Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

260 be in the same place at the same time. This concept has the potential of revolutionizing education, considering the fact that where students live has always been the single greatest factor influencing the quality of their education, albeit one often overlooked. The truth of the matter is that what street they lived on, what town they lived in, what state and country determined what classes they could take, the quality of teachers they could expect, and who their classmates would be. But all that is about to change.... Courses offered also include several inventive multidisciplinary subjects such as “Baseball: Its Impact on American So ciety and World History through Film,” not to mention the fact that all of the courses offer a global classroom and a multi-cultural perspective.] THE A UTUMN 1989 ISSUE OF T HE 2020 N EWSLETTER PUBLISHED BY IMTEC, A N ORWEGIAN edu cation association, 26 revealed the fact that as they push forward with their own International Learning Cooperative, Europeans were embracing the American Tactics for Thinking program developed by the U.S. Department of Education’s MidContinent Regional Laboratory (McREL). Of interest is the fact that Shirley McCune (referenced several times in this book) was senior director of McREL at the time the activities described in The 2020 Newsletter were taking place. This newsletter illustrated clearly the extent of internationalization of not only curriculum, but instruction, assessment and administration. IMTEC reported: The IMTEC training program for school-based development consultants is going on at pres ent in two countries: Germany... the Netherlands. We are also planning a renewed program in Norway. We are also in the planning stage of this program in the U.K. A section of IMTEC’s newsletter entitled “Cooperation with McREL” made the following state ments: The Second “School-Year 2020” International Conference held in Colorado, October 1988, was a joint undertaking by McREL (the MidContinent Regional Educational Laboratory) and IMTEC.... Our cooperation with McREL will continue. A Development Group represented by people from McREL and IMTEC is presently working on new programs building on McREL’s Achiev ing Excellence Program (A+) and IMTEC’s IDP, the Institutional Development Program.... McREL’s A+ is a site- or school-based management system. It organizes and uses re search-based knowledge to increase educational efficiency, effectiveness and excellence.… The A+ management system also provides unique assessment tools for maintaining progress and redirecting energy. Pilot programs of A+ will take place in the Netherlands, in the UK, and most likely Norway during 1989/90.... THINKING SKILLS IMTEC is presently developing a new “Thinking skills” program, building upon development work in several countries. Central to our interest has been the “Tactics” program developed by McREL. [Ed. Note: The above relates to Effective School Research, OBE, ML, PPBS, etc.; what is being sold to Americans as “local control” or “localism” is in fact “global.” In addition, the “Tactics” program is the same Tactics for Thinking discussed in the 1988 “Jeannie’s Group” entry in this book.]