Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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“Some averages fell to the 40th percentile or lower.”… District administrators were hard-pressed to pinpoint reasons for the falling scores. Johnson attributed it partly to school reforms and a phenomenon he called the “change curve.” Schools that shift their teaching approaches often witness dips in scores while they’re trying to make changes in the classroom.... Candalaria has worked hard to improve students’ creative thinking when approaching math problems…. But by focusing on new skills, teachers might have given less attention to basic math computation, where scores are dropping, she said. T HE A TLANTA C ONSTITUTION RAN AN ARTICLE ENTITLED “G INGRICH : T APS FOR T EXTBOOKS — He Says Computers Will Replace Them” in its June 9, 1998 edition. Excerpts follow: [Newt] Gingrich, speaking Monday at the Supercom trade show at the Georgia World Con gress Center, said the onrush of technology will make textbooks obsolete. “One of the goals should be to replace all textbooks with a PC,” the Georgia Republican said. “I would hope within five years they would have no more textbooks.” Personal computers are the new focus for learning and students should be given one when they enter first grade, he said. That suggestion drew immediate fire from Washington, D.C.-based author Harriet Tyson, who wrote A Conspiracy of Good Intentions: America’s Textbook Fiasco . Gingrich has distorted technology’s value, she said. “He is like a 16-year-old who just fell in love with computers. He is not a techie. He’s just in love with techies.” Gingrich, a former college professor who peppers his talks with references to writers such as Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming and Alexis de Tocqueville, also called for an overhaul of the nation’s schools. Gingrich urged that schools be judged in a business context. Gingrich argued that Internet connections should often be available to replace the traditional lecture by a professor. In contrast to the old-style teaching model, the Net would be accessible 24 hours a day, he said. “We have to become a learning society.” [Ed. Note: The following quote from the 1971 The Individualized Learning Letter entry echoes the views of Newt Gingrich: Down with textbooks! Textbooks not only encourage learning at the wrong level (imparting facts rather than telling how to gather facts, etc.), they also violate an important new concern in American education—Individualized Instruction. This is also another instance which reminds us of the gravity of the consequences of H.R. 6 (reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 ) and its as sertions that “lower order skills” (memorization and basic academics) should not be funded or promoted.]

T HE T RI -C ITY H ERALD OF K ENNEWICK , W ASHINGTON CARRIED “G ROUP S UPPORTING P AULA Jones Case Sues Pasco Schools” by Wendy Culverwell in its June 11, 1998 issue. The article tells us that:

The organization that is paying Paula Jones’ legal bills in her sexual harassment case against President Clinton filed suit Monday against the Pasco School District.