Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–94 resources) for the global workforce?

If the above analysis is on target, and the documentation unfortunately seems to point in that direction, it is a very, very sad day for American education, our children, and our nation.

January 30, 1997 Memo To: Activists in States Implementing DISTAR/Reading Mastery using Doug Carnine of the federally-funded national Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, as Consultant to your State Deptartment of Education From: Charlotte Iserbyt Regarding: Doug Carnine’s work in your State. Proof that Direct Instruction/Reading Mastery is 100% B.F. Skinner Rat Lab education Am sending you the alerts I have been getting out the past two weeks, which have gone onto the Internet, and which you should have, if you are not on-line. Carnine has not responded to my original January 10, 1997 alert, although requested to do so by others on the Internet. Considering the amount of information we have on his connections with Engelmann, father of DISTAR/Reading Mastery, dating back twenty years, it is no surprise Engelmann, Becker, Carnine, etc., do not wish to respond. Those who do not understand Skinnerian behavioral psychology and its use on innocent children are making a very big mistake supporting DI/Reading Mastery. I have the entire ECRI teacher training in which Engelmann is referenced several times (absolutely nauseating quotes). I cannot find a word to express my disgust that such a dehumanizing method could be used on anyone, much less captive children in the classroom. I don’t care if it is used to teach the Ten Commandments. It is sick, sick, sick, and our good people had better wake up and stop embracing it simply because it uses intensive phonics instead of Whole Language. Hitler had a pretty good system going for him, too; he used this method; so do the Russians. I personally consider my two sons to be more than “organisms.” I pulled them out of a Christian school that used ML for the same reason fifteen years ago. After reading the ECRI teacher training I can honestly say that I would prefer to have my child in a Whole Language class, learning nothing, than a Skinnerian DI class, possibly learning bits and pieces of basics (which will never transfer) and in which my child’s whole being, personality, etc. will be damaged, perhaps forever. And I have fought Whole Language ever since it arrived on the horizon, for over ten years. I have written about it. One article was even published in The Congressional Record . I mention this only to convince those still believing I am possibly pro-Whole Language that I am not. I support teaching phonics with the teacher in front of the class, lecturing the children (teacher-initiated or -driven instruction of basic content material: traditional education). Curriculum in script form using operant conditioning, i.e. Programmed Learning, be it Ethna Reid’s ECRI or Engelmann’s SRA (DISTAR/Reading Mastery/Direct Instruction) is not traditional teaching. When Ann Herzer, a teacher, complained about going through the ECRI training in Arizona, she was absolutely crucified, strung up, and left there to bleed (by conservatives, among others). She was asked by the trainer, “Don’t you understand—we’re training the children to be ‘people pleasers’?” You should see the file I have of letters from distraught