Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

249 Brandt suggested that school districts involve board members, teachers, and the com munity early on in deciding whether and how Tactics might be used in the system. ASCD will continue to closely monitor any instance in which the program is challenged. Anyone knowing of such incidents should write Brandt at ASCD headquarters, 1703 Beauregard St., Alexandria, VA 22311–1714. [Ed. Note: The Tactics program, or a similar critical thinking program using another title, could well be part of the curriculum in each of the 16,000 school districts in the nation, since it takes only one of those 20,000 teachers in each district to train other teachers. It was, however, not adopted in East Gibson County, Indiana.] The "Effective" Eighties : c. 1988

T HE A UGUST 11, 1988 EDITION OF E DUCATION D AIL Y COVERED THE N ATIONAL C ITIZENS Alliance Press Conference held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Excerpts follow:

GROUP ASKS EDUCATION DEPARTMENT TO STOP FUNDING “MIND-CONTROL” CUR RICULA, END SOVIET EXCHANGES

A citizens group headed by a former Education Department official asked ED to stop pro moting curriculum the group says controls students’ minds. The National Citizens Alliance (NCA), a group of parents and teachers, alleged at a Washington, D.C. news conference yesterday that ED is promoting “mind-control” curricula that use hypnosis-like techniques to foster concentration. NCA wants to “get the federal government to stop pouring millions of dollars” into the “development of mind-control programs currently sweeping through American schools,” said Charlotte Iserbyt, who served as senior policy advisor in ED’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement from 1981 to 1982 and is NCA’s East Coast coordinator. Iserbyt called on Education Secretary William Bennett and other federal officials to: End federal funding and promotion of programs such as Tactics for Thinking , which is used in Indiana schools. 20 NCA says the curriculum “employs hypnotic-like processes and altered states of consciousness techniques on children”; Cancel the education portion of the 1985 exchange agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, which NCA says allows dissemination of “communist propaganda” through global teaching methods and the joint development of textbooks and computer software; and Force Pennsylvania to ask parental consent before using its Educational Quality As sessment test, which NCA says uses “psychological and psychiatric testing” in violation of the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment [Anita Hoge case against the Pennsylvania Department of Education]. NCA also criticized ED’s National Assessment of Educational Progress for tracking student attitudes and behavior, saying that obtaining such information violates privacy rights and could lead to behavior modification nationwide. Secretary Bennett’s spokesman Loye Miller said he is not aware of the complaints to which NCA refers. An OERI spokesman declined to comment.—Christopher Grasso

A MAJOR REPORT ENTITLED T HE F ORGOTTEN H ALF : P ATHWAYS TO S UCCESS FOR A MERICA ’ S Youth and Young Families was published by the W.T. Grant Foundation’s Commission on Work, Family and Citizenship. 21 The November 23, 1988 issue of Education Week carried an item on