You can read John Taylor Gatto's Underground History of American Education free online here: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

The American education system is doing exactly what the industrialists designed it to do - mold naturally curious children into mindless workers who are basically still children, wanting all the latest "toys" out there & wanting them right now! We don't need to spend more $$$ on the current educational system. It's too efficient at what it was created to do as it is.

Traditional schools are preparing us to be mindless drones. School is nothing but job training. It prepares us to be working, taxpaying consumers who keep the economy going. Its purpose is not to enlighten us.

2-Year-Old Knows Geography Better Than 97% of Population:
When you consider that 80 percent of American families did not read or buy a book in 2006, and 70 percent of U.S. adults haven't visited a bookstore in the last five years, it is very refreshing to see someone as bright as Lily -- and she's only 2 years old!

In an era where two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 still cannot find Iraq on a map, this adorable 2-year old who can not only identify Canada and the United States, but also Zimbabwe, Fiji, Saudi Arabia, China, and dozens and dozens of others, is really amazing.

Dumb and Dumber Has Become American Norm 
Not long ago, I wrote about how most Americans are dumber than dirt when it comes to health.
Now I've come across some startling statistics that may point to the reason for this epidemic of dumb-and-dumber-itis:

Ø 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives

Ø 80 percent of American families did not buy or read a book last year

Ø 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years

Think about it: what is the use of wasting borrowed money that you'll have to struggle years to pay back in order to send your kids to college if they are the typical ones who won't bother to read sufficiently to keep up-to-date in their field, as well as to also know what is going on in the world and have informed opinions enough to make wise choices in who they elect, how they live their lives, their health and other choices?)

Meanwhile, people in the United States spend an average of four hours in front of the TV each day and three hours listening to the radio -- both sources that contain little or no real information that can truly benefit your life.

Obviously, most of you reading this are not in this category and do actively read, so you're not part of the problem. However, as we work toward creating a paradigm shift in people's consciousness about health and well-being, we clearly have our work cut out for us.

With almost no one searching for, reading, and critically analyzing information, it's no wonder that only 11 percent of Americans know the daily amount of calories they should be eating -- especially when you consider the vast amounts of disinformation being thrown at all of us by advertisers every day, as well as the pseudo-science being spread by the many bought-and-paid for organizations which are nothing more than fronts for corporations.

Drug companies, as only one of many examples, spend literally billions of dollars each year on direct-to-consumer TV advertising (the U.S. being one of only two countries in the world where this is legal) because they know that it works.

When most people see a drug being advertised on TV, they have no other sources of information to let them know that they are being sold an ineffective and dangerous product. Given that situation, it's no surprise that 2/3 of doctor visits resulted in a drug being prescribed, and spending for prescription drugs is the fastest-growing category of health care expenditures.

Yes we have a long row to hoe in educating our friends and relatives about the truth so at least they can make informed choices and not continue to be brainwashed by the drug cartels.

If we are to thrive as a society, encourage your kids to read, read often, and discuss what's been read to encourage free and independent thought.

Preserving liberty and restoring constitutional precepts are impossible as long as the welfare mentality prevails, and that will not likely change until we've run out of money, but it will become clear, as we move into the next century, that perpetual wealth and the so-called balanced budget, along with an expanding welfare state, cannot continue indefinitely. Any effort to perpetuate it will only occur with the further erosion of liberty.

The role of the US government in public education has changed dramatically over the past 100 years. Most of the major changes have occurred in the second half of this century. In the 19th century, the closest the federal government got to public education was the Land Grant College program. In the last 40 years, the federal government has essentially taken charge of the entire system. It is involved in education at every level through loans, grants, court directives, regulations, and curriculum manipulation. In 1900 it was of no concern to the federal government how local schools were run at any level.

After hundreds of billions of dollars, we have yet to see a shred of evidence that the drift toward central control over education has helped. By all measurements, the quality of education is down. There are more drugs and violence in the public schools than ever before. Discipline is impossible out of fear of lawsuits or charges of civil rights violations.

Controlled curricula have downplayed the importance of our constitutional heritage while indoctrinating our children, even in kindergarten, with environmental mythology, internationalism, and sexual liberation. Neighborhood schools in the early part of the 20th Century did not experience this kind of propaganda.

The one good result coming from our failed educational system has been the limited but important revival of the notion that parents are responsible for their children's education, not the state. We have seen literally millions of children taken from the public school system and taught at home or in private institutions in spite of the additional expense. This has helped many students and has also served to pressure the government schools into doing a better job. And the statistics show that middle-income and low-income families are the most eager to seek an alternative to the public school system.

There is no doubt that the way schools are run, how the teachers teach, and how the bills are paid is dramatically different from 100 years ago. And even though some that go through public schools do exceptionally well, there is clear evidence that the average high school graduate today is far less educated than his counterpart was in the early part of this century.

Due to the poor preparation of our high school graduates, colleges expect very little from their students, since nearly everyone gets to go to college who wants to. Public school is compulsory and college is available to almost everyone regardless of qualifications. In 1914, English composition was required in 98% of our colleges; today it's about one-third. Only 12% of today's colleges require mathematics be taught, where in 1914, 82% did. No college now requires literature courses. But, rest assured plenty of social-babble courses are required as we continue to dumb down our nation. (No wonder U.S. students rank 36th in the world!)

Federal funding for education grows every year, hitting $38 billion this year, $1 billion more than requested by the administration and 7% over last year. Great congressional debates occur over the size of a classroom, student and teacher testing, bilingual education, teacher's salaries, school violence, and drug usage. And it's politically incorrect to point out that all these problems are not present in the private schools. Every year there is less effort at the federal level to return education to the people, the parents, and the local school officials. For 20 years at least, some of our presidential candidates advocated abolishing the Department of Education and for the federal government to get completely out of the public education business. This year we will hear no more of that. The President got more money for education than he asked for, and it's considered not only bad manners but also political suicide to argue the case for stopping all federal government education programs. Talk of returning some control of federal programs to the state is not the same as keeping the federal government out of education as directed by the Constitution.

Of the 20 congressionally authorized functions granted by the Constitution, education is not one of them. That should be enough of a reason not to be involved, but there's no evidence of any benefit, and statistics show that great harm has resulted. It has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, yet we continue the inexorable march toward total domination of our educational system by Washington bureaucrats and politicians. It makes no sense!

It's argued that if the federal funding for education did not continue education would suffer even more. Yet we see poor and middle-class families educating their children at home or at a private school at a fraction of the cost of a government school education, with results fantastically better--and all done in the absence of violence and drugs. A case can be made that there would be more money available for education if we just left the money in the states to begin with and never brought it to Washington for the bureaucrats and the politicians to waste. But it looks like Congress will not soon learn this lesson, so the process will continue and the results will get worse.

The best thing we could do now is pass a bill to give parents a $3,000 tax credit for each child they educate. This would encourage competition and allow a lot more choice for parents struggling to help their children get a decent education.

(From "A Republic, If You Can Keep It" by Dr. Ron Paul)

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The curious case of NEA priorities
By Alan Sears
Friday, August 25, 2006

It is, arguably, the most powerful union and lobbying group in the country. And you cannot envy what its members are up against.

Day after day, the National Education Association (NEA) sees the same statistics we do.

Plunging test scores. Floods of incoming college freshman who can't read at even a sixth-grade level. Principals and school boards groping for incentives that will draw better teachers into lifelong service for high stress and infrequent appreciation.

Instead of embracing the joys of books and learning, America's children are gorging junk food on the couch, dabbling with R-rated music videos and video games while their synapses run headlong down blind brain alleys.

Teacher morale remains low, as many grapple daily with parents who are disengaged and apathetic, neurotic or demanding, angry or eager to move their child into alternative educational settings.

Add to all that the professional pressures inherent in 'No Child Left Behind,' and you can understand how the NEA leaders who gathered this summer in Orlando for their annual convention had their work cut out for them. The toughest question was undoubtedly the first one: where do we start, when it comes to fixing America's schools?

Well, they figured it out. And, really, faced with so many incredible challenges, their priority makes sense. This is, after all, the NEA. They know the classroom. They know the teachers. They know the real challenges of education.

Which is why their elected leaders decided that, before anything else, the first thing our teachers have to do is win popular support for homosexual 'marriage.'

That's right. The all-knowing members of the NEA decided that what our kids need to know 'more than math, geography, grammar, science, or computer skills' is what men and men see in each other, why women and women fall in love, and what our government and society 'owes' those who practice homosexual behavior.

You can see why that kind of information is critical to a third grader, can't you?

Of course not. The NEA didn't think so. That's why they're taking the matter out of your hands. Listen, when the world's largest teacher's union elects to endorse same-sex 'marriage,' they're not talking tacit support. They're talking posters and projects, classroom lectures and guest speakers, testimonials and textbooks -- at every grade level, and in every public school, in every school district in America.

Questions, of course, accumulate. Among them:

What if a teacher or principal objects to same-sex unions, for reasons of personal faith or experience? What if said educator doesn't want his (often mandatory) NEA dues going to support those who promote homosexual behavior? What if parents don't want their children learning about sex (or sexual politics) at school? What if children are ill-equipped, mentally or emotionally, to handle the information presented by a zealous instructor?

Either the NEA has considered, and dismissed, these questions -- in which case the group that wants to exert the most significant impact on America's teachers, parents, and children turns out to have no real concern or compassion for our teachers, parents, or children... or else the union has not considered these crucial questions, in which case... ditto.

Either way, the academic needs of children are no longer as much a priority for this organization as the political agenda of those who engage in homosexual behavior.

Actually, that's not anything new for the teachers' union. The NEA has been working hand-in-glove for years with aggressive promoters of homosexual behavior. Indeed, former NEA president Bob Chase is a member of the board of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network), and once defended NEA's force-feeding of the homosexual agenda to children by warning that:

'Some critics want the public schools to be an agent of moral doctrine, condemning children and adults when they are not in accord with Biblical precepts.'

But if the NEA objects to teaching moral doctrines -- how do they justify teaching immoral doctrines? If they're against teaching creationism, for example, for its spiritual implications, how can they favor sex education classes that indoctrinate even very young children with homosexual advocacy?

How can they bar prayers, ministers and Christian clubs from campus, while organizing school assemblies, demonstrations, and classroom visits featuring homosexual and transgender 'role models'?

Clearly, the NEA has rejected its prima facie identity as the representative of America's teachers, in favor of a new raison d'etre: brainwashing schoolchildren into acceptance of, and even indulgence in, homosexual behavior. For the union's leaders, there will be no rest until families all over the country not only acknowledge, but embrace and endorse the homosexual agenda.

It's as simple as A-B-C. What those pressing that agenda cannot win at the ballot box, they will win in the minds of the next generation... one vulnerable child at a time.

Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor who held various posts in the departments of Justice and Interior during the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.

Alan Sears, a former federal prosecutor who held various posts in the departments of Justice and Interior during the Reagan Administration, is president and CEO of the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation. He is co-author with Craig Osten of the book The ACLU vs. America: Exposing the Agenda to Redefine Moral Values and The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom.
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Ideology Was Bush's Undoing
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Over lunch, a liberal friend expressed puzzlement. Citing the title of Tom Oliphant's new book about the Bush administration, "Utter Incompetents," he wondered aloud.

Like him or not, he said, Bush is not an unintelligent man, and he is a principled and energetic executive. As for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the others, almost all had long resumes of accomplishment in politics, government and business. Why, then, do they seem to have failed so dismally?

In my new book, "Day of Reckoning," published this week, I offer an answer. If there is a one root cause to the Bush failures, it has been his fatal embrace of ideology.

Ideology is substitute religion, a belief system based on ideas that are often contradicted by history and common sense. Yet men will adhere to ideologies with a zealotry that borders on fanaticism.

Marxism, fascism and socialism were are ideologies, gods that failed. So, too, is democratism, the Gospel of George W. Bush.

Democratism is a belief that all men are equally endowed with a desire for freedom and an aptitude for democracy. All can be uplifted, and all brought to see that democracy is the one true path to peace in our world. In democracy lies our salvation.

This conviction lay behind the invasion of Iraq, Bush's crusade to democratize the Middle East and his "global democratic revolution" to "end tyranny in our world." And, as Woodrow Wilson's crusade "to make the world safe for democracy" gave us Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, Bush's crusade for democracy is leaving us with ashes in our mouths.

Yet, Wilson's heart was pure, and he ever exhibited the serenity of the True Believer, the unmistakable mark of the ideologue. One imagines Bush will be preaching the dogma of free trade long after the last U.S. factory has closed and the dollar has reached parity with the Mexican peso.

Bush's "compassionate conservative" appears grounded in the ideological conviction that all children are endowed with the capacity to learn through the high school level. No Child Left Behind was going to raise the test scores of all our children above the national average, as in Lake Wobegon.

Why was it fated to fail? Because reality is otherwise. All children are not equal in their innate ability to learn English or math, as they are not equal in their ability to play sports, music or chess. A second-grader knows that, but our elites reject it as bigotry and blasphemy against the egalitarian dogmas that define who they are.

So we invest trillions, empower bureaucrats and enrich the education industry, demanding it produce what it has shown for 40 years it cannot produce. Today's SAT scores are far below where they were in 1964. Like socialists striving to make their system work in Cuba, China and Russia, we have been banging our heads against a brick wall of human nature.

Consider Katrina. Bush was indeed disengaged. But Katrina was a failure of government, not of Bush. The city of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana and FEMA all failed at the simple rescue of 30,000 people stranded by a few feet of stagnant water, while TV anchors boated back and forth bellowing for government to come save them.

Where were the men of New Orleans?

Why did the men of New Orleans, after getting their families out, not come back in boats to rescue the black women and children? Why did so many cops defect and start looting? And why did the National Guard and 82nd Airborne succeed and end the hysteria in hours?

In New Orleans, society collapsed because its basic building block, the family, has collapsed, for all the reasons we know too well.

Yet while civil government is failing, institutions like the 82nd, Microsoft and the New England Patriots succeed -- because they operate on other than ideological principles.

You don't vote for the head of Microsoft or choose the coach of the Patriots or commanding officer of the 82nd by elections.

These institutions reject egalitarianism. They put excellence before equality. They do not believe in a "level playing field" for opponents, but, with Vince Lombardi, that "winning isn't everything, winning is the only thing." They demand our best. You fall short, you are gone. They are intolerant of excuses and self-pity.

All who labor there know if they do not perform, the penalties are real: loss of jobs, income, and prestige. In the 82nd, incompetence can mean dead comrades or your own death. They are one-for-all and all-for-one people. They are exclusive, not inclusive. They reject racial, ethnic and gender quotas and affirmative action. To the 82nd and the Patriots, there are places women simply do not belong.

Thomas Jefferson believed that in a republic a "natural aristocracy" of virtue and talent should rule. Those who run these institutions believe the same. That is why they succeed, and why government, when we ceased to be a republic and degenerated into an egalitarian democracy, so often fails.

In the context of education reform, parents, citizens, taxpayers continually hear the term "systems approach" or "systems thinking." What is it? What does it mean? Where did it come from? What part will it play in the restructuring of America?

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking grew out of the writings of Alfred North Whitehead. The science of systems thinking is credited to a man by the name of Ludwig von Bertalanffy and his associates (one of whom is Ervin Laszlo, currently working with the United Nations). The generic term for systems thinking is general systems theory.

A word about Bertalanffy before continuing. Bertalanffy came to the United States from Germany on a Rockefeller grant. He returned to German-occupied Vienna, Austria, in 1938. His biology textbooks were used by Hitler. He returned to the United States following World War II.

General systems theory states, simply, that the world is a system of subsystems (also called systems), all interconnected and interdependent to form a wholistic or holistic system; that within any system is an infrastructure that is analogous (the same) across systems, irrespective of physical appearance.

Stated a bit differently, but to the same effect, is the Gaia hypothesis which states the world is a living, breathing organism, irreducible to its parts; that what affects one part, affects all parts; that in the name of saving spaceship Earth, we must change our society. The Gaia hypothesis adds a spiritual (metaphysical) dimension to systems thinking.

Systems thinking sees everything as wholistic, with all parts interconnected, interdependent. In the words of Senge (1990), systems thinking --

is the fifth discipline because it is the conceptual cornerstone that underlies all of the five learning disciplines of this book.

This discipline is the foundation upon which the other four disciplines function: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning. Many who have been through the team building process of consensus will recognize the terms. The systems thinking model, because of its wholistic approach, is cyclical -- sometimes shown as a circle, sometimes as a spiral. The beginning is the end. You start at point A and your destination is point A. The journey between point A and point A is the "process". At point A the change agents decide what they want the world to look like in x number of years. This is the goal, destination, or outcome. Example: the exit outcomes for the school, state, federal: what the child should know and be able to do as a result of his or her educational experience; what the child should look like.

The next step is to align everything to achieve point A, the outcome. In this endeavor, the curriculum, instruction and teaching methodologies are aligned to the outcome to ensure that the outcome is reached; the measure of which is the assessment. This process is known by many names, among them backmapping. The technical term is a syllogism: a process used by behavioral scientists to bring about planned change.

Thus it is that mankind can be said to be creating the future.

It is imperative, at this point, to digress to the philosophy behind systems thinking as it is important to understanding the semantics of systems thinking. Systems thinking sees everything as a system, analogous to all other systems irrespective of physical appearance. All things are equal, whether it be the ecosystem or mankind -- man is no better than animal or a tree. The underlying philosophy here is humanism that maintains that man is devoid of spirituality or self-determinism. It therefrom follows that man must be conditioned (the process) to his environment (the outcome or goals), whatever it is decided that environment will be (creating the future). As stated in the Humanist Manifesto II,

we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.

All the exit outcomes from all the school districts, states, and Goals 2000 are what man must be conditioned to to achieve the created future. That created future is based on future trends which, again, is cyclical, deciding what "we" (the change agents) want the world to look like (in the 21st Century), then backmapping. In this same vein, outcome-based education is education based on outcomes -- starting at the end and backmapping to ensure the outcome. In researching future trends, it becomes very obvious that they are not based on fact, but rather on the doomsday prophesies of rabid environmental groups whose religious philosophy is very much humanistic/New Age.

Systems thinking, to repeat, sees everything as wholes. It is in this context that appear whole language; the wholistic education system incorporating all services to deal with the whole child -- mentally, physically, emotionally; life-role or real-life (wholistic) education; constructivist (hands on) learning (the child reinventing the wheel); integrated curriculum deleting the lines of structured disciplines; thematic units addressing social or life-related issues (wholistic); conflict resolution in pursuit of the collectivist (wholistic) society; peer tutoring to promote the group (collectivist) mentality; the child centered classroom; individual learning plans (IEP's) -- Everything that is done is to achieve the whole, with all systems (everything done to produce the child who will look like the exit outcomes) interconnected and interdependent to achieve the whole.

Humanism is a religion that sees everything as wholistic, the basis of collectivist thought and action; it is the foundation upon which Marx built his philosophy (Marx saw Christianity as a religion of self-alienation, something to be stamped out at all cost). Marx believed the individual mind to be part of the universal mind (the wholistic mind), the collective. He saw the Hegelian Dialectic as a process for achieving wholes, of Oneness of Mind through a process of thesis (an idea or proposition), antithesis (the opposite idea or proposition) and synthesis (the bringing together of thesis and antithesis). Synthesis then becomes the new thesis, and through a continuing process (evolution to higher levels), Oneness of Mind theoretically occurs. If you look consensus up in the dictionary, you will discover that it means solidarity of belief; continual evolution to oneness of mind. To achieve consensus (wholism), one must give up his or her individual beliefs and conform to the group beliefs -- again to achieve the whole.

Left to its own devices, however, consensus is uncontrollable. Thus, to control the process, and insure the outcome, facilitators are trained in group dynamics (how individuals brought together in a group interact) to ensure the outcome. Again, we start at point A and return to point A. In the process, the greater number of participants are brought to hold the predetermined outcome instead of just the facilitator. In the words of one participant, the job of the facilitator is to make everyone in the group think it's their idea (Resource Document, Schools for the 21st Century, Final Report, January 1995).

Because of multiple parties being involved in consensus, it cannot be rigid except in outcome. In each instance thesis and antithesis come into play, with synthesis as the outcome, whether achieved incrementally or in one cycle. From the synthesis of thesis and antithesis comes compromise. Thus it is that there is no right or wrong answer, everything is relative, situational. (This is the why and wherefore, also, of no right answer in the classroom.) Everything is thesis and antithesis, ever evolving in a spiral, whether individual thought or collective thought, to the next higher plain. This is, incidentally, the process of attaining higher order thinking. This is the reason for the teacher as facilitator -- the guide on the side; not the sage on the stage.

The facilitative process is not one that appeals to the cognitive domain; it appeals to the affective domain -- how people feel. In achieving consensus, it is not what one knows about a subject that matters, it is how one feels that is important. As so adequately demonstrated by the final evaluation of the Schools for the 21st Century in Washington state, content is excellence in terms of the change agenda, process is the destination, the product, and what learning is about; and emotionality and affectivity are the means by which content and process will be achieved. If you want to change someone's belief system, you do not appeal to what they know, you appeal to what they believe, how they feel about a subject or issue. In a consensus circle, the facilitator sets the stage by appealing to the affective domain of the participants -- emotionality is imperative. If the advocates of education reform have learned nothing else from sex education programs and the resulting rise in teen pregnancies, they have learned that appealing to emotionality sets the stage if the intent is for people to compromise their principles. Once the stage has been set, affective is brought into conflict with cognitive, and the individual is pushed to conform to a group belief system -- mine, yours and ours. Once that has occurred, and individual principles have been compromised, it is very hard for the individual to reclaim his individuality. To do so requires breaking away emotionally from the new "family" and again thinking for oneself. The social acceptance within the circle makes this very hard for most people to do -- a facet that is very much counted on. What people learn about each other, intimately, within the circle "of trust" also becomes a coercive factor against anyone who might attempt to break away.

In the classroom, systems thinking plays out in the focus of the classroom. No longer is the focus knowledge. Now the focus is real-life or life-role education. Everything is set in the context of children experiencing real-life situations. Thus it is that the focus in the classroom is social or life-related issues taught in the context of unit themes or thematic units, whether it is gender, prejudice, discrimination, the environment, homosexuality, life styles --the primary focus, however, is upon environmentalism, which is why parents are finding a lot of it in the classroom. This environmentalism is not, in most cases, based on scientifically validated research, but rather, on the doomsday prophesies of rabid environmentalists with a self-serving agenda -- an agenda that plays itself out in such events as the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and similar more recent events such as the more recent earth summit held in Japan. The fear tactics perpetuated in the name of global warming is a good example.

Future trends harken back to a man by the name of Jay W Forrester and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Forrester was Peter Senge's mentor for 20 years according to Senge, 1990). In 1972, Forrester established a world simulation model known as World 3 for the Club of Rome (this group has a propensity toward world government). This was a computer simulation model that, according to inputs, predicted future scenarios. A book, The Limits to Growth by Donnella Meadows, was written over the twenty scenarios predicted by the simulation model. None of the predictions have come true, but that's beside the point. It is the doomsday prophesies that "we must change our ways if we are to save spaceship Earth" that dominates the scene. This is also what comes across in the classroom where turning children into social and political activists for the cause is paramount. This is what Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson meant, in her 1997 state of education address, when she said,

Education beats out fighting crime, holding the line on taxes, creating new jobs, improving access to health care, or protecting the environment. And, by the way, when we achieve our educational goals, all of these problems will be addressed in new and better ways.

In his book, A Strategy for the Future, The Systems Approach to World Order, Laszlo predicted that a more accurate and concise model of World 3 would be in place by the mid-1980's. This, or something similar, is undoubtedly where the predictions of what the world will look like in the 21st century are coming from. The point that needs to be made here, is that in predicting the future, the future can also be created, starting at point A and returning to it. In others words, whatever the "we" want it to look like. What "we" want it to look like is manifesting itself now in the classrooms across American under Goals 2000, STW and the plethora of bills building the system.

In creating the future, one of the first steps, is to analyze "where we are now" against "where we want to be." This is called a gap analysis. Undoubtedly, most have heard this term. The gap analysis becomes the foundation of the change strategy -- what "we" need to do to move people from "where they are now" to where "we want them to be" -- from "here" to "there." The facilitative process then becomes the bridge between "here" and "there" whether in the classroom or in the community or in the country. This is why facilitators are used in the whole of the process, whether in the classroom or in establishing the mission and vision statements and the exit outcomes.

Once the cyclical process is put in motion, theoretically it will envelope the whole community at some point -- except those who refuse to participate, referred to by proponents as critics of change, naysayers, the glass half-empty crowd, and enemies of education. The success of systems thinking, however, is contingent on it encompassing everyone -- all. Because not everyone can be so easily controlled, the necessity comes eventually, in the interests of the system, to invoke tyrannical means of achieving and maintaining compliance to the system. This is why, in the USSR, dissidents were labeled "mentally ill" and incarcerated "until they came to their senses." See The Fallacy of Systems Thinking.

Systems thinking is the method of achieving and maintaining the planned economy, in which every facet is carefully monitored and carefully controlled, including the human factor. It is a system that does not tolerate deviance from the accepted norm. It is a system that is very much into producing robots that all act and think alike.

Accountability, under systems thinking, is the gathering and analysis of statistical data to measure evolution to outcomes, to insure compliance with the system. Thus the establishment of huge data banks housing personally identifiable information on every man, woman and child. Available to the proponents of systems thinking is the element that was missing in early models (Planning Programming Budgeting Systems, mastery learning) -- computer technology. In the gathering, storage and analysis of statistical data and personally identifiable information on every man, woman and child in this nation, coercion becomes a definite factor in achieving the desired outcome -- whether it is determined that the parent, teacher or child is the problem.

The Spiritual Dimension

In his book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Senge acknowledges that the vision for the writing of this book was born in the fall of 1987 during his morning meditation. As a book outlining the components of the high performance work organization, the road to continuous quality improvement, the total quality environment, and as a book referenced heavily in books written advocating education reform, this revelation in the introduction gives us a sense of the spiritual aspect of systems thinking. Senge defines this aspect further in defining personal mastery -- one of the five disciplines of the learning organization, acknowledging that it is rooted in both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions as well as secular traditions -- three components of New Age religious practice. He also states that personal mastery is imperative to developing and sustaining shared vision within an organization.

Eastern spiritual traditions incorporate mystic practices involving altered states of consciousness, known to parents as guided fantasy/guided visualization, sometimes as centering or relaxation exercises or techniques. In Senge's words, these practices are key to "working effectively with the subconscious".

Senge also points out, in The Fifth Discipline, that an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling forbids companies from requiring that employees participate in training seminars that they believe violate their religious beliefs, and Christians do believe that these practices are a form of self-divination that is forbidden by the Bible. But Senge claims that this snafu in the workplace can be circumvented. He claims that anyone committed to the learning organization is also committed to truth. In other words, if the Christian refuses to participate in these religious practices, the Christian denies truth and is a roadblock to achieving the learning organization.

There is another way to circumvent this roadblock, as outlined in The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson:

You can only have a new society, the visionaries have said, if you change the education of the younger generation. -- Of the Aquarian Conspirators surveyed, more were involved in education than in any other single category of work. (p 280)

Teachers are being taught the techniques of guided fantasy/guided visualization by people such as Jack Canfield of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Canfield is a New Age author and promoter of confluent education. In an article published in New Age magazine in 1978, Canfield instructs:

If you're teaching in a public school, don't call it meditation, call it "centering." Every school wants children to be relaxed, attentive, and creative, and that's what they will get.

In a sidebar to this article, it is acknowledged that:

Many of the new methods and approaches we have written about in this article are beginning to be adopted by more and more teachers in pilot programs.

More and more parents are becoming aware of the use of the techniques of guided fantasy/guided visualization in the classroom. Both of these techniques place the child in an altered state of consciousness -- a key component of yoga or meditation. In this state, children are VERY open to suggestion which is why this state is used in most accelerated learning programs that can be connected to George Lozanov, the Bulgarian (communist) professor.

Besides the religious aspect of guided fantasy/guided visualization, parents need to know that these practices can have a very adverse affect on a child in a couple different ways. First, children placed in an altered state of consciousness are often taken to meet a spirit guide, guide, or wise old person. In The Beautiful Side of Evil and Like Lambs to the Slaughter, Johanna Michaelsen exposes these spirit guides as demonic spirits. If anyone is the least bit dubious about where this can end, these books are recommended reading. This is also one of the reasons why parents are seeing Native American studies being brought into the schools as the Native American spirituality (religion) incorporates altered states of consciousness in pursuit of spirit guides -- the hawk, the eagle, the coyote, the bear, etc. Just as marijuana is an introduction to harder drugs, introducing children to guided fantasy/guided visualization invariably leads to broader experimentation. It is dangerous, as Johanna Michaelsen divulges in her books, and often leads to satanic, occult worship -- earth worship (GAIA), spirit guides, mandalas, etc. These practices in schools are, however, being touted as an avenue to the inner wisdom, creativity, and self esteem we hear so much about these days. Anyone who wants to get an eyeful of where it goes, just pick up The Light Shall Set You Free, co-authored by Dr Shirley McCune (currently an employee under the direction of the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction and a friend of Terry Bergeson) and read it.

The second problem is that the practice of placing children in altered states of consciousness should ONLY be done by licensed clinicians and then ONLY under certain conditions. This medical procedure should NEVER be used in a group setting such as a classroom where the use of it by teachers is nothing short of medical malpractice. That aside, more and more lawsuits are being filed by parents whose children have been put in these hypnotic states, resulting in problems returning to consciousness, flashbacks at any time (like psychedelic drugs cause), and blackouts. Teachers are being taught how to use these techniques, they are not being told the whole story behind the use of these techniques or what can happen if they do use them.

Guided fantasy/guided visualization is New Age, and their use in the classroom exposes children early to New Age practices in pursuit of the learning organization, the high performance work organization, the total quality environment. It is being done in schools without the knowledge or informed consent of parents which violates their rights as well as the child's. It also violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, forbidding the establishment of a state religion.

Referenced Resources:

Ferguson, Marilyn; The Aquarian Conspiracy: Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time; New York: G. P. Putnam Sons; 1980.

Lazslo, Ervin; A Strategy for the Future: The Systems Approach to World Order; New York: George Braziller; 1974.

McCune, Shirley and Dr Norma Milanovich; The Light Shall Set You Free; Albuquerque: Athena Publishing; 1996.

Meadows, Donnella et al.; The Limits to Growth; New York: New American Library; 1972.

Michaelsen, Johanna; The Beautiful Side of Evil; Eugene: Harvest House Publishers; 1982.

Michaelsen, Johanna; Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Your Child and the Occult; Eugene: Harvest House Publishers; 1989.

Senge, Peter; The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization; New York: Currency Doubleday; 1990.

©September 1998; Lynn M Stuter

Websites Regarding Systems Theory:
International Federation for Systems Research
International Society of Systems Sciences
International Systems Institute

Systems theory states, simply, that the world is a system of subsystems (also called systems), interdependent and interconnected, to form a wholistic or holistic system; that within any one system is an infrastructure that is analogous across systems, irrespective of physical appearance.

The Gaia Hypothesis, in different words but saying the same thing, adds a spiritual dimension to systems theory, stating that the world is a living, breathing organism, irreducible to its parts; that what affects one part affects all parts; that in the name of saving spaceship earth, we must change our society.

These are the two hypotheses which under gird systems governance and the transformation of American society to the total quality, outcome-based, environment of a managed economy in a communist society in which every aspect of that society is micromanaged by the all powerful government to achieve goals established to attain a humanist "created future" -- the sustainable global environment.

This is happening nationwide, in every branch, office and department of government; in industry; in health care; in education at all levels; in property rights, growth management and land use planning; it is evident in the environmental movement in both the public and private sectors ... there is nothing that is not being affected by this. This is a total and complete transformation or paradigm shift of our society.

Systems governance has, of course, been tried before: in the USSR since the Bolshevik Revolution, Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini, Japan under Hito, China, North Korea and Vietnam -- every totalitarian regime society has ever spawned. And the results have always been the same -- the loss of rights and freedom for the people subjugated to it. This time will be no different even though the philosophical advocates of

total quality management (TQM) -- systems governance in business and industry;

planning programming budgeting systems (PPBS) -- systems governance in the public sector;

outcome-based education (OBE) -- systems governance in education; and

the church growth movement (CGM) -- systems governance in matters involving the church and religion;

believe that the evolution of computer technology will provide the 'handlers' (such as was the Supreme Soviet in the USSR, the Third Reich in Germany under Hitler -- ) with the needed information to leverage problem areas and keep the 'whole' (the earth) in balance as a sustainable environment without totalitarian tactics.

The links to the left will take the reader into some of the different aspects of this 'new' system of governance, revealing to the reader not the rhetoric but the reality.

The Fallacy of Systems Thinking

Having established the purpose and process of systems thinking -- whether one knows it as total quality management, the high performance work organization, outcome-based education, performance-based education, planning programming budgeting systems, or by any of the plethora of other names by which it is known -- one need analyze whether the fallacies of the system are greater than the benefit.

In discussing the fallacies of systems thinking, it is necessary to digress, for a moment, to the definition of systems thinking ... theory ... philosophy ... world view: the world is a system of subsystems, all interconnected and interdependent to form a wholistic or holistic system; that within any one system is an infrastructure that is analogous across systems, irrespective of physical appearance.

This means that whether a human system, plant system, animal system, eco system ... the infrastructure is the same.

But are they really? That depends on one's worldview. If one is a humanist, one sees man as no different than animal or plant. But if one believes in a higher authority -- ie, God -- one is reminded that God commanded man to take dominion over all of earth and its creatures, large and small. Such sets man apart from and superior to other systems. Not only does systems theory not recognize a higher authority but it also denies the superiority of mankind.

Systems theory presupposes that man has no individuality that sets one being apart from all other beings; that individual man is but part of the collective mind of man. People who have been raised under the tenets of Christianity know differently; that each being is created and revered in the eyes of God as an individual.

Systems theory sees everything as wholistic or holistic. The system, by its very construct and nature, must include everyone -- all. This is where the mantra's "all children can learn" and "no child left behind" come from. In the same venue, people participating in the process of systems governance (facilitation to a preset outcome) must either agree, agree to disagree (tactic approval), or disagree but agree not to sabotage (tactic approval). To openly oppose or disagree with the system, its goals or objectives, is to violate the "all" mandate of the system.

So what happens when someone, or a group, openly opposes or disagrees with the system. Remember that systems theory is a system of subsystems, all interconnected and interdependent. This means that if the system is to function properly, all systems must be kept in balance. (Remember Al Gore's Earth in Balance?)

What happens if a system gets out of balance? Many will have heard the term leveraging. The out-of-balance system must be leveraged back into balance. Now, if the out-of-balance system can be leveraged back into balance with the other systems, all is well. But what happens if the out-of-balance system cannot be leveraged back into balance with the other systems? The obvious answer is that the other systems then move to compensate. One can readily see how, over time, a radical element could cause the system to continue to compensate until it can no longer compensate, causing the system to fail. This is what happened in the USSR.

The Fallacy of Systems Governance

But systems theorists believe they have found the cure for this problem: the collection and analysis of data by high-performance computers running high-tech systems, under the mantra of "accountability". There is only one problem -- computers may be able to calculate with great accuracy, but they cannot think as the human mind thinks.

And just as mankind has not been able to accurately map how the human brain functions, neither has mankind been able to build computers capable of extracting that information which is pertinent from the milieu of information presented, and process that information devoid of bias. And until they do (which will never happen), no computer is intelligent enough to analyze data to the degree necessary to successfully leverage systems into balance and keep them in balance.

Because systems theory runs counter to the nature of most human beings, the failure rate of leveraging systems back into balance is high. And because balance is not only necessary but crucial, systems theory, by its very construct and nature, becomes more and more oppressive as measures are implemented to control "radical elements" that can cause the system to be thrown out of balance.

The greatest threat to systems governance is dissension, either by opening opposing the systems process or by refusing to supply the personally identifiable data -- such as is collected via the WASL, or medical records (see SPEEDE/ExPRESS for all the personally identifiable data sought) -- needed to analyze and leverage systems. This is why dissension cannot be allowed; why people can disagree but must give their tactic approval via their silence. As a note of interest, those who refuse to supply the needed data are labeled oppositional defiant -- a term parents who have refused to allow their children to take the WASL have run into.

The need to include all is also why proponents of systems governance claim they represent the majority, defined as anyone who does not openly oppose the system, whether because they truly agree or because they are ignorant or apathetic.

Systems theory is the very essence of pure democracy, abhorred and avoided by our Founding Fathers. In the words of Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper.

From this view of the subject, it may be concluded, that a pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

Does systems governance work? No, it doesn't. The fallacies of the system far outweigh any benefit (of which none is known) derived therefrom.

Systems government, while proffered as the cure for the ills of mankind, is the product of self-indulgent minds striving for power and position ... governance by the few over the many for the benefit of the few ... the old feudal system. It didn't work in the Dark Ages, it most certainly won't work now even though the trappings have changed.

© February 2002 Lynn M Stuter
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The Delphi Technique -- What Is It?

The Delphi Technique was originally conceived as a way to obtain the opinion of experts without necessarily bringing them together face to face. In recent times, however, it has taken on an all new meaning and purpose. In Educating for the New World Order by B. Eakman, the reader finds reference upon reference for the need to preserve the illusion that there is "'lay, or community, participation (in the decision-making process), while lay citizens were, in fact, being squeezed out." The Delphi Technique is the method being used to squeeze citizens out of the process, effecting a left-wing take over of the schools.

A specialized use of this technique was developed for teachers, the "Alinsky Method" (ibid, p.123). The setting or group is, however, immaterial; the point is that people in groups tend to share a certain knowledge base and display certain identifiable characteristics (known as group dynamics). This allows for a special application of a basic technique.

The change agent or facilitator goes through the motions of acting as an organizer, getting each person in the target group to elicit expression of their concerns about a program, project, or policy in question. The facilitator listens attentively, forms "task forces," "urges everyone to make lists," and so on. While s/he is doing this, the facilitator learns something about each member of the target group. S/He identifies the "leaders," the "loud mouths," as well as those who frequently turn sides during the argument -- the "weak or noncommittal".

Suddenly, the amiable facilitator becomes "devil's advocate." S/He dons his professional agitator hat. Using the "divide and conquer" technique, s/he manipulates one group opinion against the other. This is accomplished by manipulating those who are out of step to appear "ridiculous, unknowledgeable, inarticulate, or dogmatic." S/He wants certain members of the group to become angry, thereby forcing tensions to accelerate. The facilitator is well trained in psychological manipulation. S/He is able to predict the reactions of each group member. Individuals in opposition to the policy or program will be shut out of the group.

The method works. It is very effective with parents, teachers, school children, and any community group. The "targets" rarely, if ever, know that they are being manipulated. Or, if they suspect this is happening, do not know how to end the process.

The desired result is for group polarization, and for the facilitator to become accepted as a member of the group and group process. S/He will then throw the desired idea on the table and ask for opinions during discussion. Very soon his/her associates from the divided group begin to adopt the idea as if it were their own, and pressure the entire group to accept the proposition.

This technique is a very unethical method of achieving consensus on a controversial topic in group settings. It requires well-trained professionals who deliberately escalate tension among group members, pitting one faction against the other, so as to make one viewpoint appear ridiculous so the other becomes "sensible" whether such is warranted or not.

The Delphi Technique is based on the Hegelian Principle of achieving Oneness of Mind through a three step process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In thesis and antithesis, all present their opinion or views on a given subject, establishing views and opposing views. In synthesis, opposites are brought together to form the new thesis. All participants are then to accept ownership of the new thesis and support it, changing their own views to align with the new thesis. Through a continual process of evolution, Oneness of Mind will supposedly occur.

The theory of the Delphi and the reality of the Delphi are, obviously, quite different -- the reality being that Oneness of Mind does not occur but only the illusion of Oneness of Mind with those who refuse to be Delphi'd being alienated from participating in the process.

While proponents of education reform feel they are quite justified in this, the effect of this unethical manipulation of people is to create polarized camps. In an effort to maintain the process, advocates have marketed a plethora of publications (such as What's Left After the Right, No Right Turn and If You Don't, They Will) intended to label, castigate, and alienate anyone who does not go along with them. As a result, parents come to understand that their role in education reform is merely perfunctory; that the outcome is preset, that they are not but the rah-rah team so when opposition does arise, advocates of education reform can say, "we had community input." 

To make sure that the situation is controlled, only those parents who agree with the process are allowed on the restructuring teams. New participants are carefully screened to ensure that education reform goes forward unquestioned.

If measurable opposition persists, advocates are told, get the local ministers on board. Take steps to neutralize, by whatever means necessary, the opposition. In some places, opponents have been harassed, both at home and on the job, personal property has been damaged and vandalized, people have lost their jobs. Anyone who does not go along with the restructuring of our society is susceptible to the totalitarian tactics of those promoting education reform -- whether it be parents, teachers, principals, superintendents or board members. The need exists for advocates to maintain an iron grip on the process. They cannot, for instance, withstand open public debate of the issues. Therefore, they do not partake in public forums. They cannot withstand the criticism, so they close every avenue for parents to address the issues. They are rapidly creating, through their divisive tactics, a volatile situation. America is being torn apart.

Parents, citizens, teachers, principals, superintendents who are opposed to the new purpose being given our American education system need tools to withstand the process being used to bring it in -- against the Delphi Technique and consensus which, through their basis in the Hegelian Principle, have Marxist connections and purposes.

First, no opportunity must be left untaken to expose this unethical, divisive process. Second, when this process is used, it can be disrupted. To do so, however, one must be able to recognize when the Delphi Technique is being used, and how to disrupt it.

With thanks to Sandy Vanderberg, Peg Luksik and others.

©March 1996; Lynn M Stuter
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My First Experience with the Delphi

I attended the Middle Years Committee Work summit last night.

There were approximately 75 people there ... mostly school staff and teachers.

People came in and sat down at round tables. As I was sitting, I observed people (obvious facilitators) seeking out a table. A friend/neighbor of mine sat at my table.

A nicely dressed lady walked by my table several times before asking to join us. My 'red flags' went up immediately and rightly so!

The meeting was started with a "welcome" and introduction of the 'committee' members -- only two parents on the 'committee.'

A brief overview of what they have achieved so far was given via an overhead. Exploratory Electives were emphasized.

Then the Group Activity began. Another parent, a dad who I didn't know, joined our table at this point. The main 'facilitator' asked some silly questions to arrive at who should be the 'reporter' and 'recorder.' I didn't participate and neither did the others. But I grabbed the pencil and said I would take notes.

Each table was given a big sheet of paper in order to fill in our 'input' in four sections: Classroom, Activities, Culture, and Other.

Culture was stressed by the main facilitator as attitudes and atmosphere in the school. "What can we do to make them safe?" (The anti-bully bill was mentioned later in the evening.)

The other lady (facilitator) introduced herself as a teacher at the high school. Surprise, surprise! She was a language instructor (teaches foreign language). She obviously wasn't born in America and she mentioned she attended school in another country.

The teacher/facilitator immediately started expressing what she'd like to see in the classroom. She wanted an 'exploratory language class' so when students reached High School they'd know which foreign language they wanted to take. So, I wrote down 'exploratory foreign language classes.'

Oops! Did you know the word 'foreign' is not PC (politically correct)? The teacher said it's too negative and wanted it erased from the sentence. We all couldn't understand what word she wanted to replace foreign with. I looked at the dad and my friend and said, "I like 'foreign.' Do you like 'foreign'?" We all agreed we wanted to keep the word 'foreign.' And we moved on.......

The dad said he wanted more basics. I jumped in and said, "Yeah, more academics and less 'fluff'." My friend agreed. The teacher-facilitator tried to reword what we had just said.... it didn't work! The dad spoke up and said he liked what I said ... he said he liked MY words -- "more basics and less 'fluff.'" So, that's what we wrote. The three of us agreed that we'd like to see history, geography, economics, and civics taught separately. Basically, we flipped the table on the facilitator and from that point on we controlled the 'input.' The teacher/facilitator, at some point, said we were too protective of our children because we were insistent that the 6th graders should be isolated from the 7th & 8th graders.

The next activity was reporting the 'input.' Two people from each table went up to the microphone and briefly discussed their 'inputs.' I went up with the dad, who I obviously knew 'at that point' was conservative, and we stressed the back to basics and activities such as an Americanism club. I think I shocked the audience when I introduced myself as a 'homeschool parent in the District.' A lot of school staff and teachers spoke for their tables ... and they went on and on and on using all the PC buzzwords. Surprise, surprise!

It was obvious from the buzzwords that were spoken that other tables had been facilitated to a pre-determined outcome.

I exchanged phone numbers with the dad and gave away some information.

Oh, I forgot to mention ... a man at another table spoke up about STW/Career Paths ... changed the entire feel of the meeting. You could hear a pin drop. They tried to make him out as a 'whacko' but a mom behind me spoke up about her son's negative experience with career paths. You should have seen the facilitators faces at that point. I wish I had had my camera with me! More arms were going up with questions about career paths, and, at that point, they ended the meeting.

That was my first Delphi experience.

Cynthia

While this participant effectively undermined the Delphi at her table, the input from her table will be synthesized with the input from the other tables who reached the pre-determined outcome. In that synthesis, the input from her table will be removed as it does not conform to the agenda.

What happened here is a typical Delphi meeting, the purpose of which is to ...

1) make the greater number of people believe the pre-determined outcome/s are their own, such that they will ...

 a) support and advocate said outcomes to the larger community; and
 
 b) defend said outcomes, if necessary;

2) move responsibility for the pre-determined outcomes to a non-elected group of people who...

 a) are said to 'represent the community', but that
 
 b) cannot be held accountable by the community.
 
 If measurable opposition to the outcomes arise, those opposing will hear ...
 
 c) "This represents what the community wants" or
 
 d) "This is supported by the community."

 What they don't say, don't want to discuss, and don't want brought to light is that the outcomes ...
 
 e) are not the result of unfettered community input, and
 
 f) were not achieved via the informed consent of the participants (ie, the participants were aware they were being exposed to the Delphi

Technique, understood the process, and agreed to its use).

Tactics of the Trained Facilitator

I read every word of the exchange of correspondence you posted re: K-12. Your antagonist is so typical of a couple kinds of people. I have found that ...

there is the trained change agent/facilitator whose only means of pseudo debate is their definition of 'dialogue'. It requires other listening 'ears' since the psychology of group dynamics is foundational. Their first consideration is not to persuade you personally. The objective is to discredit you so you don't influence others. If their 'trained' modulated original tone of 'voice' doesn't disarm the one they are challenging, they go to the next step of 'authoritative' tone designed to impress with 'credentials'. When that doesn't work, they challenge the opponent's legitimacy to express facts. When that doesn't work, the knuckles get white, the tone of 'voice' becomes shrill, and the motives and accusations of political agenda are used. When that doesn't work, they take their self righteous leave of the scene implying that the challenged party is not worthy of their time and warped wisdom.

I've encountered another similar, but differently motivated type. They are sincerely wrong but committed to the erroneous idea. They usually have some vested interest in whatever they are defending, being part of an organization behind the program or issue or whatever. They see themselves as spokesmen for not only the issue, but also the organization sponsoring it. Any criticism of the issue is construed as an attack on the organization and its representatives. They are truly blinded by the association of which they are a part. They, too, start out mildly trying to bring you around with true sincerity. They actually are interested in changing your mind, individually. As that doesn't work, however, they begin to question your authority to question the institution or idea. The debate becomes more strident as with the trained change agent. Ultimately, both do the same 'exit' scenario of being the one to cut off the exchange, dismissing the challenger as unredeemable.

Long ago when I challenged my church synod about their bragging about being the first of that denomination to adopt PPBS, I was finally told, 'Obviously, you don't know what you are talking about. We suggest this correspondence cease'. To this day, I suspect, the official correspondent had no clue what he was defending, but someone up the chain did.

The passing reference to the Modern Red Schoolhouse leaped out at me. I am currently reading a book, Commies, A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left, by Ronald Radosh, co-author of the Rosenberg File. In the book, he has a chapter titled, 'The Little Red Schoolhouse' in which he describes his days as a child of New York Communist Party parents (the commie youth camps, the schools, etc.). He attended a private school in NY, Elizabeth Irwin School, 'distinctive in that it was a refuge for teachers who would be thrown out of the public school system because they would not sign the Feinberg Law oath, stating that they were not members of CPUSA, refusing to testify at HCOUA, etc...'

He says,'There was a reason why we called the institution we attended 'the Little Red Schoolhouse for little Reds.'

One wonders about the name of the Modern Red Schoolhouse for the 21st Century.

Mary Thompson
California

Note: There is a book, put out by Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1995, entitled Schooling for 'Good Rebels'; Socialism, American Education, and the Search For Radical Curriculum by Kenneth Teitelbaum with a foreword by Herbert Kohl. This book describes the 'Socialist Sunday Schools' of New York. In reading the book, it is hard to miss the parallel to systems education. Kenneth Teitelbaum, at the time this book was published, was an Associate Professor in the Division of Education at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamtom.

I was thinking about this last night. Because I had just heard of a positive response to an on-line debate, I thought about what was the difference.

In the case where the lady responded positive, after some lengthy back and forth, she actually switched gears from opinion to fact. She went out and did some background research as she had been encouraged to do. She ate humble pie! She was willing to admit that yes, she had been only spouting opinion, and an ill-informed one at that! She went on to sign the WSFH Statement and Resolution.

What a stark contrast to Lynn's debates with this so-called 'Gladys.' Some of us have concluded that 'Gladys' and some of these other 'ladies' are not real people at all, but plants from the public policy institutes and think tanks, well-trained in the exact form of debate that Mary described yesterday, and perfectly willing to go so far as to engage in very nasty personal attacks and threats.

The days of gentle grassroots activism are over. We are now facing the big boys head-on and they aren't pleasant. In fact, they aren't pleased that a truly spontaneous, genuine grassroots movement erupted. They intended to control all sides of the debate from the Right to the Left, and suddenly a few websites show up, and a few articles by Lynn Stuter appear, that expose their agenda a bit too closely.

Leslie
---

The Delphi Technique -- How to Disrupt It

Ground rules for disrupting the consensus process (Delphi Technique) -- when facilitators want to steer a group in a specific direction.

1) Always Be Charming. Smile, be pleasant, be courteous, moderate your voice so as not to come across as belligerent or aggressive.

2) Stay Focused. If at all possible, write your question down to help you stay focused. Facilitators, when asked questions they don't want to answer, often digress from the issue raised and try to work the conversation around to where they can make the individual asking the question look foolish, feel foolish, appear belligerent or aggressive. The goal is to put the one asking the question on the defensive. Do not fall for this tactic. Always be charming, thus deflecting any insinuation, innuendo, etc, that may be thrown at you in their attempt to put you on the defensive, but bring them back to the question you asked. If they rephrase your question into an accusatory statement (a favorite tactic) simply state, "that is not what I stated, what I asked was? (repeat your question)." Stay focused on your question.

3) Be Persistent. If putting you on the defensive doesn't work, facilitators often resort to long drawn out dissertations on some off-the-wall and usually unrelated, or vaguely related, subject that drags on for several minutes -- during which time the crowd or group usually loses focus on the question asked (which is the intent). Let them finish with their dissertation/expose, then nicely, with focus and persistence, state, "but you didn't answer my question. My question was? (repeat your question)."

Remember -- always be charming, stay focused, and be persistent.

Never, under any circumstance, become angry. Anger directed at the facilitator will immediately make the facilitator "the victim." This defeats the purpose which is to make you the victim. The goal of the facilitator is to make those they are facilitating like them, alienating anyone who might pose a threat to the realization of their agenda. [People with fixed belief systems, who know what they believe and stand on what they believe, are obvious threats.] If the participant becomes the victim, the facilitator loses face and favor with the crowd. This is why crowds are broken up into groups of seven or eight, why objections are written on cards, not voiced aloud where they are open to public discussion and public debate. It's called crowd control. It is always good to have someone else, or two or three others who know the Delphi Technique dispersed through the crowd; who, when the facilitator digresses from the question, will stand up and say nicely, "but you didn't answer that lady's/gentleman's question." The facilitator, even if suspecting you are together, certainly will not want to alienate the crowd by making that accusation. Sometimes it only takes one occurrence of this type for the crowd to figure out what's going on, sometimes it takes more than one. 

If you have an organized group, meet before the meeting to strategize. Everyone should know their part. Meet after the meeting to analyze what went right, what went wrong and why, and what needs to happen the next time around. Never meet during the meeting. One of the favorite tactics of the facilitator, if the meeting is not going the way he/she wants, if he/she is meeting measurable resistance, is to call a recess. During the recess, the facilitator and his/her "spotters" (people who wander the room during the course of the meeting, watching the crowd) watch the crowd to see who congregates where, especially those who have offered measurable resistance. If the "resistors" congregate in one place, a "spotter" will usually gravitate to that group to "join in the conversation" and will report back to the facilitator. When the meeting resumes, the facilitator will steer clear of those who are "resistors." Do not congregate. Hang loose and work the crowd. Move to where the facilitator or "spotters" are, listen to what they have to say, but do not gravitate to where another member of your team is.

This strategy also works in a face to face, one on one, meeting with anyone who has been trained in how to use the Delphi Technique.

With thanks to Sandy Vanderberg, Peg Luksik and others

©March 1996; Lynn M Stuter
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THE DELIBERATE DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA
By Samuel L. Blumenfeld
NewsWithViews.com

Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's new book, 'The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America,' is without doubt one of the most important publishing events in the annals of American education in the last one hundred years. John Dewey's 'School and Society,' published in 1899, set American education on its course to socialism. Rudolf Flesch's "Why Johnny Can't Read," published in 1955, informed American parents that there was something terribly wrong with the way the schools were teaching children to read, and my own book, 'NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education,' published in 1984, explained in great detail how and why the decline in public education was taking place.

But Iserbyt has done what no one else wanted or could do. She has put together the most formidable and practical compilation of documentation describing the well-planned 'deliberate dumbing down' of American children by their education system. Anyone who has had any lingering hope that what the educators have been doing is a result of error, accident, or stupidity will be shocked by the way American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientists.

This mammoth book is the size of a large city phone book: 462 pages of documentation; 205 pages of appendices; and a 48-page Index. The documentation is 'A Chronological Paper Trail' which starts with the Sowing of the Seeds in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, proceeds to The Turning of the Tides, then to The Troubling Thirties, The Fomentation of the forties and fifties, The Sick Sixties, The Serious Seventies, The 'Effective' Eighties, and finally, the Noxious Nineties. The educators and social engineers indict themselves with their own words.

Iserbyt decided to compile this book because, as a 'resister' to what is going on in American education, she was being constantly told that she was taking things out of context. The book, she writes, 'was put together primarily to satisfy my own need to see the various components which led to the dumbing down of the United States of America assembled in chronological order -- in writing. Even I, who had observed these weird activities taking place at all levels of government, was reluctant to accept a malicious intent behind each individual, chronological activity or innovation, unless I could connect it with other, similar activities taking place at other times.' 

And that is what this book does. It connects educators, social engineers, planners, government grants, federal and state agencies, billion-dollar foundations, think tanks, universities, research projects, policy organizations, etc., showing how they have worked together to advance an agenda that will change America from a free republic to a socialist state.

What is so mind boggling is that all of this is being financed by the American people themselves through their own taxes. In other words, the American people are underwriting the destruction of their own freedom and way of life by lavishly financing through federal and state grants the very social scientists who are undermining our national sovereignty and preparing our children to become the dumbed-down vassals of the new world order.

One of the interesting insights revealed by these documents is how the social engineers use a deliberately created education 'crisis' to move their agenda forward by offering radical reforms that are sold to the public as fixing the crisis -- which they never do. The new reforms simply set the stage for the next crisis, which provides the pretext for the next move forward. This is the dialectical process at work, a process our behavioral engineers have learned to use very effectively. Its success depends on the ability of the 'change agents' to continually deceive the public, which tends to believe any lie the experts tell them.

Iserbyt's long journey to becoming a 'resister,' started in 1973 when her son, a fourth grader, brought home from school a purple ditto sheet, embellished with a smiley face, entitled 'All About Me.' She writes: "The questions were highly personal; so much so that they encouraged my son to lie, since he didn't want to 'spill the beans' about his mother, father and brother. The purpose of such a questionnaire was to find out the student's state of mind, how he felt, what he liked and disliked, and what his values were. With this knowledge it would be easier for the government school to modify his values and behavior at will -- without, of course, the student's knowledge or his parents' consent."

From that time on, Iserbyt became an activist in education. She became a member of a philosophy committee for a school, was elected as a school board member, co-founded Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM), and finally became senior policy advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education during President Reagan's first term of office.

As a school board member she learned that in American education, the end justifies the means. 'Our change agent superintendent,' she writes, 'was more at home with a lie than he was with the truth.' Whatever good she accomplished while on the school board was tossed out two weeks after she left office.

It was during her tenure in the Department of Education in Washington, where she had access to the grant proposals from change agents, that she came to the conclusion that what was happening in American education was the result of a concerted effort on the part of numerous individuals and organizations -- a globalist elite -- to bring about permanent changes in America's body politic. She was relieved of her duties after leaking an important technology grant -- a computer-assisted instruction proposal -- to the press.

Another reason why Iserbyt decided to publish this book is because of the reluctance of Americans to face unpleasant truths about their government educators. She wants parents to have access to the kinds of documents that were only circulated among the change agent educators themselves. She wants parents to see for themselves what has been planned for their children and the kind of socialist-fascist world their children will have to live in if we do nothing to counter these plans.

Therefore, getting this book into the hands of thousands of Americans ought to be a major project for lovers of liberty in the year 2000. It will do more to defeat the change agents than anything else I can think of.

Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including 'Is Public Education Necessary'? and 'The Whole Language/OBE Fraud,' published by The Paradigm Company, 208-322-4440. His reading instruction program, 'Alpha-Phonics,' is available by writing The Tutoring Company, P.O. Box 540111, Waltham, MA 02454-0111. www.alpha-phonics.com www.howtotutor.com (More schooling articles)
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Ritalin stunts growth of children; long-term risk to children's health unknown
by Mike Adams
http://www.newstarget.com/z021944.html

New research published in the August, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry finds that Ritalin, the amphetamine drug used to treat a fictitious medical disorder labeled Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, stunts the growth of children. After three years on the psychotropic drug, children are one inch shorter and 4.4 pounds lighter than their peers, researchers have documented.

The psychiatric industry, of course, has been trying to play down the growth-stunting effects of Ritalin for at least a decade. Research conducted over the last several years by psychiatrists working for the National Institutes of Health initially found evidence of the drug stunting growth of children, yet nevertheless concluded that Ritalin carries "no long-term growth risk" to children. (Those researchers, by the way, failed to disclose their financial conflicts of interest with drug companies.)

Because of that conclusion, psychiatrists have refrained from warning parents about the fact that Ritalin stunts the growth of their children, focusing instead of how their children need "treatment" to correct a "brain chemistry disorder" that was, in reality, invented by the Big Pharma-backed psychiatric industry as a way to sell more drugs to children who don't need them.

Turning schoolchildren into street junkies
Ritalin is an amphetamine. In street lingo, it's called "speed." Selling speed to children is a felony, but feeding speed to children with a prescription is called "treatment." The practice of dosing children with powerful, mind-altering drugs is, in fact, a form of chemical abuse, yet it is tolerated today because it is framed in the language of medicine. Parents and teachers all too easily agree to the mass drugging of schoolchildren because it makes symptoms of ADHD seemingly go away. This drugging practice is, ultimately, pursued for the convenience of the children's caretakers and the profits of powerful drug companies, not out of any real concern for the health of the children.

Nutritional research has shown that the symptoms of ADHD can be completely reversed in 80 percent of children in just two weeks by eliminating processed foods and chemical food additives from their diets. The so-called "disease" of ADHD is really just an expression of behavior caused by extreme dietary imbalances. The entire theory of ADHD can also be completely shot down by simply handing an ADHD child an X-Box or Wii gaming system, after which the child will sit down and engage in extremely focused, attentive and mentally demanding gaming activities for as long as six hours without a single break, and without distraction. If there really were such as disease as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, such behavior would not be possible.

The truth is that ADHD kids aren't diseased at all: Most schools are simply boring beyond belief, and children don't learn well by being forced to sit still at their desks and listen to teachers ramble their way through meaningless memorization exercises dubbed "history" or "science" or whatever the topic may be. Children learn by doing things, and all that extra hyperactive energy has a useful function if it's channeled into experiential learning exercises.

Does Ritalin cause permanent health damage?
This new research about Ritalin stunting the growth of children does not answer the question of whether children ever regain their normal height and body weight, or whether Ritalin causes a permanent stunting of growth that cannot be reversed. It does make us wonder, however, whether a drug that stunts physical growth might also stunt the growth of brain cells and the nervous system, leading to intellectually stunted children at the same time that it produces physically stunted children.

In previous years, psychiatrists tried to argue that it wasn't Ritalin that caused the stunting of growth -- it was the ADHD disease itself, they claimed with a straight face! And thus, treatment with Ritalin was the only way to return children to "normal" growth.

This kind of twisted, circular logic typifies modern psychiatric medicine, which spontaneously invokes the existence of numerous psychiatric "disorders" at the exact coincidental moment that profitable pharmaceuticals become available to treat them. The logic of psychiatry goes like this: ADHD is a real disease because it's in the DSIM-IV manual (the bible of fictitious psychiatric disorders). ADHD is listed in the DSIM-IV because it's a real disease according to a group of Big Pharma-funded psychiatrists who made it up. Thus, ADHD is real because psychiatrists say is it! (See our related cartoon, Disease Mongers, Inc., to see a humorous depiction of this process.)

Treating children like guinea pigs
Nobody knows the long-term effects of Ritalin use on children. As a result, the psychiatric industry is treating children like guinea pigs, waiting to see what might happen after someone takes these amphetamines for a decade or longer. For all we know, Ritalin might stunt the size of the reproductive organs of these children, too, leading to future fertility problems. Perhaps the "Ritalin generation" won't be able to have babies. This is just a guess, but the important point here is that the psychiatric industry is guessing, too. Nobody knows. Long-term testing has not been done. It's all basically a "let's give these drugs to children and see what happens" experiment. It's all quite typical of Big Pharma today, which treats members of the public as revenue-producing guinea pigs who are too stupid to wake up and realize they should be questioning the outrageous claims of treatment now being associated with harmful prescription medications.

These side effects of stunting growth and altering the brain chemistry of children might conceivably be worth it if Ritalin were actually treating a genuine disease. If Ritalin, for example, were preventing brain cancer in at-risk children, it might be reasonable to trade a reduction of cancer risk with stunted growth. But Ritalin has no justifiable medical use whatsoever and is, in fact, more a form of chemical mind control than anything resembling real medicine. To place the growth of children at risk in order to give them a drug so powerful that it would be illegal if sold to children on the street is to engage in medical madness. There is no justification for the mass-treatment of children today with this drug other than the clever exploitation of human beings for profit.

The only medically proven use of Ritalin, it turns out, would be for parents who want their children to be short and stunted. Feed those kids enough Ritalin amphetamines, and they won't grow up to be as tall or have as much muscle mass as their peers. It might be a strategy very useful for grooming children for a career as a horse racing jockey, or growing a world-class gymnast (who are all rather short due to the physics advantage of having a shorter body and limbs), but for those parents actually looking to raise healthy children who express their full genetic potential, Ritalin seems to fall short. (Ahem.)

For those parents looking to ruin the health of their children, on the other hand, dosing kids three times a day with amphetamines seems to be quite useful. But why stop there? Why not graduate to METH amphetamines, too, and start giving your kids street meth like the militaries of the world already give to their soldiers? It makes about as much sense as giving them Ritalin, but believe me, if Big Pharma could find a way to control and legalize meth, psychiatrists would no doubt be standing by, ready to invent a fictitious disease "treated" by meth. (Remember, too, that street meth is manufactured from drug company cold medicines sold over the counter to children.)

It all makes you wonder about the Partnership For a Drug-Free America, doesn't it? This is an organization funded in part by drug companies, which seems to have no problem whatsoever about the mass drugging of children with Ritalin amphetamines. The "Partnership," in my opinion, isn't about making America drug free, it's about making America addicted to Big Pharma's drugs while curbing use of the competition: street drugs. The Partnership says, "Ritalin is a valuable medicine." Are they on crack?

Click here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamines) to read about amphetamines on Wikipedia.

Not surprisingly, when it comes to Ritalin and the drugging of children, it's all about the profit. The best way to market a drug is to first market a disorder, then pitch the drug as the only known treatment for that disorder.

The chemical abuse of children
In my opinion, what's happening today in psychiatric medicine is a crime against humanity and a form of chemical abuse towards children. Rather than pretending that these psychiatrists have any real medical authority, we should instead be locking them up and prosecuting them for these Nazi-style chemical assaults upon the population. Modern psychiatry, through its rampant chemical poisoning of the people, has proven itself to be far more dangerous to the safety of Americans than any terrorist threat, and in any honest society, these people would be stripped of their right to practice "medicine," and denied access to children. We need a nationwide restraining order against practitioners of modern psychiatry!

I believe it is time we abolished the industry of psychiatry and its disastrous "treatment" of children with dangerous, mind-altering chemicals. If we continue to allow these profit-minded psych doctors to drug an entire generation with amphetamines, the long-term consequences to society will no doubt be devastating. Children do not need mind-altering drugs to demonstrate normal, balanced behavior. They simply need honest nutrition, responsible parenting and to be kept away from refined sugars, petrochemical food additives and processed foods.
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Ritalin / Adderall addicts snort the meds like cocaine
Here's a Q&A from GoAskAlice (http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/3703.html) that explains, in more detail, the ways in which Ritalin and Adderall are, in fact, dangerous street drugs:

Dear Alice,

Recently I have started snorting Ritalin and Adderall (not at the same time though). I have found that the effects closely resemble that of snorting cocaine, but are not quite as intense. I really like doing this, because it's much cheaper than buying coke. However, I was wondering exactly how dangerous this might be, if even at all, considering it's a prescribed drug and I never snort more than the average dose that you would take orally. If you could tell me what the danger in doing this is and what I might possibly be doing to my body, that would be great.

Thanks,
Adderall Addict

(Alice answers:)
Dear Adderall Addict,

Ritalin and Adderall are two of the most prevalent prescription drugs used in the treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Both of these medications are classified as Schedule II drugs in the amphetamine class. Even though they are stimulants, when prescribed as directed by a medical provider in standard doses for people with ADHD and ADD, these prescription drugs assist people with AD(H)D to sustain their attention for a longer amount of time. This allows them to study or complete tasks at hand much more effectively minus the feelings associated with the medications' "speed-like" effects.

Schedule II drugs, such as Ritalin and Adderall, however, have a high propensity for misuse, abuse, and dependence. Widely prescribed for school-age children by medical professionals, many adolescents and young adults snort Ritalin and Adderall as they believe that they are safe alternatives to cocaine. This could not be further from the truth. First, both the potency of Ritalin and Adderall exponentially increase when they are snorted or injected because they enter the bloodstream directly. Second, prescription medications, especially when they are not prescribed for the user, as with illicit drugs, do not diminish their potential for harm. These actions make the misuse/abuses of these substances as or more harmful than cocaine, since the user may believe snorting Adderall and Ritalin is safe.

Dangerous side effects from inhaling Ritalin and Adderall include:

respiratory problems, such as destruction of the nasal and sinus cavities and lung tissue -- irregular heartbeat (heart arrhythmia) -- problems with circulation -- psychotic episodes -- increased aggression -- toxic shock -- death, in extreme cases

As Adderall is similar in its chemical makeup to methamphetamine, it poses additional dangers. Extended, continuous abuse can result in developmental problems concerning the brain and negative changes in brain wave activity [emphasis added]. If someone misuses/abuses Ritalin, Adderall, or both, help is necessary to stop using, not only to prevent further harm, but also to keep the person safe during withdrawal. Once one has become addicted to these substances, stopping could cause withdrawal symptoms similar to those with cocaine, such as:

severe depression -- psychosis -- restlessness -- extreme feelings of agitation

You may think that you are safer and more frugal by snorting Ritalin and Adderall, rather than cocaine, but you are harming yourself in similar ways. You also run the risk of arrest for having and using these substances without a prescription.
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Abu Ghraib-i-fying America's Schools
Michelle Malkin
Friday, August 22, 2008

The citizens of the world who hate America are going to love the latest agitprop released this week by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union. In a document titled "A Violent Education: Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools," the left-wing groups seek to paint a horrifying portrait of the nation's classrooms as Abu Ghraib-like torture chambers.

The report compiles sob stories of students humiliated after being disciplined by school officials for unruliness, and claims that minority students are "disproportionately targeted" for punishment. Citing international law and threatening lawsuits, Human Rights Watch and the ACLU are demanding that the White House and Congress ban physical discipline in all public schools.

The report says that "more than 200,000 U.S. public school students were punished by beatings during the 2006-2007 school year," but makes no distinction between "beatings" that take the form of mere knuckle-rapping versus swats on the backside versus over-the-line violent confrontations. In several of the anecdotes cited, it wasn't bruised bottoms that upset the supposedly brutalized students. It was bruised egos.

Peter S., a middle-school student from the Mississippi Delta, whined to the researchers: "The other kids were watching and laughing. It made me want to fight them. When you get a paddling and you see everyone laugh at you, it make you mad and you want to do something about it." How about ending your bad behavior and flying right?

Of course educators must use common sense when punishing bad apples. Of course they should be held accountable if they cause undue harm. But the agenda of these outfits is not to ensure the safety of everyone in the classroom. Their agenda is to demonize unapologetic enforcers of order and to impose international dictates on American public institutions.

The main author of the report is a special fellow with the Open Society Institute, funded by George (America must be "de-Nazified") Soros. Replete with references to the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the report declares in sweeping terms: "All corporal punishment, whether or not it causes significant physical injury, represents a violation of each student's rights to physical integrity and human dignity. It is degrading and humiliating, damaging the student's self-esteem and making him or her feel helpless." It's Gitmo all over again.

As usual, the Human Rights Watch/ACLU activists inject claims of racial discrimination into the mix -- repeatedly underscoring that many of the remaining states that allow corporal punishment are in the South. They infer deliberate targeting of black students based on statistics that reportedly show that "in the 13 southern states where corporal punishment is most prevalent, African-American students are punished at 1.4 times the rate that would be expected given their numbers in the student population, and African-American girls are 2.1 times more likely to be paddled than might be expected."

But that disproportion does not automatically equal discrimination. What they don't tell you are the races or ethnicities of the victims of the thugs being disciplined. What they don't bother to mention -- because it doesn't fit the America-as-torturer-of-minorities narrative -- is the unmitigated violence perpetrated in American classrooms against minority teachers.

The recent videotaped beating of black Baltimore teacher Jolita Berry by a black female student -- as other black students cheered and screamed, "Hit her!" -- exposed the continuing chaos in inner-city districts. In that school system alone, 112 students were expelled for assaults on staff members this school year.

Federal education statistics show that between 1996 and 2000, 599,000 violent crimes against teachers at school were reported. On average, the feds say, in each year from 1996 to 2000, about 28 out of every 1,000 teachers were the victims of violent crime at school, and three out of every 1,000 were victims of serious violent crime (i.e., rape, sexual assault, robbery or aggravated assault). Violence against teachers is higher at urban schools.

America's problem isn't that we're too tough and cruel in the classroom. It's that we've become too soft and placative, too ashamed and timid to assert authority and take unilateral action to guarantee a secure environment. Exactly where the human rights groups want us.
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So-Called Education Intentionally Dumbs Down Americans
by Heidi Stevenson

(NaturalNews) As Mike Adams' wonderful analysis of the current state of the world shows in 'The Biofuels Scam, Food Shortages and the Coming Collapse of the Human Population' (http://www.naturalnews.com/023091.html) , something is deeply wrong in America and the world. It's as if the vast majority of people have given up. Given up caring. Given up thinking. Given up common sense. Given up everything but gluttony.

But why? What has brought us to such a state? Could it have just 'happened'? Or was it intentional? To call it intentional, it's necessary to demonstrate planning. Fortunately, John Taylor Gatto, who was once named Teacher of the Year in both New York City and New York State, has explained what happened, when it started, and why.

Perhaps you were like me as a child. You loved learning. You'd spend hours and hours studying something of interest. Yet, you hated school. It was unutterably boring. It was rigid. It stifled original thought, even punished for it. Give any answer other than the prescribed one, even if you had clearly demonstrated a full understanding of the subject, and you were given a bad grade. Disrupt the class -- - meaning that you questioned the teacher -- - and you could expect time in detention, even more grinding boredom. Standing out from your classmates made you 'different'. You'd be ostracized by the other kids. The school itself supported such behavior. It sponsored things like cheerleading, another term for a popularity contest, where the kids from the right families were nearly always elected.

To survive through it all, you either had to get out -- - a daunting prospect for a child -- - or stuff your creativity, your spark. You probably thought of yourself as an oddball. After all, it was you who was different from all the others. It probably never dawned on you that most of the other kids were just as miserable -- - and just as fearful of speaking out. It probably never dawned on you that many of your teachers felt much the same way. That is, they did if they really wanted to teach.

What Created This Monstrous 'Education' System?

We think of our school system as something that has always existed. The reality is quite different. In the U.S. expecting all children to go to school a certain amount of time every day for a certain number of months and a certain number of years didn't come into being until the early twentieth century, 1905-1915.

Hardly any of the greats of American history went through much formal schooling. That includes Thomas Jefferson. George Washington. Benjamin Franklin. Thomas Edison. Herbert Melville. Mark Twain. Margaret Mead. Admiral Farragut. And so many more.

Obviously, formal secondary s