Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1984

student violence which has taken place in the nation recently.]

S TEPHEN B ROADY OF T ARKIO , M ISSOURI PRESENTED TESTIMONY IN 1984 AT THE U.S. D E partment of Education’s Region VII hearing on “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to further implement Section 439 of the General Education Provisions Act , 34 CFR, Parts 75, 76, and 98, 20 U.S.C.A. Section 2132(h) 20 U.S.C. 1231e–3(a)(1), 1232h ( Hatch Amendment ).” Broady’s statement exposes the controversial nature of the two leading mastery learning programs—Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI) and Project INSTRUCT—both of which use Skinnerian operant conditioning and both of which submitted claims of effectiveness which have been questioned by persons involved in implementing and evaluating the programs. The third pro gram, DISTAR (Direct Instruction for Systematic Teaching and Remediation), which is similar to ECRI, is the highly recommended “scientific, research-based” phonics program so popular with conservatives in the late 1990s. The following are some excerpts from Stephen Broady’s testimony: I am a farmer currently engaged in the operation of over one thousand acres of prime farm ground. I became interested in education after my wife and I observed emotional change in our daughter while she was attending a rural public school using an “approved” federal educational project… “Project INSTRUCT”… approved for funding in the amount of $710,000 and for nationwide use by the Joint Dissemination Review Panel on May 14, 1975 (JDRP #75–37). Although Project INSTRUCT is only one of over 300 “approved” educational projects, Project INSTRUCT and the educational project upon which it is based, the Exemplary Cen ter for Reading Instruction (ECRI), are the most widely used mastery learning educational projects in the United States. ...These mastery learning systems use a type of psychological manipulation based on the Skinnerian ideology of rewards and punishments, and individual feelings are irrelevant.... More commonly referred to as “behavior modification,” the Skinnerian ideology which is used in the teaching techniques of these mastery learning systems, breaks down the process of learning into small bits of information and actually codes a type of behavior that is desired into the learning process itself. The real objective of these mastery learning systems with their behavior modification, is a deliberate attempt to make children conform to an artificial environment which is more suited to the thinking of the school than to the needs of the children. These federally funded mastery learning systems require the use on young children of a highly structured curriculum, test and re-test with the use of criterion tests, stopwatches, direct eye contact, physical contact, and psychological manipulation until the so-called “mastery” of the subject is achieved. These ideas and practices form a complex philosophy in which the “authoritarian” concept predominates. In the early part of 1983, I obtained the evaluation report of Project INSTRUCT from the superintendent’s office of the Lincoln Public Schools. At that time I was unaware the so-called behavior modification based on Skinner’s rewards and punishments was used on my daughter. The evaluation results clearly referred to behavioral objectives which were… established for: (a) students; (b) parents; (c) administrators; (d) media specialists; (e) project staff; (f) teachers; (g) paraprofessionals and volunteers, and (h) prospective teachers. The wholesale use of behavior modification is part of Skinnerian psychology. As it was outlined in the evaluation, Project INSTRUCT includes rewards and punishments, not only