Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

241

The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1987

Inquiry in the Fall of 1987 (Vol. 7, No. 4, p. 11) and stated that

Christian parents who want the freedom to indoctrinate their children with religious edu cation do not understand that the law that prevents them from legally teaching their kids prevents someone else from abusing them.... Certified teachers are state-mandated child-abuse reporters. When children are allowed to be kept at home, there may be no outside contact, no help for the abused child. [Ed. Note: This portentous article was published just as the homeschooling movement in America began mushrooming. Parents responded to the failures of the latest fads in the class rooms by pulling their children out of public schools to instruct them at home. Many educators viewed the rise of home education with alarm. Parental rights and constitutional religious freedoms posed a direct threat to the “it takes a village to raise a child” philosophy which was to become embedded in every state’s education reform plan during the 1990s.] O N N OVEMBER 2, 1987, A FEW SHORT YEARS BEFORE THE B ERLIN W ALL CAME DOWN , AND only two years after the signing of the U.S.-Soviet education agreements, Mikhail Gorbachev was reported by Novosti Press Agency Publishing House in Moscow to have said in his speech to the Soviet Central Committee, “We are moving toward a new world: the world of communism. We shall never turn off that road.” Even so, after the Berlin Wall came down (1989) Gorbachev was a keynote speaker at a major Republican Party fundraiser. D AVID W. H ORNBECK OF THE C ARNEGIE F OUNDATION FOR THE A DVANCEMENT OF T EACHING and Maryland’s state superintendent of instruction, whose credentials lie in theology rather than in education, presented his proposal for a new public education system for the nation in the November 17, 1987 issue of The Montgomery County [Maryland] Journal . The Journal car ried an article entitled “State Education Chief Pushes Revolutionary Plan for the Nation” that, amongst other things, “would let students enroll in schools of their choice and even sue the state over low-quality education.” Excerpts follow: “The model state law would create a situation in which it’s the school’s fault and not the kid’s if the school is unsuccessful. If it’s not a successful school, you can leave it.” The system would let a student cross district lines in search of better public education.... Hornbeck’s presentation Saturday at an Asheville, North Carolina meeting aroused just a few criticisms, which were mainly concerned with the proposal’s wording, said Jay P. Goldman, spokesman for the school chief’s council. “This follows years of massaging and reworking it,” he said.... …The new rights proposals are directed toward all children, but special measures target those considered “at risk of educational failure.” In the early years, low-income children would be identified as at risk; in later years, achievement would provide the definition.... “We’re trying to take a step away from kid-bashing,” Hornbeck said. “Society and the schools fail the kids.”... …Hornbeck, who said he is waiting for the council vote before discussing the issue with Gov. William Donald Schaefer and Maryland legislative officials, said he expects local school officials across the country to resist the proposals. “If the council adopts this, you will have the superintendents of the United States say ing we want to create new rights and routes that may well lead to the courts,” Hornbeck