Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

303 ing. You will never think of schools in the same way again” In the preface of School’s Out , Perelman reveals that: Unlike others who channeled their disaffection into calls for “reform,” by 1970 I was con vinced that the education system could not be amended but needed to be entirely replaced by a new mechanism more attuned to the technology and social fabric of the modern world. This conclusion was nurtured by many sources, but especially influential were the works of B.F. Skinner, George Leonard and Jay Forrester. The work of Skinner and his disciples showed that the processes of learning could be analyzed, understood, and organized to serve the individual learner’s needs.... Inspired by such ideas, I returned to Harvard in 1970 and spent the next three years in an intense and largely independent study of most of the key questions that underlie this book: What is learning and how does it work? What technolo gies can facilitate learning, and how do they work? How does learning fit in with the overall processes of human economy and ecology? And most important, how do you transform or replace established human institutions?... Of the several Harvard and MIT faculty who contributed to my exploration of these questions, I particularly benefited from the aid and encouragement of Wassilly Leontief, Harvey Liebenstein, Jay Forrester, Ithiel deSola Pool, B.F. Skinner, and Paul Yivisaker.... After leaving Harvard, I continued my research for another year with support from a grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and presented the results of the whole five years of study in my first book, The Global Mind , published in 1976. (p. 8) [Ed. Note: In 1994 Dr. Perelman served as education specialist for the Progress and Free dom Foundation’s First Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, “Cyberspace and the American Dream.” 25 The Progress and Freedom Foundation published Alvin and Heidi Toffler’s book, Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave , which carried a foreword by U.S. Representative and soon-to-be Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R., GA). On page 96 of the Toffler’s book, the Progress and Freedom Foundation issued this invitation: If you have read and been influenced by this or by any of their works, they—and we—would like to know about it. Especially if you have ideas for how to speed the transition to a Third Wave America, please send them to us.] The Noxious Nineties : c. 1992 T HE 1993 A NNUAL R EPORT OF THE H ERITAGE F OUNDATION OF W ASHINGTON , D.C., DEDI cated to their twentieth year celebration, revealed the following: The idea of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) originated with Heritage Fellow Richard Allen and has long been advocated by Heritage policy analysts.... The idea of creating a North American free trade zone from the Yukon to the Yucatan was first proposed by Heritage Distinguished Fellow Richard Allen in the late 1970s, refined by then Presiden tial candidate Ronald Reagan, and further developed in a major 1986 Heritage Foundation study. (p. 4) [Ed. Note: The Free Trade Agreement got the ball rolling for the development of skills stan dards by the newly formed National Skills Standards Board, endorsed by the U.S. Labor De 1993