Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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The Troubling Thirties : c. 1933

the full exercise of his physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual powers as he strives to achieve recognition and a place of usefulness and honor in adult society. (p. 17)

Beginning in 1933 and continuing through 1941, the Eight-Year Study laid the groundwork for many of the education “reforms” and innovations we are encountering today. Most of the funding for the study came from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the General Education Board. Commission and working committee members of note who participated in the study are: Wilford Aikin, Bruno Bettelheim, Burton P. Fowler, Frances Knapp, Louis Raths, Harold Rugg, Ralph Tyler, Hilda Taba, and Goodwin Watson. Over the eight years of the study five volumes were published: The Story of the Eight-Year Study by Wilford Aikin; Exploring the Curriculum: The Work of the Thirty Schools from the Viewpoint of Curriculum Consultants by H.H. Giles, S.P. McCutcheon, and A.N. Zechiel; Appraising and Recording Student Progress: Evaluation Records and Reports in the Thirty Schools by Eugene R. Smith, Ralph W. Tyler and the evaluation staff; Did They Succeed in College?: The Follow-up Study of the Graduates of the Thirty Schools by Neal E. Drought and William E. Scott with preface by Max McConn; and Thirty Schools Tell Their Story: Each School Writes of Its Participation in the Eight-Year Study . [Ed. Note: As will be seen in later entries in this book, the Eight-Year Study was foundational to outcome-based education and proposals to remove the Carnegie Unit. The Carnegie Unit has traditionally been the measure of participation; a certain number of units—hours in each class—in various disciplines have been required of the student in order to graduate or be accepted at a college. The Carnegie Unit measure is representative of the educational philosophy reflected in most state constitutions—that the state is responsible to provide and make available educational opportunities to all its citizens. The removal of this unit has been a central feature of current OBE/ML reform plans which reflect the philosophy that the state must guarantee that all citizens receive and achieve an educational outcome determined by the state . A change from “inputs” to “outputs.”] H UMANIST M ANIFESTO I WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 1933 IN THE N EW H UMANIST (V OL . VI, #3, 1933: Yellow Springs, Ohio), the main publication of the American Humanist Association. Co-author John Dewey, the noted philosopher and educator, called for a synthesizing of all religions and a “socialized and cooperative economic order.” The following are excerpts taken from Secular Humanism and the Schools: The Issue Whose Time Has Come by Onalee McGraw, Ph.D. (Critical Issues, Series 2, The Heritage Foundation: Washington, D.C., 1976): The basis of humanist belief is that there is no Almighty God, the Creator and Sustainer of life. Humanists believe that man is his own god. They believe that moral values are relative, devised according to the needs of particular people, and that ethics are likewise situational. Humanists reject Judeo-Christian moral and ethical laws, such as those contained in the Ten Commandments, calling them “dogmatic,” “outmoded,” “authoritarian,” and a hindrance to human progress. In humanism, self-fulfillment, happiness, love, and 1933