Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

20 prepared a volume of extreme importance entitled Education for All American Youth . This highly promoted document told, in fictional format and as though it were a fait accompli , how the “Planners” would solve all the problems; not just of youth, but of two imaginary communities—a village and a city—through involving citizens in cooperation for the goals of the planners. The following goals are laid out in this book: • federal programs for health, education and welfare combined in one giant bureau • Head Start programs • getting pre-school children into the system • teacher participation in curriculum decisions • federal funds without federal control • youth services through a “poverty program” • removal of local control of political and educational matters “without seeming to do so” • sex education [Ed. Note: The involvement of “citizens in cooperation for the goals of the planners” is “participatory democracy,” unheard of publicly until twenty years later. 2 ] T HE E IGHT -Y EAR S TUDY WAS INITIATED BY THE C OMMISSION ON R ELATION OF S CHOOL AND College of the Progressive Education Association in 1932. Chairman of the Commission and author of The Story of the Eight-Year Study (Harper & Brothers: New York, 1942) Wilford M. Aikin chronicled the study’s beginnings and purposes. Recounting the proceedings at the 1930 annual meeting of the Progressive Education Association, Aikin wrote: In the course of... discussion many proposals for improvement of the work of our secondary schools were made and generally approved. But almost every suggestion was met with the statement, “Yes, that should be done in our high schools, but it can’t be done without risking students’ chances of being admitted to college. If the student doesn’t follow the pattern of subjects and units prescribed by the colleges, he probably will not be accepted.” ...[S]omeone with courage and vision proposed that the Progressive Education Association should be asked to establish a Commission on the Relation of School and College to explore possibilities of better co-ordination of school and college work and to seek an agreement which would provide freedom for secondary schools to attempt fundamental reconstruction.... All members agreed that secondary education in the United States needed experimental study and comprehensive re-examination in the light of fuller knowledge of the learning process and the needs of young people in our society.... (p. 2) It has been assumed that physical and emotional reactions are not involved in the learning process, but if they are, they are not very important. The newer concept of learning holds that a human being develops through doing those things which have meaning to him; that the doing involves the whole person in all aspects of his being; and that growth takes place as each experience leads to greater understanding and more intelligent reaction to new situations. Holding this view, the participating schools believed that the school should become a place in which young people work together at tasks which are clearly related to their purposes.... The school should stimulate his whole being. It should provide opportunities for