Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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reactions to the death of a friend, pet or relative; what your friends think of you; what adults think of you and what you think of yourself. • Logbooks: These are workbooks used in conjunction with many language arts textbooks. They are vehicles for children to reveal their reactions to short stories, often dealing with emotions and moral dilemmas. There are no right answers, only personal responses. Sometimes the logbooks guide the child into a response. For instance: Even if your family is a happy one, you’re bound to feel sad... or even lonely. When might a person be lonely even if he is part of a family? Loneliness is listen ing to your parents arguing. Loneliness is when you come home and there’s no one there. Loneliness is.... Perhaps the most frequently used strategies for self-revelation are the diary and role-playing. These techniques were introduced into American public schools by an Estonian teacher, Hilda Taba, and a Romanian psychiatrist, Jacob Moreno. [Ed. Note: In 1957 a California State Senate Investigative Committee exposed the work of Hilda Taba, Jacob Moreno and others. In spite of this exposure, these people continued to receive tax dollars and access to schools nationwide. Hilda Taba’s program has remained in use by key change agents from 1960 to 1999. Bruce Joyce and Marsha Weil’s Models of Teaching mentions her work as well as that of many other sociologists, behavioral psychologists, etc. As a school board director in 1976, the writer found materials related to the above-described programs and many others described by Mrs. Lawrence in a box given to her by a home economics teacher. Needless to say, the writer was shocked to find that behavior modification was being introduced into the curriculum under the innocent-sounding “home economics” label.] The U.S. Office of Education gave grants to Taba to develop an elementary social studies program to improve the social adjustment and personality development of children. She had worked in reform schools and mental institutions with Moreno and found that role-playing and diaries were successful tools to learn where a child stood in his beliefs, attitudes, and social interactions. The diary has been used for years in Russia and China for self-revelation, self-eval uation, and self-criticism. More recently the personal diary was found in Guyana throughout the Jim Jones compound. Montgomery County, Maryland, requires its students to keep a diary from kindergarten through grade nine. Diaries are an important psychological instrument. They provide a precise record and personality profile of the child, his family members, neighbors and peers—in formation needed by the teacher or therapist to alter a student’s behavior or attitude. It is important that the writing be free-style and spontaneous, coming directly from the emotional feeling area of the child. Diaries are not corrected for form, grammar or spelling.... A teacher manual for values education suggests 15 kinds of diaries for use in the class room; some examples are a budget diary, religion diary, hostility and anger diary, low points diary, affectionate and tender feelings diary, and a time diary.... In the psycho-social approach to education, the child is taught concepts through the use of psychotherapy. For example, to better understand the social problem of prejudice and to teach children through experiential learning, blond children in a fifth grade (age 10) were asked to sit in the back of the room for one week, totally isolated, not permitted to participate in the classwork. For a one-and-a-half hour period each day, brown-haired students were instructed to pick on, insult, make fun of or taunt the blonds. Needless to say, taunting