-Caveat Lector- Educating for the Collective State Diane Alden Aug. 23, 2001 In Minnesota education has always been important in the lives of its people and their children. It is a state that has an independent streak and caters to the tough immigrants and settlers who decided that America's Siberia was an okay place to live and raise kids. Nonetheless, the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes is not immune to the central planning of the burgeoning collectivist state located in Washington, D.C. Parents, along with some educators, professionals and legislators, have been battling the directives of those bureaucrats and politicians who are forcing on the states Outcome Based Education, Goals 2000, School-To-Work, Workforce Investment Act, invasive student surveys, whole language, revisionist history, and "integrated" math. (Integrated math teaches that there is no right answer; there is little deduction grounded in mathematical skills requiring the "boring" work of memorization or learning without depending on a calculator.) Located in St. Paul, Minnesota, Minnesota's Maple River Coalition has been getting the word out about what is really going on in education today. They understand the latest effort by central planners to turn kids into human "capital." Its current manifestation is George Bush's "No Child Left Behind." Apparently, it is one more expensive, destructive program emanating from policy wonks and "experts" along with politicians in the "amen" corner throwing money and influence at it. Like the rest of the new policies and systems it is little more than a plan to train workers for the centrally planned world economy we will be sharing in the not-too-distant future. On September 29, 2001, a group of parents, educators and legislators will meet in Arden Hills, Minnesota, in order to discuss and plan a strategy to circumvent the "new" old system of education. For more information go to their website at www.mredco.com. As Minnesota education activists have discovered, the new wine of education "reform" is the same old bottle of blinding moonshine offered by the federal feudal barons in D.C. Along with educrats firmly ensconced in their air-conditioned imperial offices in Washington and in the states, they offer one more government answer to America's self-created educational "crisis." The "new" idea from the Bush administration is the same creation of a national curriculum. Eventually all these octopus programs will reach out and control private schools and homeschools under the collectivist intellectual leaky big tent. It isn't that Minnesota's parents and educators don't care and have given up. Indeed, that is not the case. These intelligent, concerned groups and individuals have been attempting to find a workable solution in a state that has always offered decent educational opportunities. Minnesota usually ranks high in national tests, as do most other upper Midwest states. In 2000 the Minnesota State Legislature tried to offer local communities some autonomy in order to allow them flexibility in developing their curriculum. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Department of Education gave notice to the state that there could be NO deviation from federal requirements. The threat of losing all federal money was the "willing seller" club to be used to bash the state in order to force it to comply with federal standards. Standards which Minnesotans had found wanting because they are mediocre and geared to the lowest common denominator. The upcoming Maple River Conference will endeavor to show people what is happening and how terrible even "No Child Left Behind" is for children of the state and the nation. The speakers and experts will make suggestions on how to counter federal education despotism over the states. It is interesting to note that one of the conference topics is "Federal Workforce Investment Act: Restructuring for a State-Planned Economy." Another topic is bringing private schools and homeschools into the "seamless web." With the U.S. Department of Education and the "experts" involved, it is more likely that the outcome will be a federally sponsored, centrally planned nightmare from hell. Seamless Web of Deception Every bad idea has a father - sometimes several fathers. The current state of American education is the bastard child of several fathers. The bad ideas that are forcing states like Minnesota into compliance with a failed system and structure goes back into the 19th century. One of the fathers of the red-haired stepchild is Georg Hegel. He is patriarch of one of the worst intellectual and philosophical systems in the history of mankind. It is a sad fact but every bad idea in the last 200 years can be found in some Prussian school of social philosophy. I'm not picking on the Germans, so pull in your horns. I am picking on a school of thought which just happened to develop in Germany but can find its roots in Plato and Rousseau. As Paulo Lionni says in "The Leipzig Connection" (1993): Germany was the center of scientific and technological advances. . Hegel, at the University of Berlin, proposed to make history a scientific subject." Out of the Hegelian German philosophical tradition came the first psychologist, one Maximillian Wundt. He established the world's first psychological laboratory. Wundt's "contribution," according to Lionni, was to conclude that "man is devoid of spirit and self-determination. ." From the Wundtian school slithered American educrats like Edward Lee Thorndike, G. Stanton Hall, John Dewey, and our current crop of "experts." Thorndike was very powerful in shaping the entire educational system we are stuck with today. The modern incarnations of Wundtians are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. These two, along with Dewey, are demi-gods in most colleges of education today. However, it is Wundt and Thorndike who influenced John Dewey, the father of American education. Thorndike's theory, which Dewey adopted, depends on behavior modification based on denying pleasure to a child. Common sense might indicate that offering a more explicit and action-related "negative" punishment would work better. These days that is not only discouraged, it is almost illegal. The gratification-based theory has won out, and as a result reason and responsibility have been dumped. John Dewey maintained that actual education, as opposed to socialization, prevented socialism from taking hold in society. In the last 35 years the tragic feel-good chicken has come home to roost in every level of American society. The pointy-heads of the 1800s and early 1900s share much of the blame. In addition, American foundations have funded most of this anti-human, anti-intellectual claptrap. They have done so for less than altruistic reasons. American foundations since the beginning have funded efforts to train children, especially children of the lower classes, and they continue to do so today. They do it out of elitism and snobbery and the desire to control what may impact their interests. The ideas of Hegel and John Dewey have led to the intellectual and educational destruction of several generations of children. It is a system that creates the corporate citizen, who is a barely literate, uneducated, undisciplined drone. It is a system based on gratification at the expense of logic, reason, and intellectual and ethical behavior. There is very little place for sacrifice in this system or for denying oneself for a future good for the individual, as it offers more power and control to the state. Thus it is that the system Dewey brought into existence has its roots in totalitarian philosophy. Lost somewhere is the early American idea of a child being educated as a thinking, critical human being with an innate dignity and value as a human being. Instead we get the human being as a 'commodity,' a form of capital to be manipulated for reasons created by the state's central planners. Cloning and creating embryos in laboratories is part of this entire notion of humanity as commodity. All of it of course is done for the very best of reasons - for the greater good. How Hegelian. As part of the new system created by Dewey and the rest, a child is taught to "feel" more than he is encouraged to think. His self-esteem becomes a matter of more importance than learning and absorbing a body of knowledge. A child is spared sacrifice and effort and occasional drudgery and boredom for the sake of gratification. In this brave new world system, self-gratification and self-esteem become the highest good as long as they fit in with the needs of society at large, i.e., the State or Hegel's "Oneness of Mind." Hegel built on the collectivist fantasy called "oneness of mind." His system is working very well in America today. That system seeks to create crisis, create opposition to crisis, and then effect the 'wanted' solution. Our political parties and politicians either have no clue as to what experts steeped in Hegelian theory have wrought or they are complicit. The fact is the system veers from crisis to crisis but the solution is always the "wanted" solution. The solution always involves more interference from the central planners and more money from the taxpayers. In fact, for years our politicians have merely been discussing and wrangling over rearranging the deck chairs on America's educational Titanic. Meanwhile, the ship continues to the bottom of the ocean with most passengers still on board. What Americans will get for their trouble is children who will be forced or coerced into becoming quiet cogs in the new world corporate state. In the future, this new American will become a socialized automaton content with his or her lot in life, a corporate citizen willing to give up certain freedoms in order to obtain security or goods from the state. In other words, a person who will fit into the collective state rather than rise above it. Since Edward Everett and Horace Mann in Massachusetts in the mid-1800s, government involvement in education had almost invariably been to produce the trained person rather than the educated person. In various tomes educational psychologists and philosophers like Dewey come out and say the average person becomes a commodity or human capital to fill their slot in Hegel's "oneness of mind." In 1971, Harvard economist Lester Thurow wrote "Investment in Human Capital" and there have been many such books since. In fact, most companies consider human beings to be part of their investment as "capital." This is an international phenomenon as well. In 1971, UNESCO created an outline for an educational system that would allow students to choose a vocational field in part-time work in which they would receive a certificate of educational attainment. A few years later, Hillary Clinton's adviser Michael Lerner penned "The New Socialist Revolution" in which he states that "education will be radically transformed in our socialist community. . [T]he main emphasis will how to be to live and work collectively." Meanwhile, in the late '80s Carnegie Corporation gave $600,000 to create a Soviet-American Exchange Agreement. Out of that effort came Professors Martin Haberman and James Collins' "The Future of Teaching Profession." They state that "schooling is now seen primarily as job training and, for this reason, quite comparable to schooling in NON-democratic societies . emphasizing preparation for work as its first purpose." In addition, in the last 12 years important educational policy formation moved from the Carnegie Forum, morphing into the National Center on Education and the Economy. Out of that foundation came National Education Goals, which in turn became America 2000 and Goals 2000. Among the board members were Hillary Clinton and David Rockefeller Jr. Their influence led to SCANS, the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, used by the Department of Labor. In 1991, a SCANS report recommended establishing a certification of competency something like Germany's certificate of mastery. In the German system of today, children are tracked starting at age 10 and forced into a rigid system whereby there is little movement between tracks. Hillary Clinton has been promoting these notions since the '80s. They work nicely with her allegiance to the collectivist concepts of Herbert Marcuse, Antonio Gramsci and Georg Hegel. Hillary absorbed and has worked toward collectivist and statist goals since her undergraduate days at an expensive elite Northeast university. Similarly, other Democratic Socialists like Senator Ted Kennedy promote School-To-Work type concepts. Oddly, the senator and his relatives have short memories. He forgets that in the 1800s, WASPS such as Edward Everett and Horace Mann and J.D. Rockefeller had absolutely no love for Catholic Irish immigrant children. Thus, they concocted a Prussian training program that is accelerating in the modern era. We are getting that system codified and paid for by ignorant taxpayers and venal and corrupt politicians. Luckily, Hillary, Kennedy and their families were able to buy themselves an expensive education. Their children and grandchildren will be the new feudal barons. They have made it much easier to buy and pay for education "experts" who will develop the drones for the collectivist state. The vast majority of ordinary children, especially the poor and underprivileged, are going to be out of luck. Too bad that Jesse Jackson and the Democratic Socialists are so corrupt and deceitful that they don't care. Too bad Republicans are too lazy, ignorant, cowardly OR complicit to stop it. As part of this, Republican George Bush's "No Child Left Behind" is full of potential statist traps. This effort by his administration merely promotes a national curriculum based on skills testing. There will be precious little testing of a body of knowledge, i.e., reading and math. It is a system that further erodes local control. Like Goals 2000 it intimates that too much time is spent on core curriculum as opposed to skills learning useful to a centrally planned state economy. NewsMax learned from David Thompson, head of the Maple River Coalition, that red flags appear in the Bush plan. They include requiring tests every year from grades 3 to 8. These tests have to be state-approved and in effect must be approved by the federal government. Of course, that same government through legislation and funding is promoting the education model of the Soviet and Prussian ideal. That ideal is to train children for jobs rather than to educate them in knowledge that will allow them to seek their own goals, thus expanding their options. It is happening. American children are learning job-oriented skills as opposed to gaining self-sufficiency and independence through actual core curriculum. In such a manner they are becoming docile and mediocre individuals. Lost to them is excellence and expanding their creativity. In fact, that is what government schools are all about. Whether politicians like Bush are aware or not is moot. As long as government funds and promotes these horrors they will impact local and state schools and eventually even private schooling and homeschooling. What the central planners can't get through the front door they will get through the back door. The Prussian and Soviet models that the establishment is pursuing include the certificates of mastery program. Again, that is the model which David Rockefeller and Hillary Clinton promoted in the early '90s. Various states are toying with the idea that young people would not be able to be employed unless they obtained one of these certificates through the state testing. However, it is not knowledge that they will have mastered. Instead, what the central planners are seeking are social and job skills deemed necessary by the corporate state at the national and international level. In effect children in private schools and homeschools may be unable to get employment through the mastery program. They might have math and reading down pat and know it inside and out. However, the tests are politically correct quizzes about lifestyle and relationships, and government-school children are being trained to pass them. Homeschool children are not. Parents don't realize that they are paying for the training of future feudal subjects of an international centrally planned state. The important thing will be the needs of the state as the only criteria for education and eventual state control of every aspect of their children's lives, not to mention their own. As Mr. Thompson maintained, "There is no freedom in this system; it violates the principle of freedom and local control." When I was a kid we took the Iowa Basic Skills test. That test is still available but it is being changed to "harmonize" with the NAEP (National Assessment Educational Progress) test. The NAEP advocates a national curriculum. However, it is a curriculum heavy into political correctness and social engineering. It institutionalizes that social engineering for the centrally planned state. Local control is out the window and that is why people are leaving the school systems. Also out the window is any concept of a core curriculum based on a secure knowledge of the 3 Rs. The lack of responsiveness to parents' concerns by local school systems these days has more to do with the intransigence and federalization of schools than anything else. The REAL problem isn' t rotten teachers who don't want to teach. In fact several sources indicate Minnesota teachers are afraid to speak out lest their jobs be put in jeopardy. I am sure that is the case in many other states besides Minnesota. Therefore, it isn't only the NEA (National Education Association) that is the problem. We have people in power who in their heart of hearts are little more than fascists, men and women who believe in a system where some pigs are more equal than others. Unfortunately, not even our supposedly conservative politicians seem to have a clue. Thus, the American education system is becoming the same as the Soviet and German models. Even so, America's children can't measure up to the bare minimum standards maintained by those systems. There seems to be little American parents can do unless they want to dump every single member of Congress, totally de-fund multiple departments of government along with the toadies in the private sector, and get rid of most bureaucracies at all levels. Finally, they have to wise up to the fact that whoever we elect for president, the result will be the same. It is the Hegelian trap: Create crisis, create a counter-crisis. The solution is always the same, and so are the goals and end result. Because of that, the American system of education, the republic, and our children are screwed. A warning to private school and homeschool parents: DON'T BE COMPLACENT. The parents of children outside government schools, have pitifully few friends in Congress or in government. According to testimony before the Minnesota Legislature by an official associated with the Iowa Basic Skills, i.e., the National Norm Reference Test, that test is being "harmonized" to comply with NAEP standards. The "seamless web" the feds and the Hegelian politicians are seeking will create intellectual and social gulags for the nation's children. THAT includes private school and homeschool children as well. Local school district control is bogus and as ephemeral as "willing seller" is to CARA (Conservation and Reinvestment Act). When you believe your particular politician, you are placing your trust in someone who is possibly stupid, blind, or a corrupt liar. A person apparently more interested in re-election than in doing what is right by your children or the Constitution. Republicans are no help. Both Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. have promoted hare-brained educational schemes because they fell for the blathering of the "experts" who ruined the system in the first place. As it turns out, the federal government is rotten in 90 percent of what it attempts. It has no business in creating government schools. Certainly it has no business dictating to local communities that have had a record of successfully educating their own children. Minnesota has done well by its children, but if the government has its way, the kids will become corporate citizens the same way they are going to be "harmonized" in the rest of the nation. We are incorporating and accepting federally promoted educational mediocrity and "training." Forget the matter of community and familial "choice," because it will be forced out of existence. In Communist China there is a name for what is happening in the United States today. That name is "Dangan." It describes the connection of human beings as capital in relation to the needs of the state. In other words, in totalitarian regimes human life is cheap and to be manipulated and so is human potential. Human potential invariably upsets the apple cart of the power brokers of the world. In China's "Dangan" system individuals must be willing to relinquish particular skills or dreams and allow themselves to be "guided" on paths that are "best" for the wider society, i.e., the state. America moves closer to that system every day. Minnesota's Problem - Our National Problem Underneath it all is man's age-old problem. Our elite, the control freaks and users of human potential, have a belief neither in God, in the American people, nor in the Constitution of the United States. While our politicians continue to make decisions that should get them thrown in jail they are rewarded by high-paying jobs, eternal benefits, speaking engagements, trips that would make a Roman emperor jealous, and all they have to do is get elected to office. That political, cultural and social elite is warping our nation. A nation where the children of the elite receive a decent education but the vast majority will only be "trained" for the needs of the corporate state. In the end America's children may receive cradle-to-grave security, but they will become perpetual wards of the state. In a thousand little and big ways, America's parents and their children are no longer free. To add insult to injury, they are dumbed-down subjects of the corporate state. The average uninvolved parent and child do not have the skills or knowledge to assist them in replacing the dead and dying system. What is exceptionally tragic is that most of them will not even notice or care. They will live and die in state-sponsored uniformity and conformity. They will be denied the experience and recognition of the importance of the soul and heart and individuality of man. They will comply with a system that the American elite has been putting into place for a hundred years. Such a system doesn't need to be reformed; it needs to be ended, because every American is entitled to pursue his or her own dreams. Each American deserves a decent education NOT provided by the central planners in the corporate state. Finally, never forget where our rights and dignity come from. Contrary to what the political elite believes, those rights are unalienable and come from God. For more info on the Minnesota Conference and topics like "The Three-Part Federal System: Loss of Local Control"; "Can States Really Set Their Own Standards?"; "The National Curriculum"; "Federal Workforce Investment Act: Restructuring for a State-Planned Economy"; PLUS Babby Ed, NAEP, SCANS work skills, absorbing private and homeschooling: Http:www.mredco.com and 651-646-0646 and David Thompson. My website is www.aldenchronicles.com and my e-mail address for the time being is [EMAIL PROTECTED] Listen to me on Mondays and Fridays with Steve Myers and Bob Winford on "Morning in America." You can listen on the Internet. *** Diane Alden is a research analyst with a background in political science and economics. Her work has appeared in the Washington Times as well as NewsMax.com, Enterstageright, American Partisan and many other online publications. She also does radio commentaries for Steve Myers' show on Liberty Works Monday and Friday mornings, and can be heard regularly on Mike Fleming, WREC in Memphis. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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