Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–117 …For any major reorganization of actual practices and responses to take place, the individual must be able to examine his own feelings and attitudes on the subject, bring them out into the open, see how they compare with the feelings and views of others, and move from an intellectual awareness of a particular behavior or practice to an actual commitment to the new practice…. What is suggested here, if specific changes are to take place in the learners, is that the learning experiences must be of a two-way nature in which both the students and teachers are involved in an interactive manner, rather than having one present something to be “learned” by the other. A... finding is emerging from the study of enrichment of educational opportunities in the New York public schools, which has been termed “Higher Horizons” (Mayer 1961)…. The significant thing to remember in this very ambitious project is that the major impact of the new program is to develop attitudes and values toward learning which are not shared by the parents and guardians or by the peer group in the neighborhood. There are many stories of the conflict and tension that these new practices are producing between parents and children. There is even more conflict between the students and the members of their peer groups who are not participating in the special opportunities. The effectiveness of this new set of environmental conditions is probably related to the extent to which the students are “isolated” from both the home and peer group during this period of time. It is unlikely that such “separation” from the home and peer group would take place after the age of sixteen and seventeen. And it is also likely that the earlier new environments are created, the more effective they will be. From the operational point of view and from the research point of view, it does seem clear that, to create effectively a new set of attitudes and values, the individual must undergo great reorganization of his personal beliefs and attitudes, and he must be involved in an environment which in many ways is separated from the previous environment in which he has developed. …[T]he changes produced in such a general academic atmosphere which is not deliberately created are probably of smaller magnitude than the changes produced where the entire environment is organized (deliberately or not) with a particular theme at work. In summary, we find that learning experiences which are highly organized and interrelated may produce major changes in behavior related to complex objectives in both the cognitive and affective domains. Such new objectives can best be attained where the individual is separated from earlier environmental conditions and when he is in association with a group of peers who are changing in much the same direction and who thus tend to reinforce each other. In his studies of stability and change in various characteristics, Bloom (1964) finds that the individual is more open to some of these major changes earlier in the growth period than later....The evidence points quite convincingly to the fact that age is a factor operating against attempts to effect a complete or thorough-going reorganization of attitudes and values…. It is quite possible that the adolescent period, with its biological and other modifications, is a stage in which more change can be produced than in many other periods of the individual’s career.... [T]here is an increasing stability of interests in the age period of about ten to fifteen and that appropriate learning experiences and counseling and guidance may do much to develop different kinds of interests. Some Additional Research Problems …[Bloom] has been attempting to do research on what might be called “peak learning experiences.” …[T]he evidence collected so far suggests that a single hour of classroom activity under certain conditions may bring about a major reorganization in cognitive as well Appendix XIX