Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

275 [Ed. Note: The decline in education is not only probably responsible for the widespread use of drugs, it is also probably responsible for the increase in all sorts of irresponsible and im moral behavior among youth today, including violence and sexual promiscuity. Dr. Reisman’s statement is particularly poignant in light of increased incidents of school violence in the late 1990s.] The Noxious Nineties : c. 1990 D R . M. D ONALD T HOMAS , IN AN ARTICLE IN T HE E FFECTIVE S CHOOL R EPORT ’ S S EPTEMBER , 1990 issue entitled “Education 90: A Framework for the Future,” said in part: From Washington to modern times, literacy has meant the ability to read and write, the ability to understand numbers, and the capacity to appreciate factual material. The world, however, has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. The introduction of technology in information processing, the compression of the world into a single economic system, and the revolution in political organizations are influences never imagined to be possible in our lifetime.... Literacy, therefore, will be different in the year 2000. It will mean that students will need the following [the writer has selected some key requirements from a much longer list, ed.]: • Appreciation of different cultures, differences in belief systems and differences in political structures. • An understanding of communications and the ability of people to live in one world as one community of nations.... • In a compressed world with one economic system... it is especially important that all our people be more highly educated and that the differences between low and high socio-economic students be significantly narrowed.... • Education begins at birth and ends at death.... • Education is a responsibility to be assumed by the whole community.... • Learning how to learn is more important than memorizing facts.... • Schools form partnerships with community agencies for public service projects to be a part of schooling.... • Rewards are provided for encouraging young people to perform community ser vice. “W ORLD C LASS S CHOOLS AND THE S OCIAL S TUDIES ” BY C ORDELL S VENGALIS FROM S OCIAL Studies Horizons (Iowa Department of Education: Des Moines, Iowa, Vol. 3, No. 1, Fall 1990) was published. The following excerpts reveal a significant definition of “World Class education,” one of the popular “buzz words” used to describe and promote education reform during the early 1990s: As part of a nationwide trend, the Iowa Department of Education has become involved in the movement to develop a world-class educational system for the schools of our state.... Few would argue with the need to greatly improve the educational system we now have, and to help students acquire the skills they will need to become better integrated into the global community. We have not only become globally interdependent, we have come to recognize our global interconnectedness. Therefore, a World Class education program would