Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

250 the report which stated that service projects and community service were recommended as a requirement for graduation. An excerpt from the article follows: The report recommends that schools and communities “establish attractive service oppor tunities” for young people and either include service projects as part of the curriculum or require a specified amount of community service as a requirement toward graduation. The report also encourages “partnerships between business and state and local governments that provide opportunities for job training.” A RECAP OF A 1988 INVITATIONAL CONFERENCE IN THE U.S.S.R. ENTITLED “C HILDREN , Computers and Education,” written by David Porteous, contract coordinator for the School of Social Work, University of Connecticut, West Hartford, Connecticut, was published in the 1988/1989 issue of T.H.E. Journal (technology journal). 22 Excerpts follow: Recently, educators from the United States, Canada, West Germany and the Netherlands met with counterparts from the Soviet Union and Bulgaria in an historic first—an invitational conference in the U.S.S.R. titled “Children, Computers, and Education.” The word “informatics” is used in Russian to denote the principles underlying the operations of computer hardware and software. Informatics seems to encompass the elec tronic and algorithmic systems of computers. Dr. Alexey Semenov of the Soviet Academy of Sciences said algorithmic thinking is embedded in the Soviet’s educational system and fun damental to their understanding of cognition. This fits with the Soviet schools’ high regard for mathematics and physics.... Semenov’s presentation on the history and present status of algorithmics in Soviet schools started with the fact that their schools have used programmed instruction since the 1960s…. As might be expected, LOGO is held in high esteem in the Soviet Union and Seymour Papert works with some Soviet schools.... There was hope among the leaders with whom we talked that computers will become seen and used in more diverse ways throughout the curriculum. Certainly the goals of Gorbachev’s Perestroika include the restructuring of schools, along with other institutions and the economy, and a subsequent technological boost to the country. With the broad cur riculum reforms and structural changes occurring in schools today and in the near future, the computer could expedite this process.... MODEL SCHOOL Most schools have one or more sponsors, such as factories, institutes, universities, which provide materials, professional assistance and a place for students in the upper forms to do practical work for three to four hours a week, including computer programming. School #344 has close ties with a university and a technical institute, for instance [same as USA School-to-Work proposals, ed.].… …The informatics curriculum, with objectives broader than computer use, is taught even when students do not have access to a computer…. We were told that this conference, from Leningrad to Moscow to Zvenigorod, had begun to open many minds as to what is possible with computers and children beyond the formal informatics curriculum. Professional respect and relationships have developed among partici pants. We could not have heard better news for our efforts to achieve a major step towards a productive global discussion of how all children can benefit from an informed use of CAI [computer-assisted instruction/programmed learning] in the world’s classrooms.