Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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and a ready access to the information the student needs during each stage of his progress. (p. 36)

Perhaps we must go significantly beyond the present, minimum family educational programs that candidly discuss interpersonal relationships, family conflicts and tensions, counseling and rehabilitation services and the many areas that need to be explored between a man, a woman, and their children. (p. 46) The task of the schools during the past stable, relatively unchanging world was to emphasize fixed habits, memorization of facts, and development of specific skills to meet known needs. But for a future which will include vast changes, the emphasis should be on how to meet new situations, on the skills of research, observation, analysis, logic and communication, on the development of attitudes appropriate to change, and on a commitment to flexibility and reason. (p. 50) Behavioral sciences subject matter should form a part of our modern curriculum to provide a basis for self knowledge and behavioral concepts.... Study of ethical traditions, concepts and changes in value structure should be emphasized.... Department of Education should experiment with the group therapy, role playing and encounter group approach that are pro fessionally planned and conducted, as a basis for understanding other people, races, cultures and points of view. (pp. 51–52) From the point of view of the teacher, individualized instruction should provide for opportuni ties to diagnose the learning styles, and strengths and weaknesses of pupils; direct assistance by skilled counselors, psychologists, social workers and physicians will assist in accurate and meaningful diagnosis.... The Department should adopt team teaching and non-gradedness as the basic approach to classroom instruction. The present system of age and grade classification of students is excessively rigid and not conducive to individualized instruction. A non-graded approach, therefore, on a K–12 basis, is sought as an ultimate goal. (p. 54) The school system will seek financial support of educational programs on the basis of edu cational outputs, that is, the improvement, growth and changes that occur in the behavior of the pupil as a result of schooling. (p. 55) This school system will systematically study the benefits of any promising non-educational input to enhance learning. Recent discoveries from the field of bio-chemistry suggest that there already exists a fairly extensive class of drugs to improve learning such as persistence, attentiveness, immediate memory, and long term memory.... The application of biochemical research findings, heretofore centered in lower forms of animal life, will be a source of con spicuous controversy when children become the objects of such experimentation. Schools will conceivably be swept into a whole new area of collaboration in research with biochemists and psychologists to improve learning. The immediate and long-term impact on teaching as well as on learning and the ethical and moral consequences of extensive use of chemicals to assist in the learning process must be studied extensively.... The Department should initi ate a long term, continuing series of discussions with individuals directly associated with these research efforts. Lay persons from our community should be an integral part of these discussions. (p. 56)

The Department should take the initiative to establish a state compact of all agencies with responsibilities in education in this state. The purpose of such a compact will be to coordi-