Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Noxious Nineties : c. 1996

to further dumb down our children. Parents, Direct Instruction is not back-to-basics (teacher-directed instruction of content, with the teacher teaching in the front of the classroom). It is fast-forward into the world of global workforce training, where the teacher will be in front of the classroom chanting, not instructing; your children will be expected to “perform” like rats or pigeons, not learn aca demic content. Parents want teachers to teach content which their child can relate to other parts of his/her life for complete understanding; they want their child to be able to make connections between what he/she learns and past knowledge, to be used in the future. Chanting back what a teacher chants is not learning—it is training. There can be no transfer of knowledge when bits and pieces of information which relate to nothing are all the “robots” can repeat. Parents don’t want teachers to be controllers or directors, and they surely don’t want their children to be passive learners chanting back answers like parrots, mimicking what a teacher says. Such training considers your child as nothing but a raw resource to be prepared and molded as a product. Traditional education, which allows for give and take between teacher and student (creativity) is the last thing in which the corporate/education elite is interested. This new type of education (training), in conjunction with mandatory community ser vice, workforce preparation starting in elementary school, mandatory uniforms for America’s school children, new school board policies regarding fighting in school which will allow the police to come to the school and drag your children into holding tanks for further prosecution, etc., sends chills down the back of this writer. It brings to mind the ugliness of a recent era in history which many seem to have forgotten.]

I N - SERVICE TEACHER TRAINING WAS HELD IN C HICAGO , I NDIANAPOLIS , AND M INNEAPOLIS during the first part of May in 1996. The flyer advertising these events stated the following:

NATIONAL EDUCATION INSTITUTE PRESENTS

Using Research-Based Teaching Techniques to Increase Student Learning: Or How to Teach Anyone Anything

PROGRAM AGENDA: The three key parts of direct instruction; discover the major and minor differences between direct instruction and traditional teaching methods. National consultant, teacher and trainer Adrienne Allen conducted the training sessions. [Ed. Note: This flyer was received from a homeschool mom who said the “research-based” training was for homeschoolers. The above quote presents a very different picture from that being circulated throughout the nation which describes direct instruction as a “traditional” teaching method.] “D UMBED -D OWN SAT S D ISGUISE D EFICIENCIES —T HE F AULT , D EAR E DUCATOR , I S N OT IN Our Tests,” by George C. Roche, president of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, was published in the July 5, 1996 issue of Human Events . Dr. Roche’s article underscores the success of the internationalist change agents’ relentless efforts to dumb down our children and, in turn, our