Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

232 I’ve learned a little bit about this very fine gentleman who is here today and the more I have learned the more I am convinced that there can’t be any other American who has done more to bring the attention of the American people to the real story of the onslaught against American civilization than that distinguished American, Mr. Norman Dodd. I think it was about 32 years ago… 1954 when Mr. Dodd served as the able director of research for the Reece Commission to investigate the tax-exempt foundations, and oh sir! how they needed to be investigated. Congressman Reece was so shocked by the anti-American activities of the major foundations and their academic allies that he felt obliged to establish a special committee of Congress to investigate [these] activities… Mr. Norman Dodd, as research director of the Reece Committee, provided a great ser vice to our nation by exposing the real designs of the tax-exempt foundations, such as, who else but the Rockefeller Foundation, and the bottom line of their activities was, and it still is, fundamentally to alter our cultural life so that socialism instead of freedom becomes the American way of life. That’s what they’re about. Oh, they have other pretexts, just as do such organizations today as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. We are sounding a call to arms to you again, sir, to get you to help us combat these people.… [F]rom what I have learned of Mr. Dodd’s life, he has steadfastly adhered to the ideals of our Founding Fathers, as so few do. I hope that conservatives of today, particularly the younger ones, will go back to the hearing records of the Reece Committee and carefully review the massive amount of testimony and findings—over 1,000 pages. I think it is time to pick up where Congressman Reece and Norman Dodd left off 32 years ago and begin again with investigation of activities of the foundations. Without a doubt we are going to find the same patterns, the same designs, the same goals that were uncovered three decades ago, and those that were uncovered then were unsavory. Those which can be uncovered today will be the same. In any case, I am so delighted to be here—it’s an honor to be here… on behalf of the National Forum for Educational Awareness, and Mr. Dodd, really and truly on behalf of the American people…. [I present this] beautiful plaque…. I am proud of you, sir, and God bless you! [Ed. Note: There is no one in a more influential position, nationally or internationally, than Senator Jesse Helms, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to “pick up where Congressman Reece and Norman Dodd left off 32 (now 45) years ago and begin again the investigation of activities of the foundations.” The reader is urged to contact his elected officials to request a resumption of this investigation.] C AROL B ARBER , OUTCOME - BASED EDUCATION / MASTERY LEARNING CONSULTANT FROM H OUS ton, Texas wrote “Outcome-Based Education/Mastery Learning: What Is It? Why Do It? How Do You Do It?” which appeared in the Spring (Vol. 5, No. 3) 1986 issue of Outcomes , the quarterly journal of the Network for Outcome-Based Schools. The following are excerpts:

OBE/ML: WHAT IS IT?

As discussed by others in this issue, there is considerable overlap in many of the school reform movements sweeping the country today. Frequently, outcome-based education and mastery learning are used interchangeably or as synonymous phrases. While there are certainly many commonalities in the two movements, they also are very different. One way to differentiate OBE from ML from other effective school practices is to vi sualize an umbrella and its various parts. The umbrella includes: 1) a canopy; 2) a center