Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Noxious Nineties : c. 1993

of the cold war makes it possible to reunite threads of thinking and development in education and learning that have been long kept separate. …We believe we have reached a point of synergy between our team in the West and that of Alexander in the East that will result in an innovative new step in group learning for educators and those interested in the subject of learning systems. In the end, my best recommendation must be that I see the seminar in California as a further challenge, a further opportunity to develop together and a real chance to be at the cutting edge of development towards a 21st century that I want to be around in. Hope to see you all there. (Nick Zienau is a senior partner in Zienau Consulting which together with Cascade International of San Francisco is organising the seminar. The Russian partner in this enter prise is Eureka Free University, Moscow.) S USTAINABLE A MERICA : A N EW C ONSENSUS FOR P ROSPERITY , O PPORTUNITY AND H EALTHY En vironment for the Future was published in 1993 by the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. In chapter 3, “Information and Education,” under a subtitle “Reforming Formal Education” the report says: Educating for sustainability does not follow academic theories according to a single discipline but rather emphasizes connections among all subject areas, as well as geographic and cultural relationships.... Education for sustainability is not an add-on curriculum—that is, it is not a new core subject like math or science. Instead, it involves an understanding of how each subject relates to environmental, economic, and social issues. A N INTERVIEW WITH K EN H AZLIP AND J AMES B LOCK WAS INCLUDED IN THE F ALL 1993 issue of Outcomes, the Outcome-Based Education movement’s journal mentioned in previous entries in this book. Excerpts from that interview follow: Jim: To stay on this point about labels, this movement, this idea set, has made several choices of labels. At one time it was called Mastery Learning, another Outcomes Based Education, and now Partners for Quality Learning. Yet much of what has driven this movement under the OBE label has not changed from Mastery Learning and what has changed still comes from the research done under the Mastery Learn ing rubric. Will this new Quality Learning label stimulate a better idea base than the old label OBE? Ken: I doubt it. The power of our movement still derives from the original Mastery Learning idea.… Jim: When we were a Mastery Learning movement, we were concerned with schools and school districts. As we move to quality, we start to see linkages between school and the workplace.... Ken: Our school environment certainly does not look like this. The irony of the link ages you describe is that we will have to look to industry to “fix” problems that we have imported from old industrial practices because we were trying so hard to look like factories years ago. Jim: I am a little surprised by your response. It seems to me that one of the charac