Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

A–130 President Truman for China’s Communist Government; and credits Fidel Castro for improved schools and race relations in Cuba. This textbook is heralded by E.D. Hirsch, who is a cultural literacy guide, who’s trying to promote standards for school children. And yet, if this is the best thing they can do, and this is being lauded even by some conservatives as good history, then I think our education system is in bigger trouble than we thought. According to The Jim Lehrer News Hour (September 17, 1997) Hirsch said, “National testing is a good idea, but be careful of the content.” One can assume that national testing would suit Hirsch just fine as long as the content is his Core Knowledge . One who has watched the educrats turn traditional education on its head over a period of years would truly have to be in a coma not to see a very ugly picture emerging. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put together the pieces of this puzzle. The international education system could not have been fully implemented without approval of the Skinnerian method, and the change agents—using conservative concern over whole language—have succeeded in having the Skinnerian method mandated at the national level. A matter of morality There have been too few people who understand how evil the method is, and who have been willing to speak out. The noted philosopher and author Francis Schaeffer has spoken most eloquently in opposition to the Skinner method in his book Back to Freedom and Dignity . The extent of damage to our children from bad content K–12, outrageous as the outcomes are and have been since this writer started researching education in 1973, cannot be compared to the damage to our children from the use of operant conditioning K–12. Do parents really understand that this method was first used on rats and pigeons in experimental laboratories? Human beings are not animals; they have intellect, soul, conscience and creativity. They can think. They can figure things out. Direct Instruction or Mastery Learning do not take any of these important human aspects into account. Those who do understand the dangers inherent in operant conditioning are naturally very concerned over the decision to mandate this method of instruction. Concerned parent Tracey Hayes, for one, comes to mind as an individual who has been very helpful to me, a researcher and writer. Many of us have read much of the medical research on operant conditioning. We have written on the subject, but we have never actually “used” the method on our own children. Tracey is valuable particularly for this reason—as well as for the fine in-depth research she has done as an opponent of whole language which she has at great cost made available to all of us. She saw what Engelmann’s DISTAR did to her own child. She has helped me enormously to understand the reality of this evil method. Those grassroots parents researching education are extremely lucky to have her input. As for Ann Herzer, we all know her credentials as a long-time traditional phonics reading teacher and the courageous stand she took in opposing the Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction (ECRI) teacher training. She and Tracey have personally lived out the nightmare of operant conditioning and are thus in a position to speak authoritatively regarding the method. Do those who support Direct Instruction agree with Ann Herzer’s teacher trainer who angrily said to her when she resisted the training, “Don’t you understand we are training our children to be people pleasers?” Also, as a member of the AFT, Herzer was responsible for getting a resolution unanimously approved by the Arizona affiliate of the AFT to forbid federal funding of operant