EDUCATION REFORM AGENDA:
THE AGENDA
Monday, February 14, 2011
By Mary McGarr
Everyone who wishes to understand “restructured or reformed education” must
first accept that there is an agenda at work in the public education arena and
that the agenda emanates from the government
and others who stand to gain financially from the accomplishment of the
agenda. That would include those in the construction industry, vendors of
software and school supplies, organizations like the PTA, the SAT, the ACT,
TASB, TASA, foundations, NGO’s, and so
on.
The agenda is to dumb down most of our populace (and I’m talking 80 to 85% of
our people) so that they will be malleable, complacent workers who can put part
A to part B without questioning why, and who will be happy with low wages,
minimal working conditions, and who will not question those in charge.
Do not think that if your child is smart, he will be educated properly within
the 15% who are to receive a proper education.
Those students probably will come from private schools (such as
the Sidwell Friends
School where the Clintons and the Obamas send their children for $32,000
a term).
Even though parents send their children to highly rated private schools in their
own community, those schools may or may not be educating students academically,
but may instead be following the same dumbed down curriculum of the public
schools. Look for ability grouping
at all levels. If it exists, then
you have probably found a good private school.
Where the teachers are educated is also critical.
In a private school one wants to see academically educated teachers on
the faculty, not teachers who have come through a College of Education which is
a place rife with teaching dumbing down techniques and methodology.
Unfortunately for public school teachers, if one wants to teach in elementary
school, the state requires an elementary education degree.
Go figure. Those students, for example, in college don’t take a college
math course, they take a “math education” course, and it’s a vastly different
course of questionable difficulty.
But don’t fault the teachers for this situation.
They are simply following the law.
Fault instead the state legislators who aren’t wise enough to fix the
problem.
Another practice to watch out for is those teachers who have education degrees
being used to staff junior high/middle
schools. Teachers of the seventh,
eighth and ninth grades most certainly need to have an academic college degree.
The reason public schools don’t have many teachers with an academic college
degree in junior high is that there is a shortage of those kinds of teachers.
Private schools are one answer for parents; homeschooling is another.
Look elsewhere on this web site
for information about homeschooling.
As for private schools, if you don’t have $32,000 to spend on each of your
children per term, I would look to religious backed schools first.
It seems (anecdotally) most of
the adults I meet lately who exhibit good sense and are smart,
turn out to have been educated in a
Catholic School.
Why do people employed as teachers allow themselves to be co-opted so that they
are part of this dumbed down system?
I’m sure there are lots of answers to that question.
Mostly the teachers need a job, and to get and keep one, they are forced,
by economics, to do the bidding of their administrators.
As for the administrators, especially the ones at the top, I’m not going to let
them off so easy. They are
complicit in the scheme, and they know better.
They should be ashamed of themselves for going along to get along.
They could have stood up together as a group in the beginning and let the
public know what was going on.
Instead they quietly implemented the program, and not one of them that I know
about ever objected to a thing.
As for our state leaders, I think they were duped, and the fact that they were
tells me a great deal about how smart all of them were and are.
(See TBEC, Business Roundtable elsewhere on this web site.)
Big business is in cahoots with the government in this effort.
They needed/need the compliant dumbed down workers.
They are tired of having to go out of our country
to find such workers.
There are public figures who used to have good sense, but who have fallen for
the rhetoric. Bill Gates comes to
mind. I suppose he just wants to
sell more software. Of course his
largesse is couched in seemingly worthy and benevolent
rhetoric, but I’m not buying it!
Also, the pigs feeding at the public trough, those that we see locally, are all
supportive of the agenda, (which most of them do not understand at all), because
they are greedy and looking for government money. These pigs include the
construction industry who jack up the price of everything connected to the
construction of a public school, the vendors of educational software and unnecessary
supplies, and so on. They will do anything to curry favor with the
administration of a school in order to make a buck. You all know who they are by
now.
I urge you to read the columns I have posted on the Education/Holland, Robert
page. Mr. Holland gave me
permission to post them, and they are the finest, clearest explanation of how
Outcome-Based-Education and School to Work were implemented in our schools.
What happened in Virginia, where Mr. Holland was a newspaper editor, was
happening in every state at the same time, so what he has to say will explain Texas’ efforts very
well.
The most important aspect of this essay,
however, is to impress upon the reader that there IS most definitely an agenda,
and if one understands the agenda, then everything one reads about
education and
education reform makes perfect
sense.
"NOT THAT!
Are the schools of America to be used as a propaganda agency to mould public opinion into conformity with the policies and theories of the administration?
We hope not, and believe not. Even the suggestion of such a thing is shocking. But that is just what Louis P. Alber says is going to be done, and Louis P. Alber is chief of the speakers' division of the NRA (National Industrial Recovery Act).
In an interview at New York, published everywhere in the Saturday papers, he declared that a "primer" expounding the principles of the NRA and the Roosevelt program would be set into the high schools, both public and parochial, of this country. That of itself would not be a disturbing thought, for such a primer might be a practical explanation of the plan that would be helpful and commendable. But apparently there is much more to it than that. Just read these astounding utterances by Mr. Alber:
The rugged individualism of Americanism must go, because it is contrary to the purpose of the New Deal and the NRA, which is remaking America.
Russia and Germany are attempting to compel a new order by means typical of their nationalism---compulsion. The United States will do it by moral suasion. 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 added that the "primer" is only the first step, and that a plan is being considered for the extensive use of motion pictures in the schools for the same purposes.
It still might be thought that perhaps, after all, he proposes nothing more than to explain in the schools the nature and operation of the National Industrial Recovery Act--that perhaps we are reading too much meaning into his words. But he removes all doubt on that point when he says:
The 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 of the nation.
So, according to what Mr. Alber says, NRA --sweeping and revolutionary as it is--is only a "fragment" of a greater program of which the public knows nothing, and this unknown program is to be inculcated in the minds of pupils in the schools everywhere, by official efforts and at government expense. Hitherto the purpose of the schools has been merely to educate the youth of the land--to impart knowledge, in an unbiased and non-political manner. Now, according to Mr. Alber, our schools--like those of Italy, Germany and Russia--are to become 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 those policies or not, are to pay for having their children converted to them.
The whole proposition is so amazing, and so alarming in its implications, that we refuse as yet to take it seriously. We prefer to believe that Mr. Alber is merely an enthusiast who has been carried off his feet, and who spoke rashly. We cannot believe that Mr. Alber reflected the President's designs or his desires."
OBVIOUSLY, MR. ALBER SPILLED THE BEANS. THERE'S NO RECORD THAT I CAN FIND OF HIS CAREER IN THE ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION, AND ONE HAS TO WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM!
A friend of mine who lives in another state, sent me the copy of this article. Here are her comments:
...
it is a copy of the newspaper clipping from 1933 which I
found tucked between the pages of my Grandparent's Bible .
I have used it in speeches and articles over the years since the 60's to
document that the dumbing down and "unfreezing the system" of schools and the
"refreezing of a new system of schools" has been planned and in the works for
generations beginning with the FDR Administration. This article is one
year before publication of the Carnegie plan in 1934 which details what was
to be accomplished. During Reagan's Administration an
agreement was signed to work toward merging the schools of the U.S. and
the Soviet Union. It has just about been accomplished in this
early 21st Century. The School Choice Movement is
mopping up the agenda with Charter Schools which China is now funding
in the U.S., especially in Florida where Jeb Bush
is orchestrating the process and leading the movement
nationally. Grandpa and Grandma G were very astute
watchers of current events and realized what FDR was
about. Few today know or even care, and
sadly self identified conservatives are in the forefront
of the Charter School, Voucher advocacy....they know not what they
do. ....Mary Thompson