Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Noxious Nineties : c. 1998

OR/ED Laboratories, also supported the week’s events. “Most of the participants work with national information systems for education, with Great Britain, Israel, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, having among the most advanced sys tems,” Taylor said. Speakers debated the benefits of standardizing student and school information across regions. Such information systems benefit students by tracking their academic achievement, as well as administrators who have individual children continually entering and leaving their schools. “This goes beyond counting cheese and buses,” one participant remarked. “We want to create consistent data on local, regional and national levels.” [And international? ed.] T HE J ULY 11, 1998 ISSUE OF T HE W ASHINGTON T IMES CARRIED AN ARTICLE ENTITLED “Classroom Brain-Watchers?” by Kathleen Parker which discussed the federal government’s plan to prevent school violence by “adding psychoanalysis to our teachers’ laundry list of responsibilities.” Excerpts follow: I have a healthy paranoia toward government, born most likely of having been reared by a misanthropic WWII pilot with a bomb shelter. Let’s just say, when government bu reaucrats knock on my door and say, “We want to help you,” I get the same feeling I got as a little girl when the old man down the street reached over his cyclone fence to offer me a piece of candy. Not “No, thanks,” but “Run!” When they come knocking to say they want to help my children, I reflect wistfully on moats. Such that when I recently heard about the federal government’s plan to prevent school violence by adding psychoanalysis to our teachers’ laundry list of responsibilities, I began pricing drawbridges. Judging from the absence of news stories on the subject, you may have missed your future. President Clinton first mentioned the plan in his June 13 radio address to the nation. Education Secretary Richard Riley mentioned it again a couple of weeks ago during the Safe and Drug Free Schools Conference in Washington, D.C. Mr. Clinton has directed Mr. Riley and Attorney General Janet Reno to work with the National Association of School Psychologists to develop a framework—“early warning guide”—to help teachers and principals identify which kids are most likely to bring Grandpa’s deer rifle to school one of these days. The plan also calls for expanding links between schools and local psychological com munities so children identified as “troubled” have access to counseling. Because the guide is in the early planning stages, details are skimpy. No one knows yet how danger signs will be defined or recognized, according to a Department of Educa tion spokesperson. Right off, I’d have to say it’s pretty easy to tell which kids are dangerous without creating a psychological bureaucracy. In nearly all recent school shootings, as Mr. Clinton pointed out, the shooters announced their plans in advance. In other words, if a kid says, “I’m going to blow everybody away tomorrow because they’ve been picking on me since nursery school,” you might assume trouble. If, on the other hand, a third-grade boy draws a picture of a ship exploding with bodies flying in all directions, punctuated by red ink blots, you might assume you’ve got a normal third-grader on your hands. But you can bet that won’t be the thinking once the warning guide is in the hands of extremely well-meaning educators and counselors, some of whom have the judgment and