Tag Archives: Ralph Tyler

Continuing Our Conversation on the Planned Psychologizing of Each Student via the Classroom

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Friday was a heartbreaking day. I obviously wrote the previous post before we got the tragic news of those lost precious young children and the Principal, School Psychologist, and Teachers who lost their lives trying to protect them. It is certainly a reminder that in all my writing about what has really been going on in education and what the actual intended goals are, well-intentioned, brave adults are being manipulated in all this to be Inadvertent Agents of Change. Many are unaware of what the actual goals are and any past history. Or they are Intentional Agents of Change but nothing in their background could possibly alert them to the gravity of what is being attempted via education.

I cannot let the topic of what is planned go. After all, for a history geek  the phrase “general objectives of a spiritual, philosophic and cultural nature reflecting a certain idea of mankind” coupled with taxpayer money and an unaccountable bureaucrat in charge of obtaining the sought transformation is akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull. He wants to charge and gore. I want to find a helpful anecdote to illustrate the consequences and write. But being graphic so soon after Friday’s tragedy about what I know about Connecticut education and how long Outcomes Based Education has been ramping up the transformational summit there and then comparing what I know from my other examinations of similar tragic events will wait for another day.

I have a strong insights and lots of hard evidence that we must consider in time. Before these schemes and policies and procedures are fully nationalized. But not today. I have gone back though and pulled two older posts that many of you may never have seen.  I would like for you just to contemplate the kind of mental and emotional manipulation that has been going on with political aims in mind.  http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/real-change-will-require-new-values-and-new-ways-of-thinking-or-social-engineering-is-hard/ is based on a March 2012 aspirational article in Scientific American. I also would like you to appreciate that the five basic shifts in human thinking proposed and quoted in that post left the planning stages quite a long time ago in many school districts. Let that reality sink in.

Then I would like you to read http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/priming-delicate-minds-for-a-desired-disruptive-revolution-what-is-the-real-damage/ from early August and begin to appreciate just how Orwellian and manipulative the term “Best Practice” actually is. One of the solutions already being raised for shooting rampages apart from gun control is better Moral and Character Education. Both those terms have been hijacked by political radicals to mean changing values, attitudes, and beliefs through the classroom to again gain a collectively-oriented political and economic Transformation. That post will help you have the proper skepticism that the proposed solution will likely create more of the problem. And appreciate how subtle and mostly out of sight Bill Ayers’ activities really are.

As I so often do, I sought this past weekend’s solace and insights in history and decided to tackle John V Fleming’s The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books that Shaped the Cold War. I thought I was taking a break but it turned into a real lesson on the importance of the “psychological mechanism of belief” as a prominent topic in all the autobiographies of the former Communists. In choosing freedom they had to examine all of their prevailing beliefs. Instilled from an early age. They each recognized and wrote about how it is beliefs that drove their actions and beliefs are not opinions. That really caught my eye.

All those former Communists recognize that beliefs must be confronted if they are to live in freedom. And the schemers who want to use education to gain a more collectivist 21st century society not grounded in Individualism or Capitalism keep referring to “changing values, attitudes, and beliefs” as the Outcomes Based Education mantra phrased it.

(Brief aside to reiterate, that OBE goal is now safely tucked out of sight for the most part in the 2012 poorly understood definition of what constitutes Learning and Student Growth and Achievement. Seriously if I did not know this already, it would be almost impossible to find. That was the idea.)

So like Values but less limited in number, Beliefs drive behavior. Frequently at an unconscious level. Very useful to control of you want to change society. False beliefs and tragic values can still be highly influential. Here are a few of the false beliefs these Communists had been taught to passionately believe. It’s not too much different from what many K-12 and higher ed students are today being led to believe.

“They believed that capitalism was immoral, indeed criminal, in its ‘exploitation of man by man.’ From its very nature capitalism was the cause of conflict, slavery, oppression, and human misery of every kind. The remedy was for them as certain as was the nature of the pathology and its diagnosis. The remedy was ‘socialism’. Just as in the seventeenth century Isaac Newton had for the first time in human history understood and explained the laws of the physical world, so also for the first time in human history had Karl Marx understood and explained the laws of the social world. . . The believed the USSR was a shining beacon, and the harbinger of socialism in the world. They believed the Western democracies were rotten to the core. They believed that the Sovietization of Eastern Europe was the historical equivalent of proletarian revolution, and that it was bringing the blessings of socialism to millions. Imperialist forces, headed by the United States, were actively preparing to initiate a war against the Soviet Union.”

All that strikes us in the West, especially from the vantage point of the 21st century and not the late 1940s, as stunningly false. Unbelievable. And the part I left out about the US and Britain being Sluggish and unreliable World War 2 allies? hits us as ungrateful and ignorant. But beliefs filter reality and each event in the real world was perceived through these set of beliefs as well as the fostered values of Community first. Submission to the wisdom of the Leader. It took quite a long time to reassess such a belief system.

Still does. Which is why creating a useful belief system was the goal of the Catholic Church in the MIddle Ages and the Communists in the 20th. It is also apparently why Ralph Tyler originally created Learning Objectives, which his student and good friend turned into Outcomes Based Education. Which is now called Norman Webb’s Depth of Knowledge and has been incorporated into both the SBAC and PARCC Common Core assessments. Scheming ideas never go away. They simply get new masking names like Higher Order Thinking Skills.

My other weekend diversion of research did not go as planned either. The Teacher’s Workbook for the Facing History curriculum I wrote about in concern here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/changing-the-filtering-perception-the-way-we-see-the-world-is-key/ came. And I was right to be concerned. If ever a curriculum was designed to foster hate (by fostering false equivalence between 19th century blacks in the US and what happened to the Jews in Germany) and drive future political action and create a false and dangerous belief system it is Facing History.

But what is easy for me to see as a history devotee would be difficult for the typical student or teacher to accurately perceive. They will become, as intended, passionately aggrieved. Under the delusion that Fascism has to be about race and involves a dictator. Taught to believe that Propaganda was what the Germans did to the Hitler Youth, not false attribution of historical causes in order to incite their passions.

As I said in that previous post Totalitarianism is a dangerous thing to misapprehend. I did appreciate the quote though of Hannah Arendt, right before introducing the great evil of Adolph Hitler to the students for the first time. Arendt is quoted as saying:

“Of all the forms of political organization that do not permit freedom, only totalitarianism consciously seeks to crowd out the ability to think. Man cannot be silenced, he can only be crowded into not speaking. Under all other conditions, even within the racing noise of our time, thinking is possible.”

Well, everything about OBE under whatever name it goes by and the Facing History curriculum and what we have been chronicling on this blog seeks to “crowd out the ability to think” in the sense Arendt meant as Totalitarian. Yet by including that quote and constantly using the term “thinking” to mean merely expressing an opinion or emotional beliefs and all that reflecting in journals, we are priming students to believe they are free.

When they are not in the least. And that false Belief System and reworked values designed to prompt political action at an unconscious level is the Whole Idea of these Reforms.

We live in interesting times. We will have to continue to look at where this created false belief system and SEL student-centered classroom have been and are going.

We need to stop using the classroom to create an obedient mind to make gulags unnecessary and stealth control possible.

 

 

Are the New 3 R’s and the Student-Centered, Inquiry Driven Classroom a Means to Eastern Spirituality?

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We are so trained to defer to religious beliefs as a private matter and something that, at least in the US, Government is supposed to stay out of, that it can take a sledgehammer hit to force us to look at what was staring us in the face all along. I would write stories and then run into the advocates as teachers in a California Wisdom Center. And ignore it. I have traced many of the education reformers/professors to discussions about Third Order Consciousness. And ignored it. Mustn’t be controversial.  It’s a private matter.

I wrote posts about sought Deep and Continual Personal Change  within each Student and ignored the clear references to Meditation Practices. It’s just not how I think. It’s an area I did not want to go to. I have written about Peter Senge and his Systems Thinking and his Presencing book but chose to overlook the links of his sought education and organization practices to his Buddhist practices and beliefs. Again we want to see spirituality as a private, personal matter. Bringing it up and discussing it are off limits. Even when personal Spiritual/ Internal Values are clearly targeted by the Full Personality/holistic education/Systems Thinking focus we are discussing.

The Sledgehammer forced me to confront this Reality recently when I was filing some of my research and glanced at a xeroxed Preface called “Education Trends in a World Crisis” from a 1954 book Education in the New Age. Now its author, Alice A. Bailey, is a controversial New Age enthusiast/Theosophist and apparently much more (you can search out the more lurid details. That’s not my point) but the description in the Preface fit the emotionally driven, intuitive, nonrational mind we have been chronicling. That was the desired Goal. Bailey was the one describing the Sought Mental Global Reality in Students and Future Voters we have been examining in terms  of synthesizing Tibetan spirituality practices.

She was the one writing about using education globally to “resynthesize the objective and subjective, the extrovert [the West] and the introvert [Oriental Asian] civilizations and to achieve a great orchestration of culture.” When you mention culture like that and it turns out the book is a write-up of a 1953 seminar in Chicago funded by the Ford Foundation and you go on to describe your education “project” as based on a UNESCO document you have my full, undivided attention. Most of what we have encountered throughout this blog’s journey traces back to UNESCO involvement and Ford funding. The Regional Equity Movement now is a high priority of Ford and they have hired a John Goodlad confederate, Jeanne Oakes, away from UCLA’s Center for Democracy and Education. She is behind most of the research claiming academic tracking is a bad idea. Ford Foundation employees edited Breakthrough Communities: Sustainability and Justice in the Next American Metropolis. The book I got the Van Jones essay from.  Same involved employees were listed as part of that CA Wisdom Center I already chose to ignore.

Sledgehammer moment caused me to go check to see if Bailey’s book was still in print. The answer? Yes, with its Twelfth Printing listed as 2012. This year. Someone thinks this is still a relevant global vision. For UNESCO’s Education for All globally? For its Decade of Education for Sustainable Development? To promote the Orwellian named, John Dewey inspired, Quality Learning, globally? Only one way to find out. So I bought Bailey’s 1954 book as well as a 1932 book, with a 1960 copyright published in 1972, called From Intellect to Intuition. You see I remembered the kind of emotionally-driven, Arational Minds being sought via education http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/blending-sustainability-and-education-to-gain-arational-nonlinear-minds-and-new-behaviors/ and wanted to see if part of the impetus for rejecting Axemaker Minds was coming out of this Altered Consciousness to fit with Eastern Spirituality emphasis. That would be a huge, emphatic YES!! More on that shortly or in the next post. Remember I am providing those dates above for a reason. Think of World Affairs at those times.

Bailey’s Goal for Education is not the least bit modest. She wants to inculcate a World-view in each person on the planet Earth that “will make possible a planetary civilization by integrating whatever trans-temporal and trans-spatial truths about man and the universe we can extract from all regional cultures in their local times and places.” That was Thomas Berry’s Bioregional Vision too. Also involved with the CA Wisdom Center I ignored.

Bailey was seeking a totalizing World-view or Governing Ideology that guides one through all elements of daily living. Her aspiration, in 1954, was that the World-view taught provide “the kind of overall synthesis that Marxism and neo-Scholasticism provide for their followers [no need then for individual free decision-making], but to get this by the freely chosen cooperative methods that Dewey advocated.”

That would be the Student-Centered, Inquiry Driven Classroom John Dewey wanted with its Quality Learning goal. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/why-quality-learning-may-be-the-last-thing-you-want-for-your-child/ . The kind of classroom and practices the accreditors like AdvancED and consulting companies like Cambridge Education mandate in their reports about Quality. Now. In 2011 and 2012.

That would be the same Quality Learning that is “intuited rather than deduced, felt rather than described, and is immediate to the situation [concrete real world problems in context] rather than removed from it [the forbidden abstract conceptualizations within the privacy of your own mind with your own set of known facts].

Now it is time to pivot to the 1932 From Intellect to Intuition since the sought focus in Quality Learning is feeling and intuition as well. The book is about meditation and “leading man into his heritage as a human being” through educational and psychological practices so that together these two “lead him to the door of the mystical world.” This occurs by training students to use Direct Experience and then turn inwards toward themselves to Reflect upon it. Remember the constancy of this phrase? “The heart and mind become united in their endeavor.” Bailey’s idea is that through “right education,” emotionally-driven, experiential education, (No she did not use the word Hands-On Education but that would be the 21st century version of her idea), the “mind and soul” learn

“to be receptive towards impressions emanating from the mind.” This to Bailey is meditation but to work it requires moving education away from “education of the memory and the cataloguing of world knowledge.” Sound Familiar? Can’t be “the old education with its memory training, its books and lectures and its appropriation of so-called facts.” This is the actual CCSSI implementation model. Cannot be about the teacher transmitting knowledge. That’s a Barrier to a Mind open to Bailey’s New Knowledge. Must be about the New 3 R’s–Relationships, Rigor, and Relevance.

Bailey talks a lot about Right Relations with all of humanity in her books. That was the first tip-off that reminded me of the New 3 R’s. I remembered Willard Daggett in CCSSI training of teachers saying that “Relevance makes Rigor Possible.” I got he meant relevance makes an emotional approach primary. Then I read the following passage in Bailey’s book on creating the Meditative Mind:

“The question may be asked, what is the easiest way to teach oneself to concentrate? . . . one way that may be employed is to utilize what has been called the ‘expulsive power of a new affection.’ To be profoundly interested in some new and intriguing subject, and to have one’s attention focussed on some fresh and dynamic matter will automatically tend to make the mind one-pointed.”

That passage on getting to an inward feeling focus that is not rational provides a good definition of Relevance. But it also makes the arrival of the new C3 Framework, Social Studies Standards, from the previous post, even more important. Making the classroom focus Questions about “societal issues, trends, and events” that the student is interested in is precisely the kind of “new and intriguing” and “fresh and dynamic” matter Bailey wrote about so long ago.

I am just getting started. This turned into quite an illuminating inquiry once I recognized where I had to look. Except my inquiry is not John Dewey’s definition.

Mine is driven by facts and open declarations of intent.

 

 

Political Primer 101: What is the Marxist Theory of the Mind and Why Does It Matter in 2012?

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The Berlin Wall is down. Mao is dead. The Soviet Union is no more although I believe their national anthem is back. Why mention Marx at all? Isn’t it offputting in our 21st century to be bringing back previous hobgoblins that are now irrelevant?

But is isn’t irrelevant. That’s the dangerous myth that makes a stealth assault through taxpayer funded and supported institutions possible. The misunderstanding of our adversaries, or even that we have any, acting through something like education that is supposed to be a Public Good. You may have noticed I will usually make references to Uncle Karl to make the point on what is involved without running the risk that readers will step back. The Bridge Too Far.

I think honestly the misappreciation of what Marxism is and the vital importance of education as a primary cultural weapon has been deliberate. If we had rightly understood that consciousness and mindsets were under attack we would have caught on to what was actually going on in the Reading and Math Wars much sooner. We would be paying attention to the actual implementation documents on federalizing education that impact what must, and what Now Cannot, go on in classrooms.

So let me step back now and frame what is under attack and why. At this point because this theory is so ubiquitous and poorly understood it is all the more dangerous. I think we will need the shorthand-”Oh, that’s just another scheme to impose the Marxist Theory of the Mind without us recognizing it” if we are to be able to successfully combat this Evil. I just went back and capitalized Evil because it cost too many human lives in the 20th century not to deserve a Capital “E” for emphasis.

Plus let’s face it the related Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of Learning are just a mouthful. And really created to obscure the political derivations while obtaining the desired political effects. Squelch individualism. Stomp the rational mind. Hobble the incredible human capacity to create private mental scenarios to weigh possible consequences of various possibilities and then choose to act or not accordingly. In other words, to crash that Axemakers Mind anywhere it might arise before it can happen.

So Marxist Theory of the Mind is accurate and pithy compared to our alternatives. Which would also include John Dewey’s work. But what is it? Well, actually I just told you and have been all summer. I just avoided calling a spade a spade for as long as possible. The Marxist Theory of the Mind is a political subjugation theory. And I am not using the word Subjugation to show off Robin’s Large Vocabulary and Stock of $5 Words. I mean Subjugation in its sense of deliberate permanent altering of the Human Mind and Personality in order to have lasting Control and Unconscious Influence. See? A great vocabulary word actually does take numerous words to really capture its singular meaning.

And that’s why the Marxist Theory of the Mind remains relevant in the 21st Century. We still have politicians and bureaucrats and Crony Businesses seeking economic and political power over the Individual. And Marx may have been a moocher from his parents and friend Engels who never had a real job in his life. And he may have thoroughly misunderstood capitalism and industrialization and who was benefitting and what was unstable. But his Idea that Your thoughts were not your own and merely reflected the Class you were born into painted a Bullseye on Mental Consciousness as a Target for State Manipulation.

He blew that too by the way. Our thoughts are not merely a reflection of our social interactions and our environment. But think of the power if the nature of school and education could be changed to try and make this part of Karl’s dream a reality. That’s the dream that drove John Dewey and Ralph Tyler of the 8 Year Study (I have an interview he gave just before his death) and so many others. It has become the poorly understood essence of the modern education degrees. It is what drives the accreditation agencies worldwide. We are in Deep Peril if we do not understand this.

So how does it manifest itself almost everyday now in what I am reading? It is embedded deeply in the Digital Literacy Initiative from the last post. There was also Tuesday’s Bridging Differences column claiming that the global economic crisis was due to the “insatiable consumption of our natural resources and control of the world’s wealth by the 1 percent.” Here’s a hint. Most of that One Percent live at the intersection of Politically Directed Capital and Politically Connected Individuals. It’s Al Gore and the Green Business Grants directed by the 2009 Stimulus Act to his investments. It’s the leaders of China and other countries. The imposition of the Marxist Theory of the Mind will simply make this state appropriation and direction worse as there will be no one to fight it. The One Percent should not be the Focus. State Crony Capitalism should be.

It is manifested in the insistence that the transmission of knowledge in urban schools  amounts to the imposition of “white middle-class values on their children” to “mold them so that they are compliant and obedient to authority figures.” That’s pretty brazen given the desire to change everyone’s values to a more Communitarian ethos and Mold Everyone through the collection of data about values, attitudes, and beliefs. That was also yesterday. A thoroughly troubling document called “Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners” which turned out to describe manipulation via the classroom of what are being called “Non-cognitive Skills” or Soft Skills. It claims that:

“racial/ethnic and gender differences in school performance can be reduced by focusing on students’ attitudes and behaviors.”

Delightful details on when these remain malleable and subject to interventions. Lots of mentions of creating desired Mindsets and references to Carol Dweck’s psychology work without bothering to mention she is a noted Lev Vygotsky scholar. Little details. It’s not like that report did not have lots of research to back up what it was mandating. Oh wait, actually it admitted there was little proof for the theories but, hey, what’s the use of a government monopoly over children’s minds if you cannot do widespread research on the Theories after they have been forced into classrooms.

What else just this week? There was Tuesday’s release of a report seeking an official rejection of capitalism in the Advanced Computing businesses and the adoption of an Industrial Policy to have the Government pick the winners and losers and blur the line between public and private when it comes to computer hardware and the semiconductor business. Called “The New Global Ecosystem in Advanced Computing: Implications for US Competitiveness and National Security,” it is a detailed plea for collusion among certain of the tech companies, higher ed, and government regulatory power and tax money.

It is also sought by many of the same businesses pushing the Digital Literacy Initiative and the 21st Century Skills global push. The same businesses that push P-Tech Career Pathways for All in high schools. The same businesses insisting that students only need the 4 C’s and Soft Skills in the 21st Century. Creativity (with little subject knowledge), Critical Thinking (to recognize need for Transformation), Communication (Dewey’s theory that minimizes the cognitive element), and finally Collaboration. Because we know Individualism is so 19th Century.

That’s awfully coincidental and self-serving don’t you think? Industrial Policy, Rejection of non-State Directed Capitalism, and Heavy Involvement in the Radical Restructuring of Education Globally? All essentially at the same time? Think there’s a connection? Let’s not even get started on how much of the actual Common Core curriculum and “Measuring” Assessments the Gates Foundation is also simultaneously funding. Which I have seen by the way. Now I appreciate the omnipresence of Environmental Projects. It really is all connected.

As I wrote about here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/oh-good-grief-now-i-need-to-know-what-a-noetic-system-is-because-it-is-under-attack/, change the noetic system and the economic and political systems must change too. Marx knew that and so do many educators. And apparently tech companies now. It’s the American people and ordinary citizens all over the World in the dark about what is happening right now.

I am going to close with what UNESCO wants, and through its allies in politics, business, education, and accreditation, is well on its way to achieving. Just in case you need reminding of how totalitarian these aspirations are. And global. And happening in Reality. This is from a January 11, 2011 Address in London by Irina Bokova that explicitly addressed Two of the “We Should All Emulate Finland” Crowd, Professors Michael Barber (UK) and Michael Fullan (CA). I reread it this week as I was mulling over the UN’s Digital Technology pushes in light of Joel Klein’s remarks about Amplify. I had previously missed these 3 objectives that typify the subjugation going on all over the world and all the sought manipulation in the classroom.

“Responding to climate change also starts in the classroom. Education is the way to shape new ways of thinking and forge new, sustainable behaviour.  These objectives guide UNESCO in leading the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).

Fundamentally, education is about values.”

It sure is now. But Whose?

Using Education to Shut Down Free Choices and then Redefining as Personal Autonomy: Orwell Lives!

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George Orwell that is and the Newspeak he warned about in 1984 where thought is  confused because none of the official terms being used means what is commonly assumed. We have talked about that before in education with terms like Quality Learning or Excellence. But what about when personal autonomy means the choices made after primary education is used to monitor personal behaviors and interactions with others to make sure that a person is putting the needs of the group first? Or that the person is building their self-identity during those crucial adolescent years around being a member of a Group?

You think you see where this is going? Yet more insistence on the primacy of the Common Good? You would be correct Sir. Ten Points in the Bonus Round of Diminishing Personal Freedoms as THE 21st Century Goal for All Learning. Everywhere apparently. This is from the controversial Moral and National Education Project that went live for Hong Kong primary children last month and for the remainder of secondary schoolchildren in September 2013. And before anyone says “That’s the other side of the Globe. It will not impact US or Canadian schoolchildren.” The sources cited are American profs. Ontario profs.

This is a global political coup being mounted through our K-12 schools. At least the Hong Kong parents, students, and politicians knew enough to be outraged. They aptly called it brainwashing but to no avail. We in the US still have comparable obligations being imposed in classrooms but it is hiding behind Positive School Climate mandates and the actual Orwellian definitions of College and Career Ready or Deep Learning Strategies or Higher Order, Level 4, Thinking.

“As far as altruism is concerned, children should be taught to extend their love and sacrifices to their parents and significant others to include acquaintances, neighbors, strangers in one’s country and people in other countries.”

How useful to anyone in power to redefine personal autonomy as the choices of someone AFTER they have been indoctrinated through K-12 education to have such a sense of mandated altruism. Isn’t this all the Kremlin or Mao and every tyrant in history ever wanted? To have educators instill this so-called Universal Love Principle so that young people believe:

“They are expected to sacrifice their personal needs, benefits and even their basic rights for the sake of the stability and prosperity of the country. Betraying one’s country is not only immoral but also evil and sinful.”

Betraying one’s country is selling state secrets, not refusing to defer to the majority consensus! Seriously. Moral education is being defined as teaching that the “majority’s opinion and interests precede individual’s opinions and interests.” Now won’t this come in handy with the promotion of Systems Thinking and telling each student they are merely a part of the much broader Whole?

US Constitution be damned if the Colleges of Education decide to remove the primacy of the individual emotionally. Through their monopoly over what happens in the Classroom. And if you think again this is Hong Kong, search out Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development/Universal Principle and see how influential it is in teacher education for the classroom. Or here, about two weeks ago, Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory as the basis for Child Development activities in Pennsylvania classrooms. http://imaginepennsylvania.com/2012/10/expanding-views-of-child-development-urie-bronfenbrenner/

So yes I am lifting these quotes from Hing-keung Ma’s work but she in turn is quoting the Western education profs and feminist profs like Carol Gilligan and we have the same names for the same interpersonal and mandated social altruism as we are seeing in the West. The highest stage of Ma’s world social altruism in preparation for a desired sense of world citizenship is called Global Perspectives. That just happens to be the name of the  company with its affective inventory (Global Perspectives Inventory) of desired personal traits in college students created to implement the radical new vision for US colleges and universities.http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/college-ready-as-a-goal-of-k-12-is-not-helpful-if-first-you-gut-the-historic-purpose-of-college/

The way to foster world citizenship then is using the concept of moral education to push these ideas of universal love and universal justice on schoolchildren. What a dream for parasitical UN bureaucrats and their tax free salaries to have students all over the West being taught these ideas as Systems Thinking and Education for Wellbeing as we saw in this post on what Australia is mandating with US advisors.  http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-education-transforms-values-and-feelings-and-beliefs-to-control-behaviors-are-we-free/  In fact the advisors are from the same US college campus where that Global Perspectives Inventory was created. What are the odds?

So self-actualization in this Orwellian world of Newspeak becomes a declared aim “at the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” And woe be us once public employment plus beneficiaries crosses that 51% threshold to be a majority where education says self-actualization means:

“if there is a conflict of interest between an individual and the majority, the individual should be prepared to sacrifice himself/herself for the majority.”

Well this is certainly yet another way to fracture the concept of the Unitary Self as the Regional Equity and Environmental Justice advocates seek.  http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/distributive-justice-is-not-enough-we-must-break-the-illusion-of-the-unitary-self/ Seriously long term regular readers are thinking. What is going on? This is all clearly related. And global. And a stealth implementation of what are clearly collectivist political and economic theories. Could you please give us a date you say? Somewhere in particular to help us really frame what we are dealing with here?

Well, I have quite a few illuminating choices to answer that one but this week’s Tiptoe through the Footnotes Journey yielded yet another Glittering Gem of an Epiphany. This one is from 1968–an important year because we are at the height of the Cold War and the beginning of the student riots that changed American culture and education so much.

The book, The Learning Society, is by a man, Robert M. Hutchins, who was once the President of the University of Chicago in the 30s and 40s. We have talked before about Ralph Tyler and his Eight Year Study which laid out a way to implement the progressive vision for education originated by John Dewey http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-standardsoutcomesobjectives-what-is-the-real-common-core/ . Hutchins was a close friend and mentor to Ralph Tyler in addition to being his boss. It was Hutchins who put Tyler in the chair positions at Chicago where the entire concept of Behavioral Sciences and Systems Thinking originated. So when one of the scheming Systems Thinkers cited the book, I thought it was time to read it.

Hutchins lays out a new vision for global education that will be applicable to all students–to set their minds free. Education that cultivates the Common Good. What Hutchins called an “education designed to help people become human” by “connecting man with man.” An education that is not about the transmission of information since “why should data be memorized if they can be instantly available by pressing a button?” Education that promotes a “deep understanding” of issues and questions where “there is more than one answer or no answer at all.”

Sound familiar? An education that “introduces all men to the dialogue about the common good of their own country and the world community.” Now Hutchins wanted this education for new values centered around the concept of Humanity to be pushed everywhere. To use education to change the culture to “one in which living wisely and agreeably and well is the object.” Communist China and the Soviet Union and Kuwait and India and Japan and Africa and the US. But these countries differ drastically in the level of influence their students and citizens have over government actions. Or refusals to act.

What we are seeing in 2012 is just a continuation of this previous attempt to snuff out personal liberty and individualism everywhere on this globe where these ideas have ever flourished. And especially in those countries where they are cherished. So in the US we get our assault on freedom wearing Orwellian masks and tucked into little read but still binding regulations. But the assault is no less real.

And the draw bridge is down. And the Armed Guard went into town to fetch some mead for a planned banquet. And the moat has been drained to allow for easy to access organic gardening.

We are wide open and largely unsuspecting. And it is coming.

 

If Standards=Outcomes=Objectives, What is the Real Common Core?

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Have you ever thought about the fact the schools are the one social institution that almost everyone of our future voters and workers passes through? Usually for years at a time. Well you should for a minute because every person who aspires to major social or political or economic change has known it and relied on it. And said so repeatedly. And if the designers of what became a controversial policy or practice were open enough initially to tell us why, we should listen. Tomorrow we will focus on why. Today we will focus on the what. The fundamentals of the proposed changes to the schools and why we get name changes from decade to decade, but no real change in the purpose or function of the education establishment’s idea of reform.

To understand Common Core’s reality and not just the sound bytes of its sales/PR campaign, we have to go back to the 1930s and something called the 8 Year Study. OK– I heard that skeptical reader out there who is quite sure I must be stretching it to go for a damning comparison. I am using a copy of the report that was republished and updated by Maine educators in April 2000. Does that sound stale? It looks to me like it was getting ready for implementation under the last round of federal education reform-Goals 2000. You want more up to date? Something that ties directly to our current version of Common Core and how it is really going to be implemented? Would the Fall 2009 AERA Curriculum Studies Newsletter do? Still the template. Still relevant. Right now.

My favorite part is recognizing that what the 8 Year Study and our version of Common Core are actually rejecting is what we are being led to believe we are getting. Does this sound familiar?

“Until recent years learning in school has been thought of as an intellectual process of acquiring certain skills and of mastering prescribed subject matter. It has been assumed that physical and emotional reactions are not involved in the learning process, but if they are, they are not very important.”

So in the name of national consistent content standards out goes school as an intellectual process. Prescribed subject matter. Also known as Content and Knowledge. The best that has been thought and said by the best minds over the centuries. The cultural foundation of the world we have and the worlds that ended tragically. All gone. But we at least get a newfound emphasis on the physical and emotional. That’s convenient isn’t it? What a useful way to make learning accessible to all. Except learning has a new meaning. It now means changing beliefs, feelings, values, and behaviors. No they didn’t give us a Glossary of what these terms actually are now to mean. I guess that’s what I am here for.

And the new concept of learning from the 8 Year Study? Coming to a school and classroom near you soon via Common Core and NCLB state waivers and Race to the Top grants and the current avalanche of publicity over bullying and a few other methods we will be talking about this summer? Those are my snarks in parentheses.

“The newer concept of learning holds that a human being develops through doing those things (Projects! Tasks! Authentic Problem Solving!) which have meaning to him; (Relevant!; Real World!) that the doing involves the whole person in all aspects of his being; (Engaging!) and that growth takes place as each experience leads to greater understanding and more intelligent reaction to new situations.” (Rigor! Higher Order Thinking!)

Well that will certainly not be driving dynamic job growth in the 21st Century or genuine innovation which always requires deep knowledge of the type being soundly, if quietly, rejected. We keep getting name changes of goals and purposes to obscure the changed nature of school from the transmission of knowledge and skills to a place that stimulates the “whole being” so each student has “opportunities for the full exercise of his physical, intellectual (don’t get excited, they mean practical and everyday uses),emotional, and spiritual powers as he strives to achieve recognition and a place of usefulness and honor in adult society.”

Ralph Tyler came up with the obscuring term Objectives in the 1930s as well as “assessment” to try to hide just how very little graduates of such schools would actually know. Outcomes replaced it in the 80s and 90s. Parents and taxpayers of course wanted good outcomes and solid academic results. Nobody told them the entire nature of the education game and purpose had been transformed. All that money wasted because no one would tell the public what was really going on. The inevitably poor academic results, since that was no longer the actual purpose or goal in the schools and districts adopting this vision, created the need for a name change. Standards, high would be nice for a change, replaced outcomes with no change in actual goals or focus.

If you listen carefully to the advocates of Common Core you will hear them frequently use outcomes, objectives, and standards interchangeably. Sometimes skills and competencies as well. The things a student is to believe. How each student should feel. What each student should value. How each student is to behave as a matter of habit.

That’s the Common Core. And tomorrow I will tell you why using the designers actual quotes. From a 21st Century source.