Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

276 have as one of its major objectives the development of skills and understandings grounded in an ethical/moral context. This ethical/moral context would be based on the idea of as suming a sense of responsibility toward our interrelated planetary future.... Perhaps the most compelling vision of our time is that of a sustainable society [em phasis in original]. Our global society, in terms of the environmental degradation, explosive population growth in the Third World, energy shortages, pollution, conflict, crime, drugs, poverty, and just sheer complexity, is not sustainable into the 21st century.... Students need to understand these things as part of their World Class education. This particular issue of Social Studies Horizons also reported on the 1990 Chicago Con ference on Holistic Education, which issued a document called “The Chicago Statement” calling for a radical change in education. An excerpt asserts that: The time has come to transform education so as to address the human and environmental changes which confront us. We believe that education for this new era must be holistic. The holistic perspective is the recognition that all life on this planet is interconnected.... Holism emphasizes the challenge of creating a sustainable, just and peaceful society in harmony with the Earth and its life. Dr. Svengalis of the Iowa Department of Education was involved in the production of a Catalogue of Global Education Classroom Activities, Lesson Plans, and Resources . The curriculum came under fire from the Iowa Farm Bureau because of its open advocacy of vegetarianism and environmentalism, according to the Iowa Farm Bureau’s Spokesman (September 19, 1992) article entitled “State Role in Global Education Resource Guide under Review.” Also included in the global education curriculum were themes of pacifism, population controls, international global government, and Gaia worship. Fourth and sixth graders could be assigned to “[t]alk about the ideas of a ‘living’ Earth using Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis.” Dr. James Lovelock made the radical “scientific” proposal that the Earth was both an entity and a deity. According to education reform researchers Marla Quenzer and Sarah Leslie, environmental “outcomes” were supplanting traditional academics. In an article published in the May 1993 issue of Free World Research Report entitled “The Myth of a Competitive World-Class Edu cation,” Quenzer and Leslie refuted the idea that “world-class” education is competitive and academically challenging. Under the new reforms they found an emphasis on cooperation and sustainability based upon extreme environmentalism and “a kind of ‘New Age’ soup of pan theism, Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism.” They cited an article entitled “Global Framework for Local Education” from Holistic Education Review (Spring 1991): This author, Joel Beversluis, states “that educational objectives [should] transcend the accumulation of facts, the learning of skills, and even the preparation for work and life in the world as it is. Rather, at its best, education will assist, like a midwife, in the transformation of the mindsets—the consciousness—of students....” Beversluis asks, “Is it not time for the community of educators and educational publishers to recognize that the respectful study of diverse cosmologies, value systems, and religions has a legitimate and even necessary place in the curriculum?” He then proceeds to list these new “global” values.... Just what values are being talked about? This turns out to be the pivotal question. Beversluis spells it out for us. He lists as negative values: “individualism, nationalism, free enterprise, unlimited growth and progress, and competitive achievement.” The values he lists as positive are “interdependence, diversity, cooperation, equilibrium, and limits.” The values that he lists as negative are foundational to western civilization and are based upon a