Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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a booklet, Character Education: Lessons from the Past, Models for the Future , by Professor James Leming of Southern Illinois University. • Seminars . We are currently working with several clients (including the J.M. Smucker Company, Lancaster Laboratories, Inc., and the Council on Foundations in Wash ington, D.C.) to provide ethics training programs. We have trained more than 1,000 executives and managers in day-long, intensive seminars, and developed a train the-trainers program as well. Our goal is to encourage what we call “ethical fit ness”—which, like physical fitness, needs to be practiced, developed and applied. • Radio . Our newest venture is a one-hour Public Radio program titled “Let’s Be Hon est—Ethical Issues of the ‘90s.” Featuring a three-person panel and a moderator, the program focuses on the moral and ethical aspects of a specific topic drawn from the week’s news and encourages on-air telephone calls from listeners. Pilot versions of the program, aired on Maine Public Radio, have been very well received, and plans are afoot to develop a version of the program for a national audience. [Ed. Note: Kidder’s Global Ethics program is another example of the problem with character education as a whole: basing character, values and ethics on consensus decisions by a group instead of absolute, enduring principles.] Schools in 21st Century Iowa will be hubs of their communit[ies], providing broad learning opportunities for all citizens, according to the director of the Iowa Department of Education. William Lepley says future schools will be centers for family and social services as well. “Society in the year 2010 has realized that the school is the single societal institution that can truly be an advocate, a resource, and a catalyst for children and families, as well as learners of all ages,” Lepley said.... Students’ evaluation will improve. Instead of grades, students will be assessed not on the work they complete, but on the skills they master, he explained. Community service will be a graduation requirement. Also, educational opportunities are available for all citizens from preschool to adults. The school year won’t be restricted to 180 days of 5–1/2 hours each, because flexible schedules and teacher contracts will per mit year-round learning, he said. “Teachers in ideal schools are managers of the learning environment,” Lepley said. “The teacher has been given the tools to be able to diagnose learning needs and to prescribe appropriate activities.” Schools themselves will change too, Lepley noted. The ideal school houses social agencies such as health, job, and human service agencies, child care and serves as the community’s senior citizen volunteer center, he said. And adults come to ideal schools—open round the clock—for educational opportunities ranging from childbirth and parenting classes to pre-retirement planning, he added. In the ideal community, Lepley said, the superintendent coordinates children and family services, in addition to education. [Ed. Note: Lepley used the term “hub” in this article and in a pamphlet distributed widely across Iowa to describe the school of the future which will encompass numerous social ser vice agencies, health care, job training, child care, etc. This concept mirrored the Community Education plans promoted by the Mott Foundation of Michigan and incorporated into federal grantmaking under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 . K ENT T EMPUS WROTE “E DUCATION IN THE F UTURE : 21 ST C ENTURY S CHOOLS W ILL O FFER Learning for All Citizens” for The Muscatine [Iowa] Journal ’s April 22, 1989 issue. Excerpts follow: