Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

194 renorm parents and the general public. It is important that your community know what you intend to do, why it is happening, and exactly what they can expect as it progresses. I believe a district will win some degree of tolerance and patience if it involves the community in this way. To expect residents to passively accept any modification after the fact or by edict is a serious error. Think of renorming the community the same way you conduct similar efforts in the school environment. Don’t challenge the community, co-opt them. (pp. 36–7) T HE U.S. D EPARTMENT OF E DUCATION FUNDED TWO IMPORTANT PROJECTS IN 1983: 1) “Framing a Future for Education” for Kansas; and 2) “Strategic Planning and Furthering Excellence in Millard Public Schools” for Nebraska, both of which were assigned to Dr. Shirley McCune of the MidContinent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL) as project director. These two projects, based on the work of the New Age Naisbitt Group founded by John Naisbitt who authored Megatrends, served as national pilots for OBE restructuring of America from a “representative democracy” to a “participatory democracy—moving from a left versus right politics to a politics of the radical center,” in Dr. McCune’s words. McCune became famous (or infamous) during the National Governors’ Association conference in Wichita, Kansas in 1989 when she said: What we’re into is the total restructuring of society. What is happening in America today and what is happening in Kansas and the Great Plains is not simply a chance situation in the usual winds of change. What it amounts to is a total transformation of society.... Our total society is in a crisis of restructuring and you can’t get away from it. You can’t go into rural areas, you can’t go into the churches, you can’t go into government or into business and hide from the fact that what we are facing is the total restructuring of our society. [Ed. Note: In the 1996 entry regarding McCune’s book, The Light Shall Set You Free (Athena Publishing, Alpha Connections: Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1996 ), McCune expressed her belief that “each individual is a co-creator with the Divine.”] “A C ALL FOR A R ADICAL R E - EXAMINATION : E DUCATION S HOULD R EFLECT A N EW I NTERNA tional Economic Order” by Michel Debeauvais was published in the March 1983 issue of The Edu cation Digest . The article was a condensed version of the original which appeared in Prospects (Vol. XII, No. 2, pp. 135–145). Michel Debeauvais is co-founder and president, Francophone Association of Comparative Education, Sevres, France. The following excerpts relate to the transformation of the world’s education systems from traditional academic emphasis to work force training: The current of thought that seeks to abolish the existing international economic order and replace it with a new order calls for reexamination of the relations between education and the economy.... Assuming growing importance everywhere, however, is the inadequacy of [the response] of school systems to social needs and to the needs of the economy. These shortcomings lie behind the educational reforms upon which nearly all countries have embarked. The chief criticisms are: primary schooling often tends to direct young people toward salaried employment in the modern urban sector, whereas only a minority among them can hope to obtain such jobs; general secondary education still channels pupils’ aspirations toward higher