Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

96 Take a look about you today, with the Washington-directed school policies. Is the Health, Education and Welfare Department doing exactly what the defunct NRA started out to do?

R EPORT OF THE S TUDY , T ITLE III, ESEA BY E MERY S TOOF WAS PRODUCED BY THE E DUCA tional Innovation Advisory Commission and the Bureau of Planning and Development of the Cali fornia State Department of Education in 1970. Excerpts follow: Origin of the Bureau... An Instructional Program Planning and Development Unit was estab lished by State Board action in 1965 and was funded through a Title V, ESEA project. This unit was comprised of persons responsible for the state level administration of Title III, ESEA, and co-ordination of Title V, ESEA. A general conceptual model for effective planned change in education, as well as a management model for the administration of Title III, ESEA, was submitted to the State Board’s Federal Aid Committee in 1965, with November 10, 1965 as the first deadline for receiving applications for funds.… Two significant developments early in the state administration of Title III, ESEA, were (1) the project to Prepare Educational Planners (Operation PEP), and (2) the funding of twenty-one regional planning centers. “PEP” sessions trained administrators in systematic planning procedures, systems analysis techniques, “planning, programming and budgeting system” and cost-benefit analysis. PACE (Projects to Advance Creativity in Education) was to encourage school districts to develop imaginative solutions to educational problems, to utilize more effectively research findings, to translate the latest knowledge about teach ing and learning into widespread educational practice, and to create an awareness of new programs. Through the regional centers, the Bureau has endeavored to (1) encourage the development of creative innovations, (2) demonstrate worthwhile innovations in educational practice through exemplary programs, and (3) supplement existing programs and facilities. [Ed. Note: This is an example of how the Federal government began its takeover of all state and local education agencies, removing any semblance of what could be considered local control. The California report explains exactly what happened in every single state due to our elected officials’ inability to resist taking federal money and their trust of education change agents (administrators, principals, superintendents, etc.). How many American children have been severely handicapped academically and morally by experimental, “innovative” programs which had absolutely nothing to do with academics, but everything to do with attitude, value and belief change?] I N 1970 L EONARD S. K ENWORTHY , PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION AT B ROOKLYN C OLLEGE OF the City of New York, wrote The International Dimension of Education: Background Paper II Prepared for the World Conference on Education (Asilomar, California, March 5–14, 1970), edited by Norman V. Overly. The conference was sponsored by the Association for Supervision and Cur riculum Development, National Education Association, and the Commission on International Cooperation in Education. Excerpts from the report follow: III. The International Dimensions of Our Schools: Some Overall Considerations Here and there teachers have modified individual courses.... Schools have rewritten syllabi or added courses.... But nowhere has there been a rigorous examination of the total experi ences of children and/or youth in schools and the development of a continuous, cumulative, comprehensive curriculum to create the new type of people needed for effective living in the