Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–40 citizens who are unable to support themselves. We must, in short, assess our educational needs before establishing our objectives and setting into action leadership and management plans. (pp. 32–32) Use of Tests in Needs Assessments The economic, sociological, psychological and physical aspects of students must be taken into account as we look at their educational needs and accomplishments, and fortunately there are a number of attitude and inventory scales that can be used to assess these admittedly difficult to measure outcomes…. Most of these efforts to manage education try to center in one place an information center that receives reports and makes available to all members of the management team various types of information useful to managers…. The Student and Staff Personnel Profile A departmental or school student and staff personnel profile, constructed from needs assess ment information, will provide information in greater depth than is typically found in most school or college operations. The characteristics of the student populations being served and the social, economic, racial, and ethnic make-up of the community or neighborhood must be weighed in making assumptions on performance expectations. An objective, expressed in anticipated performance results, must take into account the characteristics of the students, the neighborhood and community. (p. 42) Humanizing Education Many of our current problems of alienation and depersonalization are at least partly traceable to our emphasis in our schools upon giving and getting information and our neglect of the discovery of meaning and humanization. The committee writing the 1962 ASCD Yearbook listed common school practices that have depersonalizing and alienating effects: • The emphasis on fact instead of feelings • The belief that intelligence is fixed and immutable • The continual emphasis upon grades, artificial reasons instead of real ones for learn ing • Conformity and preoccupation with order and neatness • Authority, support and evidence • Solitary learning • Cookbook approaches • Adult concepts considered as the only ones of value • Emphasis on competition • Lockstep progression • Force, threat and coercion • Wooden rules and regulations • The age-old idea that if it’s hard it’s good for them School management by objectives demands more use of educational tests and measures (pp. 33–35).

Until now we have been schooling to fit a “norm” of society. It’s time to begin think ing of an education for every man. As defined by Carl R. Rogers, “The only man who is