Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Noxious Nineties : c. 1990

those that don’t. Those that don’t should be eliminated. Studies show white-collar workers on average spend 75 percent of their time doing non-value-added tasks, Skwarek said. But defining the waste and eliminating it are two different things. And for productivity to increase, proper employment of the compensation lever is critical. A bank teller might be rewarded for the number of customers processed in a week, but penalized for every customer who complains about service. In jobs where it’s difficult to measure the output of a single worker [emphasis in original], compensation might be linked to a group’s ability to meet certain goals, an increasingly common approach. Whatever the approach, Wyatt’s Emig encourages companies to think big—meaning bonuses as high as 25 percent of salary. “The basic idea is borrowed from B.F. Skinner, who taught us that behavior which is positively reinforced will be repeated,” says Emig. “But it doesn’t work if people don’t consider the money worth striving for.” [Ed. Note: Is it politically incorrect to ask how the United States became the most productive nation in the world without using the above-outlined ridiculous Total Quality Management system based on Skinner’s operant conditioning?] T HE N ATIONAL C ENTER ON E DUCATION AND THE E CONOMY (NCEE) ISSUED IN 1990 A PRO posal to the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) entitled “The National Al liance for Restructuring Education: Schools and Systems for the 21st Century.” The report was stamped “CONFIDENTIAL.” On the cover page NCEE’s partners in this venture are listed as follows: States of Arkansas, Kentucky, New York, Vermont, and Washington; Cities of Pitts burgh, PA; Rochester, NY; San Diego, CA; and White Plains, NY; Apple Computer, Inc.; Center for the Study of Social Policy; Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce; Harvard Project on Effective Services; Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh; National Alliance of Business; National Board for Professional Teaching Standards; New Standards Project; Public Agenda Foundation; and Xerox Corporation. [Ed. Note: In Appendix XII of this book NCEE’s proposal is heavily excerpted. The last few pages of excerpted materials which relate to “staff development” could have been written by the late Madeline Hunter, master teacher trainer who has translated “theory into practice” in her “Instructional Theory Into Practice: ITIP.” 3 These excerpted materials prove that NCEE’s National Alliance for Restructuring Education, in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, has selected “the method”—Skinnerian operant conditioning—to train teachers so that, as robots, they will all teach exactly the same way.] W ORLD C ONFERENCE ON E DUCATION FOR A LL , SPONSORED BY THE W ORLD B ANK , U NITED Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and others, was held March 5–9, 1990 in Jomtien, Thailand. “Outcomes” were approved at this conference, and the Edu cation for All Forum Secretariat advertised the “World Declaration on Education for All” and “Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs” as the agenda for discussion at the World Conference. 4 Important and significant institutional membership in the Education for All Coalition included: American Association of School Administrators (AASA); Association