Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–24

Scientists on education problems, translating research into viable programs for preservice and in-service teachers. The traditional concept of research as theory is not discarded, but the emphasis is shifted to a form of practical action-research in classrooms and laboratory. The humanities are designed to promote an understanding of human behavior in humanistic terms…. Students are to be exposed to non-western thought and values in order to sensitize them to their own backgrounds and inherent cultural biases.... Skills initiating and directing role-playing are developed to increase sensitivity and perception. Simulation games are included for training in communication skills as leaders or agents of social change. (p. 1)

Lewis’s comments regarding “Systematic Analysis of Future Society,” taken from p. 237 of BSTEP:

B.F. Skinner’s behavioral philosophy is quite apparent in this BSTEP Design which states

Calculations of the future and how to modify it are no longer considered obscure academic pursuits. Instead, they are the business of many who are concerned about and responsible for devising various modes of social change. One can’t help but wonder—who gave the educators the “responsibility” or the “right” to devise modes of social change, to use teachers as the “change agents,” and to use the children as the guinea pigs through which society is to be changed? One realizes the extent to which this “future society planning” has already gone after reading through the following lengthy list of organizations involved in this behavioral designing: 1. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare— Exploring Possibilities of a Social State-of-the-Union 2. American Academy of Arts and Sciences—Commission of the Year 2000 3. American Academy of Political and Social Science 4. United Nations Future-Planning Operation in Geneva, Switzerland 5. World Future Society of Washington, D.C. 6. General Electric Company—Technical Management Planning Organization 7. The Air Force and Rand Corporation [designer of PPBS, ed.] 8. The Hudson Institute [See 1992 entry regarding approval by business/corporation funded New American School Development Corporation of the Hudson Institute’s “Modern Red School House” proposal. The Design Team was headed by former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett and includes Chester Finn, former Assistant Secretary to Education Secretary, and former Governor Lamar Alexander and author of America 2000 (President Clinton’s Goals 2000 ), ed.] 9. Ford Foundation’s Resources for the Future and Les Futuribles —a combination of future and possible 10. University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University, Stanford University, Syracuse University, etc. 11. IBM (International Business Machines)

This section of the report concludes with: “We are getting closer to developing effective methods for shaping the future and are advancing in fundamental social and