Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

346 economy) activities. According to Seekins’s research these activities were not confined to ivory tower musings, but had penetrated education at the local level. Some excerpts follow: P ITTSFIELD —Russian exchange teacher Tanya Koslova addressed the SAD 53 board of directors Monday night to express her appreciation for the opportunity to work with the district and Maine Central Institute [MCI—deeply involved with workforce training]. She offered an overview of the work she had done in the district over the past four months, spending two months with children in kindergarten through grade eight and the balance of her time at MCI. She particularly enjoyed students who participated in her Russian humanities class who were “highly-motivated and eager students.”[MCI Headmaster] Cummings told the board that MCI will be the recipient of the School-to-Work funding in conjunction with the Maine Youth Apprenticeship Program. The school could receive up to $8,000 to provide staff training to better integrate aca demics with the program provided by apprentices’ worksites. M ACHIAVEL P EDAGOGUE OU LE M INISTERE DE LA R EFORME P SYCHOLOGIQUE [M ACHIAVEL lian Ped agogy or the Ministry of Psychological Reform ] by Pascal Bernardin (Editions Notre-Dame des Graces: Paris, 1995) was published. This book deals with United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) role in the transformation of education worldwide from a system based on academic instruction to one in which the purpose is nothing but conditioning for acceptance of world government (New World Order). Monsieur Bernardin discusses brain washing techniques such as cognitive dissonance and the group process, and is highly critical of the role played by American and European behavioral psychologists in the transformation of the world’s schools from places of learning to mental health clinics for brainwashing. The following are excerpts from this writer’s translation from the French version: The general philosophy of the pedagogical revolution is exposed, without detour, in the publications of the international organizations (UNESCO, OECD, Council of Europe, Com mission of Bruxelles...).... This pedagogical revolution attempts to impose an ethic for the creation of a new society and to establish an intercultural society. The new ethic is nothing more than a remarkable presentation of a communist utopia. A study of the documents leaves no doubt, under cover of ethics and behind a rhetoric and remarkable dialectic, of a communist ideology for which only the presentation and the means of action have been modified.... Also it is no surprise that the level of scholarship will continue to go down since the role of the school has been redefined so that its principal mission is no longer intellectual but social formation....One no longer gives students intellectual tools for liberation but imposes on them values, attitudes, and behavior using psychological manipulation techniques.

S ALEM , O REGON ’ S T HE S TATESMAN J OURNAL OF F EBRUARY 4, 1995 CARRIED AN ARTICLE entitled “Service Learning Projects Match Students with Needs in the Salem-Keizer Community.” Ex cerpts follow:

Service learning is a method through which students learn values, citizenship, and skills by