Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

197 the programming of instruction—an advance not mentioned in any of the reports I have cited,” he writes. He argues “the reinforcing consequences of being right” will eventually prompt students to do what they are supposed to do, but to elicit the behavior the first time, their behavior must be “primed” and “prompted.” “Programmed instruction,” Mr. Skinner contends, makes “very few demands on teachers.” [Ed. Note: Had the above interview occurred a year later, Skinner would have known that A Nation at Risk ’s ultimate recommendations would be to implement Skinnerian mastery learn ing (OBE) “in all the schools of the nation.”] M AINE A SSOCIATION FOR S UPERVISION AND C URRICULUM D EVELOPMENT IN - SERVICE TRAINING was attended by this author in 1983. Dr. S. Alan Cohen led the training. Cohen taught research and curriculum design in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of San Francisco, California, and was president of SAC Associates, a private consulting firm in systems analysis, evaluation and curriculum design. The following information was contained in a flyer handed out at the in-service training: His [Cohen’s] curriculum research generated the concept of High Intensity Learning, an ap plication of systems theory to classroom management. Today, thousands of schools around the world operate his High Intensity Learning Centers in reading and math. He co-authored the Random House series, the first commercially published basal program developed on the Mastery Learning model. A second Mastery Learning program, published in 1978, teaches pupils how to score high on standardized tests. In 1979 Dr. Cohen authored, designed and published a series of graduate textbooks under a SAC subsidiary, Mastery Learning Systems (MLS). Cohen was one of the architects of the Job Corps Curriculum System. Has been con sultant to the Right to Read Office, U.S. Office of Education Office of Economic Opportunity.... His work as consultant and author to Random House and to 20th Century’s B.F. Skinner’s Reading Program reflects an unusual synthesis of radical behaviorism and humanistic ap proach to curriculum design.… ...[W]ith Harry Passow and Abe Tannebaum of Teachers College, Columbia University, Dr. Cohen formed the education task force in the first War on Poverty, Mobilization for Youth. Since that time, his training in learning psychology has been applied to research, materials and systems development, writing and teaching in three major areas: systems applications to curriculum, teaching the disadvantaged and learning disabilities. In 1976 Block and Burns published in the American Educational Research Association re search, around the world on mastery learning. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is committed to Mastery Learning all over the world. We have evaluated data worldwide.... Loyola University is the information center for Mastery Learning. Amazing amount of data from all over the world that tells the obvious.... You can account for 97 out of 100 things you give in a test.... Teaching kids to discriminate between long and short “a” is bad... mundane.... Design assessments to fit what teachers are doing.... Avoid misalignment of conditions of instruction and conditions of assessment.... [Referring to the Iowa and California tests] Start teaching to them or stop using them. Find out what they truly measure.... Same issue as defining what you are teaching.... How do you get teachers to measure precisely what they teach? You must have an A and that bet The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1983 During the in-service training, this writer recorded verbatim Cohen’s following points: