Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

386 public schools. The two governments agreed to a “partnership for education” in which the United States will help Brazil develop standardized testing of its public schools’ performance, U.S. and Brazilian classrooms will be linked by computer, and a commission will be set up to oversee a new student exchange program and promote private sector investments in schools. H.R. 2614, T HE R EADING E XCELLENCE A CT , PASSED THE U.S. H OUSE OF R EPRESENTATIVES in No vember of 1997. 56 For the first time in U.S. history legislation has been passed which mandates a particular method of teaching. Excerpts from the abstract of the legislation follow: SELECTION OF READING AND LITERACY GRANT APPLICATIONS Applications from Reading and Literacy Partnerships will go to the Secretary of Education, who would forward them to a Peer Review Panel for initial approval. The Peer Review Panel will consist of experts in the field of reading who are appropriate to evaluate such grant applications. Members would be selected by the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) in consultation with the National Research Council (NRC, a division of the National Academy of Sciences); the Child Development and Behavior Branch (CDBB) of the National Institutes of Health; and the Secretary of Education. NIFL, NRC, CDBB and the Secretary would also be members of the Peer Review Panel. A priority would be given to applications from states that have modified or plan to modify state teacher certification in the area of reading to reflect reliable, replicable research on reading.... In selecting an applicant, the Reading and Literacy Partnership must give priority to subgrantees that form a partnership with a local Head Start program or a community-based organization (CBO) working with children to improve their reading skills, or state or federally funded preschool programs or family literacy programs. INFORMATION DISSEMINATION The National Institute for Literacy would head up the effort to disseminate information on reliable, replicable research on reading to all recipients of Federal financial assistance under ESEA, Head Start, IDEA, and the Adult Education Act . In doing so, NIFL would build upon applicable information networks currently in existence including OERI (Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education) and those established by states and private sector entities. The panel may assist any reading and literacy partnerships to determine whether applications for subgrants meet the requirements of this Act relating to reliable, replicable research on reading. AUTHORIZATION There would be a total of $260 million available for this Act . For more detailed information, visit the worldwide web at http://www.house.gov/eeo/. [Ed. Note: Legislating a particular method to teach reading would never have been possible had the Hegelian Dialectic not been used. Workforce training requires that Skinnerian operant conditioning (programmed learning) be implemented in the schools. The only way to get that method accepted was: (1) Create the problem: introduce Whole Language which is guaranteed to hinder children’s ability to learn to read and causes parents to scream for a solution—any solution! (2) Right on schedule, the social change agents responded with a predetermined solution which necessitated the use of Skinnerian direct instruction (programmed learning) to teach reading.