Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

207 methods employed by the behavioral scientists, the sociometrist, and the psychiatrist. Such methods are the most coercive and manipulative known to man today. They were originally developed and used for treating mentally disturbed in mental institutions and the criminally insane in prisons. The techniques are role-playing, psychodrama, sociodrama, simulation games, guided fantasy, diary-keeping, situation attitude scale tests, encounter groups, magic circle, and behavior modification such as isolation, time-out boxes and cof fins, as well as operant conditioning. These are techniques to influence by clinical, hospital procedures the thinking processes of children in a compulsory classroom setting. In addition to training teachers, a special cadre of sensitive manipulators, known as change agents, were trained to facilitate the process of change and to identify forces which resisted change. The change agent serves as a catalyst for teacher and citizen awareness and attempts to gain support for educational change. Dr. John Goodlad’s Report to the President’s Commission on School Finance, Issue #9 , “Strategies for Change,” dated October 1971, explains that the change agent is the decision maker. He decides which changes a school will make. The report states that five to fifteen percent of the people in a given community are open to change. They are the Early Majority and can be counted on to be supportive. A second group, 60 to 90 percent, are the Resist ers; they need special attention and careful strategies. Also there are Leaders, formal and informal, and their support is critical for effecting change. In a diagram from the report… you will note that the change agent creates the Early Majority and influences the Leaders, and then gets both of these groups to act in concert with him to level a triple attack on the Resisters. Goodlad’s report to the President expressed concern about the willingness of the people to change: “People cannot be forced to change until they are psychologically ready.”... …Even if we assume for the sake of argument that change agents are gifted with in finite knowledge and wisdom, their methods are in conflict with the political principles of democracy. Their changes in curriculum and methods and goals of education have not come as a result of democratic discussion and decision. In this vein, it is interesting to note that the Maryland State Teachers Association has lobbied against proposed state legislation for parental access to classroom materials because teachers “would be ineffective as change agents.”... …Moreover, education is now termed psycho-social, psycho-medical, humanistic, af fective and/or diagnostic and prescriptive. Educators diagnose the child’s emotional, intel lectual, perceptual and conceptual development levels. Dr. Benjamin Bloom explains that what educators are classifying is the intended behavior of students, or as he puts it, “the ways in which individuals are to act, think, or feel as a result of participating in some unit of instruction.” In order to bring about desired attitudinal changes in students, teachers must first know where a child is in his or her attitudes and opinions. Various tactics and techniques are used in classrooms to make a child reveal himself to his teacher and peers. The examples I use below are nationally used and have received federal funding: • Magic circle, talk-in, contact or group discussions: The teacher gathers the children into a circle where they are encouraged to discuss personal feelings about one another, their parents, and home life. Family size, advantages, disadvantages, comparison of toys, vacations, and clothing may be discussed. Family conflicts, worries and fears are often revealed. • Inside-Out: A nationally-used elementary social studies program encourages students to discuss their feelings before, during and after their parents’ divorce; their personal The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1984