Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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tions.... Immediate consideration must be given to (1) the development of an integrated social control of our population size and growth, and (2) the impact of a steady stable condition on our society. The scope and complexity of this task requires the attention of a highly pro fessional team whose talents and professional training are equal to the challenge. It is the recommendation of the Council that such a team be brought together and charged with the prompt development of the details of this program and reporting back to the Council.

Approved by the Population Subcommittee, March 30, 1971.

Present: Dr. C.T. Black, Mr. Robert Boatman, Professor William Cooper, Dr. Ralph MacMul lan, and M.S. Reisen, M.D., Chairman

Surely it is no coincidence that the above-mentioned Michigan and U.S. Senate recom mended policies on population control were being discussed at the same time (1971) that the United States was engaged in “Ping Pong” diplomacy with Communist China, the international leader in mandatory population control. Some excerpts follow from “The Ping Heard Round the World” which appeared in the April 26, 1971 issue of Time magazine: Dressed in an austere gray tunic, Premier Chou En-Lai moved along a line of respectfully silent visitors in Peking’s massive Great Hall of the People.... Finally he stopped to chat with the 15-member U.S. team and three accompanying American reporters, the first group of U.S. citizens and journalists to visit China in nearly a quarter of a century. “We have opened a new page in the relations of the Chinese and American people,” he told the U.S. visitors. ...Yet in last week’s gestures to the United States table tennis team, the Chinese were clearly indicating that a new era could begin. They carefully made their approaches through private U.S. citizens, but they were responding to earlier signals that had been sent by the Nixon Administration over the past two years. ...Probably never before in history has a sport been used so effectively as a tool of international diplomacy. [Ed. Note: Back to family planning, Michigan-style. Population and Family Planning in the People’s Republic of China, 1971 , a book published by the Victor-Bostrom Fund and the Popula tion Crisis Committee, has a table of contents that includes: “A Letter from Peking” by Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China ; “Family Planning in China” by Han Suyin, M.D.; and “Why Not Adopt China’s Population Goals?” In other words, it looks like Ping Pong Diplomacy may have been used to open up the dialogue between Communist China and “private” Ameri can groups supporting population control. These would, in turn, lobby in Congress for more liberal family planning policies and for the legalization of abortion as recommended in the U.S. Senate Journal Resolution #214 and the Michigan paper. Here again, as was the case with the 1985 Carnegie Corporation-Soviet Academy of Sciences education agreement, diplomacy is being conducted by private parties: table tennis teams and groups such as the non-profit Victor-Bostrom Fund and the Population Crisis Committee.]

P ERFORMANCE -B ASED T EACHER E DUCATION : W HAT I S THE S TATE OF THE A RT ? BY S TANLEY Elam, editor of Phi Delta Kappa Publications (AACTE Committee on Performance-Based Teacher