Charlotte
Thomson Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of
Education, blew the whistle in the `80s on government activities withheld from
the public. Her inside knowledge will help you protect your children from
controversial methods and programs.
In
this book you will discover:
-how
good teachers across
-how
"school choice" is being used to further dangerous reform goals, and
how home schooling and private education are especially vulnerable.
-how
workforce training (school-to-work) is an essential part of an overall plan for
a global economy, and how this plan will short circuit your child's future
career plans and opportunities.
-how
the international, national, regional, state and local agendas for education
reform are all interconnected and have been for decades.
The
deliberate Dumbing down of
Readers
will appreciate the user-friendliness of this chronological history designed
for the average reader not just the academician. This book will be used by
citizens at public hearings, board meetings, or for easy presentation to
elected officials.
Publication
of the deliberate Dumbing Down of
PREFACE
Coexistence
on this tightly knit earth should be viewed as an existence not only without
wars...but also without [the government] telling us how to live, what to say,
what to think, what to know, and what not to know. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from
a speech given September 11, 1973.
For
over a twenty-five-year period the research used in this chronology has been
collected from many sources: the United States Department of Education;
international agencies; state agencies; the media; concerned educators;
parents; legislators, and talented researchers with whom I have worked for at
least twenty-five years. In the process of gathering this information two
beliefs that most Americans hold in common became clear:
1)
If a child can read, write and compute at a reasonably proficient level, he will
be able to do just about anything he wishes, enabling him to control his
destiny to the extent that God allows (remain free).
2)
Providing such basic educational proficiencies is not and should not be an
expensive proposition.
Since
most Americans believe the second premise-that providing basic educational
proficiencies is not and should not be an expensive proposition-it becomes
obvious that it is only a radical agenda, the purpose of which is to change
values and attitudes (brainwash), that is the costly agenda. In other words,
brainwashing by our schools and universities is what is bankrupting our nation
and our children's minds.
In
1997 there were 46.4 million public school students. During 1993-1994 (the latest
years the statistics were available) the average per pupil expenditure was
$6,330.00 in 1996 constant dollars. Multiply the number of students by the per
pupil expenditure (using old-fashioned mathematical procedures) for a total
K-12 budget per year of $293.7 billion dollars. If one adds the cost of higher
education to this figure, one arrives at a total budget per year of over half a
trillion dollars. The sorry result of such an incredibly large expenditure-the
performance of American students-is discussed on page 12 of Pursuing
Excellence-A Study of U.S. Twelfth Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement in
International Context: Initial Findings from the Third International
Mathematics and Science Study [TIMMS], a report from the U.S. Department of
Education (NCES 98-049). Pursuing Excellence reads:
Achievement
of Students, Key Points:
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.
There
are many talented and respected researchers and activists who have carefully
documented the "weird" activities which have taken place "in the
name of education." Any opposition to change agent activities in local
schools has invariably been met with cries of "Prove your case, document
your statements," etc.
"Resisters"-usually
parents-have been called every name in the book. Parents have been told for
over thirty years, "You're the only parent who has ever complained."
The media has been convinced to join in the attack upon common sense views,
effectively discrediting the perspective of well-informed citizens. Documentation,
when presented, has been ignored and called incomplete. The classic response by
the education establishment has been, "You're taking that out of
context!"-even when presented with an entire book which uses their own
words to detail exactly what the "resisters" are claiming to be true.
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.
The
Deliberate Dumbing down of
I
want them to know that there will always be hope for freedom if they follow in
these people's footsteps; if they cherish the concept of 'free will'; if they
believe that human beings are special, not animals, and that they have
intellects, souls, and consciences. I want them to know that if the government
schools are allowed to teach children K-12 using Pavlovian/Skinnerian animal
training methods-which provide tangible rewards only for correct answers-there
can be no freedom.
Why?
People 'trained'-not educated-by such educational techniques will be fearful of
taking principled, sometimes controversial, stands when called for because
these people will have been programmed to speak up only if a positive reward or
response is forthcoming. The price of freedom has often been paid with pain and
loneliness.
In
1971 when I returned to the
Those
ten years (1971-1981) changed my life. As an American who had spent many years
working abroad, I had experienced traveling in and living in socialist
countries. When I returned to the United States I realized that America's
transition from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy
would not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through the
implementation and installation of the "system" in all areas of
government-federal, state and local. The brainwashing for acceptance of the
"system's" control would take place in the school-through
indoctrination and the use of behavior modification, which comes under so many
labels, the most recent labels being Outcome-Based Education, Skinnerian
Mastery Learning or Direct Instruction. In the seventies I and many others
waged the war against values clarification, which was later renamed
"critical thinking," which regardless of the label-and there are
bound to be many more labels on the horizon-is nothing but pure, unadulterated
destruction of absolute values of right and wrong upon which stable and free
societies depend and upon which our nation was founded.
In
1973 I started this long journey into becoming a "resister," placing
the first incriminating piece of paper in my "education" files. That
first piece of paper was a purple ditto sheet entitled "All About
Me," next to which was a smiley face. It was an open-ended questionnaire
beginning with: "My name is _______________." My son brought it home
from public school in fourth grade. The questions were highly personal; so much
so that they encouraged my son to lie, since he didn't want to "spill the
beans" about his mother, father and brother. The purpose of such a
questionnaire was to find out the student's state of mind, how he felt, what he
liked and disliked, and what his values were. With this knowledge it would be
easier for the government school to modify his values and behavior at
will-without, of course, the student's knowledge or parents' consent.
That
was just the beginning. There was more to come: the new social studies textbook
World of Mankind. Published by Follett, this book instructed the teacher how to
instill humanistic (no right/no wrong) values in the K-3 students. At the
text's suggestion they were encouraged to take little tots for walks in town
during which he/she would point out big and small houses, asking the little
tots who they thought lived in the houses. Poor or Rich? "What do you
think they eat in the big house?...in the little house?" When I complained
about this non-educational activity at a school board meeting I was dismissed
as a censor and the press did its usual hatchet job on me as a misguided
parent. A friend of mine-a very bright gal who had also lived abroad for
years-told me that she had overheard discussion of me at the local co-op. The
word was out in town that I was a "kook." That was not a
"positive response/reward" for my taking what I believed to be a
principled position. Since I had not been "trained" I was just mad!
Next
stop on the road to becoming a "resister" was to become a member of
the school philosophy committee. Our Harvard-educated, professional change
agent superintendent gave all of the committee members a copy of "The
Philosophy of Education" (1975 version) from the
After
two failed attempts to get elected to the school board, I finally succeeded in
1976 on the third try. The votes were counted three times, even though I had
won by a very healthy margin!
My
experience on the school board taught me that when it comes to modern
education, "the end justifies the means." Our change agent
superintendent was more at home with a lie than he was with the truth. Whatever
good I accomplished while on the school board-stopping the Planning,
Programming and Budgeting System [PPBS] now known as Total Quality Management
[TQM] or Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures/Generally Accepted Federal
Funding Reporting [GAAP/GAFFR], getting values clarification banned by the
board, and demanding five [yes, 5!] minutes of grammar per day, etc.-was tossed
out two weeks after I left office.
Another
milestone on my journey was an in-service training session entitled
"Innovations in Education." A retired teacher, who understood what
was happening in education, paid for me to attend. This training program
developed by Professor Ronald Havelock of the University of Michigan and funded
by the United States Office of Education taught teachers and administrators how
to "sneak in" controversial methods of teaching and
"innovative" programs. These controversial, "innovative"
programs included health education, sex education, drug and alcohol education,
death education, critical thinking education, etc. Since then I have always
found it interesting that the controversial school programs are the only ones
that have the word "education" attached to them! I don't recall-until
recently-"math ed.," "reading ed.," "history
ed.," or "science ed." A good rule of thumb for teachers,
parents and school board members interested in academics and traditional values
is to question any subject that has the word "education" attached to
it.
This
in-service training literally "blew my mind." I have never recovered
from it. The presenter (change agent) taught us how to "manipulate"
the taxpayers/parents into accepting controversial programs. He explained how
to identify the "resisters" in the community and how to get around
their resistance. He instructed us in how to go to the highly respected members
of the community-those with the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, Junior League,
Little League, YMCA, Historical Society, etc.-to manipulate them into
supporting the controversial/non-academic programs and into bad-mouthing the
resisters. Advice was also given as to how to get the media to support these
programs.
I
left-with my very valuable textbook, Innovations in Education: A Change Agent's
Guide, under my arm-feeling very sick to my stomach and in complete denial over
that in which I had been involved. This was not the nation in which I grew up;
something seriously disturbing had happened between 1953 when I left the
Orchestrated
Consensus
In
retrospect, I had just found out that the
*
Hegelian Dialectic (common ground, consensus and compromise) * Gradualism (two
steps forward; one step backward) * Semantic deception (redefining terms to get
agreement without understanding).
The
Hegelian Dialectic4 is a process formulated by the German philosopher Fredrich
Hegel (1770-1831) and used by Karl Marx's in codifying revolutionary Communism
as dialectical materialism. This process can be illustrated as:
Synthesis
(consensus)
Thesis
Antithesis
The
"Thesis" represents either an established practice or point of view
which is pitted against the "Antithesis"-usually a crisis of
opposition fabricated or created by change agents-causing the "Thesis"
to compromise itself, incorporating some part of the "Antithesis" to
produce the "Synthesis"-sometimes called consensus. This is the
primary tool in the bag of tricks used by change agents who are trained to
direct this process all over the country; much like the in-service training I
received. A good example of this concept was voiced by T.H. Bell when he was
Secretary of Education: "[We] need to create a crisis to get consensus in
order to bring about change." (The reader might be reminded that it was
under T.H. Bell's direction that the Department of Education implemented the
changes "suggested" by A Nation at Risk-the alarm that was sounded in
the early 1980's to announce the "crisis" in education.)
Since
we have been, as a nation, so relentlessly exposed to this Hegelian dialectical
process (which is essential to the smooth operation of the "system")
under the guise of "reaching consensus" in our involvement in
parent-teacher organizations, on school boards, in legislatures, and even in
goal setting in community service organizations and groups-including our
churches-I want to explain clearly how it works in a practical application. A
good example with which most of us can identify involves property taxes for
local schools. Let us consider an example from Michigan:
The
internationalist change agents must abolish local control (the
"Thesis") in order to restructure our schools from academics to
global workforce training (the "Synthesis"). Funding of education
with the property tax allows local control, but it also enables the change
agents and teachers' unions to create higher and higher school budgets paid for
with higher taxes, thus infuriating homeowners. Eventually, property owners
accept the change agent's radical proposal (the "Anti- thesis") to
reduce their property taxes by transferring education funding from the local
property tax to the state income tax. Thus, the change agents accomplish their
ultimate goal; the transfer of funding of education from the local level to the
state level. When this transfer occurs it increases state/federal control and
funding, leading to the federal/internationalist goal of implementing global
workforce training through the schools (the "Synthesis").5
Regarding
the power of gradualism, remember the story of the frog and how he didn't save
himself because he didn't realize what was happening to him? He was thrown into
cold water which, in turn, was gradually heated up until finally it reached the
boiling point and he was dead. This is how "gradualism" works through
a series of "created crises" which utilize Hegel's dialectical
process, leading us to more radical change than we would ever otherwise accept.
In
the instance of "semantic deception"-do you remember your kindly principal
telling you that the new decision-making program would help your child make
better decisions? What good parent wouldn't want his or her child to learn how
to make "good" decisions? Did you know that the decision-making
program is the same controversial values clarification program recently
rejected by your school board against which you may have given repeated
testimony? As I've said before, the wagers of this intellectual social war have
employed very effective weapons to implement their changes.
This
war has, in fact, become the war to end all wars. If citizens on this planet
can be brainwashed or robotized, using dumbed-down Pavlovian/Skinnerian
education, to accept what those in control want, there will be no more wars. If
there are no rights or wrongs, there will be no one wanting to
"right" a "wrong." Robots have no conscience. The only
permissible conscience will be the United Nations or a global conscience.
Whether an action is good or bad will be decided by a "Global Government's
Global Conscience," as recommended by Dr. Brock Chisholm, Executive
Secretary of the World Health Organization, Interim Commission, in 1947-and
later in 1996 by current United States Secretary of State Madeline Albright.
You
may protest, "But, no one has died in this war." Is that the only
criteria we have with which to measure whether war is war? The tragedy is that
many Americans have died in other wars to protect the freedoms being taken away
in this one. This war which produces the death of intellect and freedom is not
waged by a foreign enemy but by the silent enemy in the ivory towers, in our
own government, and in tax-exempt foundations-the enemy whose every move I have
tried to document in this book, usually in his/her/its own words.
Ronald
Havelock's change agent in-service training prepared me for what I would find
in the U.S. Department of Education when I worked there from 1981-1982. The use
of taxpayers' hard-earned money to fund Havelock's "Change Agent
Manual" was only one out of hundreds of expensive U.S. Department of
Education grants each year going everywhere, even overseas, to further the
cause of internationalist "dumbing down" education (behavior
modification) so necessary for the present introduction of global work force
training. I was relieved of my duties after leaking an important technology
grant (computer-assisted instruction proposal) to the press.
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,"7 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.
The
socialist/fascist global workforce training agenda is being implemented as I
write this book. The report to the European Commission entitled
"Transatlantic Co-operation in International Education: Projects of the
Handswerkskammer Koblenz with Partners in the United States and in the European
Union" by Karl-Jurgen Wilbert and Bernard Eckgold (May 1997) says in part:
In
June, 1994, with the support of the Handswerkskamer Koblenz, an American-German
vocational education conference took place...at the University of Texas at
Austin. The vocational education researchers and economic specialists...were in
agreement that an economic and employment policy is necessary where a
systematic vocational training is as equally important as an academic
education, as a "career pathway."...The first practical steps along
these lines, which are also significant from the point of view of the
educational policy, were made with the vocational training of American
apprentices in skilled craft companies, in the area of the Koblenz chamber.
[emphasis added]
Under
section "e) Scientific Assistance for the Projects," one reads:
The
international projects ought to be scientifically assisted and analyzed both
for the feedback to the transatlantic dialogue on educational policy, and also
for the assessment and qualitative improvement of the cross-border vocational
education projects. As a result it should be made possible on the German side
to set up a connection to other projects of German-American cooperation in
vocational training; e.g., of the federal institute for vocational training for
the project in the U.S. state of Maine. On the USA side an interlinking with
other initiatives for vocational training-for example, through the Center for
the Study of Human Resources at the University of Texas, Austin-would be
desirable.
This
particular document discusses the history of apprenticeships-especially the
role of medieval guilds-and attempts to make a case for nations which
heretofore have cherished liberal economic ideas-i.e., individual economic
freedom-to return to a system of cooperative economic solutions (the guild
system used in the Middle Ages which accepted very young children from farms
and cities and trained them in "necessary" skills). Another word for
this is "serfdom." Had our elected officials at the federal, state,
and local levels read this document, they could never have voted in favor of
socialist/fascist legislation implementing workforce training to meet the needs
of the global economy. Unless, of course, they happen to support such a
totalitarian economic system. (This incredible document can be accessed at the
following internet address: http://www.kwk-koblenz.de/ausland/trans-uk.doc )
Just
as Barbara Tuchman or another historian would do in writing the history of the
other kinds of wars, I have identified chronologically the major battles,
players, dates and places. I know that researchers and writers with far more
talent than I will feel that I have neglected some key events in this war. I
stand guilty on all counts, even before their well-researched charges are
submitted. Yes, much of importance has been left out, due to space limitations,
but the overview of the battlefields and maneuvers will give the reader an
opportunity to glimpse the immensity of this conflict.
In
order to win a battle one must know who the "real" enemy is.
Otherwise, one is shooting in the dark and often hitting those not the least
bit responsible for the mayhem. This book, hopefully, identifies the
"real" enemy and provides Americans involved in this war-be they
plain, ordinary citizens, elected officials, or traditional teachers-with the
ammunition to fight to obtain victory.
1.
Noted Soviet dissident, slave labor camp intern, and author of The Gulag
Archipelago and numerous other books.
2.
Statistics taken from The Condition of Education, 1997, published by the
National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, NCES
97-388. Internet address: http://www.ed/gov/NCES.
3
OBE/ML/DI or outcomes-based education/mastery learning/direct instruction.
4.
Dean Gotcher, author of The Dialectic & Praxis: Diaprax and the End of the
Ages and other materials dealing with dialectical consensus building and human
relations training, has done some excellent work in this area of research. For
more detailed information on this process, please write to Dean Gotcher of the
Institution for Authority Research, 5436 S. Boston Pl., Tulsa, Oklahoma 74l05,
or call (918) 742-3855.
5.
See Appendix ___ for an article by Tim Clem which explains this process in much
more detail.
6.
ISO stands for International Standards of Operation for manufacturing (9000)
and human resources (1400), coordinated through the United Nations Educational,
Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
7.
"Privatization or Socialization" by C. Weatherly, 1994. Delivered as
part of a speech to a group in Minnesota and later published in the Christian
Conscience magazine (Vol. 1, No. 2: February 1995, pp. 29-30).