Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Noxious Nineties : c. 1993

dysfunctional misperceptions.... It all comes down to a basic tenet: In order to facilitate change on a larger level, indi viduals must first work for change on a personal level. To become a true and effective agent of change, one must facilitate change within oneself.

I N 1993 D R . B EAU F LY J ONES , A SENIOR DIRECTOR OF THE N ORTH C ENTRAL R EGIONAL Educational Laboratory (NCREL) in Oak Brook, Illinois and a strong advocate and practitioner of Skin nerian mastery learning, wrote “The Unfolding of an International Partnership: A Story of Russia and the U.S.” published in EFA Today (No. 2, January–March, 1993). Excerpts follow which illustrate the extent of controversial exchange activities due to the 1985 U.S.-Soviet and Carnegie-Soviet agreements in education: Well-designed exchanges often involve strong emotions, including caring, empathy, and the excitement of discovery, and individuals may return from such exchanges not only with cognitive paradigm shifts, but also with life-changing values and interests. This has been the case with the NCREL involvement in Russia. In January 1992, the Russian Ministry of Education assumed control of the former Soviet Ministry’s responsibilities. Dr. Edward Dneprov, the new minister, initiated massive reforms focusing on decentralization, democratization, and the demilitarization of the Rus sian school system. NCREL’s relationship with the new Russian Ministry began with an invitation to join the Metropolis Project, a collaboration among schools in Chicago, Moscow, and Amsterdam. The objective of the Project is to identify and develop successful models of systemic change in an urban context. To this end, the Project involves research, training, and exchanges of school staff in the three cities. Themes that guide these efforts are authentic learning, global education and strategic teaching.... …Metropolis schools were being selected, and one of the highlights of the delegation’s February tour was the signing of a Letter of Cooperation between the Russian Ministry and the Chicago Public Schools.... Existing exchanges between the U.S. and Russia tend to focus on university students or the teaching of foreign languages. For that reason, one of the major problems in obtaining funding for the Metropolis Project was that it involved a new level of exchange, this time between Russia and U.S. teachers and administrators, as well as a change in the nature of the exchange, which would focus on school reform and school-based training. J AMES C OLLINS AND M ARTIN H ABERMAN ECHOED E UGENE B OYCE IN THE F EBRUARY 1993 issue of The Journal of Associating Teacher Educators in an article entitled “The Future of the Teaching Profession” when they said: Schooling is now seen as primarily job training and, for this reason, quite comparable to schooling in non-democratic societies. Once education is redefined as a personal good and as emphasizing preparation for this world of work as its first purpose, our schools can ap propriately be compared with those in the U.S.S.R. 31