Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

328 The following quote from an article in the May 14, 1984 issue of The Washington Post entitled “Industrial Policy Urged for GOP” sheds some light on behind-the-scenes activities which have led to acceptance of corporate-fascist workforce training necessary for a planned economy: A conservative study group founded by supporters of President Reagan is about to issue a report that advocates Republicans shed some of their deep-rooted antipathy to a planned economy. The “Industrial Policy Debate” is to be issued today by the Institute for Contem porary Studies, a think tank founded by Presidential Counselor Edwin Meese, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and other Reagan supporters. It should also be pointed out that Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger served as Sec retary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Nixon Administration in 1973, and that he oversaw the development and publication of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Evaluation Systems (PPB[E]S) State Educational Records and Reports Series handbooks which document the establishment of the central planning system for the USA. One of the handbooks included in this series entitled Financial Accounting: Classifications and Standard Terminology for Local and State School Systems stated in its preface: Another project funded by the Office of Education from 1968 to 1971 was the development of a program, planning, budgeting, and evaluation conceptual design under the sponsorship of the Association of School Business Officials’ Research Corporation.... The emphasis in this project is on the development of a goal-oriented system for evaluating programs. 34 [Ed. Note: One can’t resist asking the politically incorrect questions: When were the Amer ican people asked if they wanted to exchange our free enterprise system for the socialist school-to-work system identified with European countries? When was the decision made, and by whom, that the United States would benefit from a planned economy, when this nation has served as the lighthouse for the world, beckoning millions to its shores to benefit from the upward mobility provided by the free enterprise system? By this time the reader should seriously question the legitimacy of the “lead organizations” for the Comparative Learning Teams Project—organizations that this book has documented to be involved in “the deliberate dumbing down” of America.] A PAPER ENTITLED “I SSUE FOR D ESIGNING A S YSTEM OF S KILL S TANDARDS AND C ERTIFICA tion for the American Workforce: On What Basis Should Occupation/Skill/Industry Clusters Be Organized?” by Robert W. Glover of the Center for the Study of Human Resources, University of Texas at Austin, was prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor in May of 1994. Mr. Glover has contributed to several national and international studies, including America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages! 35 and was the author of the Texas Department of Commerce’s publication entitled Developing a System of Skill Standards for the State of Texas (January 1993). Excerpts from Glover’s paper follow:

The Appeal of Setting National Standards as a Device To Reform and Upgrade American Learning Systems

In its report published in June 1990, the Commission on Skills of the American Workforce