Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

204 for school children, but for anyone who comes in contact with the school system itself. The Evaluation of Project INSTRUCT, Executive Summary , written by Carl Spencer, project director for Lincoln Public Schools, also explains that: Project INSTRUCT grew from beliefs that to reduce reading failure reading programs must (1) be diagnostic and prescriptive so that failure does not begin to occur, (2) be im plemented by regular teachers in regular classrooms, (3) provide direct rather than indirect teaching, (4) correlate instruction in all language skills, particularly reading, spelling and handwriting.… The intent and emphasis in 1970 was on behavioral indices and concrete ways of showing accountability; and the data would suggest that the reading of the students themselves may not have increased, but the impact of Project INSTRUCT in the Lincoln, Nebraska Publish Schools seems to be very extensive and influential. [Ed. Note: Project INSTRUCT accomplished its major objective—it developed and installed a less than successful reading program in Lincoln, Nebraska using a model which could be transported to other districts. It also had considerable impact upon the district as a whole, on schools outside of Lincoln and even on the Nebraska State Department of Education. In assessing this impact as a whole, Dr. Ronald Brandt, assistant superintendent for instruction, has said of this project, “Project INSTRUCT made a lasting contribution to instruction in the Lincoln Schools by helping us improve our planning capabilities and by furthering the concepts of focused instruction and mastery learning.” It should be noted that Dr. Ronald Brandt went on to become the executive editor of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s (ASCD) publication Educational Leadership . ASCD could be considered the most influential education organization in the world, outside of UNESCO.] D AVID W. H ORNBECK , CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE C ARNEGIE F OUNDA tion for the Advancement of Teaching and Maryland’s state school superintendent, oversaw the implementation of Project BASIC in 1984. Project BASIC was based on the very controversial Management by Objectives (MBO/PPBS) that is thoroughly discussed in this book. One of the more controversial graduation requirements in Project BASIC was “the worthy use of leisure time,” which was later given the more acceptable and politically correct label of “arts and recreation”—another semantic deception at work. However, Hornbeck’s penultimate controversial recommendation—one which would reverberate from coast to coast, resulting in heated debate at local school board meetings—was his recommendation to the Maryland State Board of Education that community service become a mandatory graduation requirement. Many objections were raised on the grounds that that recommendation constituted involuntary servitude, thus making it unconstitutional. [Ed. Note: In this writer’s opinion, David Hornbeck is a soft-hearted, highly paid “should-have been” Presbyterian minister do-gooder who approaches his job with missionary fervor rooted in theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s idea that a good Christian must strive to correct any unjust status quo. However, his mission seems to be to help implement a socialist world government, increasingly referred to as “The New World Disorder,” as was the goal of the do-gooder Federal Council of Churches in 1942, working toward all being equally poor, miserable and illiterate.