The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: behind the US’s educational policy
I found this on the Informer’s blog here on Vox. Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, who was senior policy adviser to the Department of Education under the Reagan Administration, talks about the dumbing-down of the United States and how education has been set on a socialist path by Marxists. She has written a book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, which you can download free of charge in PDF format from her site.
From the preface, with footnotes omitted and some paragraphing changed for clarity:
… Achievement of Students, Key Points: U. S. twelfth graders scored below the international average and among the lowest of the 21 TIMSS nations in both mathematics and science general knowledge in the final year of secondary school. (p. 24)
Obviously, something is terribly wrong when a $6,330 per pupil expenditure produces such pathetic results. This writer has visited private schools which charge $1,000-per-year in tuition which enjoy superior academic results. Parents of home-schooled children spend a maximum of $1,000-per-year and usually have similar excellent results. …
The desire by “resisters” to prove their case has been so strong that they have continued to amass-over a thirty- to fifty-year period-what must surely amount to tons of materials containing irrefutable proof, in the education change agents’ own words, of deliberate, malicious intent to achieve behavioral changes in students/parents/society which have nothing to do with commonly understood educational objectives. Upon delivery of such proof, “resisters” are consistently met with the “shoot the messenger” stonewalling response by teachers, school boards, superintendents, state and local officials, as well as the supposedly objective institutions of academia and the press.
This resister’s book, or collection of research in book form, was put together primarily to satisfy my own need to see the various components which led to the dumbing down of the United States of America assembled in chronological order-in writing. Even I, who had observed these weird activities taking place at all levels of government, was reluctant to accept a malicious intent behind each individual, chronological activity or innovation, unless I could connect it with other, similar activities taking place at other times. This book, which makes such connections, has provided for me a much-needed sense of closure. …
In retrospect, I had just found out that the United States was engaged in war. People write important books about war: books documenting the battles fought, the names of the generals involved, the names of those who fired the first shot. This book is simply a history book about another kind of war:
* one fought using psychological methods;
* a one-hundred-year war;
* a different, more deadly war than any in which our country has ever been involved;
* a war about which the average American hasn't the foggiest idea.
The reason Americans do not understand this war is because it has been fought in secret-in the schools of our nation, using our children who are captive in classrooms. The wagers of this war are using very sophisticated and effective tools:
* Hegelian Dialectic (common ground, consensus and compromise)
* Gradualism (two steps forward; one step backward)
* Semantic deception (redefining terms to get agreement without understanding) …
Much of this book contains quotes from government documents detailing the real purposes of American education:
* to use the schools to change America from a free, individual nation to a socialist, global “state,” just one of many socialist states which will be subservient to the United Nations Charter, not the United States Constitution;
* to brainwash our children, starting at birth, to reject individualism in favor of collectivism;
* to reject high academic standards in favor of OBE/ISO 1400/90006 egalitarianism;
* to reject truth and absolutes in favor of tolerance, situational ethics and consensus;
* to reject American values in favor of internationalist values (globalism);
* to reject freedom to choose one’s career in favor of the totalitarian K-12 school-to-work/OBE process, aptly named “limited learning for lifelong labor,” coordinated through United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Only when all children in public, private and home schools are robotized-and believe as one-will World Government be acceptable to citizens and able to be implemented without firing a shot. The attractive-sounding “choice” proposals will enable the globalist elite to achieve their goal: the robotization (brainwashing) of all Americans in order to gain their acceptance of lifelong education and workforce training-part of the world management system to achieve a new global feudalism.
There’s more at www.deliberatedumbingdown.com. It’s useful food for thought in our technocratically biased society, and I think we can see some of the same things happening in our own educational system and media.
Comments
Oh man, Jack, where shall I start about the "benefits" of OBE? The older Ninjette sat for her HSC last year as the first batch of guinea-pig students to go through the OBE curriculum. Thankfully, I was able to subvert whatever crap she was taught in school through our own private tutoring to give her some common sense; sadly OBE doesn't encourage common sense.
I was part of a large group of very concerned parents and teachers who protested very intensely against the implementation of OBE here. Fortunately, our arguments/common sense prevailed and the State government swapped back to the basic fundamentals of education.
Let me see, how can I best crytallise what the OBE rubbish was all about? It's like this: you get a quarterly school report back from the home room teacher about the child, and it says something along the lines of: "Little Johnny has tried very hard all term to improve on his math. He has scope to improve. But we are really pleased that he shows up for class on time everyday and takes pride in his school uniform."
I don't know about you, but OBE does absolutely nothing for the kids and robs them of a real education.
"Inside American Education" by Dr. Thomas Sowell is an excellent book on this very subject. Dr. Sowell is a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford Univ.
Many different people from different states and we are all seeing the same thing and fighting against it.
As I read Patricia's comment, I thought she's not followed this too closely or she'd know just as so many others do. But I was so encouraged by her not discounting this information as false, she as any good and honorable teacher would do, she's going to research this more. The information about this truth is all over the place and I think as a teacher she will be in a position to help do something about this in her community. The research will be heart breaking for her as it has been for all of us who've had to learn what our education system is turning into. My introduction to this was reading children's school text books - that was a rude awakening for me and I've researched it ever since.
Thanks Jack for posting this.
H. I., I believe Patricia has her head screwed on right and keeping one’s wits about isn’t a bad idea, getting the full story. I am not surprised to find that you discovered the sort of decline via reading children’s textbooks. I wonder if I have kids what sort of school I would send them to. Those parents opting for homeschooling might have the right idea.
I doubt any child would be looking for reds, mind you, simply because they don’t care. Until I was around 11 or 12 I didn’t even notice there were other races.