Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

G–8 The original purpose of Community Education was and still is to put all services (health, leisure, senior citizen, recreation, etc.) under the umbrella of the school district. Com munity Education literature states that the purpose of Community Education is to change the attitudes and values of community residents. Community Education seeks to eliminate elected officials, replacing them with politically correct, unelected members of a com munity council who will not challenge controversial new programs. Government officials who promote Community Education have likened it to the Chinese Communist communal system. “Group process,” “participatory democracy,” and “sustainable development” are other terms associated with Community Education. (See 1979 October article on school based clinics, 1994 November Iserbyt article in Education Week and Appendix I) Consensus Building. The process by which students, schools, communities, or groups of people learn to give up individual beliefs and ideas in order to work for “common goals.” These may be dictated from the top down (international to local), yet be promoted as grassroots ideologies. Consensus building changes beliefs through pressure to conform to group thinking. (See Common Ground , Delphi Technique , Group Process , Synthesis and Appendix XXII) Core Values/Virtues. The late Ernest L. Boyer, former president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, defined “The Core Virtues” in his book The Basic School: A Community for Learning—An Introduction to the Basic School as

The Basic School is concerned with the ethical and moral dimensions of a child’s life. Seven core virtues—honesty, respect, responsibility, compassion, self discipline, perseverance, and giving—are emphasized to guide the Basic School as it promotes excellence in living, as well as in learning.

He goes on to say under a section called “Living with Purpose” that

The core virtues of the Basic School are taught both by word and deed. Through curriculum, school climate, and service, students are encouraged to apply the lessons of the classroom to the world around them.

On face value, who could question the above seven core virtues? A problem arises when a student interjects his religion’s definition of any of these core virtues. That is when values education becomes sticky and when that student will be put down with a retort from the teacher similar to “That’s your definition.” Unless the core virtues have a solid religious or philosophical base which does not allow for situational ethics, instruction in this controversial area becomes useless, confusing, and a waste of time. (For Example: the culture of the Netsilik Eskimo Tribe, discussed in Man: A Course of Study [MACOS], the controversial B.F. Skinner/Jerome Bruner social studies program, considered the putting of elderly people out on the ice to die the “compassionate” and “responsible” thing to do. (See 1975 MACOS entry and Appendix IV, V, and XIX) Critical Thinking. Professor Benjamin Bloom defines good teaching as “challenging students’ fixed beliefs.” Critical thinking does exactly that using Bloom’s Taxonomy and values clarification to bring about attitudinal and value change. (See Appendix XIX and XXIII) Delphi Technique. The social scientists’ label for a communication technique used to get a