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["Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>]

change agents and how worthless the public school system is?  If you 
remember, or not <g>, I said this goes back well before that evil Clinton. 
Well, read on, or not <g>

Lynda


> The Deliberate Dumbing Down Of America (w VIDEO)
> by Charlotte Iserbyt
>
> http://52.thelastou tpost.com/ video-1/educatio n.html VIDEO
>
> Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as
> Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and
> Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first
> Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major
> technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's
> classrooms. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine
> and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for
> Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000. She has also served in the American Red
> Cross on Guam and Japan during the Korean War, and in the United
> States Foreign Service in Belgium and in the Republic of South Africa.
> Iserbyt is a speaker and writer, best known for her 1985 booklet Back
> to Basics Reform or OBE: Skinnerian International Curriculum and her
> 1989 pamphlet Soviets in the Classroom: America's Latest Education Fad
> which covered the details of the U.S.-Soviet and Carnegie-Soviet
> Education
> Agreements which remain in effect to this day. She is a freelance
> writer and has had articles published in Human Events, The Washington
> Times, The Bangor Daily News, and included in the record of
> Congressional hearings.
>
> Download the entire book " The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" here
> www.deliberatdumbin gdown.com
> www.americandecepti on.com
> Charlotte Iserbyt  Archives
>
> Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school?
> Geoff Metcalf interviews former U.S. education adviser Charlotte Iserbyt
> Editor's Note: Most parents want their children to receive a quality
> education. Yet, low test scores, drugs and violence on campus are
> increasingly prevalent in public schools and the disconnect between
> parents, educators and administrators is widening. Why is this
> situation occurring when so much time, money and attention are being
> directed toward improving education in the United States?
> Today, WorldNetDaily staff writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf
> interviews someone who has some shocking answers, Charlotte Thomson
> Iserbyt. During the '80s, Iserbyt was a senior policy adviser in the
> U.S. Department of Education and has also written "The Deliberate
> Dumbing Down of America," a chronological history of the past 100
> years of education reform. In this interview with Metcalf, she
> discusses the impact of the federal government, the United Nations and
> influential corporations on the American educational system and a
> little-known program called "School-To-Work. "
>
> By Geoff Metcalf
> (c) 2001 WorldNetDaily. com
> Question: The first thing I have to ask you -- I'm still not sure if
> this is a blessing or a curse -- but ever since I returned to talk
> radio ten years ago, I promised myself I wouldn't interview any author
> until I read their book. I was intimidated when yours arrived in the
> mail.
>
> Answer: I don't blame you.
>
> Q: It is a big puppy. 714 pages worth.
>
> A: It is a big baby.
>
> Q: What led you to this project? You were with the Department of
> Education in the '80s -- why the book?
>
> A: I actually started collecting research in the early '70s. I was on
> a local school board after living outside the country for 18 years for
> the United States Department of State. When I came back, I was very
> upset with the changes I had seen in our school district -- which had
> happened to be a pilot-school district for change. The kids were
> rolling around on the floor -- they didn't have to learn grammar or
> anything -- and I was shocked. I started asking questions and, as the
> only parent who ever complained, I would go to school board meetings
> and ask very legitimate questions like, why don't they teach grammar?
>
> Q: How dare you ask such a silly question?
>
> A: And, finally, a retired teacher came to me and she said, "You are
> right on! I want you to go for some training to become a 'change
> agent.' We're going to find out what is going on." So, she paid for me
> to go to this training. The training came out of the University of
> Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was funded by what was to become my office in
> the U.S. Department of Education. It was funded earlier in the '70s --
> and it was still funded under Ronald Reagan, by the way. This
> particular project was called "Innovations in Education/Change Agents
> Guide."
>
> Q: So what did you learn in the training?
>
> A: I was taught how to identify the resisters in my community. Those
> people who -- good people -- good Americans who have seen and know
> clearly these programs in the schools were not there to help our
> children academically.
>
> Q: Hold on. This sounds as if instead of any modification in
> curriculum, the objective was to go after the people who were
> complaining about changes in curriculum?
>
> A: Complaining about "values clarification" and complaining about "sex
> ed" and complaining about all of these subjects that have education
> hanging off the end of them. You know, we didn't used to have "math
> education" and "reading education" -- that's not really education.
> When you have "education" hanging off of it, you know that they have
> another agenda (except for "Drivers Ed"). Anyway, these were the
> people in our communities in the '70s who were saying, "I don't like
> that sex education. I don't think it is up to schools to teach my
> children there's no right or wrong." And saying, "I don't like that
> drug education and what's that critical-thinking education?"
> I was trained because they didn't know who I was.
>
> Q: Who were you?
>
> A: I was a resister. I was actually being trained to identify myself.
> And I didn't like it. The other part of it was, I was trained to go to
> the highly-respected people in our community ...
>
> Q: Wait a minute. So, once you identified these so-called resisters,
> these people who were critical of people who defend the indefensible,
> then what do you do?
>
> A: That's a very good question. No other talk-show host has ever asked
> me that. It's a good question. What do you do? You identify them and
> then the superintendent will try to get them onto a task force and
> make them have "ownership" and ...
>
> Q: Ahhh -- a re-education program?
>
> A: Yeah -- you got it! That's a very good question -- really, truly --
> I've never had a talk-show guy ask me that question.
>
> Q: It seems like an obvious question.
>
> A: It is a very obvious one, and that's why it took me a while to come
> up with an answer. But that's exactly what the reason was. And, then,
> the other thing I was going to do was to identify the important people
> in the community -- good people, good Americans who have really been
> used with the Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Garden Club -- go to them
> and convince them that these programs are vital to the survival of
> this country, of the world: The world is changing we have to have
> these programs.
> I was really shocked. I was absolutely appalled. You have to remember:
> I had been out of the country 18 years and I had left a country that
> was red, white and blue, mom and apple pie, and all that.
>
> Q: You were a dinosaur.
>
> A: Well, yeah! I was a dinosaur. I had lived in socialist countries
> and I had traveled in communist countries and I had seen a lot. And, I
> thought to myself: "What the [blank] is going on in my own country?"
>
> Q: Charlotte, what about teachers? There are some good teachers who
> are genuinely dedicated ...
>
> A: Many. Many, many more than most people think -- and they have to keep
> quiet.
>
> Q: Yeah but what is their reaction when they are presented with these
> controversial, non-academic methodologies that don't have anything to
> do with teaching anyone anything?
>
> A: They are very unhappy, and they try to continue to do something
> that does have something to do with teaching and learning. I just
> recently heard the state of Oregon has passed legislation to get rid
> of tenure. I was always opposed to tenure. Now I'm in favor of tenure
> because what they are going to do now ...
>
> Q: ... now, see, I'm opposed to tenure. Why do you support it now?
>
> A: Because of the way they are going to use it. Now, they can get rid
> of the good teachers without any problem. It used to be getting rid of
> the bad ones right? Now, they are going to get rid of the academic
> teachers. The teachers who do not agree with George Bush's education
> agenda -- you know the outcome-based, direct education, teach-to-the-
> test. These poor teachers -- these poor children -- and they do not
> agree in the changing of the definition of quality teaching.
>
> Q: Charlotte, I'd like you to explain to our readers at what point did
> it become more important to manufacture this concept of self esteem --
> and the fact that if you can "feel good" about the process, it doesn't
> matter what the results are. When did that happen?
>
> A: Well, you know, it all started in 1934 when the Carnegie Foundation
> set the agenda for the next hundred years and that was to change our
> country from a free, individualistic economy to a planned economy --
> and to do it through the schools. And the way they would do it, would
> be to change the social studies so nobody would know what our form of
> government is -- and how precious it is -- and to not teach the
> Constitution. This is the Carnegie Corporation plan -- to implement a
> planned economy through the schools. And it is going in right now.
>
> Q: OK, that's the background and foundation. But at what point,
> recently, did they effect the significant change in direction, content
> and product?
>
> A: At what point did all the touchy-feeling stuff happen? Carnegie
> happened in 1934, the United Nations in 1945 ...
>
> Q: The only touchy-feeling stuff I encountered in school was if you
> didn't do what you were supposed to do -- when you were supposed to do
> it, the way you were instructed to do it -- Brother Benilde would
> smack you up side the head with a book.
>
> A: Well, that's right, but they don't want people to be educated, and
> this is a very important point. I know there are people out there who
> think: "Goodness, I thought the whole purpose of the corporations
> forming partnerships with the public sector (which actually is
> corporate fascism) was so that the schools would give our children
> better academic skills?" That's not true. According to David Hornbeck
> -- Mr. Carnegie and the big honcho for "School To Work," he said in
> his book, "Human Capital," which he wrote with Lester Solomon, that
> the corporations do not want educated people.
>
> Q: Why?
>
> A: Because educated people are very difficult -- they ask too many
> questions, they quit their jobs, etc.
>
> Q: Actually, the way it has developed now, (and I think the primary
> reason they want to maintain the Department of Education) the
> corporations will identify what vacancies and needs they have and
> "train" workers. Charlotte, I want you to explain "School To Work"
> because I get so angry and seething when I think about it -- and try
> to talk about it -- that I sometimes butcher it.
>
> A: So do I. I think the best way -- and I really recommend Congress do
> this, because it would be cheaper than going to Europe -- I would like
> all of them to go down and spend six months in Cuba. Is that a good
> answer?
>
> Q: If they don't come back, it would be great.
>
> A: Well, go down to Cuba and you will see the same system implemented
> there that they are implementing in Oregon, in California and in Maine
> and everywhere. Where the children are identified at a very early age,
> psychologically profiled -- fourth grade in some cases. In fact, the
> whole idea of work is started in kindergarten.
>
> Q: Hold on a moment, Charlotte, because we have to stress something here.
>
> A: What?
>
> Q: This is not fiction. This is not something out of a Stanley Kubrick
> movie. This is something that is going on right now!
>
> A: That's right. It is in. It is not vocational either -- which is
> something I have always supported. I'd like to share with your readers
> the story I sent you about the 12-year-old youngster in Minnesota. He
> understood what I was talking about and he said to his mom, "I want to
> choose my own future!" And he went to a big rally they held in
> Minneapolis at 12-years old. Isn't it interesting that this
> 12-year-old understands what "School To Work" is.
>
> Q: And, beyond that, what about the people who don't "find" themselves
> until they are 40?
>
> A: You're not kidding. I'm a bit older than that and sometimes I
> wonder if I've found myself ... I'm still looking for myself.
>
> Q: I often joke when people ask, "What are you going to do when you
> grow up?" Duh? It presupposes I will grow up and that I will know. I'm
> still working at it.
>
> A: We all have a lot of talents we don't know about until later on
> when something happens. You are absolutely correct. The thing is that
> is the German dual-track system of education and work-force training.
> It is the Soviet system -- people don't like to use that word. It is
> the Cuban system.
>
> Q: What people need to recognize is they are trying to identify kids
> at an early age for what their aptitudes are. Not based on what the
> kids talents and abilities are, but what the corporation need is.
>
> A: That's right. Actually everything is focused on the good of the
> state now. It is the state that is important -- not the individual's
> upward mobility, the individual's future life. That's the way
> education used to be. You asked me earlier when the change took place.
>
> Q: Are you going to answer it now?
>
> A: Yes. It really took place in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. And that
> followed the agreements that Eisenhower signed with the Soviet Union
> in 1958. I feel they very strongly influenced our agenda in education.
>
> Q: I just dodged the bullet. I graduated in 1966.
>
> A: You were lucky. In 1965, they couldn't get American educators to
> implement this agenda that the Carnegie Corporation wanted. Also, an
> incredible psychologist -- Brock Chisholm -- at the United Nations
> recommended getting rid of the conscience to the World Health
> Organization. And he recommended doing that through the schools by
> training the teachers to be little psychiatrists.
> None of this was accepted by any American educator until 1965. I don't
> think even at that time they really accepted it but it did pass. The
> Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a major, major shift. It
> moved our marvelous system of education -- which, up until 1960, was
> the best in the world -- from academics, what you know in your head,
> to a performance- based system which we're screaming about:
> outcome-based education, mastery learning and Skinner (who said "I can
> make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper
> schedule"). I think your readers can understand the difference between
> knowledge based in your head and performance based. Performance is how
> you perform on the job -- that is not the role of the public school
> system or any education system that I can see.
>
> Q: And it changed in 1965?
>
> A: That changed in '65. From that time on, all these incredibly
> horrible values-destroying programs were developed: values
> clarification, survival games, critical thinking. Geoff, I have a
> manual published in 1967 that is three inches thick of
> values-destroying programs. And people say, "Why Columbine?"
>
> Q: Let me ask you this -- because I've spent a fair amount of time
> talking and writing about it -- the connection between the epidemic
> prescribing of psychotropic drugs to kids as a means of controlling
> them?
>
> A: Absolutely. There's a very interesting appendix in my book about a
> Hawaii Master Plan in 1968. A pilot project for the whole country that
> was carried out in Hawaii and federally funded and it included just
> about everything that is taking place right now. But there was a
> recommendation in there to use these psychiatric drugs on our
> children. This has been planned for a long time. They don't want
> independent little active monsters running around in the classroom.
>
> Q: There is an interesting sidebar to this. There is a woman in the
> San Francisco Bay area who has home schooled all her kids. Her
> daughter just went in the Army. The recruiters were surprised and
> elated that she scored remarkably high in just about every test. They
> gave her something like an $18,000 bonus for enlisting. They couldn't
> understand why she was so far superior to all the other recruits.
> Obviously the key reason is she was shielded and protected from public
> education.
>
> A: There is no question if a parent is able to do that (and not all
> are -- I'm not sure I could have) they certainly should be home
> schooling. Or, if you can't home school, try to find a private school.
>
> Q: But that shouldn't be necessary if the public schools had not been
> so corrupted.
>
> A: It shouldn't be necessary, but we need to note that there are good
> public schools. Although there won't be for long because of the
> redefinition of academics -- and that good teaching is no longer what
> it used to be -- so we won't have really much of a public school
> system. There'll be nothing left in a few years because of the
> legislation that is going through Washington, D.C., right now and the
> way they have been crashing the public school system ever since I left
> my office in the Department of Education. However, right now, you have
> to look carefully at private schools. In many cases, they may well be
> worse than the public schools at the moment.
>
> Q: So what do you suggest to concerned parents?
>
> A: Well my recommendation is different from anybody else's because I
> guess I'm naive and have stars in my eyes and wear rose-colored
> glasses ...
>
> Q: ... and you are sheltered in Maine.
>
> A: Oh yeah ... sheltered in Maine ... well, I'll tell you when I moved
> here I thought I had moved out of the country. People don't quite
> understand "School To Work" here either and we are very important in
> "School To Work." But the only solution to this problem -- and it is a
> big problem because it doesn't just deal with education -- if we allow
> this so-called "education" system to continue, this country hasn't got
> a chance to hold on to its freedom.
> They are taking our form of government -- Congress did this in the
> '90s with this legislation where they effectively changed our free
> system of government to a planned economy. A planned economy is not a
> free system at all. And if Americans think it is, they ought to go
> down to Cuba and take a look. In my opinion nothing short of
> abolishing the U.S. Department of Education will take care of this
> problem. And that means not back to the state level but back to the
> local level.
>
> Q: Weren't the Republicans going to do that?
>
> A: Yes, Ronald Reagan promised to do that when I was there. And I
> think many of us were really disappointed that this didn't happen.
> There is no way for us to cure the problems in American education and
> for this country to stay free as long as that building is allowed to
> exist there in partnership with the Department of Labor. It gets all
> of its instructions ...
>
> Q: Charlotte, I got a correspondence a couple of years back and the
> letterhead had both departments at the top of it.
>
> A: That's right. They are in partnership. But, another thing is, they
> do not put the United Nations on top -- that is where the whole thing
> actually comes from. What we're putting in now -- I don't think people
> realize and this -- includes the school-choice proposals I'm talking
> about. What is going in now is international. You have the same
> school-choice proposals, charter schools, et cetera going into Russia.
> You have the Outcome-Based Education / Direct Instruction in Hong
> Kong. And for people to feel this is even a national program -- it is
> not. It is international.
> I think that Benjamin Bloom is probably the behavioral psychologist
> who came up with the outcome-based ed and mastery learning -- he was a
> big U.N. guy. He died a couple of years ago. The purpose of education,
> as far as the United Nations is concerned, is to change the thoughts,
> actions and feelings of students. Bloom went on to define "good
> teaching" ...
>
> Q: What ever became of the concept of seeking out knowledge and
> information?
>
> A: No, no -- people have to understand and it took me long time too --
> when we see all these failures, we put all the money into the system
> and then the test scores go down, and we keep saying, "Why? Why? Get
> with it folks!" I finally realized about 10 years ago when I finally
> started putting all the stuff together, when we think it's a disaster,
> to them, it's a success.
>
> Q: They are accomplishing their objective.
>
> A: Absolutely. Because they don't care whether our children can read,
> write, count, et cetera -- they really don't. When they put these
> programs in like Outcome-Based Ed -- and we have proof of that one --
> because we have the evaluation of the major outcome-based education
> program that went in under Reagan ...
>
> Q: What did it say?
>
> A: The evaluation said that, no, it really didn't work, that success
> -- academically -- was not there. But it was successful because it
> turned the system on its head from inputs that we used to have to
> outputs. Output is performance, and it's necessary for workforce
> training.
>
> Q: If the government took all the money that is whizzed down that rat
> hole of the U.S. Department of Education -- and didn't give it to the
> states -- but somehow distributed it through block grants or something
> to the local schools, and put the local schools in competition ... I
> remember my wife used to brag because she went to high school in
> Lexington, Massachusetts, and once upon a time they had the best
> school system in the country ...
>
> A: Yep ...
>
> Q: Not any more ... but if you allowed the local schools to compete,
> the quality of education would go up just through the benefits of
> competition.
>
> A: I think it's true, but you are always going to have the strings
> attached as long as you have the federal money coming in. That's why I
> would like to see us just abolish the U.S. Department of Education --
> in which case, all the state departments of education are going to
> collapse because they get up to 80% of their operating budget from my
> old office.
>
> Q: Cool! That would be a good thing.
>
> A: Wouldn't it be wonderful? And, then, we go back and restore the
> finest system the world has ever known. Now that to me would be even
> more devastating to the United Nations people -- the internationalists
> -- than getting out of the U.N. Because if the biggest country, the
> most important economic power in the world, the United States, all of
> a sudden decided to jump off board of the "School To Work" agenda,
> which is an international one, they are going to be in such trouble
> they will not know what to do.
>
> Q: Therein is the problem -- selling it. What about George Bush
> continuing with this?
>
> A: He wanted it all along. Bill Clinton was certainly involved in
> "School To Work" but it was George Bush the elder who initially put
> his big message into the Congressional Record. The elder Bush was big
> on apprenticeships and "School To Work." And, I hate to say it, but
> Ronald Reagan was the one who actually contributed the most to "School
> To Work" by implementing the concept of Public-Private Partnership.
> That's in the Communist Manifesto -- Industry and Government.
>
> Q: Don't be shy or reticent. I have been telling people as long as I
> have had a forum, it is not a question of who is right or wrong but
> what is right or wrong.
>
> A: You're right, but that is very sad. When Reagan went along with the
> partnership concept -- which, like I said, is in the Communist
> Manifesto, merge industry with the government -- then he signed the
> agreements with Gorbachev on education, Then, the Carnegie Corporation
> got involved -- and what they are giving us is the Soviet system.
> Look, in my book, in 1932, you saw William Foster, chairman of the
> Communist Party USA write a book "Toward a Soviet America" and what he
> called for was a United States Department of Education, the Pavlovian
> method that is going in under direct instruction. He called for the
> scientific method. He called for the teaching of evolution. Get rid of
> patriotism. All of this has gone in.

> Now you can't tell me that George Bush doesn't know this. He was the
> one who recommended keeping the U.S. Department of Education last
> July. When the Republicans wanted to keep in the platform to get rid
> of it -- to abolish the Department of Ed -- he took that out. He
> purposefully took that out. He knows, although he talks local. He says
> we're going to have local controls. How can you have local control
> when you have the United States Department of Education dictating
> every single thing to our schools right now? There is no way we have
> any local control left.
>
> Q: We have heard from some people about a Japanese concept of Kai Zin.
> It but basically it deals with tearing down in order to build up
> something new.
>
> A: That is absolutely correct. In order for them to implement the new
> system they have to destroy the old one. David Hornbeck is the
> majordomo on that. He's been in I don't know how many states. He's
> destroyed Kentucky, he's destroyed Philadelphia. I don't know where he
> is now but you have to watch him. It is so sad that parents do not see
> what we see because it has been so gradual and now, when you have
> George Bush and Ted Kennedy agreeing on George Bush's education
> agenda, that doesn't really leave any room for anybody to be
> concerned.
>
> Q: When the allegedly rabid left and right start agreeing without
> compromise that in and of itself is cause for concern.
>
> A: That's right. But where do we go? George Bush is the controlled
> right and Ted Kennedy is the controlled left. Control -- that is the
> point. And they have met at the radical center. These are the people
> who are supporting the communitarianism idea which if you look in the
> dictionary it says, "communistic form of government." Who on earth
> would ever dream that the Republican Party could end up with someone
> in the White House who is supporting a concept -- communitarianism --
> that is defined in any dictionary you want, as a communistic form of
> government?
>
> Q: But the dumbed-down American populous either doesn't believe you or
> they marginalize you as just a conspiracy theorist. Despite these
> people being in your face with it.
>
> A: You're right -- the most important documents with the proof, of
> course, are the very old ones. Yeah, they are in your face but they
> are not in the faces of the average good American who has really been
> manipulated. It has been a very diabolical plan. They use the
> three-pronged fork. They use semantic deception, which are words that
> sound so good like "basic skills." Then they use gradualism like the
> frog in the cold water -- you heat it up over 50 years and the frog is
> dead. And then you have the dialectic where you deliberately create a
> problem -- and you get people to scream and go out of business -- and
> then you impose the solution and people are so upset at the problem
> that they accept anything. That's the three-pronged fork, without
> which we never would have been taken. Plus, the dumbing down --
> because if the American people do not understand the Constitution, the
> Bill of Rights and that we do have a special form of government here,
> we are not
> going to know when those things are taken away from us.
>
> Q: And those in our Congress were either intentional or manipulated
> co-conspirators.
>
> A: That is exactly what has happened with the Congress when they voted
> for this change in our economic system to make it like Cuba -- they
> obviously didn't know that we had a wonderful free-enterprise system
> that had brought people to the shores of America for the past 150
> years.