|
|
|
Today's School Indoctrination - the Road to Communism!
|
|
|
The Death of Free Will!
by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt Infowars.com, December 8, 2010
THE LAST NAIL OF SO-CALLED SCHOOL REFORM is being struck in the coffin of traditional American education which made our nation the envy of the Free World and which produced famous scientists, engineers, mathematicians, writers, artists, musicians, doctors, etc.
The reform is not new. It started in the early 1900s when John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s Director of Charity for the Rockefeller Foundation, Frederick T. Gates, set up the Southern Education Board. In 1913 the organization was incorporated into the General Education Board. These boards set in motion "the deliberate dumbing down of America". In Frederick T. Gates' "The Country School of Tomorrow" Occasional Papers No. 1 (General Education Board, New York, 1913) was a section entitled "A Vision of the Remedy" in which he wrote:
"Is there aught a remedy for this neglect of rural life? Let us, at least, yield ourselves to the gratifications of a beautiful dream that there is. In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our moulding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."
The above quote sounds like something from one of the public/private school-to-work/tax-exempt foundation partnerships involved in the Reinventing Schools Coalition agenda, as well as other innocuous sounding current-day initiatives that are being implemented across the nation.
THE AFTER THOUGHT!
It is agreed by many Americans that the United States is living on “borrowed time,” how many of us are willing to reflect seriously on what has happened and how the situation can be reversed? In 1985 this writer, in her slim booklet Back to Basics or OBE…Skinnerian International Curriculum, warned:
Whether or not the United States of America—through citizen preoccupation with fashion, TV, sports, gourmet cooking, jogging, making a living, etc., all of which are perfectly legitimate and worthwhile activities in a “free society,” coupled with lack of understanding of the internationalists’ use of gradualism and Hegelian philosophy to attain their goals—slides into the totalitarian black hole of a socialist one world government, with the resulting loss of freedoms our ancestors fought and died for, depends on whether YOU, the reader, are convinced the problems described in this book are serious enough for you to
spend a few minutes writing to your elected officials.... If the present situation continues unchecked, by the year 1998: children now in kindergarten will have been through thirteen years of Skinnerian world government brainwash under the deceptive guise of the “New Basics”; you and I may no longer be around to vote; and the 18-year-olds may well be on their way to vote what historians have referred to as the greatest experiment in human freedom straight down the tubes.
Well, this writer is still around, and fortunately, so are many other concerned Americans who in 1985 were in their fifties. What this writer predicted has for the most part happened, although it is difficult for the average American to identify or to nail down since the loss of our freedoms at the ballot box—and more importantly through regional government which uses unelected officials to make decisions—has been introduced very gradually.
The most serious problem resulting from the “deliberate dumbing down” is that important decision making is increasingly being delegated to unelected Americans. Citizens are being called upon to participate in the political process through communitarian group management procedures (site-based school management, task forces, blue-ribbon commissions, town meetings, group consensus, call-in talk shows, polling, etc.) and public policy is being made using the “uninformed” opinions of those who have, through no fault of their own, been dumbed down by being either mis-educated or not educated at all in the
traditional sense. Many cannot even read a newspaper and depend on TV for their knowledge and understanding of current events.
Part of the solution to this problem could be to return all decision making to duly-elected officials. That, of course, would not assure that those who are elected would be any better qualified to make decisions than those presently calling the shots in Delphi circles and the numerous unelected decision-making venues at work in our country. However, accountability would be restored, and citizens could once more, as free individuals—and, I repeat, individuals—vote these people out of office and elect persons who are educated in the traditional disciplines of history and government (the U.S. Constitution), economics and basic academics. Eventually, if the public education system can be restored to its former excellence, our nation would be able to get back on track.
Seldom, if ever, does one hear the following fairly simple solution suggested when the question is posed regarding how to restore our public education system to its traditional (pre-1930’s) state of excellence:
Elected officials at the local level have the authority to re-establish public education according to the wishes of the taxpayers in each local community. Teachers with degrees in specific subject matter could be hired without requiring that they have state or national certification which subjects them to seemingly ruinous training courses which do not deal with academic material. However, the funding of the schools must remain local if citizens wish to re-create truly academic institutions. There can be no tuition tax credits, vouchers, charter schools, or laundered state tax monies (monies co-mingled with federal money) if citizens wish to be 100% in charge of the education philosophy; i.e., curriculum, hiring of teachers, teaching methods, etc. Americans forget too easily the old saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” For those who find such a solution unworkable due to
the discrepancies in local community tax bases, I say refer to the beginning of this book regarding the ability to educate on a shoestring. Education costs little: brainwashing and social services are very, very expensive.
Granted, the above “solution” may sound simplistic, and in this day and age would not be easy to implement in urban areas, where many of the needs are the greatest. However, when one surveys the urban education landscape as presently constituted, there are few bright spots. Billions of dollars in tax money, which should have gone into true academics, have been siphoned off into the operation of huge and unnecessary bureaucracies. As one has seen after reading this book, community services and changing students’ values have been judged more essential than teaching a child to read, to understand his historical setting,
the essentials of science, and how to calculate. Basic academics, in most inner city schools under the umbrella of Effective Schools Research, have been taught using Skinnerian mastery learning programs which have resulted in producing low test scores. Discipline has broken down to such an extent that the prescription of the drug Ritalin is commonplace, retired military officers are running urban schools, uniforms are mandated in many public schools, and the police are being called upon to keep order in the former halls of academe.
There is no question that much careful and sensitive thought must go into planning the urban schools, keeping in mind at all times that most of the problems facing these schools and communities have been a result of what you have read about in this book and willingness of elected officials to accept the “carrot” along with the big stick (the money with all the federal and state controls on how it is to be used).
It is never too late to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing positive can be accomplished, regardless of how much money and good will exist, unless we Americans learn again to stand on our own two feet, as individuals, not as members of the “group”
using Total Quality Management, but as individuals with God-given intellects; as individuals who accept their responsibility to be contributing participants in our constitutional republic instead of being observers in a so-called “participatory” democracy where only those who agree with the status quo will be allowed to have a voice. Our nation did not become great through group action. It became great in every way due to individual Americans thinking acting independently, caring for one another and not expecting the government to for them or their neighbors, and accepting responsibility for their actions without blaming the “environment” for all their misdeeds—from broken marriages, smoking and drinking to violent behavior.
To repeat the theme of this book: We are human beings, not animals. We have free will. We can choose and build our futures, something animals are not capable of doing. Animals justified in blaming their environment for their behavior! We, as human beings, with intellect, soul and conscience, do not have such justification.
Very recent history, being made as this book is written, should serve as a wake-up We, as citizens, seem increasingly unable to make the important connections between individual personal behavior and its effect on the nation/world as a whole. There can be
stability in our world if common decency (morality) is shunted aside and considered a “personal matter” not affecting the entire body politic (personal behavior vs. public morals). children deserve more from those adults who bemoan the sorry state of this nation while making excuses for public officials’ immoral conduct, and who are poor examples good behavior themselves. How can we expect our children to grow up and become responsible citizens and future leaders if we sanction immorality at all levels of personal and government? How can our children accept our criticisms and correction when caught lying or stealing when they see us making excuses for such behavior at the highest levels of government and leadership?
Truly, the “non-absolutist value vaccine” (extensively documented in this book) has taken can be expected to further sicken our nation in the absence of a return to dependence on clear and simple moral standards, such as the Ten Commandments which used to hang the walls of every school and public building in this nation.
Of utmost importance for all Americans at this critical juncture in American education for us not to accept a solution that may in the long run turn out to be more harmful than present unsatisfactory state of American public education. Some solutions being floated around sound good, such as the complete abandonment of public education in favor of a privately operated system in which parents ostensibly could choose the school to which they send their children. It is important to take a very hard look at such solutions. First, who is going to run those schools? Are parents aware that the New American School Development Corporation and its charter schools for workforce training were set up precisely for the purpose of replacing the deliberately “crashed” public schools? Where would children in the low-income urban areas end up? What private and/or “publicly-funded private” entities are waiting in the wings to orchestrate and relegate these students into dead-end workforce training institutions?
As explained in the preface and at the end of this book, the global workforce training system is being put in place as I write. For example, on June 28, 1999, Gene Sperling, the director of the President’s Economic Council, in an interview with CNN’s “Moneyline” said that some of the $100 billion “surplus” could be used to make sure “children are ready to be the workers of the next century.” What real “choice” will parents have when it comes to where their children will be so-called “educated” (trained) to be the “workers of the next century”? The powers-that-be must be pretty sure of themselves to so blatantly refer to education’s primary goal as creating little workers. Are American parents really so dumbed down that they find such comments coming from the highest office in the land acceptable? Even if those operating charter schools had the best of motives, what is going to happen
to the majority of children who come from homes where both parents work, where there is only one parent, where there are numerous societal problems which would impinge upon the freedom of parents to be a part of the privately-supported system—sell their children into serfdom?
“Choice in education” is an appealing concept until put under the microscope of 1990s reality. At this point in time, “true choice” with no strings attached exists only for homeschoolers and private (independent and religious) schools that have not in any way
compromised their freedom to do exactly as they wish. By that, the author means that such an entity has never: (1) accepted one single penny which has at any time, in any fashion, been a source of government—at any level—revenue (tax money; i.e., vouchers, tax credits, or funding from private sources subsidized in any way by the government); and or (2) availed themselves of any services provided by local, state, or federal governments or private sources subsidized in any way by the government (i.e., extracurricular school activities including music, art, sports, field trips, computer use, etc., or health and mental health services which may have been provided when the student was enrolled in the public school system). “True” choice is an option for the minority of children whose parents had better be on guard when offered free computers and software to learn the curriculum required in order to obtain the certificate in mastery necessary to obtain a job or be accepted in college. “True” choice is not an option for the majority of children whose parents are not in a position to avail themselves of it.
A massive national effort to restore true local control of our public schools seems to this writer to be the only “real” long-term solution which will guarantee freedom and upward mobility for all our children. Such a solution is no more difficult to implement than solutions presently being offered by those who wish to “use” America’s youth for their own profit-seeking motives-resulting in the loss of economic and political freedom.
In order for such a solution to be implemented, elected officials must understand from whence came the problems in education. It is for that reason, for the true understanding of public officials, that this book was written. The author hopes and prays that the greatest number of elected officials will read this book and take the necessary courageous action to reverse the situation which, if left unattended, represents a grave threat to the continued freedom of our nation. —CHARLOTTE THOMSON ISERBYT
It is agreed by many Americans that the United States is living on “borrowed time,” how many of us are willing to reflect seriously on what has happened and how the situation can be reversed? In 1985 this writer, in her slim booklet Back to Basics or OBE…Skinnerian International Curriculum, warned:
Whether or not the United States of America—through citizen preoccupation with fashion, TV, sports, gourmet cooking, jogging, making a living, etc., all of which are perfectly legitimate and worthwhile activities in a “free society,” coupled with lack of understanding of the internationalists’ use of gradualism and Hegelian philosophy to attain their goals—slides into the totalitarian black hole of a socialist one world government, with the resulting loss of freedoms our ancestors fought and died for, depends on whether YOU, the reader, are convinced the problems described in this book are serious enough for you to
spend a few minutes writing to your elected officials.... If the present situation continues unchecked, by the year 1998: children now in kindergarten will have been through thirteen years of Skinnerian world government brainwash under the deceptive guise of the “New Basics”; you and I may no longer be around to vote; and the 18-year-olds may well be on their way to vote what historians have referred to as the greatest experiment in human freedom straight down the tubes.
Well, this writer is still around, and fortunately, so are many other concerned Americans who in 1985 were in their fifties. What this writer predicted has for the most part happened, although it is difficult for the average American to identify or to nail down since the loss of our freedoms at the ballot box—and more importantly through regional government which uses unelected officials to make decisions—has been introduced very gradually.
The most serious problem resulting from the “deliberate dumbing down” is that important decision making is increasingly being delegated to unelected Americans. Citizens are being called upon to participate in the political process through communitarian group management procedures (site-based school management, task forces, blue-ribbon commissions, town meetings, group consensus, call-in talk shows, polling, etc.) and public policy is being made using the “uninformed” opinions of those who have, through no fault of their own, been dumbed down by being either mis-educated or not educated at all in the
traditional sense. Many cannot even read a newspaper and depend on TV for their knowledge and understanding of current events.
Part of the solution to this problem could be to return all decision making to duly-elected officials. That, of course, would not assure that those who are elected would be any better qualified to make decisions than those presently calling the shots in Delphi circles and the numerous unelected decision-making venues at work in our country. However, accountability would be restored, and citizens could once more, as free individuals—and, I repeat, individuals—vote these people out of office and elect persons who are educated in the traditional disciplines of history and government (the U.S. Constitution), economics and basic academics. Eventually, if the public education system can be restored to its former excellence, our nation would be able to get back on track.
Seldom, if ever, does one hear the following fairly simple solution suggested when the question is posed regarding how to restore our public education system to its traditional (pre-1930’s) state of excellence:
Elected officials at the local level have the authority to re-establish public education according to the wishes of the taxpayers in each local community. Teachers with degrees in specific subject matter could be hired without requiring that they have state or national certification which subjects them to seemingly ruinous training courses which do not deal with academic material. However, the funding of the schools must remain local if citizens wish to re-create truly academic institutions. There can be no tuition tax credits, vouchers, charter schools, or laundered state tax monies (monies co-mingled with federal money) if citizens wish to be 100% in charge of the education philosophy; i.e., curriculum, hiring of teachers, teaching methods, etc. Americans forget too easily the old saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” For those who find such a solution unworkable due to
the discrepancies in local community tax bases, I say refer to the beginning of this book regarding the ability to educate on a shoestring. Education costs little: brainwashing and social services are very, very expensive.
Granted, the above “solution” may sound simplistic, and in this day and age would not be easy to implement in urban areas, where many of the needs are the greatest. However, when one surveys the urban education landscape as presently constituted, there are few bright spots. Billions of dollars in tax money, which should have gone into true academics, have been siphoned off into the operation of huge and unnecessary bureaucracies. As one has seen after reading this book, community services and changing students’ values have been judged more essential than teaching a child to read, to understand his historical setting,
the essentials of science, and how to calculate. Basic academics, in most inner city schools under the umbrella of Effective Schools Research, have been taught using Skinnerian mastery learning programs which have resulted in producing low test scores. Discipline has broken down to such an extent that the prescription of the drug Ritalin is commonplace, retired military officers are running urban schools, uniforms are mandated in many public schools, and the police are being called upon to keep order in the former halls of academe.
There is no question that much careful and sensitive thought must go into planning the urban schools, keeping in mind at all times that most of the problems facing these schools and communities have been a result of what you have read about in this book and willingness of elected officials to accept the “carrot” along with the big stick (the money with all the federal and state controls on how it is to be used).
It is never too late to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing positive can be accomplished, regardless of how much money and good will exist, unless we Americans learn again to stand on our own two feet, as individuals, not as members of the “group”
using Total Quality Management, but as individuals with God-given intellects; as individuals who accept their responsibility to be contributing participants in our constitutional republic instead of being observers in a so-called “participatory” democracy where only those who agree with the status quo will be allowed to have a voice. Our nation did not become great through group action. It became great in every way due to individual Americans thinking acting independently, caring for one another and not expecting the government to for them or their neighbors, and accepting responsibility for their actions without blaming the “environment” for all their misdeeds—from broken marriages, smoking and drinking to violent behavior.
To repeat the theme of this book: We are human beings, not animals. We have free will. We can choose and build our futures, something animals are not capable of doing. Animals justified in blaming their environment for their behavior! We, as human beings, with intellect, soul and conscience, do not have such justification.
Very recent history, being made as this book is written, should serve as a wake-up We, as citizens, seem increasingly unable to make the important connections between individual personal behavior and its effect on the nation/world as a whole. There can be
stability in our world if common decency (morality) is shunted aside and considered a “personal matter” not affecting the entire body politic (personal behavior vs. public morals). children deserve more from those adults who bemoan the sorry state of this nation while making excuses for public officials’ immoral conduct, and who are poor examples good behavior themselves. How can we expect our children to grow up and become responsible citizens and future leaders if we sanction immorality at all levels of personal and government? How can our children accept our criticisms and correction when caught lying or stealing when they see us making excuses for such behavior at the highest levels of government and leadership?
Truly, the “non-absolutist value vaccine” (extensively documented in this book) has taken can be expected to further sicken our nation in the absence of a return to dependence on clear and simple moral standards, such as the Ten Commandments which used to hang the walls of every school and public building in this nation.
Of utmost importance for all Americans at this critical juncture in American education for us not to accept a solution that may in the long run turn out to be more harmful than present unsatisfactory state of American public education. Some solutions being floated around sound good, such as the complete abandonment of public education in favor of a privately operated system in which parents ostensibly could choose the school to which they send their children. It is important to take a very hard look at such solutions. First, who is going to run those schools? Are parents aware that the New American School Development Corporation and its charter schools for workforce training were set up precisely for the purpose of replacing the deliberately “crashed” public schools? Where would children in the low-income urban areas end up? What private and/or “publicly-funded private” entities are waiting in the wings to orchestrate and relegate these students into dead-end workforce training institutions?
As explained in the preface and at the end of this book, the global workforce training system is being put in place as I write. For example, on June 28, 1999, Gene Sperling, the director of the President’s Economic Council, in an interview with CNN’s “Moneyline” said that some of the $100 billion “surplus” could be used to make sure “children are ready to be the workers of the next century.” What real “choice” will parents have when it comes to where their children will be so-called “educated” (trained) to be the “workers of the next century”? The powers-that-be must be pretty sure of themselves to so blatantly refer to education’s primary goal as creating little workers. Are American parents really so dumbed down that they find such comments coming from the highest office in the land acceptable? Even if those operating charter schools had the best of motives, what is going to happen
to the majority of children who come from homes where both parents work, where there is only one parent, where there are numerous societal problems which would impinge upon the freedom of parents to be a part of the privately-supported system—sell their children into serfdom?
“Choice in education” is an appealing concept until put under the microscope of 1990s reality. At this point in time, “true choice” with no strings attached exists only for homeschoolers and private (independent and religious) schools that have not in any way
compromised their freedom to do exactly as they wish. By that, the author means that such an entity has never: (1) accepted one single penny which has at any time, in any fashion, been a source of government—at any level—revenue (tax money; i.e., vouchers, tax credits, or funding from private sources subsidized in any way by the government); and or (2) availed themselves of any services provided by local, state, or federal governments or private sources subsidized in any way by the government (i.e., extracurricular school activities including music, art, sports, field trips, computer use, etc., or health and mental health services which may have been provided when the student was enrolled in the public school system). “True” choice is an option for the minority of children whose parents had better be on guard when offered free computers and software to learn the curriculum required in order to obtain the certificate in mastery necessary to obtain a job or be accepted in college. “True” choice is not an option for the majority of children whose parents are not in a position to avail themselves of it.
A massive national effort to restore true local control of our public schools seems to this writer to be the only “real” long-term solution which will guarantee freedom and upward mobility for all our children. Such a solution is no more difficult to implement than solutions presently being offered by those who wish to “use” America’s youth for their own profit-seeking motives-resulting in the loss of economic and political freedom.
In order for such a solution to be implemented, elected officials must understand from whence came the problems in education. It is for that reason, for the true understanding of public officials, that this book was written. The author hopes and prays that the greatest number of elected officials will read this book and take the necessary courageous action to reverse the situation which, if left unattended, represents a grave threat to the continued freedom of our nation. —CHARLOTTE THOMSON ISERBYT
