Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

228 cessing, One of Four Groups” was included: Direct Instruction: James Block, Benjamin Bloom, the late Madeline Hunter, and Ethna Reid—all prominent in development, implementation and promotion of Skinnerian mastery learning. An excerpt from the Maine Center’s flyer regarding Direct Instruction follows: This model is a deductive approach to learning that presents the objective, models the skill and provides guides and independent practices. Direct Instruction requires multisensory lessons, constant monitoring by the teacher to insure understanding, and a wide range of review or practices. [Ed. Note: How fascinating that Bruce Joyce used the label “Direct Instruction” instead of mas tery learning, which proves that the two labels are rightfully applied to the same method.] I N 1985 THE U.S. D EPARTMENT OF E DUCATION , THROUGH THE S ECRETARY ’ S D ISCRETION ary Fund under Secretary William Bennett, approved the promotion of and funding for development of a character education program by the Thomas Jefferson Research Center (TJRC) of Pasadena, California. The grant was for a “teacher training project demonstrating the viability of a dis trict-wide educational program involving... the TJRC.” Through the grant, the TJRC, founded in 1963, would apply its character education curriculum “across all segments of the [Pasadena] district’s grade levels... expanding the effort to parents and community, and... to other school districts, and to share... methods and approaches with other educators and institutions na tionally.” Community service projects for elementary, middle, and high school students “are seen as extensions of classroom activity and essential elements in... the range of values being stressed.” The TJRC’s federally funded demonstration “character education” program included “Personal Responsibility Skills and Ethical Decision-Making.” National dissemination was expected to be effected through regional and national work shops, education conferences, computer conferences, and through TELE, “an electronic learn ing exchange... a computerized network of educators... involved with exemplary programs and computer assisted instruction programs within California and... across the nation.” The promotional literature for the TJRC’s middle and high school Achievement Skills programs and the text of the teacher’s manual for its middle school Achievement Skills program (1984) explicitly stated that “the basis for the programs lies in the motivational theories of [Abraham] Maslow.” In Religion, Values, and Peak Experiences (Ohio State University Press: Columbus, Ohio, 1964) Maslow stated that “each person has his own private religion... which may be of the profoundest meaning to him personally and yet... of no meaning to anyone else... each person discovers, develops, and retains his own religion.” An examination of the TJRC’s middle school Achievement Skills reveals not only the program’s base in Maslow’s psychological theories, but also the program’s ties to consciousness-altering methods. Early in the semester-long program, students are told that “we are going to study some psychology. We are going to study our selves or our minds [emphasis in original]. Each of you is going to get a chance to look at yourself as if you were a psychologist.” Repeatedly throughout the program, students are exposed to self-hypnosis, guided imagery, visualization techniques, and relaxation therapy—tools used in psychosynthesis (defined by Roberto Assagioli as the formation or reconstruction of a new personality). In his book Psychosynthesis 16 as mentioned earlier in this book Assagioli notes