EDUCATION IN AMERICA - PART III           
Friday, March 26, 2004

As the National Education Association (NEA), grew in political power through the 1990’s and spent more and more money on education, parents and teachers alike were demanding a return to the basics. However, the NEA continued to promote:

• Site-based management, a maneuver to get around locally elected school boards and maintain NEA control: and

• Mastery Learning (OBE), which has been described by Charlotte Iserbyt in her book, “Back to Basics Reform” or “Skinnerian International Curriculum” as a concept first, proposed a generation ago by Harvard psychologist, Jerome Bruner…

Iserbyt, explains that “educational reform proposals” from respected educational analysts such as Mortimer Adler (developer of the Paideia Proposal and long time advocate of a One World Government), John Goodlad, Theodore Sizer and others all “sought to translate Bruner’s work into a classroom reality.”

Iserbyt, who served as a Special Assistant in the office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, considered it shocking that men such as those just mentioned could have been “major architects of the horrendous educational mess and declining test scores in American education.

You may not remember, but President Reagan wanted to abolish the Department of Education. He had appointed Terrell H. Bell as Secretary of Education.  Bell was an established educator who fought to preserve it. Bell even recommended that William Spady, creator of OBE, apply for a grant from the U.S. Department of Education for implementing OBE in all the Schools in America.

Goals 2000 moved education in America toward the federal takeover of American education. It violated parental rights and parental responsibilities. OBE was the transition from education based on knowledge and intellect to student behavior and student demonstration, from academics to attitudes (psychology).
It was:

• Biblical morality v. license “to do your own thing”;

• Equal opportunity v. social engineering; and

• Individual responsibility v. servants of the state, as in “school to work.”

OBE did not improve academic success but “dumbed down” education. Education for a socialistic “New World Order” is the top priority for global elitists.

According to Beverly Eckman in her book “Education for the New World Order”, it remains to be seen if the extremist faction of the education establishment did indeed pull off the perfect crime.

My fear is that we Americans have not responded to active duty. We are now facing “New Civics”, a public school curriculum advocating global government and global citizenship.

Monday - Part 4