Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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many of our contemporary values are obsolete.

[Ed. Note: Please refer to the 1993 entry regarding the Fall issue of Outcomes containing an interview with Ken Hazelip and James Block connecting Skinnerian operant conditioning and mastery learning to Total Quality Management as well as exposing the fact that mastery learn ing has been a “hard sell” with American teachers. (Also see 1998 Willard Daggett’s Model School News related to District 4J in Oregon as a “model school district.”)] A SAMPLE “21 ST C ENTURY R EPORT C ARD ” WAS A HANDOUT AT THE A UGUST , 1991 A SSO ciation for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) Network conference in Traverse City, Michigan entitled “Creating the Twenty-First Century.” Descriptive excerpts—which originally led this writer to believe this sample report card was a joke until able to verify its actual exis tence—follow:

DaVinci Elementary School Principal: R.B. Fuller

[After each of the following categories there is a mark A through F as a grade, ed.]

Spatial Relationships; Intuition; Insight; Generates Ideas Freely; Daydreaming/Reverie; Gestalt Perception; Esthetic Sensibility: color, form, music, poetry

Teacher’s Comments: school psychologist suggests remedial imagination

Work Habits: Able to transcend space/time limitations; Is flexible; Listens attentively—with third ear; Follows directions unless better idea occurs; Completes assignments—when useful; Makes good use of time: fantasizing, creating, meditating. Citizenship: Accepts responsibility; Respects authority—if there is justification for respect; Respects rights and property of others; Shows empathy/telepathy;

Teacher’s signature: Parent’s signature:

Bonnie Newhouse, a Traverse City, Michigan wife and mother of four children who had served on the junior and senior parent advisory committees as well as the district advisory council, wrote an article for the Traverse City Record-Eagle ’s March 18, 1992 issue which in cluded the following information related to change agent tactics to implement restructuring promoted at the ASCD meetings: In a study done by the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee on Illiteracy, September 1989, they conclude: “For the past 50 years, America’s classrooms have been used by psy chologists, sociologists, educationists and politicians as a giant laboratory for unproven, untried theories of learning, resulting in a near collapse of public education.” This “collapse” was also referred to by William Spady in his address to the ASCD High School Futures Planning Consortium III August 1991 meeting in Traverse City. He spoke of prominent educators talking of WHEN the public education system collapses, not IF [emphasis in original]. He also shared with the audience that he was one of three given a grant by the Danforth Foundation with the assignment to transform America’s high schools.