers. When this happens—and it is near—the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher. Students will learn to write love letters and lab notes. We will help each child build his own rocket to his own moon....

Finally, if our children are to be human beings who think clearly, feel deeply, and act wisely, we will answer definitely the question "Who should make what decisions?" Teachers no longer will be victims of change; we will be the agents of change.

[Ed. Note: Catherine Barrett’s idea of "school is a concept, not a place" is an idea whose time may have come in the 1990s. Many educators, including Lewis Perelman (See 1995 Perelman’s book School’s Out), are of the same opinion. This seems to follow on the heels of the concept of "education as behavior change" instead of the acquisition of knowledge.]

IN THE SEPTEMBER 1976 ISSUE OF PHI DELTA KAPPAN, "AMERICA’S NEXT TWENTY-FIVE Years: Some Implications for Education," Harold Shane described his version of the "new and additional basic skills" as follows:

Certainly, cross-cultural understanding and empathy have become fundamental skills, as have the skills of human relations and intercultural rapport… the arts of compromise and reconciliation, of consensus building, and of planning for interdependence become basic….

As young people mature we must help them develop… a service ethic which is geared toward the real world… the global servant concept in which we will educate our young for planetary service and eventually for some form of world citizenship…. Implicit within the "global servant" concept are the moral insights that will help us live with the regulated freedom we must eventually impose upon ourselves.

[Ed. Note: The writer would like to contrast Harold Shane’s comments with those of C.S. Lewis as compiled in an article "C.S. Lewis on Liberal Arts Education" by Gregory Dunn which was published in the newsletter On Principle from the John M. Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs (April 1999, Vol. VII, No. 2). Excerpts from Dunn’s article follow:

The first reason we study the liberal arts has to do with freedom. That freedom is an integral part of the liberal arts is borne out of [C.S.] Lewis’s observation that "liberal comes of course from the Latin, liber, and means free."11 Such an education makes one free, according to Lewis, because it transforms the pupil from "an unregenerate little bundle of appetites" into "the good man and the good citizen."12 We act most human when we are reasonable, both in thought and deed. Animals, on the other hand, act wholly out of appetite. When hungry, they eat; when tired, they rest. Man is different. Rather than follow our appetites blindly we can be deliberate about what we do and when we do it. The ability to rule ourselves frees us from the tyranny of our appetites, and the liberal arts disciplines this self-rule. In other words, this sort of education teaches us to be most fully human and thereby, to fulfill our human duties, both public and private.

Lewis contrasts liberal arts education with what he calls "vocational training," the sort that prepares one for employment. Such training, he writes, "aims at making not a good man but a good banker, a good electrician… or a good surgeon." Lewis does admit the importance of such training—for we cannot do without bankers and electricians and surgeons—but the danger, as he sees it, is the pursuit of training at the expense of education. "If education is beaten by training, civilization dies," he writes, for the "lesson of history" is that "civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost."13 It is the liberal arts, not vocational training, that preserves civilization by producing reasonable men and responsible citizens….

A third reason we study the liberal arts is because it is simply our nature and duty. Man has a natural thirst for knowledge of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and men and women of the past have made great sacrifices to pursue it in spite of the fact that, as Lewis puts it, "human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice." In his words, "they propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds." So, finding in the soul an appetite for such things, and knowing no appetite is made by God in vain, Lewis concludes that the pursuit of the liberal arts is pleasing to God and is possibly, for some, a God-given vocation.…

…Truly, we ignore the liberal arts only at our peril. Without them we will find ourselves increasingly unable to preserve a civilized society, to escape from the errors and prejudices of our day, and to struggle in the arena of ideas to the glory of God.]

TODAY’S EDUCATION, THE JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, CARRIED an article in the September–October 1976 edition entitled "The Seven Cardinal Principles Revisited." On page 1 this article stated that:

In 1972, the NEA established a Bicentennial Committee charged with developing a "living commemoration of the principles of the American Revolution." This 200th anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence was to focus on the next 100 years of education in an interdependent global community. The initial work of the Committee culminated in the NEA Bicentennial Idea Book. Among its ideas was that of developing a definitive volume to "contain a reframing of the Cardinal Principles of Education and recommendations for a global curriculum." After recognizing the importance of the original Cardinal Principles, which were published in 1918, the Committee made the point that "today, those policy statements about education are obsolete, education taken as a whole is not adequate to the times and too seldom anticipates the future." A report to be issued by the NEA, proposing cardinal premises for the twenty-first century is the direct and immediate outgrowth of the Bicentennial Committee’s belief that "educators around the world are in a unique position to bring about a harmoniously interdependent global community based on the principles of peace and justice…." Early in September 1975, a 19-member Preplanning Committee began the task of recasting the seven Cardinal Principles of Education by developing 25 guidelines for the project.

[Ed. Note: Members of the Preplanning Committee read like a "Who’s Who of Leading Globalists."

It included: former Secretary of Education T.H. Bell, "Mr. Management-by-Objectives," who was responsible for the grant to William Spady of the Far West Laboratory to pilot OBE in Utah, with plans to "put OBE in all schools of the nation"; Professor Luvern Cunningham, Ohio State University, who subsequently served as advisor to the Kentucky Department of Education during its education restructuring in the 1990s; Willis Harman, Stanford Research Institute; Robert Havighurst, University of Chicago; Theodore Hesburgh, University of Notre Dame; Ralph Tyler, Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science; Professor Theodore Sizer, Coalition for Essential Schools, which calls for a "less is more" curriculum and removal of graduation standards (the Carnegie Unit); David Rockefeller; Professor Benjamin Bloom, father of Mastery Learning (the international learning method); the late McGeorge Bundy of the Ford Foundation; and others.]

FOUNDATIONS OF LIFELONG EDUCATION WAS PUBLISHED BY UNESCO (UNITED NATIONS Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) Institute for Education (Pergamon Press: Oxford, N.Y.,

Toronto, Sydney, Paris, Frankfurt, 1976). In chapter 4, "Theoretical Foundations of Lifelong Education: A Sociological Perspective," Henri Janne described accurately the how, what and why of decentralization (site-based management, charter schools, choice, unelected school councils, etc.) being sold to naïve school boards and citizens as "local control":

In education a monolithic structure is completely unacceptable as it creates organizations that, owing to their homogeneity and their ineluctable [inevitable] bureaucratic nature, are averse to change and to individual or local adaptation....

Decentralization of the greatest possible number of decisions is indispensable in a system founded on... education defined as "learning" rather than "teaching."

[Ed. Note: "Learning," as described and defined by the educational change agents, is the process by which students/children are allowed to acquire the knowledge which will be "beneficial" to them personally as they pursue the fulfillment of their particular life roles (jobs). This process is the opposite of the traditional role of education as "teaching" students subject matter which can be used for diversified pursuits later in life.

In the 1977 entry dealing with UNESCO’s Development of Educational Technology in Central and Eastern Europe the reader will note that the socialist countries of Eastern Europe had centralized systems of education and had not yet adapted their system to accommodate Henri Janne’s proposals for "lifelong learning." Janne explained above how to take a centralized system of pedagogy and ideas and "localize" them in order to change their focus without ever changing the centralized control. This gives an interesting perspective on the oft-seen bumper sticker: "Think Globally—Act Locally."]

1977

ESSAYS IN ECONOMICS: THEORIES, FACTS, AND POLICIES, VOL. II (BLACKWELL PUBLISHers: Malden, Massachusetts, 1977) by the late Wassily Leontief was published. An excerpt follows:

When I speak of national economic planning, the notion I have in mind is meant to encompass the entire complex of political, legislative, and administrative measures aimed at an explicit formulation and realization of a comprehensive national economic plan. Without a cohesive, internally consistent plan there can be, in this sense, no planning. But the preparation of a script is not enough, the play has to be staged and acted out. It is incumbent on anyone who favors introduction of national economic planning in this country—and I am one of these—to propose a plan describing how this might be done. Several congressional committees and at least one commission appointed by the President, not to speak of groups outside of the government, are now engaged in this task. (p. 398)

Who’s Who in America includes the following reference to Leontief: "Economist, born Leningrad, Russia, August 5, 1906, et al." Current Biography in 1967 listed Leontief as :

The creator of the input-output system revolutionizing economic research and national planning is the Russian-born Harvard professor Wassily W. Leontief.... Leontief has been a teacher at Harvard since 1931, and director of the Harvard Economic Research Project on the Structure of the American Economy since 1948.... [This project] was funded by an initial four-year grant of $100,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation.

In a letter to American educator/researcher/writer Gene Malone dated September 9, 1993,

Leontief, professor at the Institute for Economic Analysis of New York University, stated: "The use of the Input-Output method in educational planning was already discussed and has been practically employed in France." OBE is similar to PPBS (Planning, Programming, Budgeting System) and MBO (Management by Objective), both of which are based on input-output economic systems theory.

Leontief died February 5, 1999 at the age of 93. The New York Times February 8, 1999 eulogy steered clear of any mention of Leontief’s work in the promotion of Five-Year Plans, widely associated with socialist planning. However, the Times article provided some extremely interesting background information on Leontief:

Dr. Leontief, with the help of ever-more powerful computers, continued to improve inputoutput analysis his entire life.

With advances he made in the 1950s and 1960s, that analysis became a key part of the national accounting systems for both capitalist and communist states.... [H]e preached a doctrine of applied economics, saying that research should result in practical advances....

[H]e also found time to serve as president of the American Economic Society....

Partially through input-output analysis, he also became a leading authority on the economic effects of world disarmament and increased economic controls....

He was a 1925 economics graduate of the University of Leningrad, and he was imprisoned in that city for anti-Soviet activities. He was allowed to leave the Soviet Union and went to Germany where he received master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Berlin.

He served in 1929 and 1930 in Nanking, China, as an economics advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Railroads. He then came to this country and joined the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York in 1931.

In 1932, he joined Harvard as an economics instructor. He became an assistant professor in 1933, an associate professor in 1939 and a full professor in 1946. Two years later he founded the Harvard Economic Research Project, which became a center of input-output analysis.

During World War II, he was a consultant to the Labor Department and the Office of Strategic Services [OSS, CIA, NTL].

He left Harvard in 1975 to join the faculty at New York University, where he was a full professor and also served as director of its Institute for Economic Analysis from 1975–1991.

He continued to give classes at the university into his nineties.

Dr. Leontief thus taught and ran research organizations at two great universities all the while doing all-but-revolutionary economic research that would lead to major advances in national planning.... Dr. Leontief... championed the central role of government in planning.

"COMPETENCY-BASED EDUCATION: A BANDWAGON IN SEARCH OF A DEFINITION," AN ARticle by William G. Spady of the National Institute of Education, was published in the January 1977 edition of Educational Researcher. Excerpts follow:

In September, 1972, the Oregon State Board of Education passed new minimum graduation requirements for students entering ninth grade in the Fall of 1974 and new minimum standards for local school districts focused on the new requirements in 1974. The thrust of these new requirements and standards involved the introduction of three domains of "survival level" competencies as minimum conditions for high school graduation by 1978: personal development, social responsibility, and career development.... Although largely unintended and unanticipated by those involved, the 1972 Oregon regulations provided the first significant nudge that set in motion across the nation over the next four years a series of actions by state level policy makers and administrators to consider, formulate and implement regulations and procedures that they now associate with the term Competency-Based Education (CBE)....

It is likely, therefore, both that the outcome goals required for graduation in CBE systems will eventually emerge from a tense compromise among the many constituencies in a community regarding the necessary, the desirable, and the possible, and that C-Based diplomas will be viewed with initial if not undying skepticism by colleges and universities....

In short, CBE programs require mechanisms that collect and use student performance data as the basis of diagnosing weaknesses and necessary remediation not only for students but for themselves as well....

According to information compiled by Clark and Thompson (1976), no states outside of Oregon appear to use language consistent with a life-role conception of competency in The Serious Seventies : c. 1977 either their current or pending regulations pertaining to mandated student proficiencies.

The possible exceptions refer to the need for occupational and consumer mathematics skills. However, within the next year New York and Pennsylvania may make more decisive moves toward implementing approaches to schooling more fully resembling this conception of CBE. Almost all other states are concerned with capacity-based outcomes in limited basic skill areas (e.g., Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska and Tennessee), a slightly broader set of subject area proficiencies (e.g., California, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C.) or as-yet-undefined or else locally determined options concerned with some kind of minimum proficiency requirements (e.g., Colorado, Kansas, Michigan and New Jersey). As of October 1976, in only two cases—California and Florida—could students leave school in less than 12 years with a diploma once they passed a state-determined proficiency exam (the Oregon regulations allow local districts to determine whether early graduation will be allowed)....

Aside from Oregon, five states—California, Maryland, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania —deserve particular attention over the next few years as sites where current thinking about substantial proficiencies or competency-based reforms suggest real promise....

Pennsylvania in a fourth case has been exploring a concept of system reform with a definite Competency-Based orientation. Originally called Community Learning and currently named "Project 81," this program would be centered around facilitating student capacities and competencies in five major areas of activity, with a stress on participation outside the school building where appropriate. The areas include a broad range of basic skills, the world of work and leisure, community governance and involvement, and a broad range of citizen and personal survival skills.

"CONCLAVE OF THE CHANGE AGENTS" BY BARBARA M. MORRIS WAS PUBLISHED IN THE March 1977 issue of The National Educator. Excerpts follow from this extremely important article which proves that the federal government has been deeply involved in the funding and implementation of moral/citizenship (values) education:

Early in June 1976, 85 top level members of the educational elite and an assortment of influential change agents met at an invitation only conference in Philadelphia to draft recommendations on how to put "Moral/Citizenship Education" (MCE) programs in every school in the country—public, private and parochial. Conference participants included Humanist values educators Lawrence Kohlberg and Howard Kirschenbaum and representatives of the federal government, foundations, PTA, NEA and the National Council of Churches. The recommendations that resulted from that conference which was sponsored by a Pennsylvania organization called Research for Better Schools (RBS) [a federally funded education laboratory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] have been submitted to the National Institute of Education, with whom RBS has a contract to research, develop and disseminate moral/citizenship education programs....

So shaky is the basis for MCE that much conference time was devoted to trying to decide what to call MCE programs so as to avoid public hostility. Here are some examples of the thinking of conference participants relating to this problem:

• "‘Moral/Citizenship Education’ as a title can be sold; ‘Moral Education’ cannot. Avoid such red-flag slogans."

• "We spent three conference days quibbling about the term ‘Moral/Citizenship Education.’ That is a major problem." [emphasis in original]

• "The concept of self-development (which implies moral development) is more salable and will engender less resistance than moral development."

• "It is important to limit the parameters of what we’re engaged in, if not to change the actual title, to avoid religious antagonisms and court action."

THE SCHOOL COUNSELOR, PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN PERSONNEL AND GUIDANCE ASSOciation, published a special issue on the subject of "Death" in its May 1977 issue (Vol. 24, #5).

In this issue a remarkable admission regarding the results of sex education was made which explains clearly the purpose of these controversial humanistic programs: to create the problems sex ed, values ed, drug ed, and death ed were supposed to solve. An excerpt from The School Counselor follows:

Helping Students Clarify Values:...

The last goal is to help students clarify their values on social and ethical issues. An underlying, but seldom spoken, assumption of much of the death education movement is that Americans handle death and dying poorly and that we ought to be doing better at it. As in the case of many other problems, many Americans believe that education can initiate change. Change is evident, and death education will play as important a part in changing attitudes toward death as sex education played in changing attitudes toward sex information and wider acceptance of various sexual practices.

[Ed. Note: In light of events in the 1990s, the question arises: What does "doing better at it" mean? The statement "Death education will play as important a part in changing attitudes toward death as sex education played in changing attitudes toward… wider acceptance of various sexual practices" implies that our children benefitted from exposure to "wider acceptance of various sexual practices," when all one has to do is survey the moral landscape to see the devastating effect these programs have had on our children’s lives. The same applies to death education and its effect on children’s understanding of the value of life, reflected in the increased number of murders carried out by youth.]

JOANNE MCAULEY’S NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE, A NATIONAL ORganization of concerned parents and educators, was founded in the mid-1970s and, considering the potential it had for holding the line on innovations taking place in American education, its early demise represented a real setback for parents, children, and teachers. Ms. McAuley’s May/June 1977 issue of her newsletter, The School Bell, is proof that the National School Boards Association was, at one time, a strong proponent of local control, not a "sell out the locals" organization that in the 1990s would support site- and school-based management (taxation without representation) and charter schools. Excerpts follow:

NSBA PRESIDENT TELLS BOARDS: STAND UP TO FEDERAL MEDDLING

On March 27, George W. Smith, immediate past president of the National School Boards Association, warned school board members attending the NSBA convention in Houston that "The Congress and the federal bureaucracy could become the country’s master school board unless school board members stand up and be counted." He urged delegates to continue to forge a strong NSBA to convince Congress that local school board members are truly representative, most unselfish, and the best qualified persons to represent the local viewpoint in education.

Smith said local constituencies cannot be forgotten even while the new trust is being built with Congress. "We must not forget our own constituency," he noted. He also advised board members to be aware of—and leery of—proposals for public involvement in public school operations that would shift decision-making authority to "vaguely defined groups of citizens at the school site level." The minister from San Diego cautioned that the power to make a decision must never be divorced from the responsibility for making that decision....

He said school boards must be strong for another reason—to counter the movements of the courts and federal regulatory agencies into the operation of schools. "If we want other governmental units to stop eroding our ability to provide educational governance, we must exercise that ability more often and more effectively." Smith said, "Where we can, we should work together with all segments of the public toward the improvement of the schools. But," he concluded, "our responsibility is to all the people and we must view only the ‘big picture.’"

[Ed. Note: Smith’s ability to foresee the implementation of site-based management, the downgrading of the importance of elected board members, and the transfer of power to public-private partnerships, etc., is to be lauded! While serving in the U.S. Department of Education this writer attempted to stop federally funded programs to train local school board members in conflict resolution and in how to implement effective school research.]

"COMPETENCY TESTS SET IN 26 SCHOOLS: NEW CURRICULUM SHIFTS TEACHING METHODS in District" was the title of an article which appeared in The Washington Post on August 1, 1977.

Excerpts follow:

"The materials will be standardized, the lessons will be standardized," Guines said.

"We’re taking the play out. We’re taking the guesswork out. We’re putting in a precise predicted treatment that leads to a predicted response." Guines said that the new curriculum is based on the work in behavioral psychology of Harvard University’s B.F. Skinner, who developed teaching machines and even trained pigeons during World War II to pilot and detonate bombs and torpedoes. The basic idea, Guines said, is to break down complicated learning into a sequence of clear simple skills that virtually everyone can master, although at different rates of speed. "If you can train a pigeon to fly up there and press a button and set off a bomb," Guines remarked, "why can’t you teach human beings to behave in an effective and rational way? We know that we can modify human behavior. We’re not scared of that. This is the biggest thing that’s happening in education today."...

According to Thomas B. Sticht, Associate Director for Basic Skills of the National Institute of Education, similar techniques, called competency education or mastery teaching, are now being used in many parts of the country. Since 1973, Sticht said, they have been adopted by the Army and Navy for basic training and to teach entry level job skills. They have been used successfully in college courses, he said, and also to teach mentally retarded children who previously had been classed as "uneducable." "There has to be a well-defined series of objectives," Sticht said, "and a step by step curriculum that gives some way [through Mastery Tests] to know you have met the objectives."…

But the system also has detractors who criticize it as rigid and mechanistic. "We must be very careful," said Lawrence G. Derthick, a former U.S. Commissioner of Education, "about adopting any mechanical system of producing children like objects. There are so many complicating factors in each child—emotional, psychological, the home background, the sensitivity of teachers—there’s danger in trying to turn out children like nuts and bolts or steel pins. Human beings are more complex."...

[Ed. Note: William Spady, "father of outcome-based education," served as consultant to the D.C. schools at this exact time, working out of the U.S. Office of Education’s National Institute of Education. His position at the time is listed in his curriculum vitae as "Senior Research Sociologist, 1973–1978." With Spady, Thomas Sticht, associate director for basic skills at NIE, also worked on the failed, Skinnerian D.C. school reform. In addition, the reader is urged to refer to the August 8, 1982 Washington Post entry which paraphrases Sticht as follows: "Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low income families into the middle class." Of further interest, the same Thomas Sticht was president of Applied Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Inc., San Diego, California, and has served on the U.S. Labor Department Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS).]

DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE STUDIES: Division of Structures, Content, Methods and Techniques of Education was published and distributed by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO: Paris: ED–77/WS/ 133:English Edition) in November of 1977. The author is including excerpts from the "Section on Methods, Materials and Techniques" so that the reader will see how America 2000/Goals 2000 restructuring is identical to education in the former Eastern European communist countries.

The reader must also remember that American education is under the direction of UNESCO due to our membership in the United Nations. Excerpts follow:

The development of educational technology in the Central and Eastern European countries, as commissioned by the UNESCO Secretariat, is summarised on the basis of the oral and written information supplied by the countries having attended the Budapest International Seminar on Educational Technology in 1976. The countries involved are as follows: People’s Republic of Bulgaria, Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia, Republic of Finland, Republic of Greece, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, People’s Republic of Poland, People’s Republic of Hungary, German Democratic Republic, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Data were also supplied by the Socialist Republic of Rumania which could not participate in the Seminar.

The factors exercising a decisive influence on the present standards of the application of educational technology and the strategies and rate of its further spread in the countries listed above are as follows:

a. the overwhelming majority of the countries represented (8 out of 10) are socialist states;

b. except for the Soviet Union and Finland, the nations concerned can be classified into the category of fairly developed countries from the technological point of view.

On the basis of the above factors some of the specific characteristics of the development of educational technology will be underlined. It follows from the essence of the socialist structure of the state in the countries concerned, except Finland and Greece, that their educational system is centralized. This creates an extremely favourable situation for central state measures designed to modernize education. The socialist state possesses the means necessary for education... for the widespread use of methodology based on solid technological foundations and of the media and means of educational technology.... In a situation in which millions of students learn and hundreds of thousands of educationalists teach, on the basis of unified curricula, decisions involving the development of the method to be adopted in education and of the media and aids of educational technology call for very thorough preparatory work.…

The socialist countries also have a substantial advantage from the aspect of the development of educational technology because the training and in-service training of teachers rest on a uniform basis. In addition, curricula are uniform in the individual countries and for the different types of schools harmony between the curricular activities and the development of educational technology can be therefore established comparatively easily.

[Ed. Note: A flow chart on page 11 of the study includes under "Factors Influencing the Introduction of Educational Technology" all the components found in American educational restructuring as follows: Adequate Curricula; System of Objectives; Systems of Means of Assessment; Media System; Ensuring Appropriate Facilities (school building, hardware, media); Adequately Trained Teachers (basic training, in-service/further training/information); Research and Development; and International Cooperation.]

1978

PROFESSOR BENJAMIN BLOOM, THE "FATHER" OF MASTERY LEARNING AND DEVELOPER OF the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, presented a paper entitled "New Views of the Learner:

Implications for Instruction and Curriculum" at the 1978 Association for the Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Annual Conference. The paper was published in ASCD’s Educational Leadership April 1978 issue (Vol. 35, #7). The following quote explains clearly the reasoning behind UNESCO’s requirement that member states, including the United States, incorporate UNESCO’s lifelong learning philosophy into their education policies:

Continuing Learning

Throughout the world, the instruction and curriculum in the schools is being studied to determine its long-term contribution to continuing learning throughout life. The Edgar Faure (UNESCO) report "Learning to Be" has had great influence on this thinking. The Faure report (Faure, 1972) stresses the many changes taking place in all societies and the difficulties individuals have in adjusting to rapid change in the society, in their work, and in their lives.

Since, the report continues, it is virtually impossible to anticipate and plan for the changes that will take place, the only adaptive mechanism people have to adjust to and cope with these changes is their ability and interest in continuing learning throughout life....

We, who are responsible for the learning of our students for a ten-to-sixteen-year period, must extend our sights beyond the period that our students are in the schools or colleges.

Until we do this and until it becomes a part of our curriculum planning, we will neglect those objectives of education that relate to the entire life of the individual. (pp. 574–575)

[Ed. Note: It is important to recall Bloom’s definition of education: "to change the thoughts, actions, and feelings of students." In other words, the above recommendation very simply calls for lifelong brainwashing.]

IN THE AUGUST 1978 ISSUE OF THE NATIONAL EDUCATOR BARBARA MORRIS, EDITOR OF The Barbara Morris Report and author of many books related to education including her most recent book, The Great American Con Game,15 reported on a speech given at the University of Illinois by Mary F. Berry, assistant secretary in the U.S. Office of Education (1977), regarding Chinese education. The following excerpts from Morris’s report are too important to leave out of this book:

Indeed, what does the U.S.A. stand to learn? Let’s take a look.

Red China has eliminated testing and grades. The U.S. is rapidly going the same route.

Testing is being downgraded and scoffed at, and grades, where they do exist are just about meaningless.

For the Red Chinese, according to Ms. Berry, truth is a relative concept. In the U.S. schools students are taught the same thing in "values clarification." It’s called situation ethics and it means it’s okay to lie or cheat or steal or kill when it suits your purpose.

In Red China, according to Ms. Berry, education must serve the masses. Ditto the U.S. Only the semantics are different here. In the U.S. education is not designed for the benefit of individuals, but for society. "Society" or "masses"—what’s the difference?

In Red China, according to Ms. Berry, education must be combined with productive labor and starts at six years of age, with children working at least one hour a day producing voice boxes for dolls. At the middle school level, children make auto parts as part of the school day. We are not at this low level, but Secretary Berry frankly admits, "We will draw on the Chinese model...." We are fast approaching the Chinese model. We have work/study programs and the U.S. Office of Education is working on development of Lifelong Learning programs—another Chinese import. Such programs will enable people to work and study their entire lives for the benefit of the state.

Ms. Berry admitted U.S. Lifelong Learning programs are indeed drawn on the Chinese experience, that such programs are expected to meet "needs for intellectual fulfillment and social growth. It is here that the Chinese have set the pattern for the world to follow, and it is here that American higher education may have its last, best opportunity for growth."

Secretary Berry lamented that the U.S. is only slowly moving into Lifelong Learning, but that "The community college system with its nonconventional enrollment, is one harbinger of change. The traditional extension program is another.... But we have to go beyond them and bring four year institutions and secondary institutions, as well as private instructional facilities into the Lifelong Learning movement."

Ms. Berry is not talking about the future when she recommends radical proposals for U.S. education. A meeting of the National Council for the Social Studies, held in Cincinnati last November, featured several presentations on Communist Chinese education as a model for U.S. education. In one such presentation, teachers learned how the Red Chinese educational system "is related to achievement of national goals and citizenship preparation... how cultural activities and recreational pastimes provide a vehicle for transmitting new social values." Does this help you understand why U.S. schools usually list "worthy use of leisure" or "citizenship education" as a goal of education?

[Ed. Note: Americans, involved in what would seem to be the worthy goal of implementing The Serious Seventies : c. 1978 character, citizenship, or civic education in the government schools or in community groups, or in seeking "common ground" with groups who hold differing views on political, social, and religious issues, should think more than twice before becoming involved in this dangerous dialogue. The reason the dialogue is dangerous is evident when one studies the track record of nations whose citizens have allowed their governments to define morality or good citizenship; i.e., Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Red China, to name just a few.]

FIFTH REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL ON EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, FUNDED BY THE U.S. Office of Education, was published in an issue spanning 1978–1979. The very clear connection drawn between mastery learning and direct instruction, enabling one to understand that they are essentially the same or at least fraternal twins, is the importance of the following excerpt:

The Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) at the University of Pittsburgh has developed instructional mastery of learning programs providing individualized instruction in math, science, reading, and early learning skills. These have been disseminated nationally through Project Follow Through [Direct Instruction/DISTAR] and by Research for Better Schools (RBS). (pp. 28–29)

1979

"GEORGIA BASIC LIFE PROCESS SKILLS, ESEA, TITLE II, PROPOSED INSTRUCTIONAL TIME in School Programs," prepared by Lucille G. Jordan, associate state superintendent for Instructional Services of the Georgia Department of Education, was submitted to the U.S. Department of Education for a grant in 1979. The particular curricular programs which received funding under Title II were jointly funded by Exxon Corporation and the U.S. Department of Education. On page 34 of Georgia’s grant proposal an extraordinary curriculum graph/chart recommends the following percentages of time be spent at and between 5, 10, 15 and 18 years of age on the following subjects:

Basic 3 R’s: 90% at 5 yrs. Declining to 40% at 10 yrs. Declining to 30% at 15 yrs.

Declining to 15% at 18 yrs.

Life Process Skills: (Critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making): 5% at 5 yrs. Increasing to 40% at 10 yrs. Increasing to 70% at 15 yrs. Increasing to 90% at 18 yrs.

Citizenship and Humanities Studies: 30% at 5 yrs. Increasing to 40% at 10 yrs. Increasing to 70% at 15 yrs. Increasing to 90% at 18 yrs.

Science and Technology: 25% at 5 yrs. Increasing to 28% at 10 yrs. Increasing to 30% at 15 yrs. Increasing to 55% at 18 yrs.

Career Education: 20% at 5 yrs. Increasing to 22% at 10 yrs. Increasing to 30% at 15 yrs. Increasing to 55% at 18 yrs.

Health and Physical Education: 10% for ages 5 through 18 yrs.

[Ed. Note: Please note that the "Basic 3 R’s" is the only curriculum area targeted for decrease in time spent on instruction. An official of the Georgia School Boards Association cited this graph as being representative of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Also, why would Exxon, who was in the early 1980s one of the major corporations complaining about illiteracy and workers who are not educated in basic academics, have funded a program guaranteed to water down basic academics? (In a 1976 speech NEA President Catherine Barrett recommended teaching basic skills in only one fourth of the school day.)]

THE U.S. CONGRESS FULFILLED PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER’S PROMISE TO THE NATIONAL Education

Association by voting for a U.S. Department of Education in 1979. Now the United States which, heretofore, had been represented at international conferences as the unenlightened member of the crowd (no ministerial/socialist status), could join the "big boys" of the international community: the "big boys" being those countries who, since World War II, had been represented at these policy-planning conferences by ministers of education. Interestingly enough, the majority of teacher members of the National Education Association were opposed to the creation of the U.S. Department of Education.

The new Cabinet-level department allowed the former Bureau of Research under the National Institute of Education to become the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), which would be closely linked to the Paris, France-based Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), part of the United Nations’ Office of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). OERI’s assistant secretary would attend OECD/CERI meetings at which he would receive his "marching orders" related to international restructuring efforts and programs, all of which were either being implemented or would be implemented in the future in the United States—effective school research, site-based management, school-to-work, community education, Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), etc.

A STUDY OF SCHOOLING IN THE UNITED STATES BY JOHN GOODLAD, PH.D., DEAN OF THE Graduate School of Education, University of California, Los Angeles and associated with the Institute for Development of Educational Activities (I.D.E.A., funded by Kettering Foundation), was compiled in 1979 after being researched over a period of several years. Under Dr. Goodlad’s direction, trained investigators went into communities in most regions of the country. The sample of schools studied was enormously diverse in regard to size, family income, and racial composition of the student body. The result of the landmark report was A Place Called School:

Prospects for the Future (McGraw-Hill: New York, 1984) by Goodlad.

In A Place Called School, Goodlad proposed pushing high school graduation back to age 16 and having all students take a core curriculum until then. A new "fourth phase of education" would combine work, study, and community service to help ease students’ transition into careers, higher education, and adult responsibilities. The following three books were additionally commissioned to be written as a result of this project:

(1) Schooling for a Global Age, James Becker, Editor (1979), in the preface for which Dr. Goodlad made the following statement which has contributed to the development of parentschool partnerships:

Parents and the general public must be reached, also. Otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally-oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home. And then the education institution frequently comes under scrutiny and must pull

(2) Communities and Their Schools, Don Davies, Editor (1981), in which the history of community education at the national and international levels (China, Tanzania, etc.) was covered and the participatory democratic operation of our schools and communities was recommended (government by unelected councils).

(3) Arts and the Schools, Jerome J. Hausman, Editor (1980), in which the role of the arts in schools and in society was examined and then the focus shifted to the needs of the individual.

Arts addressed curricular issues involved in designing and implementing school arts programs and, again, actual programs are discussed and analyzed. The policy implications of implementing the programs described in the book are then discussed along with change strategies for moving from rhetoric to reality.

The four books were published by McGraw Hill. The study itself was funded by the National Institute of Education, U.S. Office of Education and the following foundations: Danforth; Ford;

International Paper; The JDR 3rd Fund; Martha Holden Jennings Foundation; Charles Stewart Mott Foundation; Needmor Fund; Pedamorphosis, Inc.; Rockefeller Foundation; and Spencer Foundation. The Advisory Committee for A Study of Schooling included the following persons:

Ralph W. Tyler, chairman; Gregory Anrig; Stephen K. Bailey; Lawrence A. Cremin; Robert K. Merton; and Arthur Jefferson. The study was conducted under the auspices of the Institute for Development of Educational Activities, Inc. (IDEA) and The Laboratory in School and Community Education, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Los Angeles.

[Ed. Note: In a telephone conversation with a representative of McGraw Hill Publishers in 1982, this writer was informed that all four books were provided to the fifty state education commissioners/superintendents. These four books provide an accurate picture of the role played by the tax-exempt foundations and federal government in the restructuring/social engineering of American society and schools to accommodate the perceived "needs" of the 21st century.]

SENATOR JACOB JAVITS (NY) REQUESTED THAT MR. ARTHUR LIPPER’S ADDRESS TO THE World Council on Gifted and Talented Children be printed in the Congressional Record, September 5, 1979 (pp. 11904–11905). Senator Javits said in his introduction to the text of the speech:

Mr. President, the gifted and talented children of our Nation have long been of continuing interest to me for they represent the future leadership of the United States. Last month, in Jerusalem, the World Council on Gifted and Talented Children held its Third Biennial Conference to discuss international cooperative efforts on behalf of the gifted, and to consider research and exchange programs to promote this most precious human resource…. At the Jerusalem conference, Arthur Lipper, III, an investment banker… and great friend of the gifted and talented… forcefully presented the idea that the development of the gifted represents the best hope for future peace and stability in the international political realm…. I urge my colleagues to consider carefully his remarks, and I ask that the text of Mr. Lipper’s address to the World Council on Gifted and Talented Children be printed in the Record.

The following excerpts from Lipper’s speech reflect a total disregard for the gifted and talented children as individuals who might be capable of deciding for themselves what they wish to do or become. It focuses instead on their "use" by the state to obtain predetermined global goals:

Some years ago I read the following statement in a school publication:

One of America’s most tragic wastes of natural resources is the loss of potential for social contribution which is inherent in economically deprived, gifted children.

Properly identified at a sufficiently early age, through culture-free, non-verbal testing, the very young child can be provided with the environment, economic and motivational support necessary for full development as a positive social contributor.

Without such early identification, the socio-economic pressure imposed upon the economically deprived child who possesses superior cognitive ability is likely to result in either a "dropping out" or only a desire to achieve improved personal life style. The chosen or available means of obtaining a better life style may not be socially desirable. Therefore their truly constructive potential, from the standpoint of society [the State], may be forever lost.

These thoughts seem to me to be applicable to all societies and especially to those less fortunate than America’s. Specifically analyzed they are:

1) Identified early enough, poor but gifted children can be given medical, financial and emotional support which probably will lead to the development of positive social attitudes.

2) Not identified and assisted the kids may either not achieve their potential or may use their talents solely for the purpose of bettering their own lives regardless of the means employed or the effects on others.

It is interesting to note the number of proudly proclaimed programs for gifted child identification and development which many of the Socialist and Communist countries have as a stated and de-facto matter of public policy. It is not strange that the capitalist countries, so quick to make use of all other "natural" resources—including the labor of their own and other countries—have been slower to recognize and secure the benefits accruing from the development of their own gifted children.

Perhaps the wealthy nations have not yet sensed the compelling need for broad social progress, based upon the future contribution of the gifted, as have some of the non-capitalist countries.

In closing, Mr. Lipper makes some recommendations, the most alarming of which follows:

Establishment of boarding schools (publicly funded) to house those identified gifted children whose existing home life is non-constructive in terms of their development.

[Ed. Note: Mr. Lipper, in his fervent desire to implement world socialism, seems to have forgotten that individuals, regardless of race, religion, talent, or income, should not be considered property of the State (human resources, human capital, etc.) to be molded and manipulated for the benefit of society as a whole (the State). Also, what and whose criteria will be employed to determine whether "home life is non-constructive"?]

"K–12 COMPETENCY-BASED EDUCATION COMES TO PENNSYLVANIA" BY JOHN H. SANDBERG, director of teacher education for Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, was published in the October 1979 issue of Phi Delta Kappan. Excerpts from the article follow:

It is too late to stop Project ’81, which will run its course and probably will soon be forgotten, but one may hope that other states will think hard before embarking on similar projects.... While it is possible that I misunderstood the meaning or intent of this "major goal" ["gain the skills and knowledge they will need as adults"], it strikes me as being unattainable on its face.... I would argue that we cannot "see that students acquire the competencies they need to be successful in the adult world" because we don’t know what they are now much less what they will be ten years from now.... Exchanging courses, credits, and Carnegie Units for "newly defined competencies" will not eliminate this fundamental problem....

Finally, in the case of students who are known to be college bound and are locked into a curriculum that is dictated primarily by college requirements (not life-role expectancies), what is going to give? Will physics give way to lawn mower repair? Chemistry to cooking?

Trigonometry to tile setting? Will it really make any difference for these students what the state board requires for graduation as long as Harvard wants math through calculus and two years of a foreign language?... I would be happy to settle for a short list of competencies if I thought we could handle them: Teach children how to read, to write, to do arithmetic, to draw, make music, and to get along with each other.

We are not doing these few things for enough kids now, so perhaps this is what we should be working on instead of making new lists of things we won’t know how to do.... I applaud the emphasis that Project ’81 gives to making better use of educational resources in the community. But as a Blueprint for structuring public education and for measuring its products, the competency-based approach embodied in Project ’81 strikes me as totally ridiculous. A true skeptic might argue that Project ’81 may be safely ignored on the ground that the Pennsylvania Department of Education is incompetent to chew, much less swallow, what it has attempted to bite off. Like other grandiose efforts to reform the schools, the project may generate some wind and heat and several billion pieces of paper and then go away, leaving all but the 12 pilot school districts untouched.

Nevertheless, the Pennsylvania Department of Education has already demonstrated, with competency-based teacher education, its competence to effect change—or at least the illusion of change—on a large scale. Project ’81 is a much more extensive undertaking whose potential for mischief is incalculably greater. The mischief can occur if Pennsylvanians do not take a long, hard look at where Project ’81 is taking them.

INFORMATION REGARDING THE PRELIMINARY PLANNING FOR SCHOOL-BASED CLINICS WAS revealed in the October 22, 1979 issue of Nation’s Schools Report which, under the section "Schools Can Offer Health Services," stated the following:

Schools with concentrations of Medicaid-eligible students can qualify for federal money if they set up screening and referral programs. A joint effort by the Office of Education and the Health Care Financing Administration could make available to schools some of the $46 million that will probably be spent on screening Medicaid children.

Historically, schools have been excluded from such payments, said Robert Heneson-

Walling, in the office of deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Education of the Handicapped.

But regulations proposed jointly by the two agencies and published in the Federal Register October 4 would allow schools to do the screening and even provide treatment and get paid for it.

"It’s never been clear that schools might take this initiative," he told Nation’s Schools Report. To help interested school officials get started, the two departments will publish a manual in November which will cover rules-of-thumb for officials to decide whether to undertake the screening, how to do it, and how to get help from state and local agencies.

"It’s not an either/or situation for the school district," said Heneson-Walling. There are seven or eight degrees of involvement a school might undertake. Some schools are already involved in extensive health screening services, because of requirements of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, so it would be a natural step for them to become primary health delivery centers. (p. 6)

[Ed. Note: The United States model was given wide publicity at the United Nations/UNICEFsponsored International Year of the Child Conference. The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare served as co-sponsor of the International Year of the Child’s program in the United States. For a glimpse into the future role of the schools in providing health care services turn to the 1999 entry for the "Little Red Riding Hood" version of the government/private sector initiatives outlined in the U.S. Department of Education/U.S. Department of Health and Human Services publication Together We Can. The 1999 Congressional proposal to completely fund the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act would go a long way toward universalizing these activities. Increased school violence in the late 1990s is also leading to increases in the number of school psychologists who can be used for "early screening."]

"BIG SCHOOL CHANGES PROPOSED" WAS PRINTED IN THE BANGOR (ME) DAILY NEWS ON November 30, 1979. The article covered what could easily be described as futuristic plans for Vermont public education. It stated in part:

MONTPELIER, VT—A blue ribbon commission has recommended a radical restructuring of education in Vermont with year-round, upgraded schools and a policy of allowing some students to drop out at age 13. In addition, the commission suggested creation of a 4,000- student, residential school for students ages 4 through 19. The state-run school would be a center for educational research and teacher training.... The commission recommends students should be permitted to drop out of formal schooling at age 13, as long as they get a job or enroll in an alternative training program.

[Ed. Note: This extraordinary plan for radical restructuring seemed beyond the pale in 1979.

However, it doesn’t seem so out of reach in 1999 when most of its recommendations are being introduced nationwide. Year-round school has been proposed in many locales, being adopted in some in 1999. Boarding schools have been openly proposed by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, but have not been widely embraced. However, the concept of allowing students to drop out at age 13 has its parallel in school-to-work efforts which force students to select a career emphasis by the end of eighth grade.]

IN THE NOVEMBER 1979 ISSUE OF EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP, MONTHLY PUBLICATION OF the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, "Mastery Learning: The Current State of the Craft" by James Block was published. Excerpts follow:

Indeed, with the help of dedicated practitioners and administrators, innovative teacher training institutions, progressive national and international educational organizations (ASCD, NEA, NASA, UNESCO, IEA), leading educational publishers (McGraw-Hill, SRA, Westinghouse Learning Corp., Random House), and powerful news media (The New York Times, CBS), Mastery Learning has helped reshape the face of contemporary educational  practice,research, and theory.... Entire school districts throughout North America (Chicago,  Denver, D.C., New Orleans, Vancouver) are actively testing the value of Mastery Learning for their particular educational situation.

[Ed. Note: The above quote by James Block calls to mind the 1921 entry in this book which chronicles the establishment of the Council on Foreign Relations. In that entry a quotation from Propaganda by Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freuds’s nephew, also remarks on the power of opinion to move an agenda forward:

It remains a fact in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by… small number of persons… and technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented.]

SUPER-LEARNING BY SHEILA OSTRANDER AND LYNN SCHROEDER, WITH NANCY OSTRANDER, (Dell Publishing Co., Inc.: New York, 1979) was published. Beneath the title on the cover is an explanation of Super-Learning as "New stress-free, fast learning methods you can use to develop supermemory and improve business and sports performance." In reality this "learning technique" is an updated version of ancient practices drawn from many religions and a grabbag of philosophies, most presented to the chosen rhythms of certain music. The following are excerpts from the book:

Georgi Lozanov (Lo-san-ov), a Bulgarian doctor and psychiatrist, who didn’t set out to be an educator... did set out, following the old adage, to study the nature of man, of the human being in all its potential. Like just about everybody else, he concluded that we’re only using a fraction of our capabilities. Lozanov devised ways to open the reserves of the mind and, as a doctor, put them to work to improve the body, to heal mental and physical disease.

But in investigating what the whole human being can do, he couldn’t help being drawn into creative and intuitive areas. Then still investigating, almost by necessity, he became one of the leading parapsychologists in the communist world. At the same time, Lozanov realized that with his new techniques, the average person could develop supermemory, could learn factual information with unheard-of-ease. (p. 9)

...Among others, we were going to talk to a Bulgarian scientist, Dr. Georgi Lozanov, who had investigated a number of people with extraordinary mental abilities like Keuni’s. Lozanov had come to claim that supermemory was a natural human ability. Not only can anyone develop it, he said, but one can do it with ease. To prove his point there were supposedly thousands of people in Bulgaria and the Soviet Union who were well on their way to acquiring supermemory of their own. (p.14)

...Dr. Lozanov greeted us in his office. Like the brilliant flowers in the garden outside, the room was awash with bright, vivid colors. As we’d already discovered at the conference in Moscow, Lozanov had a "holistic" sense of humor and a "cosmic" laugh like the Maharishi of TM fame. A lithe, compact man with warm brown eyes and a great cloud of curly, graying hair, he could be as kinetic as a handball one minute and deeply serene the next.

"Suggestology can revolutionize teaching," he asserted. "Once people get over preconceived ideas about limitations, they can be much more. No longer is a person limited by believing that learning is unpleasant; that what he learns today he will forget tomorrow; that learning deteriorates with age."...

He grew philosophical, "Education is the most important thing in the world. The whole of life is learning—not only in school. I believe that developing this high motivation—which comes through the technique—can be of the greatest importance to humanity."...

"What exactly is the technique of suggestology?" we asked. To create this new "ology," Lozanov and his co-workers had drawn from an almost dizzying array of specialties: mental yoga, music, sleep-learning, physiology, hypnosis, autogenics, parapsychology, drama, to name some. Suggestology’s deepest roots lay in the system of Raja Yoga. "There is really nothing new about suggestology," Lozanov explained. "The application is the new thing."...

Lozanov’s suggestology is basically "applied" altered states of consciousness for learning, healing, and intuitive development. (p. 17)

[Ed. Note: Lozanov’s methodology has been implemented in school systems across the country —including Henry M. Levin’s Accelerated Schools Project participants—and promoted as being physically healthful and psychically helpful. Its roots, as pointed out in the quotes above, are in techniques associated with religion and mind control. In the appendix to Super-Learning a "Recap" is written, part of which this writer wishes to leave with the reader so that its connection to what is being presented to teachers and parents in 1999 under the guise of "research-based" theory and practice can be more readily understood:

How does it work? A very specific kind of music has a psychophysicial effect and creates a relaxed, meditative state in the body. Physiological research showed this particular music slows body rhythms to more efficient levels. This music-induced relaxation brings health benefits. It overcomes fatigue and enhances physical and emotional well-being. It’s a bit like mantra meditation for it is a mind/body link that helps open up inner awareness.

Physiological research also shows this calmed state of the body facilitates mental functioning and learning. The body uses less energy, so there’s more for the mind. [emphasis in original] This particular music induces alert relaxation—alert mind, relaxed body.

How can you, at will, retrieve what you perceive? The answer is rhythm. The connection is made through synchronizing rhythms. Data to be learned is chanted with intonations in rhythm in time to the music. The person learning breathes along rhythmically in a relaxed state. So data, intonations, music, breathing, and body rhythms are all synchronized to a specific rhythmic cycle. The rhythm, intonations, music, and breathing make links with the conscious mind. Harmonized rhythms strengthen the information signal. Conscious awareness of unconscious perceptions is opened up through this link so you become aware of what’s in your memory bank.

Finally, superlearning is about learning to learn. There is a snowballing effect once you begin to use the techniques. How do you go about doing superlearning on your own?

The process is very simple. In advance, get the music, organize your material and tape it, reading it aloud at slow-paced intervals over the specified music.

Then, just relax and listen to your material as you breathe along to the music.

The roots of the above "learning" process grow deep in the mire of the ancient practices that have come to be called "New Age." The reader is urged to remember the rhythmic chants and sing-song recitations being offered as direct instruction "learning." Again, some of the therapeutic benefits from music and what is called "music therapy" are most often observed among the mentally ill and, for a lack of another designation, the learning disabled. The same areas from which most of the "research-based" data—often called "scientific"—draw their reported "success."]

STEPS TO BETTER WRITING: A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO EXPOSITORY WRITING BY GENE Stanford (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.: New York, 1979) was published. An exercise from this book is an example of the humanistic influence exerted in a writing textbook format:

EXERCISE C. In each of the introductory paragraphs below, underline the thesis sentence.

Then indicate in the blank which construction (funnel or contrast) was used. Finally, number the factors in the preview of main supporting points....

[Sample paragraph] 2. Too often parents think the way to rear a child is to give him guidance in the proper way to think and act. This "guidance" too often becomes an actual molding of his personality to suit the parent, as is seen in parental lectures beginning with the old clichés, "If I were you I would..." or "When I was your age I...." These parents, while they may have the good of the child at heart, are nevertheless making a grave mistake by trying to compel him to act or think in certain ways. What the teen needs instead is a type of love which gives him the freedom and confidence to develop his own opinions in matters such as religion, morality, and choice of friends. (p. 87)

[Ed. Note: The 1991 article entitled "Seniors’ Church Attendance" from Education Week (June 12, 1991) shows how successful this type of "academic" curriculum has been in changing our children’s values.]

Endnotes:

1 T.I.L.L., 67 East Shore Road, Huntington, N.Y. 11743

2 See 1998 entry concerning Newt Gingrich’s statements about the future of textbooks. Also, see 1974 entry for A Performance Accountability System for School Administrators by T.H. Bell.

3 This quote is taken from Danielson’s 67-page booklet, Practitioner’s Implementation Handbook [Series]: The Outcome-Based

Curriculum, 2nd Ed., by Charlotte Danielson (Outcome Associates, Princeton, NJ, 1992). Charlotte Danielson is presently

employed by the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey.

4 The Maine Facilitator Center was funded by the U.S. Department of Education and its primary role was to disseminate federally funded National Diffusion Network programs. Since 1994 the NDN has been defunded and its functions have been taken over by the U.S. Department of Education’s regional laboratories.

5 Excerpt taken from The Leipzig Connection mentioned and referenced earlier in this book.

6 Another View of Philosophy and Culture: Back to Freedom and Dignity by Francis Schaeffer (Crossway Books: Wheaton, Ill., 1989).

7 This particular "who shall survive" activity is still in use in 1990s NDN programs.

8 Child Abuse in the Classroom may be purchased for $10.00 by sending a check to: Eagle Forum, Pere Marquette Press, PO Box 495, Alton, IL 62002

9 The National Diffusion Network catalog, Programs that Work, may be purchased for $16.95 by calling Sopris West at 1–303– 615–2829.

10 Audiocassette of Lessinger’s speech (#612–20129) can be ordered from: ASCD, 1703 North Beauregard St., Alexandria, VA 22311–1714.

11 Sayer, George. Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis (Crossway Books: Wheaton, 1994).

12 Lewis, C.S. "Our English Syllabus" in Rehabilitations and Other Essays (Oxford University Press: London, 1939).

13 Ibid.

14 Hooper, Walter, Ed. "Learning in War-Time," in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Macmillan Publishing Co., New

York, 1980).

15 See Resources page for ordering information for Barbara Morris’s The Great American Con Game.

Chapter 7

THE "EFFECTIVE" EIGHTIES

"Producing a definite or desired result [emphasis added]," the first definition for the word "effective" found in Webster’s Dictionary, is the appropriate definition for the word "effective" as it is used in the title Effective School Research (ESR) or Effective Schools (ES)—which will characterize much of "The Effective Eighties." This is particularly true as it relates to the Skinnerian "method," often referred to as "What Works" education, more commonly known as outcome/performance/results based education and mastery learning/direct instruction. The evidence which links OBE to ESR is irrefutable: "Outcome-Based Education incorporates the findings of the Effective Schools Research, linking them together into a comprehensive and powerful model," stated Charlotte Danielson, M.A. in her Practitioner’s Implementation Handbook [Series]: The Outcome-Based Curriculum.1

Whether Effective Schools Research applied to education has been truly "effective" lies in the eye of the beholder and in the beholder’s definition of the purpose of education.2 Disturbing reports continue to surface regarding steep declines in academic test scores in schools which have restructured using the various components of Effective Schools Research. These scores are from schools which, while using ESR, have not yet shifted from norm-referenced (competitive) tests—which compare students’ results amongst their peers and which use "A-B-C-D-F" grading—to performance-based (non-competitive) teach-to-the-test assessments. Examples are the "open book test" and "authentic assessment"—which have the students competing against no one but themselves, giving them as much time as necessary to "master" the competencies.

Once the non-competitive, performance-based assessments are in place, the scores will naturally go up, thus allowing the social change agents to breathe a sigh of relief. The "low test score cat" will have been shoved back into his bag and the media will shout from the rooftops how well our children are doing on the new performance-based assessments! As usual, everyone will go back to sleep believing all is well—if they were ever awake to the problem in the first place.

The pre-non-competitive, performance-based academic test score decline should come as no surprise to the change agents in charge of "effective" schools. The "father" of the Effective Schools Research method, or Skinnerian mastery learning, the late Prof. Benjamin Bloom, said in his 1981 book All Our Children Learning: "The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students." An even more astonishing statement was made in The Effective School Report by one of the leading change agents, Thomas A. Kelly, Ph.D.: "The brain should be used for processing, not storage." With this educational emphasis, academic test scores could have done nothing but decline. If there is anyone reading this book who questions the validity of this writer’s claim that America has been "deliberately dumbed down," I urge them to keep these quotes in mind.

Let me pose the following question: How could the writer of this book have written this book had her brain not been used for storage? Could the answer to that question be the reason why  the social change agents do not want the brain to be used for storage?

The educationists understand full well what they are doing, since the use of Skinnerian/Pavlovian operant conditioning (mastery learning/direct instruction) does not allow for the transfer of information. All they need is a brain which knows how to immediately process predetermined bits and pieces of information—often nothing more than symbols, simple words or paragraphs, the knowledge of which can be easily measured—as those pieces of information relate to workforce training or a menial job; i.e., pushing a button like a pigeon in Skinner’s experiments was trained to push the lever to get its kernel of corn.

That is not learning; that is training to the point of automaticity, brought about by the abovementioned animal training. Neither is this training the same as rote learning or memorization. Rote learning or memorization requires storage of information in a brain which has used some reflective thinking to devise a method to recall it. Reflective thinking is essential for learning, allowing the brain to spend time examining the essence of the material with which it is presented.

If Bloom’s and Kelly’s quotes define what those in charge of educational restructuring are looking for in terms of "results," those same educationists should not be at all surprised or concerned about low test scores. All they have to do is wait for the new performance-based assessments to be put into place nationwide; after which the public—some of whom have been vociferously opposed to outcome-based education—will get off their backs.

Activities related to education in "The Effective Eighties" were not geared to improving the academic standing of our children. Quite the contrary; every single major government- or foundation funded activity had as its goal implementation of a global workforce training agenda.

In 1984 Secretary T.H. Bell approved a grant in the amount of $152,530 to the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (now known as Ed West) at which William Spady was the director. This grant was to carry out a project entitled "Excellence in Instructional Delivery Systems." The cover letter from the Utah superintendent of schools to Secretary T.H. Bell to which the application for grant funding was attached said, "This [the research as a result of the grant] will make it possible to put Outcome-Based Education in place, not only in Utah, but in all schools of the nation." The final report (evaluation) to the U.S. Department of Education regarding the results of this project stated:

The four models of instructional organization outlined in this casebook are difficult programs to implement. The practices of the ten schools described in the case studies are indeed commendable. Yet we do not offer these ten case studies as "exemplary schools" deserving emulation.3

So, what did the change agents do? They put OBE "into every school in the nation."

Such misuse of taxpayer dollars is waste, fraud, and abuse which cries out for a Congressional investigation. Obviously, the intentions of those involved in this grant had nothing to do with the purpose of the project spelled out in the grant applicaton: "To make available to America’s educators practical information about what really works well, why it works well, and how it can be made to work well in their local sites." (pp. 6–7) The real purpose of this project was to propose a radical redesign of the nation’s education system from one based on inputs to one based on outputs; from one oriented .toward the learning of academic content to one based on performance of selected skills, necessary for the implementation of school-to-work, a redesign thoroughly discussed in this book.

Dr. Brian Rowan, a sociologist who served as co-principal investigator with the above Robert Burns on this most fraudulent of federal grants—Utah’s "Excellence in Instructional Delivery Systems Project"—explained clearly how deceptive are the claims of those who promote OBE and effective school research in a paper entitled "Shamanistic Rituals in Effective Schools." (See Appendix XXVI.) In presenting his paper before the American Educational Research Association prior to his participation in the Utah grant evaluation, Rowan knew full well the project misrepresented itself even before he participated. But, to give credit where credit is due, Rowan at least put in writing the truth about OBE and Effective Schools Research; a truth, which, unfortunately, was made available to only a very small segment of the educational establishment and has remained hidden from the public.

"The Effective Eighties" saw President Ronald Reagan, who had accused the Soviet Union of being an "Evil Empire," signing education agreements with the Soviet Union—agreements which are still in effect—and setting up a Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives in the White House which, in effect, started the ball rolling for public-private partnerships (corporate fascism) which are at the heart of the Carnegie Corporation/Marc Tucker/New American School Development Corporation’s school-to-work agenda. It is ironic that the U.S. Department of Education, under the stewardship of a Republican administration, effectively transformed the essential character of the nation’s public schools from "teaching"—the most traditional and conservative role of schools—to "workforce training" —perceived as liberal and "progressive."

Secretary T.H. Bell fired Edward Curran, a traditional educator who headed up the National Institute of Education and who recommended to President Reagan that NIE—the heart of the "rot" in education—be abolished. Abolishing NIE required only that Secretary Bell give his approval, while abolishing the Department of Education—an election promise President Reagan had made which was incorporated into the Republican Party Platform—required the difficult to obtain approval of Congress.

Once Ed Curran was gone, there was no further resistance to the plans of those members of the administration and their corporate cronies (school-business partnerships) who wished to transform the nation’s schools from academics to the polytech education being implemented today.

As a conservative Republican, it has not been easy to come to the above conclusion regarding the role of the Republican Party in the "deliberate dumbing down" of America. At the same time, I must add that it is very likely the Democratic Party would have been even more steadfast in implementing the same agenda, had it been in a position to do so. This march to destruction seems to join all forces under its banner.

1980

SCHOOLING FOR A GLOBAL AGE EDITED BY JAMES BECKER (MCGRAW HILL: NEW YORK, 1980) was published. The preface by Professor John Goodlad is excerpted here:

Parents and the general public must be reached also [taught a global perspective]. Otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally-oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home. And then the educational institution frequently comes under scrutiny and must pull back.

EDUCATIONAL GOALS: STUDIES AND SURVEYS IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION WAS PREPARED for the International Bureau of Education, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO: Courvoisier S.A.: La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, 1980). Charles Fitouri wrote the following introduction to this document which clearly reflects the influence of UNESCO on education:

The crisis of education, about which so much has been written since the early 1960s, may be seen as the source of the need for change and innovation which has been felt and expressed since the early seventies. But what kind of innovation? And for what purpose? For what blueprint of society and to train what kind of man? This book on educational goals is .based on such questions as these.

The following excerpts from Educational Goals identify the roots of American education restructuring:

The International Bureau of Education’s interest in the problem of educational goals and theories does not arise from pure philosophical speculation or a simple academic exercise. It has been aroused, and even imposed, by a confrontation with certain realities which sprang up in this area when, in the early 1970’s, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) set out to examine the process of educational innovation in order to attempt to analyse it and, so to speak, expose its inner mechanism. It was thus that the first studies undertaken made it possible to establish with a great degree of certainty that any innovation in education implies an orientation in the field of values and, by virtue of this fact, involves the basic problem of educational goals....

...All the pedagogical movements of the twentieth century which preach equality of educational opportunity, after having proclaimed it to be a right for everyone, are more or less founded on the various socialist schools of thought which began to emerge at the end of the eighteenth century and have since marked the course of the nineteenth century and a good part of the twentieth....

This interest led to the report of the International Commission on the Development of Education, entitled Learning to Be, commonly referred to as the "Faure Report." In his statement introducing this report, the president of the commission was anxious to point out that the latter had based its deliberative efforts on the following four principles:

The existence of an international community which... is reflected in common aspirations, problems and trends, and in its movement towards one and the same destiny; "belief in democracy"; "the complete fulfillment of man" as the aim of development; and finally, the need for "over-all, life-long education."

In so doing, the International Commission on the Development of Education was in danger of succumbing to the illusion—generous though it may be—of the existence of universal and universally accepted goals. Indeed, although the four principles were unable to win unanimous support from the international community, one of them, at least, did not raise opposition of any sort, even if it happens to be the one which is most commonly violated in practice. Referred to here is the belief in democracy.... The report places special emphasis on this, stating that:

Strong support must be given to democracy, as the only way for man to avoid becoming enslaved to machines, and the only condition compatible with the dignity which the intellectual achievements of the human race require; the concept of democracy itself must be developed, for it can no longer be limited to a minimum of judicial guarantees protecting citizens from the arbitrary exercise of power in a subsistence society. Furthermore, and in conjunction with this, more support must also be given to educational requirements, for there cannot—or will not—be a democratic and egalitarian relationship between classes divided by excessive inequality in education; and the aim and content of education must be re-created, to allow both for the new features of society and the new features of democracy.

…This world solidarity has its prerequisites and conditions which have been described by UNESCO in the following terms:

[T]here must first of all be agreement on a system of values and a willingness to embark on a joint examination of their implications: values of justice, equality, freedom and fellowship.

These will be based on a new awareness in two respects, namely: recognition of the unity of mankind, with all its diverse peoples, races and cultures, and the assertion of a desire to live together, actually experienced not simply as a necessity for survival or coexistence but as the deliberate choice of fashioning a common destiny together, with joint responsibility for the future of the human race.

In such circumstances, the consciousness of the world’s solidarity, which is so much needed, can only be the fruit of an active and continuous process of education, which must be put in hand without delay and to which UNESCO must make its full contribution.

…The participants, having agreed to develop and stimulate reflection on educational goals, considered that:

1. UNESCO should give particular attention to the developments at regional and international levels, of comparative studies on educational goals, from the point of view both of their influence on the development of educational theories (historical dimension) and of their impact on educational realities (sociological dimension);

2. multidisciplinary teams, comprising philosophers, historians, teachers, sociologists, economists, psychologists, planners, etc., should be involved in this work of reflection and research;

3. the themes listed below should be regarded as priority themes:

3.1 Determination of the goals underlying education for international understanding and peace.

3.2 UNESCO’s contribution to the formulation and development of an international dimension of education based on a certain conception of modern man.

3.3 Implicit goals and explicit goals of education.

3.4 Role of goals in the emergence of a new type of relationship between school and society.

3.5 Formal education and non-formal education as they relate to the explicit goals and implicit goals of education.

3.6 Elucidation of a dialectic of educational goals and cultural and educational policy: philosophy of education and ideology.

3.7 Ways of determining educational goals in certain contexts where there is a clash between tradition and innovation.

3.8 Elucidation of educational goals on the basis of the child’s real needs taking account of the economic, social and cultural environment.

"POLICY ABOUT POLICY: SOME THOUGHTS AND PROJECTIONS" BY LUVERN L. CUNNINGHAM was published in the November 1980 issue of The Executive Review (Institute for School Executives:

The University of Iowa, Vol. 1., No. 2). A footnote on page 1 stated, "The paper was the Walter D. Cocking Lecture presented at the 34th Annual National Convention of Professors of Educational Administration in August, 1980, at Old Dominion University." Some excerpts from Cunningham’s "Policy about Policy" follow:

Local school officials and their constituencies will be facing several critical policy matters in this decade (some new, some enduring). These issues will test severely the structures and processes of policy making within local districts.... Local and state authorities will soon have to develop fresh policies in regard to: the first four years of life; life-long learning; secondary education; equity; classroom control and discipline; global education; languages; human resource development; incentives; testing; and resource acquisition and allocation. I would hope, therefore, that a good many boards would develop policy about policy....

The object of my concern is the improvement of practice within the local units of government (local school districts) where educational policy is developed....

The structure and processes of local district governance and management have changed little over the past century. In many places they appear to be creaking and groaning at the seams and at least warrant inspection if not reform....

Additional steps must be taken to permit better integration of experts into policymaking....

The new professions of civil strategist and systems analyst demonstrate rather well what I have in mind on a broader scale.

The several proposals for changing the governance and management of local school districts which follow are intended to achieve practical objectives.

(1) Pursue policy development processes which are open to, indeed, require the participation of citizens and professionals.

(2) Extend and intensify the citizen role in education policy development and policy making.

[Ed. Note: The writer has selected the two proposals above in order to emphasize Dr. Cunningham’s influence on the dilution and diminution of the role of elected school board members.

This is the philosophy which Dr. Cunningham took into Kentucky when he served as a consultant during that state’s education reform.

Implementation of the above two policies has been responsible for a subtle, gradual, and unhealthy trend towards the council form of government found in undemocratic, socialist countries. Before we know it, if Americans do not vociferously object to this gradual erosion of the elective process, their towns and cities will be run by unelected citizens who are countable to absolutely no one, since unelected people cannot be removed from (voted out of) office. This writer has always wondered: If members of our communities want so much to serve the community, why don’t they run for office? Why do we see so many people signing up to be members of unelected task forces and councils? Is it because they don’t want to run the risk of not winning, or is it that an appointed position is one which requires little or no accountability and they won’t have to answer for their mistakes?]

Cunningham continues:

Periodically, in the history of American education leaders have suggested that boards of education have become anachronisms, have fulfilled their mission, should be reformed, or quietly fade away. There was a period at the turn of the century when the notion of abolishing school boards attracted support from the then-emerging professions of educational administration joined by elites from the business and higher education communities. The theme was revised and revitalized in the late 1920’s, principally by Charles Judd, then chairman of the Department of Education at the University of Chicago....

These proposed changes are based essentially on the recognition that the complexity of today’s public institutions is such that they are often not governable or manageable within present approaches to their governance and management and are likely to be less so in the future.… My proposals therefore retain the principles of local control and policy determination by citizens but change the conditions under which policy is determined and administration is performed.... It is expected that the present pattern of school board behavior and ideology be altered in favor of practices which will allow sounder, more rationally determined school district policy.

The following proposals are amongst those included under "Synopsis of the Policy about Policy Proposals":

(1) That local boards of education develop discrete and definitive policy about policy, some of which are implied by the subsequent proposals for change in the governance and management of local school districts.

(2) That educational policy become the primary and continuing policy focus of local school officials as distinct from personnel, business, and physical facilities….

(4) That policy making agenda be prepared two to three years in advance to frame the work of the board, administrative staff, professional organization leaders, student The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1980 166 leaders, and citizen groups....

(7) That employee salary and wage determination prerogative now retained by boards of education of local school districts be moved to the state level.

(8) That representatives of professional groups (teachers and administrators organizations) for local school districts become members of the local boards of education and assume policy and accountability responsibilities equivalent to that office....

(11) That one or more states pass special legislation allowing school districts to suspend (for a period of time) current statutes, rules and regulations for their governance and management; and

(12) That processes of policy development and their enunciation as well as the processes of management be designed to include genuine, sustained student, parent, citizen, and professional educator involvement.

Yehezkel Dror suggests that for purposes of current policy making, the following elements should be standard features of a preferable policy-making method:

(1) There should be some clarification of values, objectives, and criteria for decision making....

(2) Explicit techniques, such as simulation and the Delphi method, should be used as far as they are appropriate, and knowledge from various disciplines should be brought to bear on the issues involved....

The weight of proposal one is not to locate ways to reduce the interference or meddling on the part of school board members in the everyday administration of the school system. The everyday meddling (or involvement if you prefer) of school board members in administrative matters that occurs across the country is understandable. In fact, board members believe deeply that they are serving their constituents when they interfere and meddle. Administrators often have little understanding of or patience for this sense of responsiveness that board members possess. As a consequence considerable institutional energy goes into disputes over the boundaries of board member and superintendent authority and responsibility.

Thus proposal one is based on the premise that both policy and administrative activity can be more efficient and effective if there is a substantial alteration in the ground rules for those activities....

There are constitutional, statutory, and other legal problems associated with the proposals.

If taken seriously they may lead to rather general re-examination of the constitutional and statutory provisions for the governance and management of local districts. For example, many current school board responsibilities may need to be managed in other ways. Determining salaries and wages of school personnel, constructing (even naming) school buildings, authorizing the issuance of bonds, setting school tax elections or referenda of other sorts, the approval of federal applications for funding, and other such decisions may be designated as responsibilities of other governments.

The removal of the collective bargaining function from local districts and placing it at the state level would clear out underbrush and permit boards of education and top school officials to focus more directly upon pedagogical and learning policy.

The work of Dr. Cunningham seems to have laid the groundwork for school site-based management which has reduced the role of elected school board members to rubber stampers of decisions made primarily by school personnel and carefully selected politically correct members of the community. Dr. Cunningham served as a consultant to the State of Kentucky’s Education Reform Commission in 1989. The following quotes are taken from a memorandum dated November 2, 1989 from Luvern L. Cunningham and Lila N. Carol of Leadership Development Associates regarding Preliminary Models of Governance for Kentucky. The recommendations should come as no surprise to those who have read the above excerpts from Cunningham’s 1980 paper.

Each governance model is designed to facilitate the achievement of equal educational opportunity for every learner enrolled in the public schools of the State of Kentucky.

Model One, "Total Educational Governance System for Lifetime Learning, Structural Features and Highlights"—

Policymaking responsibility for a total educational system including higher education is concentrated in a single Board of Regents. A Chancellor would be selected as the administrative head of a newly integrated system encompassing provisions for lifetime learning. Local school districts would be dissolved and site-based control and management instituted.

This model is a complete system of governance for a state system of education.… It is comprehensive and all inclusive, allowing for a thorough approach to accountability.

The governance structure is designed to meet each individual’s lifetime public learning needs beginning with the early years of life through the retirement period. Persons would be expected to continue a lifetime of learning consistent with the requirements of the 21st century, as portrayed so clearly in business and industry sponsored studies as well as those produced through citizens groups and public sponsorship. Lifetime educational counseling and lifetime curriculum development would be challenging new responsibilities of the integrated system.

This bureau is the central administrative center for lifetime learning. Lifetime learning is a much larger expectation for each citizen than we have acknowledged through policy in the past. Compulsory education statutes usually bracketed the ages of five through sixteen as our expectation for free public schooling in the United States. Lifetime learning on the other hand suggests a reconsideration of the compulsory education requirements pushing taxpayer responsibility both downward and upward through the age ranges. Obviously lifetime learning has tremendous implications for educational finance moving away from traditional concepts of funding toward new ideas such as individual entitlements to be expended throughout the lifetime. Each citizen would have a lifetime learning account to draw on as needed.

[Ed. Note: For a broad view of what this last paragraph could imply, please see "When Is Assessment Really Assessment?" in Appendix XI. Many of Luvern Cunningham’s proposals were incorporated into Georgia’s application to the New American School Development Corporation entitled "The Next Generation School Project." In the 1999 entry dealing with a letter to the editor in Athens, Georgia, some of the details of Georgia’s application—which later became a design which was offered by the Georgia 2000 Partnership for school system status leading to grant receiving and education/business partnering under Goals 2000—are stated. The reader should compare that letter’s contents to Cunningham’s proposals.]

COURSE GOALS COLLECTION WAS COMPLETED IN 1980–81 BY THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Education’s Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory in Portland, Oregon, having been initiated in 1971 as the Tri-County Course Goal Project. According to the price list for the collection, 70,000 copies were in use throughout the United States in 1981. Descriptors within the Collection state:

"The collection consists of fourteen volumes with 15,000 goals covering every major subject taught in the public schools from K–12."

Course Goals Collection, based on "the theoretical work of Bloom, Tyler, Gagne, Piaget, Krathwohl, Walbesser, Mager, and others," blatantly recommends the use of Mastery Learning The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1980 168 when it states: "The K–12 Goals Collection provides a resource for developing diagnostic-prescriptive Mastery Learning approaches, both programmed and teacher managed."

This collection also advocates the use of Management by Objectives and Planning, Programming and Budgeting Systems when it asserts:

Perhaps the greatest need addressed by the project is for a sound basis for accountability in education... assistance such as Planning, Program, Budget and Management systems or even general concepts such as Management by Objectives.

The use of values clarification and behavior modification is also encouraged when the Goals Collection points out that:

Value goals of two types are included: those related to processes of values clarification; secondly, those representing values, choices that might be fostered in the context of the discipline.

Goals states under "Content" that there is to be none because [E]stablished facts change, causing many fact-bound curricula to become obsolete during the approximately five-year lag between their inception and their widespread dissemination, and social mobility and cultural pluralism make it increasingly difficult to identify the important facts.

The Course Goals Collection is evidence of illegal federal involvement in curriculum development.

The extent of its use nationwide in 1981 is obvious since 70,000 copies were distributed and there were only approximately 16,000 school districts in the nation. Is it any wonder all states now have the same goals?

Charlotte Danielson, M.A., in the appendix to her Practitioners Implementation Handbook [series]: The Outcome-Based Curriculum, 2nd Ed. (Outcomes Associates; Princeton, N.J.,1992) entitled, "Classification System for the School Curriculum" acknowledged her use of the Course Goals Collection developed by the Tri-County Development Project. In the "Introduction to Outcome-Based Education" to Danielson’s Handbook she inextricably connects Outcome- Based Education to Effective Schools Research when she says:

Outcome-Based Education is a system for the organization and delivery of the instructional program in elementary and secondary schools which assures success for every student [emphasis in original]. It incorporates the findings of the Effective Schools Research, linking them together into a comprehensive and powerful model. Educators in outcome-based schools know that if they organize their schools properly, and offer high-quality instruction, all students will succeed with no change in standards. (p. 1)

[Ed. Note: Probably the most important quote involving the above Goals Project—at least as it relates to the definition of scientific, research-based instruction—is one found in Indiana Senator Joan Gubbins’s excellent report entitled "Goals and Objectives: Towards a National Curriculum?" prepared for the National Council on Educational Research, September 26, 1986as part of an investigation of the NWREL Goals Project. On page 16 of her report is the following statement:

I believe the personal valuing goals (included in the Goals Project) would be more properly classified as behavior modification procedures. Therefore, the Project’s definition of behavior modification is illuminating:

[P]rocedures used in programs of behavior modification or behavioral management are based on principles derived from scientific research (e.g., stimulus-response-reinforcement) Americans supporting the use of mastery learning, outcome-based education, and direct instruction to teach reading, take heed! When advised that such instruction is "scientific, research-based," remember the above U.S. Department of Education definition!]

1981

"A BROAD-GAUGED RESEARCH/REFORM PLAN FOR SECONDARY EDUCATION—IN THE TRADItion of the Eight-Year Study," proposed by The Project on Alternatives in Education (PAE) in 1981, was submitted for consideration and received funding from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Education Association. The project was conducted by leading American change agents, including Mario D. Fantini, John Goodlad, Ralph Tyler, Ronald S. Brandt, Herbert J.

Walberg and Mary Ann Raywid. Explanatory cover sheet of the grant proposal was submitted on "The John Dewey Society" letterhead. PAE called for publicly funded choice schools using "effective school [outcome-based education] research" and principles of the Eight-Year Study.

These called for "inculcation of social attitudes, development of effective methods of thinking, social sensitivity, better personal-social adjustment, acquisition of important information, consistent philosophy of life," etc.

IN 1981 OFFICE OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND IMPROVEMENT: AN OVERVIEW WAS PREpared by staff members of the U.S. Department of Education for Assistant Secretary Donald Senese’s use at Congressional budget hearings. Excerpts from the paper follow:

Federal funds account for approximately 10 percent of national expenditures on education.

The Federal share of educational research and related activities, however, is 90 percent of the total national investment.

The Committee on Coordinating Educational Information and Research (CCEIR), Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), in its 1980 Mission Statement defined "research" as: For purposes of brevity, the term "educational information and research" will be used to include basic and applied research, development, improvement, evaluation, policy study, information systems development, data reporting and analysis, and the dissemination of knowledge and information gained from such inquiry.

[Ed. Note: In other words, just about everything that goes on in the classrooms of American public schools, with the exception of salaries, school buildings, buses and the purchase of equipment, is either a direct or indirect result of funding by the U.S. Department of Education —as research!

Congress has recognized the federal government’s supposed limited authority in education.

In 1970 ESEA: General Education Provisions Act was amended to include a "Prohibition The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1981 170 against Federal Control of Education." This section prohibits the federal government from exercising any "direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration or personnel of any education institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system." The Education Amendments of 1976 extended this provision to all programs in the Education Division of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

Although such a prohibition sounds like a restriction against federal control, in effect it leaves out more than it includes; the most important component of federal control being "research" and "development." Who cares whether the federal government is not allowed to extend its long arm down into the choice of curriculum or the selection of resources? The point is that the federal government itself was involved in the development of that curriculum or those resources, teacher training, test development, etc., at one of its research labs or centers, or paid to have it developed by school systems across the nation.]

ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATIONAL COMPUTING AND TECHNOLOGY (AECT—A SPIN-OFF OF the National Education Association) received an $855,282 federal contract for "Project BEST" (Better Education Skills through Technology) in 1981. An explanatory brochure states:

WHAT IS PROJECT BEST? Project BEST is a cooperative effort involving both the federal, state, and local government and the private sector in the planning and use of modern information technologies to improve the effectiveness of basic skills, teaching and learning.

On a sheet circulated within the U.S. Department of Education as an internal document entitled "Project BEST Dissemination Design Considerations," there appeared the following information:

PROJECT DESIGN FEATURES

What We Can Control or Manipulate? = State participation/selection process Role of advisors Content of program

Training of state leaders

Resource people utilized

Basic skills content areas emphasized

Perception of need to use technology

BEST’s promotional flyer blatantly discussed how the project would serve not just in .education, but for other program areas as well, to implement the national/international management system (MBO, PPBS, TQM):

In addition, the State Team approach and the communications network with professional associations and other groups established by the project will serve as a model for the states in implementing similar efforts in other areas of education, or in such program areas as health, human services, housing, transportation, etc.

William Spady, at that time serving as executive director of the Association of School Administrators, and Dr. Shirley McCune, serving as head of the State Services Division, Denver, Colorado, were listed as members of the advisory board for Project BEST.

[Ed. Note: Project BEST was used as a vehicle to assist in "State Capacity Building"—a process to better enable school oficials, administrators, legislators and others to provide supportive documentation and "research" for school reform efforts. State Capacity Building grants have been funded by the U.S. Department of Education and are usually matched with state budget funding.]

ALL OUR CHILDREN LEARNING BY PROFESSOR BENJAMIN BLOOM (MCGRAW HILL PUBLISHing Co.:

New York, N.Y., 1981) was published. Excerpts follow:

In an attempt to maximize curriculum effectiveness... curriculum centers throughout the world have begun to incorporate learning-for-mastery instructional strategies into the redesign of curriculum. (p. 123)

According to Bloom:

[T]he International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IAEEA) is an organization of 22 national research centers which are engaged in the study of education....

This group has been concerned with the use of international tests, questionnaires, and other methods to relate student achievement and attitudes to instruction, social and economic factors in each nation. The evaluation instruments also represent an international consensus on the knowledge and objectives most worth learning. (pp. 33–35)

Another extremely important statement by Bloom in All Our Children Learning is found on page 180: "The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students."

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER IN ITS MARCH/APRIL 1981 ISSUE REported that critical thinking skills research was taking place within the United Nations Educational,

Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank which planned on "increasing the bank’s international education and training budget to about $900 million a year."4 The newsletter related that the U.S. Department of Education’s National Institute of Education "has awarded a three-year contract totaling approximately $780,000 to Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc., of Cambridge,

Massachusetts to analyze current programs of instruction on cognitive skills." The July/August issue of the newsletter contained the following:

The search for new referential systems and new values modifying existing beliefs should be based on modern microbiology. A scientific approach should be free from doctrinal bias, and its findings applicable to all man-kind. Ideological confrontations between East and West,

Marxism and Liberalism, Arabs and Jews do have economic, historical, and political bases, but no biological basis. These antagonisms have been created by the human brain and could be solved by the wiser brains of future man.

 [Ed. Note: It should be noted that Marilyn Jager Adams—deeply involved in "scientific, research- based phonics instruction" through her service on the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children for the Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National Research Council—has been a long time associate with the above-mentioned Bolt, Beranek and Newman.]

THE APRIL/MAY 1981 ISSUE OF TODAY’S EDUCATION, THE NATIONAL EDUCATION Association’s monthly journal, carried an article entitled "Effective Schools: What the Research Says" by Michael Cohen, senior associate and team leader of the Research on Instruction Team of the National Institute of Education, U.S. Department of Education. Some excerpts from the article follow:

According to Ronald Edmonds of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, these [effective school] studies suggest that differences in effectiveness among schools can be accounted for by the following five factors:

• Strong administrative leadership by the school principal, especially in regard to instructional matters.

• School climate conducive to learning [i.e., positive, or "psychologically facilitative," school climate, ed.]; that is, a safe and orderly school relatively free of discipline and vandalism problems.

• School wide emphasis on basic skills instruction (which entails acceptance among the professional staff that instruction in the basic skills is the primary goal of the school).

• Teacher expectations that all students, regardless of family background, can reach appropriate levels of achievement.

• A system for monitoring and assessing pupil performance which is tied to instructional objectives....

...[T]he five factors identified as contributing to school effectiveness suggest the classical model of a bureaucratic organization: a goal-oriented organization with a hierarchical authority structure and a central manager who monitors behavior and deliberately adjusts organizational performance on the basis of clear and agreed-upon goals and of feedback regarding goal attainment....

The principal must be willing to clearly set the direction for the school and to hold the staff accountable for following that direction. The staff, in turn, must be willing to view the principal’s direction even if it involves giving up some claims to their own autonomy.

[Ed. Note: The reader should keep in mind that Effective School Research has been used over the past twenty years in inner city schools and schools located in the South; that its track record, if judged by academic test scores, leaves much to be desired. In fact, Washington, D.C. and Secretary Riley’s home state of South Carolina—both of which have used Effective School Research—had the lowest academic test scores in the nation, to be followed by many inner city schools, especially those in the southern part of the nation. In this regard, the reader should re-read the 1913 entry containing quotes from Frederick T. Gates, director of charity for the Rockefeller Foundation.]

IN A 1981 ALASKA GOVERNOR’S TASK FORCE REPORT ON EFFECTIVE SCHOOLING TO THE Honorable Jay S. Hammond the following statements were made in regard to mastery learning and direct instruction (highly structured learning activities):

It has been determined that in the learning of specific skills and factual data that it is possible to enhance achievement by using the approach of mastery learning, wherein instructional objectives are clearly defined—and instructional activities are tied directly to objectives. It has been demonstrated that direct instruction—highly structured learning activity—is effective with certain groups of students. These approaches will assist students with low achievement to move closer to the current mean or average. Yet, a highly structured system of instruction applied to everyone may in fact impede the progress of those students achieving at a level above the current mean or average. The result is that, while variance (or the spread of scores from the mean) is reduced, there is a reduction in both directions. Low achievers may move closer to the mean, but high achievers may well do likewise. The examples presented bove regarding achievement may well apply to the operation of schools. If effective schooling practices are too narrow and a rigid system results, variance among districts will be reduced, but the limiting of creativity and the limiting of schools in their ability to adapt to local circumstances will cause reduction in variance from both above and below the mean or average. (pp. 38–39)

[Ed. Note: The introduction to this report which stated: "As part of the Task Force effort several studies were conducted by Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory under contract with the (Alaska) Department of Education," should explain to the reader that the U.S. Department of Education has funded—and continues to fund—mastery learning and direct instruction programs even in the face of evaluative evidence that strongly suggests that average and above average students do not benefit from such educational approaches.]

TWO IMPORTANT CONFERENCES FOR "SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT" WERE SPONSORED BY THE NORTHwest Regional Educational Laboratory (U.S. Department of Education) in 1981. They are described below:

MEETING THE FUTURE: Improving Secondary Schools with Goal-Based Approaches to Instruction. Marriott Hotel, Portland, Oregon. Major addresses: "Alternative Futures for Our Society and Implications for Education" by Dr. Harold Pluimer, Futurist and Educational Consultant, Minneapolis, Minnesota and "School Effectiveness and Implications for Secondary School Improvement" by Dr. Alan Cohen, Professor of Education, University of San Francisco.

Sessions on Innovative Practices: "Improving Goals, Objectives and Competencies; Making the Community a Resource for Learning" ; "Learning through Mastery Techniques; Organizing for Continuous Progress"; "Involving Teachers as Advisors to Students"; "Individualizing Programs for All Students"; "Managing Instruction with Computers"; "Developing Options for Student Assessment"; "Improving Record Keeping and Reporting Procedures"; "Increasing Staff Motivation through Group Planning and Decision-Making"; "Techniques for Managing School Improvement"; "Concerns-Based Adoption Model"; "Force Field Analysis"; "Curriculum Alignment Processes"; "Staff Development Models," and "Wisconsin R&D Center Model for School Improvement."

MICROCOMPUTERS IN TODAY’S SCHOOLS: A Conference for Educational Leaders. Benson Hotel and NWREL Headquarters, Portland, Oregon. Major addresses: "Why We Went for Micros and What Our Community Had to Say about It" by Dr. Billy Reagan, Superintendent, Houston, Texas Public Schools; "Tomorrow’s Technology in Today’s Schools" by Dr. Dexter Fletcher, World Institute for Computer-Assisted Teaching, and others.

THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION PUBLISHED NEA SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON INSTRUCtional Technology Report which was presented to their 60th Representative Assembly, held July 4–7,1981. An excerpt from the report related to the problems of programmed learning (computer assisted instruction) follows:

In its coming involvement with a technology of instruction, the profession will be faced again with the challenge of leadership—by example and by effective communication—the challenge of convincing the public that education is much more than treating students like so many Pavlovian dogs, to be conditioned and programmed into docile acceptance of a do-it-yourself blueprint of the Good Life.

The problems associated with technology, in its final analysis, are problems of freedom and control. Whose freedom? Whose control? As a result of its study, the committee urges the Association to view the problems and promises of instructional technology not as a single issue but rather as a broad continuum of issues affecting all aspects of education and teaching—from purposes to products, from political pragmatism to professional practice.

Most problems produced by technology have to do with the human use of human beings.

In his book, The Illusion of Technique: A Search for Meaning in a Technological Civilization (Doubleday: New York, 1978), William Barrette observes that—

Human creativity exceeds the mechanisms it invents, and is required even for their intelligent direction.... If we try to flee from our human condition into the computer we only meet ourselves there.

"FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS: A SYSTEM OF MUTUAL SUPPORT," A SPEECH DELIVERED IN 1981 by Secretary of Education T.H. Bell before a Freeman Institute audience in Utah, included Bell’s recommendation that schools should use Professor Lawrence Kohlberg’s "Ethical Issues in Decision Making" to teach values. (A synopsis of Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development is contained in a 1975 entry on the topic.)

IN 1981 MAINE’S STATE CAPACITY BUILDING GRANT FROM THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF Education (NIE), U.S. Department of Education, was examined and verbatim notes taken by this writer from the file at NIE. The same Capacity Building Grants were made to all fifty state departments of education. The writer has selected this important grant as an example of federal control of local education through federal funding. The following verbatim notes will help the reader understand the farce of local control and why the U.S. Department of Education must be abolished.

This particular grant was of extreme interest to the writer due to her involvement in the late seventies—along with Bettina Dobbs, the president of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM)—in a statewide, grassroots effort to stop the very controversial State Health Education Program (SHEP) funded in part by the Kellogg Foundation. Believe it or not, as a word of encouragement, GEM was instrumental in stopping this education program in many school districts (a good example of David and Goliath in the twentieth century). Evidently, the above referenced NIE grant was used to further the implementation of this and other health education programs. Other states would use these grants for whatever programs they perceived to be of importance to them at that time. State budget requests for matching funds would be listed simply as "State Capacity Building."

NIE Grant G–80–0025 was in the amount of $98,000 per year for four years. Maine’s share towards total federal funding was to be $118,025 out of the four-year total of $392,000.

Excerpts from the grant request follow:

These systems will emphasize staff development as primary vehicle for promoting utilization of state and national information resources for purpose of school improvement....

Brief description of Project: This project is attempting to develop a means by which Maine educators can easily acquire and use information for problem solving and school improvement....

OBJECTIVES:

1. Develop computerized information resource base which includes national, state and local resources.

2. Develop an information service that provides easy access to the information resource base.

3. Refinement of computer program and initiation of revision of data collection forms (upon recommendation of a Technical Assistance Team from the National Institute of Education).

4. Develop a system for coordinating, disseminating, and distributing school improvement efforts with the state education agency.... 1/30/80... D_____ wanted to know about a technical assistance team at NIE that works with projected content of private data banks.... Believe B_____ heads such a team and could help her with her file building activities....

DEVELOPMENT OF MAINE DATA BASE:

Administration, coordination and facilitation of Development of a Statewide School Practice/Improvement System.... A meeting was held with the Systems Analyst of the State Education Agency to explore private file development options available through the state government computer.... Model for staff development.... Training of State Health Education Program (SHEP) staff in completing and editing data collection forms.... SHEP will receive printouts for all health education resources entered into Maine Resource Bank.

EARLY IN 1981 THE PRESIDENT’S TASK FORCE ON PRIVATE SECTOR INITIATIVES WAS INstalled at Jackson Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. Membership listed on The White House letterhead read like a "Who’s Who" of individuals in government agencies, universities, tax-exempt foundations, non-governmental organizations, business, media, labor unions, and religion. The names of some individuals on the task force follow: William Aramony, president, United Way;

176 William J. Baroody, Jr., president, American Enterprise Institute; Helen G. Boosalis, mayor, City of Lincoln, Nebraska; Terence Cardinal Cooke, archbishop of New York; Governor Pierre S. Dupont, Delaware; Senator David Durenberger; Luis A. Ferre, former governor of Puerto Rico; John Gardner, chairman, Independent Sector; Edward Hill, pastor, Mt. Zion Baptist Church; Michael S. Joyce, executive director, John M. Olin Foundation; Edward H. Kiernan, president, International Association of Police; Arthur Levitt, Jr., chairman, American Stock Exchange; Richard W. Lyman, president, Rockefeller Foundation; Elder Thomas S. Monson, The Mormon Church; William C. Norris, chairman and CEO, Control Data Corporation; George Romney, chairman, National Center for Citizen Involvement; C. William Verity, Jr., chairman, Armco Steel, Inc.; Jeri J. Winger, first vice president, General Federation of Women’s Clubs; Thomas H. Wyman, president, CBS, Inc.; and William S. White, president, C.S. Mott Foundation.5

This totally new and un-American concept of partnerships between public and private sector has been readily accepted by our elected officials who ignore its roots in socialism and its implications for the discontinuation of our representative form of government and accountability to the taxpayers. Under the "partnership" process, determining responsibility when something goes wrong is like pinning jello to the wall.

Such a change in government, if presented in clear language to citizens at the polls, would be rejected. However, when implemented gradually, using the Marxist-Hegelian Dialectic, citizens don’t even notice what is happening. The shift is away from elected representatives.

In time, after voters have become even more disenchanted with the candidates and election results, fewer and fewer citizens will vote. At that point a highly-respected member of the public will enter the picture to propose a solution to the problem: some sort of compromise toward parliamentary form of government found in socialist democracies which will be acceptable to Americans unfamiliar with the protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

One says to oneself, confidently, "This will never happen." Look around you. What do you see? Site-based management in your local schools, transferring decision-making, traditionally exercised by elected school boards, to politically correct appointees and the creation of unelected task forces at all government levels; proposals to "separate school and state" which make no mention of governmental and social structure consequences—efforts to have government money (taxes) pay for services delivered by private religious or home schools, etc., with no public representation. There can be no accountability to the taxpayers under a system o alien to the United States’ form of representative government.

How clean, neat and tidy. Wholesale destruction of an entire, wonderful system of government without firing a shot.

As a U.S. Department of Education liaison with The White House during the early days of this initiative this writer inquired of one of President Reagan’s political appointees whether this initiative, was not corporate fascism; a politically incorrect question that resulted in someone else replacing me as Liaison with The White House.

A VERY IMPORTANT NATIONAL ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS (NAEP) REPORT, in galley stage, entitled Measuring the Quality of Education: Conclusions and Summary, was provided to this writer in 1981, shedding light not only on the responsibility of major tax-exempt foundations in the development of a national curriculum, but also on the role of the federal government in setting standards/goals for American education. Excerpts follow from (1) a cover letter signed by Willard Wirtz, former secretary of labor, and Archie Lapointe, executive director of the NAEP, and (2) the report itself:

(1) In a different sense, this report is designed to meet the responsibilities imposed at least implicitly by the three foundations which initiated and have supported the project; the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation have become critical and constructive forces in American education.

(2) Conclusions... Instead of determining "what is being taught" and basing the objectives on this present practice, the controlling question is "what ought to be taught."... It is specifically recommended that caution be exercised against putting the Assessment results in a form that could be misconstrued as constituting national—or "federal"—standards....

Summary... The report reflects most significantly the carefully considered conclusions of the Council of Seven which was established at the beginning of the project. Selected primarily for their recognized responsibility and good sense, they also reflect a variety of experiences and institutional interests: Gregory Anrig, then Massachusetts Commissioner of Education and now President of the Educational Testing Service; Stephen K. Bailey, who is the Francis Keppel Professor of Educational Policy and Administration of Harvard Graduate School of Education; Charles Bowen, Director of Plans and Program Administration for University Relations of the IBM Corporation; Clare Burstall, Deputy Director of the National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales; Elton Jolly, Executive Director for Opportunities Industrialization Centers; Lauren Resnick, Co-Director of the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh; and Dorothy Shields, Director of Education for the AFL-CIO....

...It was the Council’s suggestion and eventually its decision to shape the entire report in terms of the Assessment’s potential role in developing higher and more effective educational standards. Where we had been timid about this the Council moved boldly. They were right....

...Measuring student achievement is an entirely different business from measuring other aspects of the national condition.... They get to their answers without having to make value judgments. Not so of the measurers of "educational achievement." The key term isn’t defined except as they develop its meaning. The rest of this is that once that definition is worked out, the measuring process depends at critical points on what are in significant part value judgments. Whether an educational standard is "better" or "higher" depends on how it consists with ultimate educational purposes...

...Those in charge of the Assessment are in a position to guide their policies entirely by a determination of whatever "quality" means. They face no competition and are subject to no political pressures. Innovation and experimentation are part of the Assessment’s authentic tradition. It can provide not only competence but conscience and courage in the implementation of the new national purpose to improve educational standards.

...A statement in the NAEP DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT DOCUMENT covering the 1979–1980 Reading/Literature Assessment is succinctly descriptive:

The first step in any assessment cycle is objectives development. The objectives identify the important knowledge, skills, and attitudes within an assessment area which are generally being taught or should be taught in schools. These objectives then become the framework or developing assessment exercises which measure the objectives.

Although there is little public awareness of these steps in the process of setting educational standards, they affect that process vitally and give any standard its determinative character....

...This new emphasis will mean that teaching will be increasingly oriented toward these objectives, which is good or bad depending on their quality. If these standards are to determine accountability, it is critical that their measurement reflect ultimate educational purposes rather than what might be dangerous expediencies.... The 1979–1980 Reading/Literature Assessment, reported this year, appears to reflect a critical change in NAEP emphasis.

It embodies elements of objectives-setting that are essential to a quality concept of educational standards....

...Two phrases in the design and development passage quoted above are critical. Objectives are to "identify the important knowledge, skills and attitudes." This is to include those "which are generally being taught or should be taught in the schools." The emphasis is added, but is consistent with the original context. This statement contrasts with the 1970 NAEP description of the objectives set for the first Reading assessment. These were described as involving no "distinctly ‘new’ objectives," but as "restatements and summarizations of objectives which (have) appeared over the last quarter century."...

...The 1969–1970 Citizenship Assessment included a group task exercise designed to determine, by observing students’ group interaction, their ability to "apply democratic procedures on a practical level."... This capacity for innovation and experimentation has been lost, largely as a consequence of budgetary constraints.

Service Facility... In 1977–78, when the Texas legislature was considering the enactment of a minimum competency testing program, the Texas Education Agency made extensive use of NAEP materials in conducting a statewide survey (Texas Assessment Project—TAP) of student achievement in Reading, Writing, Mathematics, and Citizenship. The sampling plan was patterned after the National Assessment. Both the Writing and the Citizenship assessments were based largely on items and exercises selected by a Texas Education Agency staff panel from among those provided by NAEP offices. After the Texas assessment had been completed, extensive comparisons were made between the Texas results and available NAEP data, and reported to the legislative committee for consideration in connection with the adoption of the "Texas Assessment of Basic Skills." The circumstances under which the legislation was adopted preclude any clear identification of the effect of the comparisons.

There is more evidence of substantial influence of the TAP initiative on the FRAMEWORK FOR THE SOCIAL STUDIES and LANGUAGE ARTS FRAMEWORK which have been developed and on the STATE BOARD GOALS which have been set for 1983.

Larger potential for National Assessment usefulness is suggested by the ten years or so of cooperation between NAEP offices and the Connecticut State Board of Education, in connection with the administration of the Connecticut Assessment of Educational Progress (CAEP). A 1980 State Board report notes that "The CAEP program is modeled after the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in its basic goals, design and implementation."

This is clearly reflected in the pattern of the twelve Connecticut assessments in seven subjects also covered by NAEP surveys. The CAEP sampling design is like NAEP’s, except that students are assessed at grade rather than age levels. Goals and objectives used for the Connecticut assessments parallel clearly the objectives and subobjectives identified for the National Assessment. Many CAEP items are NAEP items; this was true of all items in the 1979–1980 Connecticut Science Assessment....

…Comparable uses of National Assessment materials have been made in a number of other states. A recent NAEP staff summary lists twelve States as having closely replicated the National Assessment model, and twelve others as having drawn on NAEP offices for technical and consultative advice. There is clear confirmation in this record of not only a substantial service potential, but also of a significant prospect for integrating state and nationwide assessment programs.

[Ed. Note: As one reads the excerpts in part two of this report, it is important to bear in mind the denials of complicity emanating from the U.S. Department of Education and the respective state departments of education when confronted with charges that the state assessments use test items from the NAEP Test Item Bank. The resistance to such use results from the public’s traditional aversion to national tests and national curriculum—with which all of the above entities have denied involvement. Clearly, denial is in vain in light of the evidence contained in this document.]

THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT ISSUED A REPORT ENTITLED THE AMERIcan Volunteer, 1981: Statistics on Volunteers. One revealing statement from the report follows:

Volunteer Population: 92 million, 44% of whom work alone in an informal, unstructured environment on projects of their own choice; the rest of whom work .in structured activities.

[Ed. Note: Obviously, the major effort related to volunteerism was—and is—to convince the 44% who are, in effect, "doing their own thing," to join in the government-private sector "Points of Light" volunteerism partnership initiated by then-President George Bush, as well as President Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps. That way they will work only on politically correct and government-approved projects.]

MALCOLM DAVIS, THE DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF LIBRARIES AND LEARNING TECHNOLogy, Office of Educational Research and Improvement at the U.S. Department of Education, in response to this writer’s comment in 1981 that computer courseware could allow children to learn at home, responded, "In essence, in the future all education will take place in the home, but the school buildings will be used for socialization purposes." This quote is not exact; however, it represents this writer’s recollection of it sixteen years later. I was so stunned by his comment that I recall it often when looking at the issue of "choice" and especially that of home schooling.

This comment was echoed by Alvin Toffler, George Gilder and Lewis Perelman during a Progress and Freedom Foundation conference in Atlanta, Georgia in August of 1995. This conference preceded and dealt with issues molding the "Contract with America" which Newt Gingrich put forth for Republican candidates to adopt as their platforms in 1996. Lewis Perelman’s book, School’s Out (Avon Books: New York, 1992), deals with this very concept and Perelman attended the conference as an expositor of "conservative" positions on education for Progress and Freedom Foundation.

[Ed. Note: A 1992 proposal to the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) from The Center for the New West of Denver, Colorado included a plan from its New West Learning Center Design Team which provided a clear picture of the community of the future.

"Home School Families" would be linked to "Public Schools, Communities, Private Schools,

Businesses, Alternative Schools, and Higher Education" with the New West Learning Center serving as the "hub" of the wheel, or community. While this proposal was not selected as  a recipient of NASDC funding, and, fortunately, has not been funded by any government entity—YET—its description of changes in local governance and relationships of community elements met the criteria established by NASDC. (See Appendix XI and XII.)]

1982

PROFILES IN EXCELLENCE: 1982–1983: SECONDARY SCHOOL RECOGNITION PROGRAM: A Resource Guide (Office of Educational Research and Improvement of the U.S. Department of Education:

Washington, D.C., 1982) listed the Kennebunk, Maine High School as one which schools across the nation might wish to emulate. The Guide stated:

The major goal of the school’s curriculum is to individualize the learning process for the student. The district is in the process of developing a data bank for students and a testing program for determining expectancy instructional levels for each student. Once this is in place, staff will develop an Individual Education Plan (IEP) for each student to meet individual eds. The major difficulty the school is encountering in implementing this new process is the secondary staff who are trained as subject matter teachers. Teachers need to be retrained to focus on individual needs rather than on content areas.

"FROM SCHOOLING TO LEARNING: RETHINKING PRESCHOOL THROUGH UNIVERSITY EDUCAtion" by Don Glines was published in the January 1982 issue of the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ Bulletin.6 The following are excerpts:

The implications of these global concerns for schools, educators, and education, are monumental if the views of most future writers are correct. Early recognition of this came in the 1974 book, Learning for Tomorrow: The Role of the Future in Education by Alvin Toffler (Random House: New York, 1974), and The Third Wave (William Morrow: New York, 1981) [by the same author].

One passage states: "American education is obsolete; it produces people to fit into a reasonably well-functioning industrial society and we no longer have one. The basic assumption driving American education, one both deceptive and dangerous, is that the future will be like the present. Schools are preparing people for a society that no longer exists. As society shifts away from the industrial model, schools will have to turn out a different kind of person. Schools now need to produce people who can cope with change."...

What do people who will be in their prime in the year 2050, assuming society makes it through the coming transitional decades, need to shape their futures? Is the current curriculum —history, mathematics, science, new versions of Dick and Jane, all taught as separate subjects, really appropriate for the concluding years of the twentieth century? The majority of futures writers have a clear answer: No. They illustrate that instant information retrieval not only ends jobs in the world of work, it ends subjects in the world of learning!...

The potential technology exists to eliminate most current classrooms before the turn of the century, moving from a campus to a community-oriented learning system. A postliterate society is on the verge of arriving; reading will become a luxury, a leisure pastime, or a choice, but not an absolute essential.

Yet, the seventh grade programs in junior high and middle schools continue with the bleakness of 50 years past. Most still require English, history, science, math, and physical education, along with a semester of art and a semester of music. They have period 1, 2, 3 schedules; A, B, C report cards; tardies, notes from home; textbooks. Perhaps even worse is the fact that most colleges still prepare teachers for this antiquity; and administrators, who in spite of the goals professed in graduate courses, continue to perpetuate the system. Is it any wonder that Learning for Tomorrow labeled today’s education obsolete?

Ron Barnes, in Tomorrow’s Educator: An Alternative to Today’s School Person (Transitions, Inc.: Phoenix, Arizona, 1977), has listed his descriptors of a New Age educator—a person who thinks systematically; accepts and promotes diversity; demonstrates a holistic perspective toward life; strives for self-awareness; promotes interdependence; is comfortable with the unknown; considers human values of highest priority; is experimental; works toward changing schools; has a more open approach to knowledge; and is a true futurist.

OUTCOME-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL MANAGEMENT: A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE BY WILLiam Spady was published in 1982, supported by a contract from the National Institute of Education (NIE–P–80–0194). This important paper, which provided a complete overview of the philosophy behind OBE, the organizational dimensions of outcome-based practice, the operational character of outcome-based practice, etc., also carried some interesting comments regarding OBE’s relationship to Project Follow Through. Excerpts follow:

Implications for Follow Through... Despite the limitations of formal validation data sources, however, there is a strong case to be made for implementing fully developed OB [outcome based] models in Follow Through sites. Philosophically, as well as empirically, this approach is inherently suited to the clientele served by Follow Through programs and possesses an operational character that is well suited for affecting positively both the cognitive and affective outcome agendas sought by a variety of current Follow Through models.

Recognizing that OB practice resembles some of these models, its unique power appears to be that it possesses a fine balance between focus and flexibility, and structure and responsiveness, and that it contains elements suitable to a variety of student motivational and learning styles without leaning heavily toward any one orientation. That is, it is as inclusionary in its methodology as it is in the conditions for student learning success it tries to establish.

A final point regarding the inherent appeal of OB practice for Follow Through implementation is its basic openness. Public involvement in goal setting, public visibility of objectives and standards, and performance records and reporting systems which describe the actual behavior being sought all help to "demystify" the educational process and facilitate clearer understanding and communication between parents and the school.

The Network for Outcome-Based Schools itself represents a unique and powerful resource for technical assistance and implementation to any sites oriented toward OB practice.

[Ed. Note: The above excerpts should be of interest to those promoting DISTAR/Reading Mastery, the Skinnerian "systematic, intensive, scientific research-based" phonics reading program which was one of the Follow Through models. How ironic that William Spady should say that the outcome-based practice which "conservatives" say they detest is similar to the Follow Through model which they have embraced. It is obvious Spady is not referring to the Open Classroom Follow Through model, since that model did not include "public visibility of objectives and standards, performance records and reporting systems which describe the actual behaviors being sought." In other words, Spady is making it clear that OB practice is a fraternal twin of 182 the Follow Through’s Direct Instruction model developed by Siegfried Engelmann, which has also been embraced by "conservatives"!]

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