Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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as affective behaviors…. It may very well help us to understand some of the conditions that are necessary for major changes in learners in affective objectives…. Allport (1954) emphasizes the basic reorganization that must take place in the individual if really new values and character traits are to be formed. We are of the opinion that as we come to understand this process we may find ways of helping bring about major changes in the affective domain with less in the way of trauma and conflict than now seems to be the case. Is it possible for individuals to take on the new without rejecting the old? Is it possible that programs of the Higher Horizons type (Mayer, 1961) help individuals become motivated toward higher education and the new values involved in academic work without at the same time bringing about great conflict and tension between the individual and his home? …However, back of all the more operational and psychological problems is the basic question of what changes are desirable and appropriate. Here is where the philosopher and behavioral scientist must find ways of determining what changes are desirable and what changes are necessary…. It is not enough merely to desire a new objective or to wish others to be molded in the image that we find desirable or satisfactory…. New objectives are important, but they must be thought through very carefully, and all must be willing to pay the price if they are to be obtained. …Can the schools take the initiative in the affective domain, or must they approach it with great caution and hesitation? We leave this problem to the curriculum makers, the educational philosophers, and the social and political forces which may or may not make certain objectives clearly desirable and even necessary. The Affective domain is, in retrospect, a virtual “Pandora’s Box.”… We are not entirely sure that opening our “box” is necessarily a good thing; we are certain that it is not likely to be a source of peace and harmony among the members of the school staff, [but] our “box” must be opened if we are to face reality and take action. It is in this “box” that the most influential controls are to be found. The affective domain contains the forces that determine the nature of an individual’s life and ultimately the life of an entire people…. Education is not the rote memorization of meaningless material to be regurgitated on an examination paper. Perhaps the two Taxonomy structures may help us to see the awesome possibilities of the relations between students-ideas-teachers. The Philosophy… The Commitment …Erikson describes the achievement of integrity, which is the hallmark of maturity as: “the age’s accrued assurance of its proclivity for order and meaning. It is a post-narcissistic love of the human ego—not of the self—as an experience which conveys some world order and spiritual sense no matter how dearly paid for. It is the acceptance of one’s one and only life cycle as something that had to be and that, by necessity, permitted of no substitutions; it thus means a new, a different love of one’s parents…. Although aware of the relativity of all the various lifestyles which have given meaning to human striving, the possessor of integrity is ready to defend the dignity of his own lifestyle against all physical and economic threats. For he knows that an individual life is the accidental coincidence of but one life cycle with but one segment of history; and that for him all human integrity stands or falls with the one style of integrity of which he partakes. The style of integrity developed by his culture or civilization thus becomes the “Patrimony of his soul,” the seal of his moral paternity of himself. Before this final solution, death loses its sting (Erikson, p. 232)….