Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

206 [Ed. Note: All of the above increase in federal control came from an office (NIE) in the U.S. De partment of Education which President Reagan had promised to abolish. Note the emphasis on funding for OBE/“effective schools,” which use Skinnerian operant conditioning methods.] I N 1984 J ACQUELINE L AWRENCE GAVE TESTIMONY BEFORE THE S UBCOMMITTEE ON E DUCA tion, Arts and Humanities of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources which held hear ings on Senate Joint Resolution 138 , a bill establishing a commission on teacher education. Excerpts from Mrs. Lawrence’s testimony follow: My name is Jacqueline Lawrence. I am a parent from Montgomery County, Maryland.… Prior to the 1960s, American public schools placed major emphasis on the intellectual development of our children, on their mastery of basic skills such as reading, writing and mathematics. Competency in physics, biology, chemistry, and chronological factual history was required. Cognitive learning and scholarly objectivity were stressed as the basic approach to education at all levels. As a result, our nation produced a large, well-educated middle class—our greatest strength. [Ed. Note: Mrs. Lawrence’s comments regarding the “major emphasis on intellectual devel opment prior to the 1960s” remind the writer of a scholarly ancient history textbook used in a high school history course at the Rockland, Maine District High School as late as the early 1970s. (It took awhile for the change agents to penetrate a fishing community on the coast of Maine!) The textbook written by Professor James Breasted, an Egyptologist and Semitic scholar, is a fascinating and extremely well written history of Ancient Greece, Egypt, etc., with few black and white photographs, quizzes at the end of each chapter, and text written for college level students. That was only 25 years ago! It would be virtually impossible to find a textbook of that scholarly level in public high schools or in most colleges today. This writer has noth ing but a feeling of tremendous sadness pondering the vapid education landscape Americans seem so willing to accept for their offspring. It is my constant hope that American apathy in this regard is due to their not knowing what has happened, and that once they know, they will—all of them—collectively and individually attempt to reverse this situation.] It is public knowledge that since the 1960s academic standards have declined. Why? Quite simply, over the past 20 years our schools have not placed emphasis on academic achievement. There has instead been a shift toward psychological development and social adjustment of students in the affective domain, that is, their feelings, attitudes, and opin ions. The shift began in 1965 with the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)…. Since 1965, billions of federal dollars have been allocated to educational the orists and curriculum developers to alter the course of public education. The blueprint for the process of educational reform may be found in a series of guides known as Pacesetters in Innovation …. From this has come a nationwide information network of ERIC clearing houses (Educational Resource Information Centers) and the National Diffusion Network of laboratories for the dissemination of federally funded classroom materials and curriculum. With the new programs came a retraining of the teachers. A prime example: in 1969 the Office of Education began financing model teacher education programs known as the Be havioral Science Teacher Education Program (BSTEP–OE 5803) to introduce to the classroom Mrs. Lawrence continued: