Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

98 in the area of Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems because of its potential use as a tool of fiscal accountability in the field of education. As we searched into the information available on the application of this subject in education, it became increasingly difficult to see any relationship between the proposed programs and fiscal accountability. It was appar ent after a study of the methods proposed for use by the schools for accountability purposes that fiscal accountability was being minimized and that techniques were being promoted for achieving behavioral objectives. Other seemingly unrelated organizations, projects, and programs were uncovered because of their influence on the application of accountability methods. They were as parts in a puzzle—analyzed by themselves, each of these projects appeared to be either harmless or an expression of someone’s “dream.” When linked together with other “harmless” programs, they were no longer formless but could be seen as an entire package of plans outlining methods of implementation, organization structures (including flow-charts), computerization, use of behavioral profile catalogs, and goals and objectives determination. C ONTROVERSIAL SEXOLOGISTS L ESTER A. K IRKENDALL AND R UTH F. O SBORNE DEVELOPED in 1971 a program entitled “Sex Education—Student Syllabus No: 216786, correlated with M.I.P. 180800” which was one of the first sex education programs to use a mastery learning approach. This program was published by the National Book Company, owned by Carl W. Salser, executive director of Educational Research Associates, a non-profit educational research corporation in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Salser is also the owner of Halcyon Press and is a long-time advocate of individualized instruction and mastery learning. Carl Salser is the author of a pamphlet entitled “The Carnegie Unit: An Administrative Convenience, but an Educational Catastrophe” and is a supporter of outcome-based education/ mastery learning. Full implementation of OBE/ML calls for the removal of the Carnegie Unit—the “seat time” measure of subject exposure for students which determines graduation and col lege entry eligibility. Salser was a member during 1981–1982 of the presidentially appointed National Council on Educational Research which had oversight of the activities at the former National Institute of Education of the U.S. Department of Education. I N 1971 THE S ECRETARIAT OF THE U NITED N ATIONS E DUCATIONAL , S CIENTIFIC , AND C UL tural Orga nization (UNESCO) called upon George W. Parkyn of New Zealand to outline a possible model for an education system based on the ideal of a continuous education process throughout the lifetime of the learner—a means of bringing an existing national school system into line with lifelong learning. The result of this effort was a book entitled Towards a Conceptual Model of Life-Long Education , published in 1973 by UNESCO (English Edition ISBN 92–3–101117–0). The preface of the book contained the following interesting biographical sketch of the little known Dr. Parkyn: The Secretariat called on George W. Parkyn of New Zealand to prepare this first study. Dr. Parkyn has rendered extensive service to education in many parts of the world: in New Zea land, as a teacher in primary and secondary schools, as a senior lecturer at the University of Otago, and as director of the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, 1954–1967; at UNESCO, where he made substantial contributions to the World Survey of Education ; at Stanford University, California, as a visiting professor; in New Zealand again, as a visiting