Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

213 I N 1984 S CHOOLING AND T ECHNOLOGY , V OL . 3, P LANNING FOR THE F UTURE : A C OLLABORA tive Model, An Interpretive Report on Creative Partnerships in Technology—An Open Forum by Dustin H. Heuston, World Institute for Computer-Assisted Teaching (WICAT) was published (Southeastern Regional Council for Educational Improvement: Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 1984) under a grant from the U.S. Office of Education, HEW, National Institute of Education. An excerpt from “Discussion: Developing the Potential of an Amazing Tool” in Schooling and Technology follows: We’ve been absolutely staggered by realizing that the computer has the capability to act as if it were ten of the top psychologists working with one student.... You’ve seen the tip of the iceberg. Won’t it be wonderful when the child in the smallest county in the most distant area or in the most confused urban setting can have the equivalent of the finest school in the world on that terminal and no one can get between that child and the curriculum? We have great moments coming in the history of education. [Ed. Note: The comment regarding the computer’s role as a “top psychologist” is as disturbing as is the idea of “no one getting between the child and the curriculum.” These ideas lay to rest the publicly stated purpose of the words “parent-school partnerships” which represent a superb example of semantic deception.] H OW TO M EASURE A TTITUDES BY M ARLENE E. H ENDERSON , L YNN L YONS M ORRIS AND Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon, Center for the Study of Evaluation of the University of California, Los Angeles (Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, Cal., 1984) was published. Funded by the National Insti tute of Education, the table of contents follows: • An Introduction to the Measurement of Attitudes and Attitude Change • Selecting from among Alternative Approaches to Collecting Attitude Information • Self Report and Reports of Others • Interviews, Surveys and Polls • Logs, Journals, Diaries and Reports • Observation Procedures, Sociometric Procedures, Various Names for the Attitude You Want to Measure • Reference Books that List, Describe, or Evaluate Existing Measures • Validity and Reliability of Attitude Instruments • Validity: Is the Instrument an Appropriate One to Measure? What You Want to Know • Names and Addresses of Publishers of Attitude Measures The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1984

T EACHING AS A M ORAL C RAFT BY A LAN T OM WAS PUBLISHED (L ONGMAN , I NC .: W HITE Plains , N.Y., 1984). Professor Tom’s book provides an extremely valuable contribution to literature on behavioral professional development for teachers and research on “effective teaching.” Excerpts follow:

A.S. Barr... himself, as already noted, increasingly came to believe that his original com