The philosopher Thomas Nagel thinks the materialist scientific worldview cannot explain consciousness. Is he right? Image: perpetualplum

Thomas Nagel is not crazy!

If we’re to believe science, we’re made of organs and cells. These cells are made up of organic matter. Organic matter is made up chemicals. This goes all the way down to strange entities like quarks and Higgs bosons. We’re also conscious, thinking things. You’re reading these words and making sense of them. We have the capacity to reason abstractly and grapple with various desires and values. It is the fact that we’re conscious and rational that led us to believe in things like Higgs bosons in the first place.

But what if science is fundamentally incapable of explaining our own existence as thinking things? What if it proves impossible to fit human beings neatly into the world of subatomic particles and laws of motion that science describes? In Mind and Cosmos(Oxford University Press), the prominent philosopher Thomas Nagel’s latest book, he argues that science alone will never be able to explain a reality that includes human beings. What is needed is a new way of looking at and explaining reality; one which makes mind and value as fundamental as atoms and evolution.

For most philosophers, and many people in general, this is a radical departure from the way we understand things. Nagel, according to his critics, has completely lost it. Linking to one particularly damning review in The Nation, Steven Pinker tweeted, “What has gotten into Thomas Nagel? Two philosophers expose the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker.”

Nagel’s pessimism about science’s ability to explain things like consciousness has a long history. In his seminal 1974 essay “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?”, he argues that even if you knew every single physical fact about someone, you’d still have no idea what it is like to be them. I could know everything there is to know about perception, but I’ll never know what it feels like to be colour-blind, save some horrible accident. Similarly no matter how much we know about bats’ ability to use echolocation we can never really know what it is like to be a bat flying about in the dark, navigating with reverberating sound waves. So, given that we are all conscious beings, it seems science is missing out on something quite fundamental. There are facts, or parts of reality, it leaves behind.

Nagel’s argument has been criticised in a variety of ways. Philosophers like Daniel Dennett or Paul Churchland argue that Nagel’s whole approach is flawed. We are of course conscious, but consciousness is a phenomenon that can eventually be explained by science the same way heat and colour are. The residual “what-its-like-ness” is just an outdated term with no real meaning, rather like obsolete scientific theories about the “ether” or “phlogiston.”

But this line of attack is hard to accept. To us it really does feel as if there is something “it-is-like” to be conscious. Besides their strange account of consciousness, Nagel’s opponents also face the classic problem of how something physical like a brain can produce something like a mind. Take perception: photons bounce off objects and hit the eye, cones and rods translate this into a chemical reaction, this reaction moves into the neurons in our brain, some more reactions take place and then…you see something. Everything up until seeing something is subject to scientific laws, but, somewhere between neurons and experience, scientific explanation ends. There is no fact of the matter about how you see a chair as opposed to how I see it, or a colour-blind person sees it. The same goes for desires or emotions. We can look at all the pieces leading up to experience under a microscope, but there’s no way to look at your experience itself or subject it to proper scientific scrutiny.

Of course philosophers sympathetic to science have many ways to make this seem like a non-problem. But in the end Nagel argues that simply “the mind-body problem is difficult enough that we should be suspicious of attempts to solve it with the concepts and methods developed to account for very different kinds of things.” And I think many of us are sympathetic to this line of reasoning.

Nagel, however, goes much further, which is what makes Mind and Cosmos interesting. Even if we agree with him that consciousness presents a serious problem for the idea that science can explain all of reality, Nagel’s next move is more controversial. He asks what reason there can be for the existence of Consciousness.

He rules out intelligent design and God, and even evolution. Nagel concludes, in a vein similar to the German idealist philosophers of the late 18^th and early 19^th century, that the nature of reality is such that there is a natural progression towards consciousness.

By this stage Nagel’s argument might have begun to appear absurd. However, he begins with modest considerations. It seems reasonable to suppose that for every truth there must be an explanation for why it is the case, often called “the principle of sufficient reason.” One may be tempted to deny this. There may be some inexplicable truths. But then one is faced with justifying why no explanation is needed. Why not just accept the brute fact that objects fall rather than bothering with Newtonian physics? There may be inexplicable facts deep in the fabric of reality, but most of them need explanation. One such fact that needs explaining is that there are conscious beings.

What sort of explanations are there for human consciousness? One is that there is some God or supernatural entity out there who endowed us with consciousness. But this explanation comes with its own vast set of problems. What is the explanation for God’s existence? Is he a part of nature? If not how can he cause things? Is he omnipotent? Can he create a boulder so big he can’t move it, and so on.

Another explanation looks to the theory of evolution. Darwin’s account of evolution, broadly speaking, says that animals’ traits will largely be determined by the environment they have existed in—namely the traits that allow one organism to survive and reproduce rather than another. Thicker furs in colder climates and sharper teeth for carnivores are good examples of adaptive traits. Consciousness could be like teeth or fur; a trait that allowed our ancestors to survive and reproduce. However, the principle of sufficient reason resurfaces. What does being conscious add, in terms of pure adaptability, over and above having really good adaptive behavioral patters? Why aren’t we unconscious primates who unreflectively go about our business?

Seeing these problems Nagel concludes that the Darwinian answer is irreparably flawed. Ruling out divine intervention or design, evolution, and inexplicability, what reason is there left to explain consciousness? The only remaining answer, Nagel argues, is that on a fundamental level there is an end towards which the cosmos is naturally inclined: a natural teleology. Part of this natural teleology is a tendency for there to be creatures that are conscious. The universe, in a way of speaking, wants to become conscious. This conclusion may look no less strange or absurd than when I first introduced it, but it is at least clear that Nagel did not pluck it out of thin air. And even if we do not agree with his conclusion, the route he takes to arrive there raises many serious questions for philosophical naturalism (the theory that science exhaustively explains the universe).

I have overlooked two significant aspects of Nagel’s book. In addition to all the problems surrounding consciousness, Nagel argues that things like the laws of mathematics and moral values are real (as real, that is, as cars and cats and chairs) and that they present even more problems for science. It is harder to explain these chapters largely because they followed less travelled paths of inquiry. Often Nagel’s argument rests on the assumption that it is absurd to deny the objective reality, or mind-independence, of certain basic moral values (that extreme and deliberate cruelty to children is wrong, for instance) or the laws of logic. Whether this is convincing or not, depends on what you think is absurd and what is explainable. Regardless, this gives a sense of the framework of Nagel’s argument and his general approach.

As often happens when a philosopher deviates from scientific orthodoxy, Nagel’s book has been thoroughly denounced. Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg, in their highly critical review, led the charge, asking, “Are we really supposed to abandon a massively successful scientific research program because Nagel finds some scientific claims hard to square with what he thinks is obvious?” Elliott Sober, in the Boston Review, wrote “[Nagel] argues that evolutionary biology is fundamentally flawed and that physics also needs to be rethought—that we need a new way to do science.” Nonetheless, says Sober, “Nagel acknowledges that he has no teleological theory of his own to offer. His job, as he sees it, is to point to a need; creative scientists, he hopes, will do the heavy lifting.”

Now to my knowledge at no point in Mind and Cosmos (or elsewhere) does Nagel suggest that scientists put down their microscopes, shut down their particle accelerators, and abandon their research programmes. In fact he explicitly states that “For all I know, most practicing scientists may have no opinion about the overarching cosmological questions…their detailed research and substantive findings do not in general depend on or imply [materialist reductionism] or any other answer to such questions.”

What Nagel does suggest is that philosophers, or scientists who wish to provide philosophical insight look at the relationship between mind and nature in a different way. In particular, philosophers should stop assuming that reality will one day be exhaustively explained by science, and start trying to incorporate other methods of explanation into our worldview.

In response, philosophers like Weisberg and Leiter and Sober tend to dig their heels in, reiterate the pragmatic values of science, and conclude that these values are sufficient to justify philosophical naturalism. But this is not a satisfactory counterargument. Nagel and most critics of naturalism agree that our best methodology for predicting and manipulating natural phenomena is science. But why suppose that reality is exhaustively described by science in its current form? There are plenty of things that aren’t obviously describable in scientific terms which are part of reality: mathematics, logic, language, history, and, here we go again, consciousness. It is never going to be possible to put these under a microscope.

There is also no obvious reason why the scientific method (granting that there is a coherent singular scientific method and content, which is itself dubious) warrants one picture of reality over another. A scientist might share Nagel’s philosophical perspective, but this won’t make any difference in the lab. There s/he will get along just fine with scientists who hold the more common metaphysical / naturalism metaphysical viewpoint. They’ll both have the same conditions for falsification and crafting a hypothesis and they’ll both read the same studies and keep the same standards for accuracy. In fact it’s hard to see if they’d ever know each other’s respective worldviews.

Of course Weisberg, Leiter, Sober, and others have answers to these criticisms. These debates are not new, and they’ve generated mountains of books and papers in the philosophy of science, mind, metaphysics, and epistemology. Regardless, one of the motivating factors behind Nagel’s book, one largely glossed over by his critics so far, is that even with the extraordinary success of science, there is no obvious way it could account for things like consciousness, rationality, or moral values. We can disagree with Nagel that those things need to be part of our picture of reality.  We can disagree with Nagel that there must be one coherent way of describing reality. We can even disagree with Nagel that there is an appearance-reality distinction. But we can’t keep gesturing to science’s great pragmatic value as a way of papering over its incomplete metaphysics.

Mind and Cosmos is ambitious in scope, philosophically creative, decently written, and, most importantly, short. This makes it more enjoyable and readable than most philosophy titles out there, which are getting worryingly larger in volume and narrower in scope. Nagel’s arguments against naturalism as an account of reality are powerful and demand close consideration, even if his positive arguments for a Natural Teleology end up looking every bit as intuitively implausible as a description of reality that leaves out consciousness.

Perhaps we need something over and above the physical facts to explain consciousness in Nagel’s scheme.

Resources:

Thomas Nagel is not crazy

Principle of least action

Mind and Cosmos

Principles of Nature: the principle of least action

Sober on Nagel’s “Mind and Cosmos”

Evolutionary Biology – Scientific American

Materialist Reductionism

Arguments for the existence of God

Mountain Mama Programs

Share the wonders of Mountain Mamas together! As part of our family programs, you and your family can milk a goat, collect eggs from our chickens, and explore our organic gardens and mountain wildlands. You may learn about native plants and ecology on our trails, make nature crafts and recycled material art, cook with foods from our garden, card and spin wool from our sheep, explore our nature hikes and more!  Under the guidance of our experienced teachers, the possibilities are endless. 

The curriculum follows an experiential learning model. Through hands-on learning, teamwork and physical activity, the children develop a stronger sense of self, respect for the natural environment, and are given tools with which to make decisions and choices about healthy food and healthy living. The theme of food is used as the universal springboard to teach about an appreciation for the people who grow and raise the food, the soil in which it is grown, the animals that provide food, and the importance of composting and recycling. When children make a sensory, positive connection with the natural environment and healthy food, the experience transforms their general approach to the outdoors, nutrition, health, and themselves.

HARVEST CELEBRATION!

Celebrate the season of bounty in the style of an old time county fair! Mtn. Mamas annual Harvest Celebration offers fun, seasonally inspired crafts and activities like scarecrow building, wool spinning, baking and making cheese and butter, among others. You will have the chance to meet our rescued farm animals, milk goats and feed the chickens and ducks. Learn about our native mountain plants on a guided wild lands hike or relax in our beautiful community garden enjoying great local music and delicious local and organic cuisine. It’s a terrific day for the whole family!

Fee:  $25/person in advance, $30 at the gate; $80 for a family of 4 or more in advance, $95 for a family of 4 or more at the gate; age 2 and under free. No one turned away for lack of funds. Volunteers aged 14 and older are always needed!

FAMILY FARM DAYS

Halloween Family Farm Day  
Mtn. Mamas will reveal some special tricks and treats! We might make Halloween costumes from recycled materials, take a spooky tour of the garden, watch some wriggly composting worms and bake delicious treats! Don’t forget to wear your costume!

Give Thanks to Food Family Farm Day  
10:00am – 2:00pm on Saturday, November

We celebrate food and where it comes from on this special family day! Take a journey through the full cycle of seed to meal, and learn about food traditions from around the world. We will fire up the horno oven and bake some bread to enjoy with our homemade butter!

Two additional Family Farm Days will be scheduled by early July. Check back then!

All programs are from 10:00am to 2:00pm

Fee: $30/person; $95 for a family of 4 or more; age 2 and under free.

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Mountain Mamas, sponsored by Freedom Wings Youth Ranch and Rescue.

Please make your tax deductable contributions to:

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This can’t be coincidence. Blog reports in the last two weeks indicate that public schools in different states have assigned students to identify their political affiliation by answering questions about policy issues (mostly social-policy issues).

Parents of a sixth grade student at the Milam Elementary School in Tupelo, Mississippi were shocked when their daughter brought home a political beliefs worksheet that teachers asked students to fill out.

The in-class assignment entitled “Are you a Democrat or Republican?” was posted to the “Stop Common Core in Mississippi” Facebook page with a message alleging that the young female student was told not to talk about or take the assignment outside of class, although multiple parents later refuted the claim.

Regardless, the assignment, written for 11-year-old children, asks students what their beliefs were on such issues as abortion, gun control and gay marriage, before having them tally up their “D” and “R” answers to determine which establishment party they belonged to.

The worksheet, which has a clear bias towards more government control, goes on to frame such topics as healthcare as supporting care for everyone including the poor if you are a Democrat, and essentially denying care to those who cannot afford it if you are a Republican. The paper gives no historical context of the incredible failures of government run healthcare, the millions currently losing their health insurance due to government intervention, or the government’s direct relation to dwindling quality, skyrocketing costs and loss of charity care as the push for government monopoly by both parties’ leadership continues.

The section regarding beliefs on military spending attempts to paint the Democratic party as more anti-war and pro-veteran with Republicans supporting more military intervention and bare minimum aid for those who served. Despite the so called anti-war left becoming nearly non-existent as President Obama expands his drone program and foreign entanglements, the reality of the Republican and Democrat leadership’s continued support of radical jihadists, while ignoring our veterans’ perils at home, is unsurprisingly absent.

Many parents not only found the assignment highly inappropriate, but question if the assignment was an attempt to gauge families’ political affiliations given the fact that many sixth graders would likely repeat what they heard at home, not having a true personal understanding of the listed topics. The assignment also clearly attempts to push children into the mindset that there are only two political parties and two mainline opinions to hold on any important topic.

Just last month, 12-year-old students in Colorado were given a similar assignment as well. A quiz entitled “Righty or Lefty?” had near-identical questions, clearly leading children towards the assumption that government is the answer to all issues facing the country.

In similar fashion, parents in Arkansas were shocked to learn that their sixth grade students were being asked to revise the “outdated” Bill of Rights after an assignment informed them that the U.S. government decided that it “may not remain in its current form any longer.”

The exercise has been administered in slightly different ways. In Illinois, it was sent home with high school students in a class on “U.S. Government.” (H/t: Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media.) In addition to giving his own answers, each student was to ask “someone 40 years old or older” to provide responses to the questions. Dubbed a “Political Spectrum Survey,” the questionnaire (sample photos at the link) identified whether responses were “liberal” or “conservative.”

Other outrages, such as fourth grade students in Illinois being forced to read a biography of the president that labels all white voters as inherently racist, have contributed to the rise in homeschooling as parents reject the MSNBC talking point that all children belong to the “collective” and not their parents. ( i.e Communitarianism)

Resources:

Know Your Rights: A Guide for Public School Students

Sixth Graders Polled On Gay Marriage, Abortion And Gun Control

Schools asking parents, students to declare political affiliation

‘Common Core‘ For Private and Homeschools | lisaleaks

Education Without Representation | lisaleaks

Common Core Curriculum and Agenda 21 | lisaleaks

RALEIGH: Educators speak out on abortion curriculum bill

Communitarianism? | lisaleaks

School interrogates seventh graders over their political views

Two Moms Against Common Core | Right Reason

KILLOLOGY, is the study of the psychological and physiological effects of killing and combat on the human psyche.The scholarly study of the destructive act, just as sexology is the scholarly study of the procreative act. In particular, killology focuses on the reactions of healthy people in killing circumstances (such as police and military in combat) and the factors that enable and restrain killing in these situations. This field of study was pioneered by  Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, in his book, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.

The soldier’s choice

Grossman claims in his book On Killing that a soldier is faced with four options once they have entered into combat.^[1] These are:

1. Fight: as the name implies this is the standard that defines the soldiers role as actively trying to defeat the enemy by use of their training.
2. Flight: this option involves the combatant fleeing the engagement.
3. Posture: This action involves the soldier falsely showing active participation in combat. In actuality they are not being effective in deterring the enemy from success. This is a major point of concern for commanders as it is difficult to tell the difference between a soldier posturing or fighting.
4. Submit: Submission to the enemy during an engagement is a direct act of surrender. In the animal kingdom, this is used by lesser combatants to prevent them from being injured after they can ascertain the triviality of their battle.

In traditional psychology most species are only warranted the flight or fight options, but this is a narrow minded view of what can be going on. Humans especially can be more complex than other animals. With Grossman’s addition of Posture and Submit, a much larger scope of emotions can be analyzed.

The problem of non or miss-firing soldiers

SLA Marshall did a study on the firing rates of soldiers in World War II. He found that the ratio of rounds fired vs hits was low; he also noted that very few soldiers were aiming to hit their targets.^[2] This was a major problem for the US government and allies during World War II. New training implements were developed and hit rates improved. The major concepts changed were minor, but effective. First, instead of shooting at targets shaped as bulls eyes, the United States Army switched to targets with a silhouette that mimics an average human. Training also switched from a 300 yard slow fire to a rapid fire at different time and distances intervals from 20 to 300 yards. With these two things hitting targets became a reaction that was almost automatic. A targets pops up and you engage as fast as possible to score the most points. This time constraint caused the thought processes in shooting to be shortened enough to prevent soldiers from having the ability to think completely about the action they are carrying out.

It should be noted that some authors have discredited SLA Marshall’s book, stating that the book may be more of an idea of what was occurring and not a scientific study of what was happening.

Another important factor that increased fire and hit rates is the development of camaraderie in training. Soldiers are taught that their actions do not only help or harm themselves but the whole unit.^[3] This recurring theme in recollections collected from war veterans is the idea that they were not fighting for themselves at the time but more concerned for the people to their left and right. This ideology is ancient and was recorded by Sun Tzu in his book The Art of War “If those who are sent to draw water begin by drinking themselves, the army is suffering from thirst.”^[4]

Increase in PTSD since World War II

Some research has been done to say that the increase of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the military is caused by the increase of firing rates.^[1] This brings up the classic debate of correlation vs causation. Many believe that other factors have been influencing PTSD such as decompression time after conflicts, and the lack of moral sovereignty in engagements.^[1]

World War II and Vietnam

Vietnam is viewed by some as less popular war than World War II. Many people who were sent to fight there thought that there was no reason for the engagement and did not feel a moral obligation to fight. In World War II many felt that they were stopping an evil empire from overtaking the globe. This helped the World War II troops’ mettle to be steadfast.

Another problem with PTSD rates after World War II is the fact that there is far less decompression time for the soldiers.^[1] During World War II the main way back home was on a boat trip that took weeks. This time was spent with others who had had similar experiences and could understand the problems faced by others.^[1] During Vietnam soldiers were sent via draft to one year rotations by plane. When you arrived to your unit it was usually by yourself and you were shunned. This shunning was a result of the senior members being afraid to befriend someone who had a much higher chance of being killed than the experienced combatants. Once your time in country was over you were once again sent back home by yourself. There may have been other veterans with you but they were from a plethora of other units and you did not know them well enough to share the hardships you had seen.

Finally one of the worst displays of environmental stressors was once you made it back home you were demonized by the public and discarded as a human being. Compare that to the treatment World War II veterans received when they came home from the European Theatre or the Pacific Theatre. Parades were thrown, everyone thanking the soldiers, even the invention of V for Victory was made to quickly show military members support. That symbol was changed into the Peace sign and used to show disapproval of the war in Vietnam just a few years later. These things among many others caused Vietnam to have the highest post war depression, suicide, and PTSD rates. To this day many are only now getting the counseling that they need to overcome the mental problems brought upon them from their service in Vietnam.^[1]

Modern engagements

In engagements in the modern era such as Desert Shield and Desert Storm through Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom there is still a problem with a lack of decompression time. The training has improved so you train and deploy with the people you will be fighting with.^[5] But many times when you reach home you are given time off, and if one is in a reserve unit you most likely go back to work and only see your brothers in arms once a month. This lack of time to debrief and decompress can cause a feeling of isolation that only worsens the effects of PTSD. Grossman states in his book that everyone who experiences combat comes back with PTSD, the only question is to what extent their mind and psyche are damaged and how they cope with it.

Claims

Grossman’s theory, based on the World War II research of S.L.A. Marshall, is that most of the population deeply resists killing another human. While Marshall’s work has been shown to be unsystematic, his findings have been corroborated by many later studies.

As a result of Marshall’s work, modern military training was modified to attempt to override this instinct, by:

• using man-shaped targets instead of bullseye targets in marksmanship practice
• practicing and drilling how soldiers would actually fight
• dispersing responsibility for the killing throughout the group
• displacing responsibility for the killing onto an authority figure, i.e., the commanding officer and the military hierarchy (See the Milgram experiment)

By the time of the United States involvement in the Vietnam War, says Grossman, 90% of U.S. soldiers would fire their weapons at other people.

He also says the act of killing is psychologically traumatic for the killer, even more so than constant danger or witnessing the death of others.

Grossman further argues that violence in television, movies and video games contributes to real-life violence by a similar process of training and desensitization.

In On Combat (Grossman’s sequel to On Killing, based on ten years of additional research and interviews) he addresses the psychology and physiology of human aggression.

Grossman’s Warrior Science Group consultants are human behavior studies specialists with credentials in psychology, educational psychology, training, military history, and modern warfare. Each project is unique, and each project is customized to meet the needs of the client. Col. David Grossman, Director, personally contributes to and supervises all projects.

Warrior Science Group examines how culture and society change when one human being kills another. The lives of individuals and families in our society can be literally transformed and the world can become a safer place through education about the causes and impacts of violent behavior.

Resources:

Killology

Warrior Science Group

Killology

Related articles

• The Military, Killing and Peace (leazengage.wordpress.com)
• Paradise Lost: Opening The Gates Of Hell Soldiers And Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – UPDATED (mmaynard119.wordpress.com)

In countries which are not harassed by struggles between various linguistic groups public education can work if it is limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic. With bright children it is even possible to add elementary notions of geometry, the natural sciences, and the valid laws of the country. But as soon as one wants to go farther, serious difficulties appear.

‘Teaching at the elementary level necessarily turns into indoctrination. It is not feasible to represent to adolescents all the aspects of a problem and to let them choose between dissenting views.’ It is no less impossible to find teachers who could hand down opinions of which they themselves disapprove in such a way as to satisfy those who hold these opinions. The party that operates the schools is in a position to propagandize its tenets and to disparage those of other parties.

In the field of religious education the nineteenth-century liberals solved this problem by the separation of state and church. In liberal countries religion is no longer taught in public schools. But the parents are free to send their children into denominational schools supported by religious communities.

However, the problem does not refer only to the teaching of religion and of certain theories of the natural sciences at variance with the Bible. It concerns even more the teaching of history from the impact of nationalism and chauvinism. But few people realize that the problem of impartiality and objectivity is no less present in dealing with the domestic aspects of history. The teacher’s or the textbook author’s own social philosophy colors the narrative. The more the treatment must be simplified and condensed in order to be comprehensible to the immature minds of children and adolescents, the worse are the effects.

As the Marxians and the interventionists see it, the teaching of history in the schools is tainted by the endorsement of the ideas of classical liberalism. They want to substitute their own interpretation of history for the “bourgeois” interpretation. In Marxian opinion the English Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution, the great French Revolution, and the nineteenth-century revolutionary movements in continental Europe were bourgeois movements. They resulted in the defeat of feudalism and in the establishment of bourgeois supremacy. The proletarian masses were not emancipated; they merely passed from the class rule of the aristocracy to the class rule of the capitalist exploiters.

To free the working man, the abolition of the capitalist mode of production is required. This, contend the interventionists, should be brought about by Sozialpolitik or the New Deal. The Orthodox Marxisms, on the other hand, assert that only the violent overthrow of the bourgeois system of government could effectively emancipate the proletarians.

It is impossible to deal with any chapter of history without taking a definite stand on these controversial issues and the implied economic doctrines. The textbooks and the teachers cannot adopt a lofty neutrality with regard to the postulate that the “Unfinished Revolution” needs to be completed by the communist revolution. Every statement concerning events of the last three hundred years involves a definite judgment on these controversies. One cannot avoid choosing between the philosophy of The Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address and that of the Communist Manifesto. The challenge is there, and it is useless to bury one’s head in the sand.

On the high school level and even on the college level the handing down of historical and economic knowledge is virtually indoctrination. The greater part of the students are certainly not mature enough to form their own opinion on the ground of a critical examination of their teachers’ representation of the subject.

If public education were more efficient than it really is, the political parties would urgently aim at the domination of the school system in order to determine the mode in which these subjects are to be taught. However, general education plays only a minor role in the formation of the political, social, and economic ideas of the rising generation. The impact of the press, the radio, and environmental conditions is much more powerful than that of teachers and textbooks. The propaganda of the churches, the political parties, and the pressure groups outstrips the influence of the schools, whatever they may teach. What is learned in school is often very soon forgotten and cannot carry on against the continuous hammering of the social milieu in which a man moves…

Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man’s human existence.

To mention this fact is not to indulge in the often derided weakness of specialists who overate the importance of their own branch of knowledge. Not the economists, but all the people today assign this eminent place to economics.

All present-day political issues concern problems commonly called economic. All arguments advanced in contemporary discussion of social and public affairs deal with fundamental matters of Economics and Praxeology.

Everybody’s mind is preoccupied with economic doctrines. Philosophers and theologians seem to be more interested in economic problems than in those problems which earlier generations considered the subject matter of philosophy and theology. Novels and plays today treat all things human–including sex relations–from the angle of economic doctrines. Everybody thinks of economics whether he is aware of it or not. In joining a political party and in casting his ballot, the citizen implicitly takes a stand upon the Essentials of Economic Theory.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries religion was the main issue in European political controversies. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe as well as in America the paramount question was representative government versus Royal absolutism. Today it is the market economy versus socialism. This is, of course, a problem the solution of which depends entirely on economic analysis. Recourse to empty slogans or to the mysticism of Dialectical Materialism is of no avail.

There is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a self-appointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon “experts” and uncritical acceptance of popular catchwords and prejudices is tantamount to the abandonment of self-determination and to yielding to other people’s domination. As conditions are today, nothing can be more important to every intelligent man than economics. His own fate and that of his progeny is at stake.

Very few are capable of contributing any consequential idea to the body of economic thought. But all reasonable men and women are called upon to familiarize themselves with the teachings of economics. This is, in our age, the primary civic duty.

Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that economics cannot remain an esoteric branch of knowledge accessible only to small groups of scholars and specialists. Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.

Resources

• New Deal – Franklin D. Roosevelt – American Heritage Center, Inc.

• To Understand Public Policy, First Understand Markets

• INTRODUCTION: Economics and Praxeology

• Praxeology – Early Warning Report

• Dialectical Materialism

• Education Without Representation | lisaleaks

• Communitarianism – Final Synthesis In Hegelian Dialectic | Lisa …

• Common Core Curriculum and Agenda 21 | lisaleaks

• Imperialism, Nationalism, Chauvinism – jstor

• hyperborea: The Threat of Nationalist Chauvinism

• Agni Yoga Talks – NATIONALISM AND CHAUVINISM

• The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in …

• The Unfinished Revolution – Oxford University Press

• How to Understand Slavery and the American Founding

• The Constitution and Slavery – Constitutional Rights Foundation

• Constitution vs Communist Manifesto

• The Communist Manifesto, The Declaration of Independence

Related articles

• Ludwig von Mises on Mathematical Economics (economicpolicyjournal.com)
• Misconceptions about (Marxian) Socialism (debatepolitics.com)
• Quick Quote: Ludwig von Mises on Labor Economics (philosophyandeducation3125.wordpress.com)
• Fascism Is a Current Political and Economic System (fromthetrenchesworldreport.com)

The art of education for life

Some parents are not convinced of the merits of either the mainstream school system or the independent sector.

They are looking for something different that will engage their children’s creativity as well as academic abilities.

An alternative can be found in a small group of schools with radically different approaches to mainstream education. Parents who are weary of a constant emphasis on IT skills and exam results may choose to look more closely at these options.

Perhaps the most familiar name in this category is Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher, playwright and artist, who founded his first school in 1919 for children of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory workers. He developed a spiritual movement called Anthroposophy, which works on the idea that children’s creative, spiritual and moral dimensions need as much attention as their intellectual ones.

Although there are only about 30 The Rudolf Steiner Schools across the UK and Ireland, there are more than 880 worldwide and the distinctive ideology attracts parents who are keen to see their child’s creativity enhanced. The Steiner system follows its own curriculum but this does not mean children are cut off from traditional exam structures.

The curriculum caters from ages three and a half to 18. It places strong emphasis on integrating art, crafts, drama and music, with science also taught using a creative approach. It addresses what it describes as “all the multiple intelligences, including emotional literacy and kinaesthetic learning and brings into balance the attributes of the right and left hemispheres of the brain”.

Alistair Pugh is head teacher at the Edinburgh Steiner School on Spylaw Road: “If a parent is considering the happiness and well-being of a child, physically as well as mentally,” he says, “then we provide a holistic environment in which to maximise the potential in every child.

“In addition to developing analytical, logical and reasoning skills as education has always done, we also focus on the development of imagination, creativity, memory and flexible thinking skills – the so called ‘soft skills’ that are so much in demand in the 21st century.

“The curriculum is based on an in-depth understanding of the development of human nature and of how children learn at different stages in their lives – factors that have stayed relatively constant despite the rapid rate of change around us. As a result, the schools have not experienced the many radical changes that mainstream schools have undergone over the past 40 years and the approach in Steiner schools remains broadly similar to that found in the earliest schools.”

Although the Steiner School has a large nursery, children don’t move onto analytical learning until the age of six. By then, even the youngest children have developed the sense of community, commitment and motivation that Pugh explains is so crucial to the school ethos: “Though ultimately they do those same Highers as in traditional schools, and we were second-placed in Scotland for Highers this year, our approach is very different.

“Just that set of Highers isn’t necessarily enough. Confidence, self-belief, a sense of direction for yourself rather than for others are all important elements. These are confident, outgoing young people who are not suspicious of others; who mix easily across the entire age group at school and who form relationships that are solidly based.”

The school is small, with just 250 pupils and class sizes are around 20, allowing for close personal attention as required. Children are encouraged to develop their own skills and to share them with others. A strong sense of social responsibility, and the importance of healthy eating are all integrated into daily life.

“Learning for young children is developed in much more subtle ways. Literacy and numeracy are being inculcated but in a less obvious way. Steiner said that play is the work of childhood. For a child to play in a structured way and to explore experiences will set down the foundations using meaningful human activities. For example, baking teaches measuring out of ingredients, how many eggs, where the eggs come from, so there is a structure built into the teaching,” says Pugh.

Maria Montessori was another education pioneer. As a doctor working with children then described as “subnormal”, she developed teaching apparatus to help children learn through movement and the development of their imagination. She started her first “Children’s House” in 1907 and spent the rest of her life developing her approach.

Scotland has a Montessori nursery school in Glasgow catering for ages two to five, and a recently established school in Edinburgh that will see children through until the end of primary school.

After a year in a church hall, the Montessori Arts School recently moved into new premises at Liberton Brae, Edinburgh. Montessori schools are not designed exclusively for special needs children, though some may find the atmosphere much more congenial than a traditional primary school. Montessori schools are now throughout the world and held in very high esteem.

Emma Wardell is principal of the Edinburgh school: “We have 50 nursery school children getting a grounding in being very self-directed, planning their own learning experience. Class members have work lists as individuals and group lessons, and they use materials that they manipulate as they learn. In a sense, they teach themselves because they enjoy it and they don’t wait to be told what to do.

“They are very good at working together, taking a non-competitive view that two heads are better than one, and they plan out projects on the strengths of the group so that each child can develop his or her own particular interests.”

To Wardell, the advantages are so huge and her personal enthusiasm so catching, it’s not surprising that parents are drawn: “There’s so much I could say to parents to explain why we’re better. Teachers never raise their voices but they are firm. This is the right environment for independence and self-discipline. The children do the laundry, prepare their snacks with supervision and spend a lot of time outside.

“This is education for life that takes in practical life skills alongside literature, dance, poetry and a sense of community. It’s an integrated package.”

Jean Piaget was a Swiss psychologist who began the systematic study of children’s behavior in the 1920s. And even though Piaget’s teachings have had a dramatic effect on educational theory, his focus was not on education but on the development of intelligence. Piaget described and elaborated the following basic concepts:

Resources:

Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Rudolf Steiner School

Montessori vs Waldorf – Montessori and Waldorf Compared

The Montessori Children’s House

Jean Piaget | Education.com

Summerhill School – Democratic schooling in England

A majority of students in public schools throughout the American South and West are low-income for the first time in at least four decades.

Public education’s biggest problem: It’s a failure.

There are solutions

America’s last competitive advantage — its ability to innovate — is at risk as a result of the country’s lackluster education system, according to research by Harvard Innovation Education Fellow Tony Wagner.

Taking the stage at Skillshare’s Penny Conference, Wagner pointed out the skills it takes to become an innovator, the downfalls of America’s current education system, and how parents, teachers, mentors, and employers can band together to create innovators.

American schools educate to fill children with knowledge — instead they should be focusing on developing students’ innovation skills and motivation to succeed:

Today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, growing exponentially… Today knowledge is free. It’s like air, it’s like water. It’s become a commodity… There’s no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn’t care what you know. What the world cares about is what you can do with what you know.

The knowledge that children are encouraged to soak up in American schools — the memorization of planets, state capitals, the Periodic Table of Elements — can only take students so far. But “skill and will” determine a child’s ability to think outside of the box.

“The Global Achievement Gap,” that set of core competencies that every student must master before the end of high school is:

- Critical thinking and problem solving (the ability to ask the right questions)

-  Collaboration across networks and leading by influence

- Agility and adaptability

- Initiative and entrepreneurialism

- Accessing and analyzing information

- Effective written and oral communication

- Curiosity and imagination

- and of course, the cornerstone to all education: BASIC LIFE SKILLS! Gardening, woodshop, Agricultural Education (FFA), balancing a checking account, setting a table, shaking the hand of someone you meet, etc…

Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World: Our country’s economic problems are based in its education system.

“We’ve created an economy based on people spending money they do not have to buy things they may not need, threatening the planet in the process,” he says. “We have to transition from a consumer-driven economy to an innovation-driven economy.”

In an effort to discern teaching and parenting patterns, Wagner interviewed innovators in their 20s, followed by interviews with their parents and the influential teachers and mentors in the students’ lives. He found stunning similarities between the teaching styles and goals he encountered with these influential teachers at all levels of education and concludes, “The culture of schooling as we all know it is radically at odds with the culture of learning that produces innovators.”

Five ways in which America’s education system is stunting innovation:

1. Individual achievement is the focus: Students spend a bulk of their time focusing on improving their GPAs — school is a competition among peers. “But innovation is a team sport,” says Wagner. “Yes, it requires some solitude and reflection, but fundamentally problems are too complex to innovate or solve by oneself.”

2. Specialization is celebrated and rewarded: High school curriculum is structured using Carnegie units, a system that is 125 years old, says Wagner. He says the director of talent at Google once told him, “If there’s one thing that educators need to understand, it’s that you can neither understand nor solve problems within the context and bright lines of subject content.” Learning to be an innovator is about learning to cross disciplinary boundaries and exploring problems and their solutions from multiple perspectives.

3. Risk aversion is the norm: We penalize mistakes. The whole challenge in schooling is to figure out what the teacher wants. And the teachers have to figure out what the superintendent wants or the state wants. It’s a compliance-driven, risk-averse culture. Innovation, on the other hand, is grounded in taking risks and learning via trial and error. Educators could take a note from design firm IDEO with its mantra of “Fail early, fail often.” And at Institute of Design at Stanford, they are considering ideas like, we’re thinking F is the new A. Without failure, there is no innovation.

4. Learning is profoundly passive: For 12 to 16 years, we learn to consume information while in school. Our schooling culture has actually turned us into the “good little consumers” that we are. Innovative learning cultures teach about creating, not consuming.

5. Extrinsic incentives drive learning: “Carrots and sticks, “As and Fs”. Young innovators are intrinsically motivated. They aren’t interested in grading scales and petty reward systems. Parents and teachers can encourage innovative thinking by nurturing the curiosity and inquisitiveness of young people, it’s a pattern of “play to passion to purpose.” Parents of innovators encouraged their children to play in more exploratory ways. Fewer toys, more toys without batteries, more unstructured time in their day. Those children grow up to find passions, not just academic achievement. That passion matures to a profound sense of purpose. Every young person I interviewed wants to make a difference in the world, put a ding in the universe.

We have to transition to an innovation-driven culture, an innovation-driven society. A consumer society is bankrupt — it’s not coming back. To do that, we’re going to have to work with young people — as parents, as teachers, as mentors, and as employers — in very different ways. We as a country need the capacity to solve more different kinds of problems in more ways. It requires us to have a very different vision of education, of teaching and learning for the 21st century. It requires all of us to have a sense of urgency about the problem that needs to be solved.

The system has become obsolete. It needs reinventing, not reforming.

Resources:

America’s Education

Creating Innovators

Education Futures

IDEO | A Design and Innovation Consulting Firm

Fixing America’s Educational System

Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will

‘Common Core’ For Private and Homeschools | lisa’s leaks

Mises on Economics, Education, and The Experts | lisaleaks

Common Core Curriculum and Agenda 21 | lisa’s leaks

Ethics in Education Leadership | COMMON CORE

lisaleaks » Education – Rssing.com

lisaleaks | TheBlaze.com

lisaleaks | Minds

The Federal Government ’s takeover of education followed the usual pattern.

First, politicians complained that local school districts didn’t have enough
money. They decided the federal government could help in a “limited” way —
without interfering with local educational policies.

Secondly, education has become more about playing politics than educating our kids. Over the last forty years or so, we’ve seen a huge increase in the amount we’re spending on education — the bulk of which goes to salaries and benefits and an increasingly bloated administration.

When you’re getting less out of what you put in, something’s wrong.

As with every other area they touch, politicians become alarmed when
federal education money isn’t spent in the way they want. So the federal
government has long since attached rules and more rules and still more rules to
its subsidies — even though only about 10% of the money spent on education
comes from the federal government.

Have federal money and federal control helped American students learn more?

Hardly. As the next graph shows, learning, as measured by Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, has steadily declined.

Teaching non-academic topics is cause of declining SATs

The federal government’s heavy hand transformed the government schools
and the private schools that became dependent upon it. Yesterday’s schools
focused on reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and geography. Today’s schools
spend much more time teaching children:
· To be citizens of the world,
· To be sensitive to people who are different from themselves,
· To embrace transgender issues
· To report their parents if they catch them using drugs, and
· To practice safe sex.
Since none of those subjects shows up in the SAT tests, it’s not surprising
that SAT scores declined so much.

Money Not the Problem

No matter how much the federal government appropriates for education, no
matter how many bond issues your school district approves, you hear over and
over that there isn’t enough money for schools.

But, as this graph shows, education has declined while the money spent on it
has increased dramatically.

Obviously, lack of money isn’t the problem.

Why Hasn’t Education Improved?

Many explanations are offered for the decline in education. But by focusing
on the decline, we may have the issue upside-down. The correct question should
be: Why hasn’t education improved?

Look at the tremendous progress made in computers, cell phones, and many other tools of communication.
Such things are ten to twenty times more efficient today than they were 40 years ago. Computers, for example, are literally thousands of times more powerful per dollar-cost than they were in the 1960s.

With the advancements made in communication technology, children should
be learning much more than their parents and grandparents did. Literacy levels
should be much higher than in previous generations, and so should SAT scores.

But just the opposite has occurred. Today’s children know far less than their
parents.

Now education is dominated by government. And politicians and bureaucrats don’t need to show a record of success; in fact, the worse the schools become, the more money they can ask for. So long as government runs education, no significant improvement is possible. Even without the federal government’s intrusions, local schools are fighting a losing battle simply because they’re government institutions.

But why must schools be run by the government?
Is it because education is so important? If so, all the more reason to keep it
away from government. The U.S. Postal Service wastes only our time and
money. But we suffer a much greater loss when so many children graduate from
high school with little more than an elementary school education.

If Only Government Would Feed Us

If important things must be handled by government, why doesn’t
government provide free food for everyone — as it provides “free” schooling for
every child?

One could live without knowing how to read — as many public school
graduates manage to do — but no one can live without food. So why doesn’t
government operate the supermarkets?

Imagine what it would be like. The food stores would become what the
schools have become.

Political battles would decide which foods are available. If you didn’t like
the choices, you’d have to attend “food board” meetings and lobby state
legislators to change the menu.

Food would become more and more expensive, even as the quality
deteriorated. Wilted vegetables, stale bread, and inferior meat would be the
norm. So would vandalism and gangs.

 A Better Dream

Now let’s reverse the picture. Imagine instead that schools were operated
like today’s supermarkets.

Most school systems would offer a variety of approaches to any one subject
— just as a supermarket offers a variety of brands for any one food item. And if
you didn’t like what one school offered, or if you didn’t like the way you or your
child were treated, you could take your business to another school.

If you wanted prayer in the school, you wouldn’t have to pray to Congress to
get it. You’d just take your child to a school that permitted it. If you didn’t want
prayer, you’d find a school that didn’t have it.

You’d be able to choose between science or social engineering, calculus or
condom use. If you wanted, you might even find a school that would teach your
children how to nag you about recycling, or that had other special programs to
undermine parental authority and encourage moral smugness.

Some schools would offer inexpensive, no-frills education. Others would
offer additional (gourmet) classes in music, art, accelerated mathematics,
physical education, and other subjects that government schools like to cut when
taxpayers turn down new bond issues.

If there were violence or drug-trafficking at your child’s school, you
wouldn’t have to complain endlessly and in vain. You’d simply move him to a
school where such things don’t happen. And with competition, any school that
tolerated such problems probably would go out of business.

How would poor children get an education? Most likely the same way many
of them get private educations now — through scholarships, church schools,
foundation grants, and outright charity. Today many inner-city children get good
elementary-school educations at low-cost parochial schools and through
scholarships at non-religious schools. And if government no longer levied heavy
property taxes for schools, the poor would be less poor and the donors would
have more to donate.

Choices

The success of private schools — even private schools on skimpy budgets
— has inspired the idea of “school choice” or “vouchers.” This plan has the
government giving the parents of each child a voucher to be spent at a school of
the parents’ choosing — government or private.

I understand the attraction of this approach. And it might seem to be an
improvement over today’s poor schooling.
But government doesn’t work. And giving government control over
education — in any form — is dangerous.

A Voucher program requires a government bureaucracy to administer it and
government “experts” to decide which schools are “qualified” to accept the
vouchers. In no time at all, private schools could become hooked on government money and required to adhere to all sorts of rules designed to make them clones of government schools — in order to keep getting the government money they’ve become dependent on. That’s exactly why most private colleges are very little different from state colleges today.

It is especially dangerous to have the federal government administer such a
program or set the rules for it. But then, if you like what the Feds have turned
government schools into, you’ll probably love what they’ll do to private schools
once they start administering more vouchers.

It is far better to lower the tax burden so that parents are financially able to buy the education they want with their own money — with no rules imposed by government.

Then each family could send its children to a government school, a church
school, or a non-religious private school — or even teach them at home. When
there’s no subsidy from the government, there are no government strings attached. Parents could do what they think best.

Are Parents Competent?

Would all parents make the best choices for their children?
Of course not. We don’t live in a perfect world. But we should live in a free
country — one in which each of us is free to make his own choices, good or bad.
And those parents who are capable of making good choices shouldn’t have their children held hostage in government schools because other parents are less competent.

WHAT MUST BE DONE

Lowering the tax burden to leave parents with enough money to pay for a
good education for their children.

Two important changes that must be made to improve education:

1. The federal government must get completely out of education! It
has made a bad situation much worse. And it has no Constitutional authority to meddle in education in any way — even if it were capable of helping.
2. Federal taxes must be lowered dramatically so that parents have
the ability to finance their children’s education directly.

Once we make these reforms, it will be up to the people in each state to decide what educational system is best.

1. Some states will revert to the kind of education provided before
the federal government took over — with government schools
that reflect local values and circumstances, and that might be
more receptive to parents’ needs.
2. And maybe some states will withdraw from education entirely
— reducing taxes accordingly so that parents have the funds to
buy whatever education they want for their children, and making
education completely insulated from government interference.

In the states in the second group, schools would become truly “public” —
responsive to the choices of their customers, the parents. They would necessarily be economical, and yet effective, places of learning. And you would never have to endure a school that was bent on indoctrinating your child.

Schools would compete to acquire the best teachers from today’s government and private schools. Good teachers could finally teach — instead of having to quell violence, “Teaching to the Test,” and obey politically correct rules.

Education is one of the most important things we give to our children —
much too important to allow government to tamper with it. Letting government educate our children was the worst mistake ever made in America.

****

Related:

Education today

Race to the Top
• Race to the Top: R2T is the education initiative funded by the Obama Recovery Act in 2009. States submit competitive bids for educational reform, and the highest-scored plans are awarded funding in the range of $100 million to $500 million. Emphasis in scoring is on teacher support, statewide reform, and student testing.
• Common Core: The Common Core State Standards Initiative, begun in 2009, has been adopted fully by 32 states and partially adopted by 13 others. The Obama administration provided competitive ‘Race to the Top’ grants as an incentive for states to adopt the Common Core. The Common Core defines standards for math and English, with standards to come in the future for science and social studies. Because the standards are copyrighted, critics consider them to be a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model, and a step towards nationalizing America’s schools.
NCLB – No Child Left Behind                                                                               • NCLB is the 2001 bipartisan law intended to improve K-12 schools, under the theory of standards-based education reform.
• States are required to establish standardized testing, so that all high school graduates meet the test criteria.
• States are also required to give options (school choice) to students who attend schools that fail to meet NCLB’s Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).
• The controversy over NCLB currently focuses on funding: Opponents of NCLB argue that states are provided inadequate federal funding for implementation of NCLB, and that therefore NCLB represents an “unfunded mandate” on states.
• Proponents of NCLB argue that the law provides accountability for schools; fights against incompetent teachers; and provides alternatives to failing schools.
• Progress is measured in the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly knows as the “Nation’s Report Card.”
Education Buzzwords
• STEM: “STEM” refers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – the components of K-12 education which are considered the most lacking in the United States. Governors and candidates of both parties insist that they will improve STEM education; it is an official designation when foreigners apply for immigrant visas (those with STEM degrees can get special visas).
• Common Core: The Common Core State Standards Initiative (begun in 2004 and formalized in 2009) defines what students should know, in terms of language and mathematics, at each grade level K-12. As of 2014, it has been adopted in 44 states (not TX, VA, AK, NE, IN, and MN). Because Common Core is a national standard, it has become a lightning-rod for states’ rights activists (usually Republicans who oppose Obama), who claim the purpose is to override state educational norms and standards.
• Intelligent design: refers to species development run by intelligent designer (implying God, without the explicitly religious terminology). In contrast, evolution teaches a random process for natural species development. Critics have called intelligent design a thinly disguised version of creationism, which takes a literal approach to the creation account in Genesis, that the earth was created in six days and is less than 10,000 years old.
• Social Promotion: Candidates debate whether students should advance a grade merely to keep up with their peer group. 90% of K-12 students are promoted (10% per year are retained).
• Teacher Pay: K-12 Teachers’ salaries average $34,200; college instructors average $63,000; compared to $50,700 for similarly educated non-teachers. Public school teachers earn 25% to 100% more than private school teachers. Generally, any reference to ‘increasing teacher pay’ implies opposition to vouchers while negative references to teacher’s unions implies support of vouchers.
• Teacher Testing: Current law is that states certify teachers and decide what their requirements are; there are currently no national standards nor testing. Liberals favor raising teacher pay and oppose teacher testing on the grounds of treating teachers more ‘professionally’.
• Student Testing: Many conservatives advocate for national testing standard or other forms of ‘standards-based education’. Generally, any reference to ‘standards,’ or especially to dealing with ‘failing schools’, implies support of school vouchers.
• Smaller Class Size: Many liberals advocate for smaller class sizes, and/or building more schools to achieve them. Generally, any reference to ‘smaller classrooms,’ or especially to ‘building public schools’, implies opposition to funding private schools.
• School Prayer: Current law is that schools allow religious groups to organize on school grounds as if they are any club. Schools are not allowed to conduct prayers at the beginning of school, but neither are they allowed to stop a student from praying.
• Bilingual Education: Schools may conduct classes in Spanish or other languages using federal ‘Title VII’ funds, which totaled $380 million last year (1% of total spending). 13% of K-12 students speak a language other than English at home. Generally, liberals favor bilingual education while conservatives favor ‘official English.’
• DOE: The Department of Education spent $38 billion last year (2% of the federal budget). But federal spending only accounts for 9% of education spending; most of the annual $600 billion comes from state & local sources. Hard-core conservatives favor abolishing the Department of Education, which was a Republican Party platform plank in the 1980s.
• Phonics: Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by sounding out phonemes (groups of letters that represent sounds). Generally, a favorable reference to ‘phonics’ implies a conservative viewpoint on all the other education issues listed here.
School Choice
‘School Choice’ generally refers to a school district allowing parents to decide which school within the district to send their kids to. The political issue is whether to allow the choice to include private schools, parochial schools, and home schooling at taxpayer expense. Taxpayer funding of parochial schools potentially violates the Constitutional separation of church and state. Taxpayer funding of private schools is controversial because it subsidizes parents who are currently paying for private schools themselves, and are usually more wealthy than the average public school family.
Charter Schools
• ‘Charter schools’ are publicly-funded and publicly-controlled schools which are privately run. They are usually required to adhere to fewer district rules than regular public schools.
• By 2011, there were 5,600 public charter schools enrolling more than two million students nationwide. More than 400,000 students remain on wait lists to attend charter schools. Over 500 new public charter schools opened their doors in the 2011-12 school year, an estimated increase of 200,000 students.
Vouchers
‘Vouchers’ are a means of implementing school choice — parents are given a ‘voucher’ by the school district, which entitles them to, say, $4,000 applicable to either public school or private school tuition. The value of the voucher is generally lower than the cost of one year of public education (which averages $5,200), so private schools (where tuition averages $8,500) may require cash payment in addition to the voucher.
Education Buzzwords
Generally, any reference to ‘standards,’ or especially to dealing with ‘failing schools’, implies support of school vouchers. Generally, any reference to ‘smaller classrooms,’ or especially to ‘building public schools’, implies opposition to funding private schools.
K-12 Education Statistics
• Total spending is $260 billion, (7% federal; the rest split state & local) rising by 5% per year.
• Student population is 50 million, rising slowly (1 million per year) since 1984.
• Public school spending is $5,200 per student, staying about even with inflation.
• Parochial school costs $4,200 per student, not discounting church-provided buildings & other subsidies.
• Private school costs $8,500 per student, not discounting scholarships or other financial aid.
• 90% attend public schools; about 6 million attend private & parochial schools.
• 78% of schools have Internet access; 97% plan to by the year 2000.
• 27% of classrooms have Internet access; lower in poor and minority schools.
College Education & Cost Statistics
• 61% of high school graduates continue on to some post-secondary education.
• 43% enroll at 4-year colleges; 33% graduate college.
• Race strongly determines the percentage enrolling at college
(49% for Asians; 38% for Blacks; 28% for Hispanics).
• Socioeconomic status even more strongly determines percentage enrolling at college
(19% from the poorest ¼ of families vs. 70% from the richest ¼ of families).
• Tuition plus room and board at public colleges averages $6,700, and at private college $18,500.
• Public college costs 15% of the average family’s income, and the percentage is holding steady (tuition rises are keeping pace with median income rises).
• Private college costs 42% of the average family’s income, and the percentage is also holding steady.

Resources:

lisaleaks » Education – Rssing.com

Independent Media Center

Education Without Representation | lisaleaks

Public School Students – Prisoners of the State | lisa’s leaks

Rethinking Public Schools | lisa’s leaks

Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline | lisa’s leaks

Creating Innovators: Why America’s Education … – lisaleaks

Communitarian Education Agenda | lisa’s leaks

‘Common Core‘ For Private and Homeschools | lisa’s leaks

Common Core Curriculum and Agenda 21 | lisa’s leaks

Thirty-Five Largest U.S. Cities Saw Increase in Child Poverty .

Top Ten Scariest People in Education Reform

Education Freedom Committee | Abolish the Department of …

States Must Reject National Education Standards

The Role Of The State Government In Public Education

U.S. GOVERNMENT > Introduction to the U.S. System

Rankings of the States 2013 and Estimates of School

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)

ESEA—A Tough Act To Follow Infographic – ASCD

How Standardized Testing Damages Education

Race to the Top

SAT scores – Fast Facts – U.S. Department of Education

A rally this month organized by Families for Excellent Schools called for education reform. Photo: Associated Press

The usual participants [in legislative debates about education] have been school boards, parents, unions, the education establishment and the occasional adventurous elected official. Starting a few years ago, and more so now, there are new players in New York. The brawny and outspoken new kid is the hedge fund community.

Say what? Well, there are millions in hedge fund dollars now floating around. Generalities are a little dangerous, but it’s fair to say that a lot of it is from conservative, big money, Wall Street hedge fund types like Home Depot’s Ken Langone, head of Republicans for Cuomo, who says, “Every time I am with the governor, I talk to him about charter schools. He gets it.” The newest entry is something called “Families for Excellent Schools.” While there certainly are “families” involved, the organization is led and funded by hedge fund managers and assorted right-wing billionaires. They’re very anti-union, anti-tenure, pro-test and pro-charter school.

When the state Legislature revamped New York’s Lobbying Laws in 2011, the reforms were meant to shine a brighter light on mega-donors seeking to influence the government. Yet this year’s biggest lobbying spender—a pro-charter-school group that reported almost $6 million in New York state lobbying expenditures through August—hasn’t had to reveal a single benefactor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, the leading adversary of Manhattan-based nonprofit Families for Excellent Schools, recently called for the group to release its donor list so “the public can judge what interests are at play.” The group’s spending this spring helped foil the mayor’s plans in a high-profile fight over charter schools’ funding and sharing space with traditional public schools.

Lobbying records, however, show how Families for Excellent Schools was able to shield its donors’ names. Even its critics acknowledge the group has found a way around the 2011 law.

“These guys have invented the ‘hedge-fund loophole’ in the dark-money world of [Gov.] Andrew Cuomo’s Albany,” charged Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, a nonprofit backed by the statewide teachers’ union, which has been warring with charter-school proponents and the governor.

Mr. Easton’s comment referred to hedge-fund executives who have donated to the governor’s campaign and to charter-school causes. A Cuomo official once griped that Mr. Easton’s group does not disclose its donors, either, but it does now, per the 2011 law.

David Grandeau, an attorney for Families for Excellent Schools, said, “FES has correctly disclosed its spending in New York state, and we are confident that our activity is within the limitations allowable.”

Despite the group’s extensive lobbying as defined by state law, and Internal Revenue Service restrictions on how much money tax-exempt organizations can spend on lobbying, donations to it have been potentially tax-deductible, according to Mr. Grandeau, who was once New York’s top lobbying regulator.

Founded several years ago by business executives including four Wall Street players, Families for Excellent Schools has two components: an apolitical 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit and a politics-focused 501(c)(4). The group’s 2012 tax returns reflect a heavy overlap between the staffs of the two entities, which share an office suite. It’s a common arrangement for interest groups, such as environmental or reproductive-rights organizations.

New York’s 2011 ethics law requires issue-oriented nonprofits that spend more than $50,000 a year on lobbying to disclose sources of funds of more than $5,000. After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing unlimited expenditures by independent groups, the law was intended to make public the names of big donors seeking to influence state government.

But the bulk of Families for Excellent Schools’ spending is not by its political arm but rather its 501(c)(3)—which does not have to disclose donors under state law. Authors of the law might have assumed such disclosure was not necessary because the IRS restricts what apolitical nonprofits can spend on lobbying.

The IRS, however, has a far narrower definition of what constitutes lobbying than New York does, said Mr. Grandeau. Even though Families for Excellent Schools has reported $6 million in lobbying expenses this year through August to the state’s lobbying oversight agency, the number reported on the group’s federal tax return will be vastly lower. A spokesman for the group said urging Mr. de Blasio not to roll back charter-school co-locations is considered lobbying by the state but not by the IRS.

Mr. Grandeau, who formerly directed the Temporary Commission on Lobbying, which was shut down when the 2011 law created the Joint Commission on Public Ethics to oversee lobbying in New York, is well equipped to navigate clients through the many complexities of compliance.

Somewhat amorphous rules

In tax filings, Families for Excellent Schools opted to subject its lobbying spending to what’s known as the “substantial part test”—a somewhat amorphous set of IRS regulations determining whether lobbying makes up a major part of an entity’s activities. In past cases, the IRS has considered such factors as what percentage of an organization’s spending is meant to influence legislation. A group that devotes too much of its annual budget to lobbying can lose its tax-exempt status.

Armed with big-money backers, Moskowitz is kicking and screaming — all the way to the bank

It’s not clear what Families for Excellent Schools, a major ally of charter-school leader Eva Moskowitz, will spend this year. Its 2012 tax return shows that its 501(c)(3) spent $1.3 million—and not a penny on lobbying. The $6 million in lobbying reported this year to the state was the first time the group registered such activity in New York. It continues to hold large rallies and recently opened a Boston office.

Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum, an expert on nonprofit lobbying regulations at Washington, D.C., law firm Venable, agreed with Mr. Grandeau that state laws define lobbying much more expansively than the IRS does. States can cast a wide net to capture attempts to influence government, he explained, while the IRS is tasked with ensuring that tax exemptions are being used appropriately.

Most of Families for Excellent Schools’ spending went to television advertising. In one commercial showing a huge Albany rally organized by the nonprofit, the narrator states, “Now we need the Assembly to act. Hear our voices.” Other ads posted on the nonprofit’s YouTube page, however, have nothing to do with legislation.

Sometimes organizations have very sophisticated nonprofit lawyers who are able to guide them through this,” said Mr. Tenenbaum. “Other times, organizations are well intentioned, but just ill informed. These are very complicated rules.

Resources:

Families for Excellent Schools

the Pro-Charter Schools Group Fighting de …

2011-1 – City Clerk’s Office – NYC.gov

New York City Updates Lobbying Laws – Greenberg Traurig …

Richard Brodsky: Wall Street and Rightwing Billionaires are ..

Richard Brodsky: Public schools need funding focus – Times …

An Investigation Into NY’s “Families for Excellent Schools

StudentsFirst

Group is visible, but not its donors

Eva Moskowitz’s Shameful Misuse of Civil Rights

Privatization of Public Schools – LA Progressive

Noam Chomsky Tells Parents to Resist Attempts to Privatize …

Chomsky: Public Education Under Massive Corporate Assault —

The Assault on Public Education

White Paper on Privatization – Corporate Accountability Project

Tom Torlakson Versus The Corporate Education Reform …

You can’t put your guard down. Rest assured the wheels of ugly education reform continue to churn. Here is a recent Seattle Times headline, “Special education is ineffective and too expensive, report says.”

Why? Well, students with special needs, 54 percent to be exact, aren’t managing to get their diplomas on time. They also aren’t going on to college as much as their non-disabled peers. They fail to always reach their No Child Left Behind (NCLB) goals on their Individualized Education Program (IEP). Students with emotional disabilities, I’m guessing with no real Special education (SpEd) services, are getting suspended 2 to 3 times more often than the students without disabilities. Second language students aren’t being served well, and parents have become concerned that their students won’t be employable.

I would argue that the reforms that have taken place since the reauthorizations that formed Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), along with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTT), have not been in the best interest of students with special needs across the country. The harsh budget cuts haven’t helped either.

But instead of fixing the problems, and without reassessing the terrible reforms that have been foisted on schools and students with disabilities for the last 20 years or more, this is what the rubber stamped Blue Ribbon Commission Report from the Governor’s office, came up with:

The evidence is clear that disabilities do not cause disparate outcomes, but that the system itself perpetuates limitations in expectations and false belief systems about who children with disabilities can be and how much they can achieve in their lifetime.

“System,” of course, implies teachers. Hey, you teachers quit sitting around painting your nails and raise those expectations! And while you are at it—embrace Common Core! Why doesn’t the news say what they all really mean?

And this is how the Seattle Times puts it:

But the vast majority of children in special education do not have disabilities that prevent them from tackling the same rigorous academic subjects as general education students if they get the proper support, so those low numbers reflect shortcomings in the system, not the students.

And where does this all come from? What revolutionary research study have we missed? Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and the U.S. Department of Education!

You see, with higher expectations, proper support and plenty of rigor, most if not all of the students with disabilities can achieve excellent results. And that is where the Common Core comes in: Rigor for all. No exceptions, no excuses.

Related:

Common Core Curriculum

Special education is ineffective and too expensive, report says

Seattle: Special Education

Seattle’s Demolition of Special Education: Making Way for …

Report Details Problems with Special Education

COMMON CORE | Education Without Representation

What Is an IEP? | Individualized Education Program

What Is IDEA? | Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

No Child Left Behind – ED.gov – US Department of Education

Race to the Top Fund – US Department of Education

Government Education: The Worst Mistake Ever Made In …

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly – Democrats for Education

The Art Of Education For Life | lisa’s leaks

Communitarian Education Agenda | lisa’s leaks

AFT: Obama Must Force Arne Duncan to ‘Improve’ or …

Peter Greene on Arne Duncan on Testing: There He Goes …

Why Do Common Core’s Supporters Try to Discredit Critics of Common Core’s Mathematics Standards?

Professor James Milgram, for over 40 years a full professor of mathematics at Stanford University, and I did a 13-city speaking tour on Common Core throughout California in November. At all of the meetings, Professor Milgram provided a two-page hand-out titled Missing or Delayed in Common Core’s Mathematics Standards—a short version of a 13-page critique he distributed at the time he refused to sign off on Common Core’s standards.  Not one of the thousands of parents, school board members, and legislators at these meetings challenged him about anything on this hand-out. (The Modesto Bee estimated about 500 at the meeting in Modesto alone.)

Yet, when speaking without Professor Milgram after distributing (with his permission) his two-page list of missing or delayed mathematics standards in Common Core, along with my own list of flaws in Common Core’s English language arts standards, I have been accused by non-mathematicians of relying on an incompetent mathematician. Why are Common Core’s supporters so desperate to discredit those with orders of magnitude more mathematical knowledge than they have at any educational level?  And to do so in such a cowardly fashion.

For example, I was warned by a very angry, self-identified local school board member and former K-12 mathematics teacher at a St. Louis, Missouri meeting in October that Professor Milgram is not “truthful.”  I was told in a November e-mail sent to me by a mathematics educator at a Missouri university not to “trust Milgram’s opinions.”  I was also told by an employee of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education at a Marshfield, Massachusetts meeting in October that, in contrast to Professor Milgram’s comments, a mathematics professor at Boston College thought highly of Common Core’s standards, and that for every analysis I did, there was another one that found that Common Core’s standards strengthened, not weakened, the high school curriculum.”  She also accused me of saying that “the old Massachusetts standards were so good that they couldn’t be improved.”

In response to a follow-up e-mail query from the organizer of the meeting asking for written evidence of her claims, she replied: “Professor Friedberg has not done a paper on the topic but he and other Massachusetts professors of mathematics strongly endorse Common Core’s standards and believe our previous standards were not sufficiently rigorous, didn’t stress mastery or understanding, included too many topics, and were not sufficiently focused. I’m sure Dr. Sandra Stotsky is already familiar with Bill Schmidt’s peer-reviewed study that found the standards comparable to the highest achieving nations.”

Yes, indeed, I am aware of William Schmidt’s study. I am also aware of its fatal methodological deficiencies. As Ze’ev Wurman noted in his review of Schmidt’s study:

“Advocates of Common Core’s mathematics standards claim they are rigorous, reflect college-readiness, and are comparable with those of high achieving countries. The two members of the Common Core Validation Committee with college-level mathematics content knowledge [R. James Milgram and Dylan William] refused to sign off on them, finding them significantly lower than those of high-achieving countries….

Schmidt and Houang’s 2012 Study—the only study that claimed the standards met international expectations—lacks reliable coding of the standards, and uses a variety of visual and statistical strategies to create the illusion that the profile of topics in Common Core’s mathematics standards is, indeed, comparable to the curriculum profile of six high-achieving countries. In fact, their own data suggest that Common Core’s mathematics standards are not at all like those of international high achievers, and that—at least from a statistical point of view—they do not carry any promise of improving American educational achievement.”

Wurman went on to conclude:

“Not only do Common Core’s standards remain unvalidated, but there are now many doubts that they could ever be validated as research-based, rigorous, and internationally competitive. Indeed, there is growing concern that they are far below the level of standards in high-achieving countries. Yet, these standards were officially adopted by over 46 states, national tests are being piloted based on them, textbooks and other curriculum materials have been aligned down to them, and all our seemingly independent indices of academic achievement or potential for college-level work have been or are in the process of being aligned down to them. What should be done?”

It is easy to understand why Common Core’s proponents would be unhappy with criticisms of Common Core’s mathematics standards. Especially when other mathematicians publicly corroborate the thrust of Professor Milgram’s criticisms (for example, the op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Marina Ratner at the University of California/Berkeley).

But they should be ashamed of making spurious charges to people who do not understand high school mathematics any better than they do. And they should learn to speak directly to mathematicians themselves to try to understand the criticisms.
—————————————————————————

Notes:

1)  http://www.modbee.com/news/local/education/article3594327.html

2)  Common Core Informational Forum, St. Louis, Missouri, October 23, 2014.   Watch these six 15-minute videos in this order.

1. http://youtu.be/z_Ps_25U1VI
2.  http://youtu.be/JRahJRom4r8
3. http://youtu.be/9FffrrRsryY
4.  http://youtu.be/-t8IIfr_h8U
5.  http://youtu.be/4Wb5KclkKa0
6.  http://youtu.be/hpvY0ymINjk

4)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZvUa4mGGQA. The Q and A is not available on this video of the Marshfield meeting.

5)  Email communication from Noel Ashekian, November 4, 2014.

6)  Ze’ev Wurman, Common Core’s Validation: A Weak Foundation for a Crooked House, Pioneer Institute White Paper #112, April 2014.

http://pioneerinstitute.org/download/common-cores-validation-a-weak-foundation-for-a-crooked-house/?utm_source=Common+Core+Validation+Apr+23+2014&utm_campaign=Common+Core+Val+April+23+2014&utm_medium=email

7)  Marina Ratner.  Making Math Education Even Worse.  Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2014.  http://online.wsj.com/articles/marina-ratner-making-math-education-even-worse-1407283282

*******************************

If the standards had been created/adopted in accordance with the Missouri Constitution, perhaps there would not be so much vitriol surrounding the new standards.  If the standards were not privately owned/copyrighted and could be changed by the state (the 85% states must use), perhaps there would not be so much anger from those concerned about the sovereignty of the standards writing/adoption process and the rule of law.  If the standards choice architects would start speaking out in state legislative hearings about the writing and adoption process instead of having multi-million dollar PR campaigns orchestrated by Bill Gates, The US Chamber of Commerce, etc to deliver the message on why untested standards and assessments are now the panacea for all educational ills, there would not be so much ‘misinformation’ out there.

The proponents’ arguments are a classic definition of irony.  Proponents of the standards (watch the videos) accuse those objecting to the CCSSI as spreading ‘misinformation’.  Regardless of whose academic research the CCSSI group chooses to follow, the basic question should be this: Why are the proponents so strident in supporting an unvalidated set of standards?  Let’s list just some of the ‘misinformation’ from the proponents:

• the internationally benchmarked claim has been withdrawn
• no studies can show these theories will produce the intended outcome
• the college ready claim has been shown to make students ready for 2 year colleges, not 4 year colleges as most taxpayers were led to believe (what does ‘globally competitive’ mean to you?)

Another initial point of ‘misinformation’ is that CCSS would not cost Missouri any money.  That was from Missouri DESE press release answering a state legislator’s question about the standards creation/adoption that bypassed the legislature. No cost analysis was done (or provided to legislatures and school districts) but DESE requested an additional $26 Million last year for new assessments and the membership for SBAC is an ongoing additional cost.  School boards will have to pony up the cost for the new technology mandated by the Initiative.  Schools will have to hire lawyers and Chief Privacy Officers as data breaches will be the financial responsibility of the school districts. 

Why are some educators supporting an Initiative:

• that has no validity
• depends on the 1% to deliver its claims/theories that are increasingly debunked
• whose choice architects demanded secrecy as to the writing/validation process (and just who was appointed king to appoint such choice architects to direct/develop PUBLIC education)
• contained no cost analysis
• creates an oligarchic structure which holds none of the private NGOs accountable to the public and legislatures

Regarding the adoption/creation of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS) structure, just who is spreading ‘misinformation’?  Just really who are the ‘misinformed’ in this debate?  How can any informed person support any initiative that violates state statutes, the state Constitution, is fallacious/not researched based and may or may not be higher standards that are decided by private NGOs not accountable to the public or legislators?

Where should the name tag of ‘I Am Not A Critical Thinker’ be placed: on these educators/NGOs who refuse to address/acknowledge these questions about the adoption/creation of CCSSI or the people who are paying for this reform and supplying their children for the CCSSI?

Related:

Missouri Education Watchdog | “What’s gotten in the way of …

The Art Of Education For Life | lisa’s leaks

Rethinking Public Schools | lisa’s leaks

Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline | lisa’s leaks

Common Core’s Invalid Validation Committee – Department …

Creating Innovators: Why America’s Education … – lisaleaks

Common Core Blockbuster: Mathematician Dr. Jim Milgram …

Communitarian Education Agenda | lisa’s leaks

Common Core Curriculum and Agenda 21 | lisa’s leaks

Common Core has Sacrificed Special Education | lisa’s leaks

Government Education: The Worst Mistake Ever Made In …

COMMON CORE | Education Without Representation

Common Core State Standards Initiative

James Milgram on the Common Core Math Standards …

Dr. Sandra Stotsky | COMMON CORE

Rightwing Billionaires are Key Players in Education Policy

Stop Common Core in California | Facebook

Evaluating the success of the Great Society

Lyndon B. Johnson’s visionary set of legislation turns 50

In just under five years in the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson enacted nearly 200 pieces of legislation known as the Great Society, an unprecedented and bold set of programs aimed at improving Americans’ everyday lives.

Fifty years later, we can examine the success of this enormous volume of programs, many of which are so mundane and ordinary, it’s hard to imagine a time without them.

Key pieces of Great Society legislation and programs enacted between 1963-1968, by month

On May 22, 1964, in a University of Michigan commencement speech, President Lyndon B. Johnson formally launched the most ambitious set of social programs ever undertaken in the United States—surpassing even Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in its range and in its ambition to transform the country.

Most of the Great Society’s achievements came during the 89th Congress, which lasted from January 1965 to January 1967, and is considered by many to be the most productive legislative session in American history. Johnson prodded Congress to churn out nearly 200 new laws launching civil rights protections; Medicare and Medicaid; food stamps; urban renewal; the first broad federal investment in elementary and high school education; Head Start and college aid; an end to what was essentially a whites-only immigration policy; landmark consumer safety and environmental regulations; funding that gave voice to community action groups; and an all-out War on Poverty.

Here are the Great Society’s key achievements and biggest failures.​

Civil Rights

On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“We believe that all men are created equal,” Johnson said in an address to the country. “Yet many are denied equal treatment.”

White and black bus passengers sit side by side in Norfolk in April 1956 after racial segregation on intrastate transportation ended under a Supreme Court decision. (AP)

The law outlawed discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion or sex. It also authorized the attorney general to bring lawsuits against schools practicing segregation and discouraged job discrimination throughthe creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In fiscal 2013, there were 93,727 charges filed with the agency; 35.3 percent involved race and 29.5 percent were based on alleged sex discrimination.Johnson later added to those protections with the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, parts of which were rescinded by the Supreme Court in 2013, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which sought to eliminate discrimination in housing.

Johnson did away with literacy tests some Southern states required voters to take; black voter registration rates in those states increased an average of 67 percent from 1964 to 1968. In 1970, there were 1,469 black elected officials in the United States; by November 2011, there were more than 10,500.

Critics, noting how much progress has been made on racial equality, argue that some aspects of the civil rights laws are no longer needed. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated some parts of the Voting Rights Act, and earlier this month, it upheld the state of Michigan’s move to ban affirmative action.

War on Poverty

On Aug. 20, 1964, Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, the foundation of the War on Poverty. It established the Office of Economic Opportunity to direct and coordinate educational, employment and training programs that laid its groundwork.

Between 1965 and 1968, spending to help the poor doubled; within 10 years, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line declined to 12 percent from 20 percent. The rate has fluctuated greatly in the past 50 years. According to the census, 15.9 percent of Americans lived in poverty in 2012, which is just a couple of points lower than where the Census estimates it stood in 1965.

President Lyndon Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson, in Inez, Ky., in April 1964 at the home of Tom Fletcher, a father of eight who told the president he had been out of work for nearly two years. The president visited the Appalachian area in Eastern Kentucky to see conditions firsthand and declare his War on Poverty from the Fletcher porch. (AP)

But the president’s Council of Economic Advisers uses a broader measure — including tax credits and benefits such as foodassistance — that estimates that poverty has dropped by more than a third, from more than 25 percent of the population in themid-1960s to 16 percent in 2012.“Today for the first time in all the history of the human race, a great nation is able to make and is willing to make a commitment to eradicate poverty among its people,” Johnson said in the Rose Garden.

Among other things it spawned was the Appalachian Regional Development Act of 1965, which was designed to help pull Appalachia, where one-third of residents lived below the poverty line, out of hardship, develop its industries and provide educational and health-care opportunities to its residents. Today, the Appalachian Regional Commission is a federal-state partnership that helps fund a number of projects in the region in areas including energy, infrastructure, highways and telecommunications.

The Office of Economic Opportunity, which ran the War on Poverty, was abolished in 1981.

Education

On April 11, 1965, Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in front of Junction School in Johnson City, Tex., which he attended. The act committed the federal government to help, for the first time, local school districts whose students come from low-income families.

Folk singer Tom Glazer performs in July 1965 for nearly 400 children enrolled in Head Start centers at Saratoga Square Park in Brooklyn, N.Y. (AP)

“As a son of a tenant farmer, I know that education is the only valid passport from poverty,” Johnson, who taught at a Hispanic school in an impoverished town before launching his political career, said at the signing. “As a former teacher – and, I hope, a future one – I have great expectations of what this law will mean for all of our young people. As president of the United States, I believe deeply no law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America.”

A month later, Head Start launched, a program designed to give underprivileged children a “head start” before starting first grade. Lady Bird Johnson served as honorary chair of the program. Head Start has served more than 31 million children from birth to age 5 since 1965. In 2012-13, 1.13 million children and pregnant women were served by Head Start, according to the program. The vast majority – 82 percent – were children ages 3 and 4.

Later in 1965, Johnson launched the Higher Education Act, meant to open up college to anyone who wanted to attend through scholarships and low-income loans. It also established a national teacher corps.

In the 1963-64 school year, $879 million in federal grants were given to students, almost all to veterans or members of the military, and $849 million was doled out in student loans. In 2012-13, students received $185.1 billion in aid; federal loans constituted 37 percent of that total and federal grants 24 percent, according to the College Board.

Health

Johnson signed an amendment to the Social Security Act creating Medicaid and Medicare, health insurance programs for the elderly and low-income individuals and families, in a ceremony at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Mo., on July 30, 1965.

Lillian Grace Avery, the nation’s first Medicare beneficiary, signs forms at Edward Hospital in Naperville, Ill., on July 1, 1966. (AP)

“No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts,” Johnson said. “And no longer will this nation refuse the hand of justice to those who have given a lifetime of service and wisdom and labor to the progress of this progressive country.”

In 1966 about 19 million people – all of them elderly – were enrolled in Medicare. By 2010, just under 47 million people – both elderly and disabled – participated in the program. In 1975, about 22 million people were served by Medicaid; currently, 62 million people participate in the program.

Arts and Media

New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath appears on the public television show “Sesame Street” in September 1972. (Harry Harris/AP)

On Nov. 7, 1967, Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act, providing financial assistance for non-commercial television and radio broadcasting, including PBS and NPR. Have you watched “Sesame Street” or “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”? Thank the Great Society.

National Endowment for the Humanities appropriations history, in millions of 2014 dollars

Today there are 987 stations nationwide – most locally owned and operated – that broadcast NPR programming.

The Great Society also led to the fruition of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington and created the National Endowment for the Humanities, which is one of the largest arts and culture funders in the United States.

Environment

On Nov. 21, 1967, Johnson signed the Air Quality Act, which granted the government increased authority to control air pollution.

“Don’t we really risk our own damnation every day by destroying the air that gives us life?” Johnson asked in the East Room of the White House. “I think we do. We have done it with our science, our industry, and our progress. Above all, we have really done it with our own carelessness – our own continued indifference and our own repeated negligence.”

The still-under-construction City Hall in Boston is shrouded in smog in November 1966. (J. Walter Green/AP)

Johnson’s action made many realize that clean air was vital. But the act designated a regional approach to combating air pollution, something many thought would be difficult to enforce. So in 1970, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, which laid out nationwide standards for pollution control. According to the EPA, cars are 99 percent cleaner for common pollutants now than in 1970.

Johnson also pushed through the Water Quality Act, which required states to establish and enforce water quality standards for interstate waterways, and the Endangered Species Act, which provided threatened animals with limited protection for the first time. Currently there are 1,190 species of plants and animals on the U.S. endangered species list.

He also signed the Wilderness Act, which preserved 9.2 million acres as federal wilderness areas; the Wild & Scenic Rivers Act, which established a national system to protect and preserve rivers; and the National Trails System Act, which created a nationwide system of scenic and recreational trails.

Housing and Urban Development

 The Omnibus Housing Act of 1965 was a $7.5 billion measure that Johnson called “the single most important breakthrough” in housing in decades. “And in the years to come I believe this act will become known as the single most important housing legislation in our history,” Johnson said at a Rose Garden signing ceremony on Aug. 10, 1965. The bill provided hefty rent subsidies for low-income people who moved into new housing projects, created grants to help low-income homeowners rehabilitate their properties, aided small businesses displaced by urban renewal and grants to rehabilitate blighted urban property. Johnson signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, which created the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a Cabinet-level agency.

A modern high-rise apartment building, part of an urban renewal project, contrasts with a nearby tenement building in Chicago in November 1963 (Charles E. Knoblock/AP)

The Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 gave federal money to rebuild and revitalize poor, blighted urban areas. “The Congress hereby finds and declares that improving the quality of urban life is the most critical domestic problem facing the United States,” the law read. It led to the creation of “city demonstration agencies,” or planning agencies to review development proposals that now exist in virtually all metropolitan areas.

The Community Action Program created Community Action Agencies, nonprofits dedicated to fighting poverty at the local level. “Through a new Community Action program, we intend to strike at poverty at its source – in the streets of our cities and on the farms of our countryside among the very young and the impoverished old. This program asks men and women throughout the country to prepare long-range plans for the attack on poverty in their own local communities,” Johnson told Congress on March 16, 1964. Today there are about 1,100 Community Action Agencies nationwide. According to their national membership organization the agencies help 17 million people each year.

Not all programs were successes. The Model Cities Program, for instance, was shut down in 1974 after largely failing in its efforts at urban renewal.

Consumer Protection

The Great Society produced a number of laws to protect consumers, including truth-in-packaging requirements which Johnson said will “will mean that the American family will get full and fair value for every penny, dime and dollar that that family spends,” at a bill signing in November 1966. Also part of his suite of bills on consumer protection were the truth-in-lending for borrowers and meat and poultry laws to enhance food safety. It created the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Child Safety Act to ensure that toys, medicine bottles and other products were safe for both children and adults.

A pack of cigarettes with a health-hazard label, shown in January 1966. (Lambert/Getty Images)

“It will ban the sale or use of toys and other children’s articles that contain dangerous or deadly substances. It will ban the sale of other household articles so hazardous that even labels cannot make them safe. Now there is a law that says the eyes of a doll will not be poisonous beans. Now there is a law that says what looks like candy will not be deadly firecracker balls. Now there is a law that says Johnny will not die because his toy truck was painted with a poison. Both these laws offer sweeping new protection to the American family,” Johnson said.

If you’ve ever purchased a pack of cigarettes, you’ve seen this warning: “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health” and have Johnson’s Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act to thank.

Immigration

Standing at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act on Oct. 3, 1965. It abolished the national origins formula that had been in place since 1924, meaning that preference was no longer given to immigrants from some European countries.

Refugees who fled Communist China arrive in San Francisco in March 1959. The Immigration Act of 1965 would expand immigration from Asia, Africa and Latin America. (AP)

“This system violated the basic principle of American democracy – the principle that values and rewards each man on the basis of his merit as a man,” Johnson said. “It has been un-American in the highest sense.”

Share of immigrants obtaining legal permanent residence by region of last residence.

The law greatly increased the number of immigrants from Asia, Africa and other parts of the world, though it continued to restrict the number of immigrants allowed into the United States each year. In 1965, 296,697 people obtained legal permanent resident status; in 2012, 1.03 million people became legal permanent residents. From 1960 to 1969, there were 358,563 people from Asia who became legal permanent residents. In 2012 alone, 416,488 people from Asia were granted that status, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Related:

Lyndon B. Johnson

United States History – Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society

Lyndon B. Johnson | The White House

Great Society – Washington Post

Remarks at the Signing of the Immigration Bill, Liberty Island

“the great society” by joseph a …

Education is the gateway to controlling the masses from childhood and should NEVER be entrusted to Federal government

Common Core State Standards | Truth in American Education

Common Core is an undisputed and unmitigated disaster. The two rollout states, New York and Florida, are already taking steps to remove themselves from Common Core. This is largely due to the fact that both New York’s and Florida’s student test scores have gone into the toilet since they embraced Common Core. Many advocates are clamoring for the dismantling of this UN inspired approach to education which perverts both math and English and will force children to read government propaganda as opposed to classic literature.

Nationalized Education Has Never Worked

All federalized education programs have thrown billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, while contributing to the dramatic decrease in student performance. For example, SAT Reading scores, for the high school class of 2012, reached a 40+ year low since the implementation of No Child Left Behind. (NCLB). Common Core is NCLB on steroids.

No teacher and no school board member was asked to contribute to the Common Core standards. Nor was any State Legislature involved in the creation of this monstrosity.

Under this plan, every teacher will teach the same material with much of the same teaching strategies as every other teacher. This is the 21st Century educational version of the Stepford Wives. The Tenth Amendment is dead and individual freedom is being stamped out.

College Ready?

Isn’t it interesting that our government says that their Common Core goal is to get students ready for college while at the same time, the government is overseeing an increase in college tuition which is eight times greater than the inflation rate as well as running a corrupt student loan program which is making debt slaves out of college students.

As a Montessori teacher of 26 years, I worry about the Common Core advocates who say the program is designed to “get students ready for college” because there is little to no legitimate evidence of statistical proof to back up the claim. In fact, all of the credible research maintains that educational achievement will go backwards under Common Core.

It is very disturbing that it remains unclear what governance structure will be created in the future to address issues related to the Common Core Standards. What is clear is that the Standards are owned and copyrighted by nongovernmental (NGO) entities unaccountable to parents and students in individual states. This is the pure definition of governmental tyranny.

Just Change The Name, That’ll Fool’em

In Arizona, in response to community push back against Common Core, State Secretary of Education, John Huppenthal declared that Arizona was not embracing Common Core. In reality, all Huppenthal did was change the name of Common Core to College Readiness. However, the curriculum is Common Core, word for word. I am not sure what is more disgraceful, Huppenthal’s disingenuous leadership, or the stupidity of Arizona citizens to accept this poorly disguised sleight of hand approach to conceal the obvious agenda.

Look Who Funded Common Core

Globalist and Eugenics proponent, Bill Gates, is one of the Founding Fathers of the Common Core movement and its copyright holders, NGA/CCSSO. Gates donated about $25 million dollars to promote his version of global education.  Gates has made several donations to CCSSO to promote Common Core. In 2009, Gates made two separate donations of $9,961,842 and $3,185,750. In 2010, Gates donated $743,331 and in 2011, he contributed $9,388,911. In 2008, Gates donated $2,259,780 to the National Governor’s Association (NGA) to develop and implement Common Core. The NGA is the conduit into America from the United Nations UNESCO, Education for All Agenda 21 version of globalist education being forced down the throats of our young people. And the elitist Gates has rigged the game. Under Common Core, individual school districts will have to invest tens of millions of dollars on computers (not that I’m against technology) so that each child can take the national PARCC Assessment and guess who is going to make money on the purchase of these computers?

Gates is listed as partner with UNESCO/UN to fund ”Education For All,” which in turn was transferred to the National Governors Association which changed the name to Common Core. In a key document, The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments’ which identifies the goals for what became Common Core. The document speaks directly to the Agenda 21 educational ideals of collectivism, social justice, environmental justice and the espousing of the beliefs of the pseudoscience known as sustainable development. In short, your child is being conditioned to be a good little stooge for the New World Order.

Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 Public Awareness and Training focuses on impressing upon every citizen on the planet, the indispensable need for achieving sustainable development. In plain language, Common Core is going into every country. The implementation names of this global education may vary, but the underlying Agenda 21 philosophies do not. Chapter 36 also states that the globalists plan to “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development. In future installments in this series, the weak academic standards of Common Core will be revealed.

Reform of the nation’s standardized objectives is merely a smoke screen to the true intent of the program which is to covertly gain acceptance for Agenda 21 policies. Subsequently, the Agenda 21/UNESCO documents clearly state their intention to turn each student into a globalist who will accept smaller living space, residing in the stack and pack cities of the future, acceptance of drastic energy reduction and the loss of Constitutional liberties. The document goes on to say that “While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and development education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning. Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns…”

Math And English Under Attack, but Propaganda Is Alive and Well

The concerns about Common Core are many and varied and limited space prevents me from listing all the concerns. Instead, I have chosen to list merely a cross-section of concerns regarding the Common Core math curriculum.

The exclusion of key math concepts is commonplace under Common Core. The Pioneer Institutes examination of Common Core revealed the following deficiencies:

 “Common Core fails to teach prime factorization and consequently does not include teaching about least common denominators or greatest common factors.

Common Core fails to include conversions among fractions, decimals, and percents, identified as a key skill by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Common Core de-emphasizes algebraic manipulation, which is a prerequisite for advanced mathematics, and instead effectively redefines algebra as “functional algebra”, which does not prepare students for STEM careers.

Common Core does not require proficiency with addition and subtraction until grade 4, a grade behind the expectations of the high-performing states and our international competitors.

Common Core does not require proficiency with multiplication using the standard algorithm (step-by-step procedure for calculations) until grade 5, a grade behind the expectations of the high-performing states and our international competitors.

Common Core does not require proficiency with division using the standard algorithm until grade 6, a grade behind the expectations of the high-performing states and our international competitors.

Common Core starts teaching decimals only in grade 4, about two years behind the more rigorous state standards, and fails to use money as a natural introduction to this concept.

Common Core fails to teach in K-8 about key geometrical concepts such as the area of a triangle, sum of angles in a triangle, isosceles and equilateral triangles, or constructions with a straightedge and compass that good state standards include.”

I found more examples of Common Core taking student achievement backwards through delaying when children which type of math.

• The mathematics standards place Algebra I in ninth grade, rather than in grade 8 where it has traditionally been taught. This fact guarantees that the majority of students will not reach calculus in high school.

• The standards require the teaching of geometry to follow an experimental method, which has never been used successfully anywhere in the world. And  despite the claims made by Common Core advocates, the Common Core standards are not internationally bench-marked.

• Common Core excludes certain Algebra II and Geometry content that is currently a prerequisite at almost every four-year state college.

Dr. Duke Pesta is a English professor from the University of Wisconsin. He is also one of the leading voices in the country, speaking out against the Common Core Curriculum. Pesta speaks clearly to the fact that our children’s appreciation of the classics is in real jeopardy. Under Common Core, children are exposed to 50% informational texts as opposed to 100% traditional classic literature as has always been the case.

Dr. Pesta, listed in the video below, clearly states that 50% of the classics will be replaced by children being forced to read Obama’s Executive Orders, unchallenged climate change documents with no dissenting opinion and various social justice documents.  Pesta also claims that home-schooling is not a viable option for escaping the Common Core Curriculum because the ACT and the SAT have been taken over by Common Core advocates and are changing the tests to reflect the Common Core Curriculum. The globalists have us coming and going.

Charlotte Iserbyt Weighs In

On March 23rd, I interviewed Charlotte Iserbyt about the present state of education in the United States. As bad as Common Core is, according to Charlotte Iserbyt, Common Core is a distraction and its ultimate purpose is to destroy public education. Iserbyt, a former Senior Policy Educational Analyst under President Reagan, states that School Choice is the real enemy. Iserbyt feels that Common Core is so egregious it will lead to a mass exodus to charter schools in order to escape its pitfalls. She is leery of charter schools because of the fact that they do not have elected school boards. And therefore, charter schools are free to input any curriculum without any parental opposition because charter schools do not have elected school boards. Ultimately, School Choice initiatives will prove to be the death of parental control over education and the schools will become bastions of a Hitler Youth Movement. In which free-flowing government propaganda will inundate our children with Agenda 21, globalist views. Remember, Professor Pesta stated that 50% of a literature class will be filled with students reading things like Presidential Executive Orders.

Iserbyt’s views seem to be justified because, Huppenthal is making robocalls to Arizona citizens and encouraging them to spend their “school choice vouchers” on private education. This should be an impeachable offense in that the State Superintendent of Education would be, in any way, lobbying for public schools to go to anything but a public school. Why would head of Arizona’s education system advocate for the erosion of Arizona’s public education system? My answer would be the same reason as to why the banksters installed Obama as the President.

It seems the prudent course of action would consist of removing Common Core from the public schools and restoring the oversight of education to where it belongs, with local school boards. Once local schools are removed from Common Core, then it is time to truly reform our schools with local oversight, not federally mandated controls. This is a doable task because citizens can exact pressure on local legislators to abandon Common Core. Meanwhile, the globalist brainwashing of your children continues full speed ahead.

Related:

Does U.N.’s Agenda 21 Education Mandate Push Common …

Common Core has Sacrificed Special Education | lisa’s leaks

‘Misinformed’? The Common Core Opponents or Proponents?

Education Without Representation | lisa’s leaks

Dave Hodges

Common Core State Standards | Truth in American Education

Keep Education Local

Does U.N.’s Agenda 21 Education Mandate Push Common Core in USA?

What Does Common Core Have To Do With the U.N.’s Agenda 21 ?

 –And Why Should You Care?

There’s an interesting article about Obama’s call for the U.S. to pay for education of the world.  It’s “A Global Fund for Education: Achieving Education for All” that you can read in full here:  http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2009/08/education-gartner

Its summary states: “In order to realize the world’s commitment to ensuring education for all by 2015, important innovations and reforms will be needed in the governance and financing of global education. In 2008, when Presidential Candidate Barack Obama committed to making sure that every child has the chance to learn by creating a Global Fund for Education. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently called for a new architecture of global cooperation…  A new Global Fund for Education… must be capable of mobilizing the approximately $7 billion annually still needed to achieve education for all, while holding all stakeholders accountable for achieving results with these resources. None of these objectives will be achieved without a major rethinking of the global education architecture and an evolution of current mechanisms for financing education… Achieving these two Millennium Development Goals, and the broader Education for All Goals… will require more capable international institutions.”

I have to ask three questions as I read this:

• Since when do nations collectively finance global education?
• Since when has the whole world agreed on what should be taught to the whole world?
• Since when is the United States of America reduced to “accountable stakeholder” status over its own educational and financial decision-making?

So Obama created a global education fund, using U.S. taxpayer money. I don’t remember voting on this.

And Hilary Clinton is misusing the word “inclusiveness” to now mean “no more independent sovereignty for anyone.” Meanwhile, there’s a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program called “Education for All” that involves the same ideas and the very same key people as “Common Core.” And there’s also an “Promoting Education, Public Awareness and Training” chapter in the U.N.’s Agenda 21 goals.

Both the U.N.’s educational goals (via UNESCO and “Education for All” ) and “Common Core” do sound very appealing on the surface. Each seeks to educate by teaching the exact same standards to all children (and adults) on a national or a global scale.  But both supersede local control over what is taught to students, and both dismiss the validity and importance of the U.S. Constitution implicitly.

Both UNESCO’s educational goals and Common Core are, coincidentally, heavily funded by activist and philanthropist Bill Gates, one of the wealthiest billionaires on earth.  http://www.eagleforum.org/links/UNESCO-MS.pdf  ( Link to Gates’ Microsoft/Unesco partnership)

Gates gave the Common Core developer/copyright holders, NGA/CCSSO, about $25 million dollars to promote his special interest, Common Core.  (See CCSSO: 2009–$9,961,842, 2009– $3,185,750, 2010–$743,331, 2011–$9,388,911 ; NGA Center: 2008–$2,259,780 at http://www.keepeducationlocal.com

Gates partnered with UNESCO/U.N. to fund “Education For All” as well.  See  http://bettereducationforall.org/

Well before the March 10, 2010, release of the national Common Core (CC) standards for K-12 math and English, the Obama administration was pressuring states to commit to them if they wanted to compete for a share of $4.35 billion in Race to the Top funds set aside from the federal stimulus…

The “Education For All” developer is UNESCO, a branch of the United Nations.  Education For All’s key document is called “The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments.”  Read the full text here:  http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147e.pdf

At this link, you can learn about how Education For All works:

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/education-for-all/international-cooperation/high-level-group/

In a nutshell: “Prior to the reform of the global EFA coordination architecture in 2011-2012, the Education for All High-Level Group brought together high-level representatives from national governments, development agencies, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector. Its role was to generate political momentum and mobilize financial, technical and political support towards the achievement of the EFA goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). From 2001-2011 the High-Level Group met annually.”

The six goals of “Education For All” are claimed to be internationally agreed-upon. But since much of what happens with the United Nations threatens the sovereignty of the United States and all sovereign nations, I do not recognize that these goals, or anything else for that matter, are “internationally agreed-upon.” Do you?

For everyone on earth to totally agree, we’d have to submit to a one-world government with a one-world constitution that would override any individual country’s constitution. There are some great thoughts on this subject here:   http://www.keepeducationlocal.com/

But in the U.N.’s own words:

“Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment. Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the Statement of principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests were adopted by more than 178 Governments at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio de Janerio, Brazil, 3 to 14 June 1992.  The Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was created in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up…” See:  http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/

So Agenda 21 is a comprehensive plan of action to be taken by everyone.  We all apparently have been signed up to agree, whether we agree or not.  I’m already getting the communist creeps.

But most of us haven’t even heard of Agenda 21 nor do we know anything about “sustainable development”.

On the linked Education and Awareness page of that same U.N. website, you can see:

“Education, Public  Awareness and Training is the focus of Chapter 36 of Agenda 21. This is a cross-sectoral theme both relevant to the implementation of the whole of Agenda 21 and indispensable for achieving sustainable development.”   http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/susdevtopics/sdt_educawar.shtml

Did you get that? Education is indispensable for the U.N. to get its agenda pushed onto every citizen worldwide. They just admitted it out loud. They want a strong hand in determining what is taught worldwide.

So then when you click on Chapter 36. The “indispensable” implementation tool they are describing are your children’s American public schools. Yes, really:

36.2 says they plan to “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development. (No discussion, no vote, no input needed on this reorientation plan, apparently.)

36.3 says: “While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and development education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning. Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns. It is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision-making. To be effective, environment and development education should deal with the dynamics of both the physical/biological and socio-economic environment and human (which may include spiritual) development, should be integrated in all disciplines, and should employ formal and non-formal methods.

The take-away?

• Environmental education will be incorporated in formal education globally.
• Any value or attitude held by anyone globally that stands independent to that of the United Nations’ definition of “sustainable education” must change.  Current attitudes are unacceptable.
• Environmental education will be belief-and-spirituality based.
• Environmental education will be integrated into all disciplines, not just science.

The stated objectives (36.4) include endorsing “Education for All,” achieving “environmental and development awareness in all sectors of society on a world-wide scale as soon as possible”; and to achieve the accessibility of environmental and development education, linked to social education, from primary school age through adulthood to all groups of people; and to promote integration of environment concepts, including demography, in all educational programmes, and “giving special emphasis to the further training of decision makers at all levels.”

Does that not sound like quite an agenda?

But it gets worse.

Under “Activities”

“Governments should strive to update or prepare strategies aimed at integrating environment and development as a cross-cutting issue into education at all levels within the next three years. This should be done in cooperation with all sectors of society…. A thorough review of curricula should be undertaken to ensure a multidisciplinary approach, with environment and development issues and their socio-cultural and demographic aspects and linkages.”

So, if a country like the USA, for example, has a Constitution and GEPA laws that states that its federal government has absolutely no legal right to supervise or direct state school systems, then what?  How can it be done?

I’ll tell you how! Just get a U.S. President to circumvent Congress and the states’ right to educate.  Just use nongovernmental groups like the NGA/CCSSO to write and copyright new national educational standards.  Just pay groups to do what you are not legally authorized to do. Just create “Race to the Top” grants.  Just promote a socialist education system but call it a state-led Common Core.  Then get philanthropist Bill Gates to promote and pay for most of it.

And that is what has happened.

Enough info for today?  Oh, no. Not even close.

They go on to say how countries should pay for all the reorientation and values/attitudes changing for all people.  And there’s even a media-to-museum rebranding blitz outline:

In 36.10:

“Countries… should promote a cooperative relationship with the media, popular theater groups, and entertainment and advertising industries by initiating discussions to mobilize their experience in shaping public behaviour and consumption patterns and making wide use of their methods. Such cooperation would also increase the active public participation in the debate on the environment. UNICEF should make child-oriented material available to media as an educational tool, ensuring close cooperation between the out-of-school public information sector and the school curriculum, for the primary level. UNESCO, UNEP and universities should enrich pre-service curricula for journalists on environment and development topics;

(f) Countries, in cooperation with the scientific community, should establish ways of employing modern communication technologies for effective public outreach. National and local educational authorities and relevant United Nations agencies should expand, as appropriate, the use of audio-visual methods, especially in rural areas in mobile units, by producing television and radio programmes for developing countries, involving local participation, employing interactive multimedia methods and integrating advanced methods with folk media;

(g) Countries should promote… environmentally sound leisure and tourism activities… making suitable use of museums, heritage sites, zoos, botanical gardens, national parks…”

So, it should be pretty clear that there is a huge re-education program happening to all countries, the aim of which is to change people’s attitudes toward believing in “sustainable development” and environmental education. If it’s picking up litter, some other innocuous program, fine; spend trillions without taking a vote to make sure we all think alike. Stupid but harmless. On the other hand, what if, what IF, it’s something we DON’T all agree upon? There are hundreds of countries. Even if it were just up to China vs. the U.S. to define “sustainable behavior” how would we ever agree?  Paper or plastic?  Paper wastes trees; plastic creates landfills. These “green-defining” issues are endless.

But the problem, in a nutshell, is simply:  Whose version of “sustainable” do you want to re-educate everyone to believe –assuming that you can accept massive-scale propagandizing for the promotion of one single belief system, under which people didn’t get a representative vote)

*Sustainable thinking includes limiting by abortion the number of babies allowed to be born, in order to have control over population growth. The Chinese “One Child Policy” was introduced by the Chinese Government in 1979 with the intention of keeping the population within sustainable limits even in the face of natural disasters and poor harvests, and improving the quality of life for the Chinese population as a whole. Under the policy, parents who have more than one child may have their wages reduced and be denied some social services.” (BBC)

Related:

Agenda 21 – United Nations Sustainable Development

unesco | COMMON CORE

A Global Fund for Education – Brookings Institution

Agenda 21 Education Mandate

Agenda 21 – United Nations Sustainable Development

Education for All – World Bank

Education for All Movement – Unesco

Cooperation Agreement – Unesco

Education for All (EFA) Goals – Unesco

Better Education for All | Mejor educación para todo el ..

Cooperation Agreement – Unesco

Michael J. Chapman — Education for Sustainable Tyranny

RABBLE ROUSER: Climate policy is economic scheme

HOLLAND: Want to withdraw from Obama Ed? – Washington …

Corrupt ‘Kids for Cash’ Judge Ruined More Than 3,000 Young Lives!

Infamous Child Warehousing Scandal in PA Involved Judges, Law Enforcement, Child Protection Services, Private Agencies, and a Local Builder, from 2000-2007.

At Least One Suicide Attributed to the Scandal… and Many Lives Wrecked!
A For-Profit Juvenile Detention Center Housed Innocent Kids- For State Dollars Per Bed!

Victims of the scandal, highlighted include Hillary Transue, who created a fake, humorous MySpace page about her school’s vice principal at age 14. Justin Bodnar, then aged 12, cursed at another student’s mother. Ed Kenzakoski, then 17, did nothing at all. It didn’t matter. They were all thrown into a Luzerne County PA Juvenile Detention Center, along with thousands of other minors…

Ed Kenzakoski

The Kids-for-Cash Scandal (2000-2007) unfolded in 2008 over judicial kickbacks at the Luzerne County of Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, “for-profit” juvenile facilities, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh sentences on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of inmates in the detention centers.

Corrupt Mark Ciavarella had been elected judge to a 10-year-term in Luzerne County in 1995, on a platform of getting “tough on teen crime.” Much admired for his stance, he was a frequent speaker at schools and was re-elected in 2005.

Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in a harsh juvenile   detention facility for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, or shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart. Ciavarella and Conahan pled guilty on February 13, 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement, to federal charges of ‘Honest services fraud’ and conspiracy to defraud the United States (failing to report income to the Internal Revenue Service; tax evasion) in connection with receiving $2.6 million in payments from managers at PA “Child Care” in Pittston Township and its sister company Western PA Child Care in Butler County. The plea agreement was later voided by a Federal judge, who was dissatisfied with the post-plea conduct of the defendants, and the two judges subsequently withdrew their guilty pleas, raising the possibility of a criminal trial.

Following the original plea agreement, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered an investigation of the cases handled by these judges, and following its outcome, overturned several hundred convictions of youths in Luzerne County. The Juvenile Law Center filed a class action lawsuit against the judges and numerous other parties, and the PA state legislature created a commission to investigate the wide-ranging juvenile justice problems in the county

As seen in the documentary “Kids For Cash,” all three Luzerne County, Pa. teens followed in the movie met the same fate for minor infractions. They were hauled into court with their parents, sometimes after being persuaded — coerced, according to at least one parent — by police to waive their right to legal counsel.

They were brought before Judge Mark Ciavarella and, without warning or the chance to offer a defense, found themselves pronounced guilty, shackled and sentenced to months of detention in a cockroach-infested jail built by a corrupt developer who was paying off the judges to have minors placed there. The kids were then trapped in the juvenile justice system for years, robbing most of them of their entire high-school experience and giving them criminal records and social stigma in their communities.

Victim Ed Kenzakoski was diagnosed with ADD before he was 10 and was drinking by 14; his parents were so worried about him that his father developed a plan to “scare him straight”. Along with two police officer buddies, Kenzakoski’s father planted a marijuana pipe in the boy’s truck, hoping he would be arrested and “turned around” after a confrontation with the authorities.

But the second part of that plan went awry, and Ciavarella sent the boy away.
Victim Justin Bodnar recalls how, shackled and torn from his home for saying a dirty word, he approached the juvenile facility on a convict bus and saw the 20-foot high razor wire. “I’m now one of those people you see in the movies,” thought the 12-year-old, who would smoke pot for the first time three months later, influenced by “living around criminals” in a facility intended to make him a better person.

After her release from incarceration, victim  Hillary Transue returned to school with a stigma, viewed as a criminal by her teachers and under watch from her probation officer, who kept an office in the school.

After his initial release, Bodnar, now 24, was shipped off to a military academy. He now works as a cook. Transue, 22, eventually graduated from college.

A fender-bender landed Kenzakoski back in court when he was 19. Ciavarella again sentenced him to a juvenile facility. When he got out, said his mother, his demeanor was all pent-up anger, and a fight landed him in state prison. He was released in January 2010. That Memorial Day, after a day of drinking and arguing with his father, Ed Kenzakoski placed a gun against his heart, and pulled the trigger. Had he lived, he would now be 27 years old.

One of the most harrowing moment occurs during Ciavarella’s trial. As his lawyer holds a press conference outside the courthouse, Kenzakoski’s mother, Sandy Fonzo, who had been standing to the side, unleashed years of pain and anguish on the man she held responsible. “My kid’s not here anymore! He’s dead! Because of him!” she screamed, pointing at Ciavarella as news cameras rolled. “He ruined my f—ing life!!! Go to hell, and rot there forever! You know what he told everybody in court — [the kids] need to be held accountable for their actions! You need to be!”

Fonzo remembers, “When my son came out of there he was just never the same. He was just pent up with anger and bitterness and resentment.”

Fonzo says the system never tried to help her son. It just continued to beat him down. “There was never any kind of help. He never looked at each as an individual. He just lined them up and shackled them and they were taken away.”

Fonzo just hopes her story will reach other families and that it will give them the courage to speak up at Ciavarella’s sentencing. “The only reason I’m doing this now is I want all those families there and I want to get some justice for our kids. I want him to pay for what he did.”

In 2013, three companies behind the private juvenile detention and treatment facilities at the heart of a juvenile justice scandal in northeastern Pennsylvania settled a civil lawsuit for $2.5M. The settlement involved claims brought by thousands of juveniles against PA Child Care, Western PA Child Care, and Mid-Atlantic Youth Services Corp., and was granted preliminary approval in Federal court.

A Federal grand jury in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania returned a 48-count indictment against Ciavarella and Conahan, including racketeering, fraud, money laundering, extortion, bribery, and federal tax violations on September 9, 2009. Conahan entered a revised guilty plea to one count of racketeering conspiracy in July 2010. In a verdict reached at the conclusion of a jury trial, Ciavarella was convicted February 18, 2011 on 12 of the 39 counts he faced.

Former Luzerne County judge Mark A. Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in prison after he was convicted of racketeering and conspiracy. Judge Michael Conahan pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge and was sentenced to more than 17 years.

The two judges and the facilities’ co-owner remain defendants in additional lawsuits. All juveniles adjudicated or sent to a facility from 2003 to mid-2008 would be eligible to receive damages, with those placed in PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care eligible for more damages, according to the settlement terms.

Two million children are arrested every year in the US, 95% for non-violent crimes. 66% of children who have been incarcerated never return to school. The US incarcerates nearly 5 times more children than any other nation in the world.

Related:

Kids For Cash

Kids for cash scandal

Luzerne County Kids-for-Cash Scandal | Juvenile Law Center

Kids For Cash: Inside One of the Nation’s Most Shocking …

Pa. ‘kids for cash’ judge ruled liable for damages

Young Lives Ruined

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‘Kids For Cash’ Juvenile Detention Scandal Lands $2.5 Million

“Kids For Cash”: Feb. 1, 2015 11:15AM, Millerton Moviehouse -

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This my position. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

If-by-whiskey in political discourse is a relativist fallacy in which the speaker’s position is contingent on the listener’s opinion. An if-by-whiskey argument implemented through doublespeak appears to affirm both sides of an issue, and agrees with whichever side the listener supports, in effect taking a position without taking a position. The statement typically uses words with strongly positive or negative connotations (e.g., terrorist as negative and freedom fighter as positive).

A similar idiom is “you can’t be all things to all people,” which is often used as a negative term in politics. It doesn’t stop me from trying. The “If-By-Whiskey” fallacy, which could equally be named the “Carter Liotta fallacy,” is a fallacy of logic and rhetoric named for Mississippi senator Noah Sweat’s speech in 1952 about his opinion of whiskey. I encourage you to read the entire text, sometime, because it’s hysterical oratory.

The label if-by-whiskey refers to a 1952 speech by Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., a young lawmaker from the U.S. state of Mississippi, on the subject of whether Mississippi should continue to prohibit (which it did until 1966) or finally legalize alcoholic beverages:

My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, here is how I feel about whiskey:

If when you say whiskey you mean the devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.

But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman’s step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life’s great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

(You can listen to the speech here: “Whiskey Speech”

Whiskey.ogg The 1952 speech by Mississippi state Rep. (and Judge) Noah S. “Soggy” Sweat, Jr., reprised by Mississippi state Rep. Ed Perry on 100th anniversary of opening of the Mississippi state Capitol, as broadcast on public radio. (Duration: 3 minutes 27 seconds)

This is an amazing insight to the human mind and the area of rhetoric. We can see how when both sides of the issue are presented through the same use of emotionally charged words and phrases, the argument is really vacuous and presents very little factual information, nor does it even take a stance on the issue.

Certainly there are two very good sides – and many more – to the whiskey argument. Both have valid points. So, “If-By-Whiskey” does not mean that there’s only one right answer – only that you can’t argue both points at the same time and still be considered arguing.

He who argues everything, argues nothing.

Having evaluated literally thousands of positions on God by people all over the belief spectrum, I thought I would create my own, “If-by-God” version of the argument, showing how carefully placed rhetoric can blur the line between the most perfect being imaginable and the most horrible being imaginable.

If By God

The question is, if God does exist, should we love him and worship him?  My position is clear, and I am not embarrassed to let the world know exactly how I feel.  So here it goes.

If by God you mean the great dictator in the sky, the almighty smiter, the God who created us with imperfections then holds us responsible for the imperfections, the God who took away paradise and eternal life from us because the first man and woman committed a “wrong” against God before they were capable of knowing right from wrong, the God who commanded his chosen people to utterly destroy every man, woman, and child in dozens of cities, the God who hardened hearts, killed first-borns, demanded blood sacrifices, commanded man to brutally kill other humans for “crimes” such as “not honoring your parents”, the God who destroyed virtually all living creatures on the planet, the God who would demand that his own son be brutally murdered to pay a debt to him, the God who allows children to be born with birth defects, die young, and get cancer, the God who continues to destroy using floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, the God who ignores the prayers of billions of his faithful followers, the God who allows a majority of his creation to suffer through unimaginable torture for all eternity in the fiery pits of Hell, then he is certainly not deserving of our love and worship.

But, if when you say God you mean the defender, the protector, creator of heaven and earth, the father of us all, the being of pure love, kindness, and everything good in the world, the God who led the Israelites from slavery to freedom, the one who looks after us all, the God who heals the sick in his son’s name, the God who gave us his perfect laws for our benefit, the God who loved us so much, that he sacrificed his only son so that we can be saved, the God who allows us to spend a blissful eternity with him and our loved ones, then certainly he is deserving of our love and worship.

This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.

Exception: If you are serving as a moderator and need to remain neutral, plus want to add a little “spice” in the debate, this might be a good technique.

Cannabis Pros and Cons, “If By Whiskey” Style

If when you say cannabis you mean the Devil’s weed, the gateway to the nightmare of hard-drug addiction, the tempter of teenagers that terrifies parents, the cause of the feeling that flesh is falling off bones, the impairer of judgment and driving (causing fatal crashes), the shrinker of brains, the origin of pointless mental excursions to the artificial nowhere of a fool’s paradise, the psychologically addictive near-narcotic that stupefies the user and saps motivation, perseverance, and determination; the converter of our precious and capable young people into idle, self-indulgent, unhelpful stoners; if you mean the powerful not-your-father’s marijuana, the slow train to nowhere, the greed-driven motivation for a New Joe Camel and the big business of addiction, the carrier of molds and carcinogens into the lungs, the risky complement to alcohol, the manifestation of a “damaging level of permissiveness” in America, the threat to American economic competitiveness, the product whose illegality would push Mexican cartels to produce deadly heroin, the psychoactive trickster that creates irresistible cravings for the unhealthiest food, the undesirable attraction for rowdy tourists and penniless drifters, the aptly named “Skunk” whose smoke irritates neighbors and passersby, the precursor to legalized cocaine, the finicky and fragile hybrid whose secret indoor cultivation guzzles energy and pollutes our imperiled planet, the wrong choice between Drugs or Jesus; if by cannabis you mean the cause of cannabinoid hyperemesis, the poison scourge that brings on panic attacks and psychotic symptoms and sends thousands to emergency rooms each year, if you mean the placebo or mere pain-reliever that diverts the suffering sick from real cure, then certainly I am against it.

Related:

If-by-whiskey – Toolkit For Thinking

• Creative Thinking

Resources:

Noah S. Sweat

Noah S. Sweat – Whiskey Speech

Safire’s Political Dictionary – William Safire – Oxford

Safire’s Political Dictionary: William Safire

Taken from the Political Archives of Texas. [Archive]

If-By-Whiskey – Logically Fallacious

examples of the “if-by-whiskey …

If By Whiskey – On Campaign Speeches

Errors in Logic: The Slippery Slope | Carter Liotta

Fallacy | Carter Liotta

“Errors in Logic: If by “Whiskey” you mean…”

Fallacies of Relevance by Valarie Smith on Prezi

Informal Fallacies | Does It Follow?

This is an analysis of assistant professor at Harvard University, Alexander James Inglis‘s book ‘Principles of Secondary Education.‘ In his 1918 book, Inglis lists the 6 primary functions of education. This critical point of departure shows how these functions are as alive and kicking today as they were a hundred years ago.

The purpose – the actual purpose – of modem schooling breaks down into six basic functions:

1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can’t test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called “the conformity function,” because its intention is to make children as alike as possible, i.e. Common Core. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student’s proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in “your permanent record.” Yes, you do have one.

4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been “diagnosed,” children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits – and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin’s theory of natural selection as applied to what he called the “favored races.” In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit – with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments – clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That’s what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.

6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

As can be seen from this deduction of Ingles list of primary functions of education, the base premise of education is to maintain and manage the status quo of the market-oriented society and within that, the segregation of citizens into manageable consumer groups. As someone who teaches children on a daily basis and spends my days observing what happens behind the walls of the school system, I cannot but confirm the accuracy of this list and its practical implications.

Yet you will not find these six purposes in any school policy. Instead these policies are elegantly written with goals and principles that honor virtues such as ‘equality,’ ‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘life-long learning.’ These key words are used in schools all over the industrialized world to innocuously present the education system as a benevolent place. But like the U.N’s declaration of human rights, it is nothing but a red herring.

Students know they must go to school to learn for the “sake of learning” but are taught from an early age to not ask questions. They learn through ethnocentric course material that their culture is superior to other cultures and that a word like ‘terrorist’ is a synonym for Arabic sounding names. In fact, the stark inversion between the apparent principles that schools are supposed to teach and the actuality of life for children in schools resembles George Orwell’s double-speak, where words were reversed and twisted to coax the population into placated obedience. (When an entire society is built on living a lie, it has to be assiduous in its efforts to maintain the illusion that the lie is truth.) Most importantly: students are taught that there are no viable alternatives to the current societal structure and that any alternatives they may encounter are at best laughable and at worst disruptive and dangerous for the status quo.

For young students who were born with brains and bodies not yet washed with that sweet but toxic detergent that is the current education system, it is not as easy as simply drinking the cool-aid and getting on with their business. They are prompted to learn about the importance of ‘democracy’ in a system that is anything but democratic. They are told to accept and include each other on the playground while being bombarded with images and music that tell them they must compete and stand out to be good enough. Buying the newest toy, gadget or clothing item becomes a matter of social life or death for them. It is no walk in the park to exist in a constant state of cognitive dissonance.

The current system, where citizens become consumers whose lives are indebted to corporations, is ‘perfect’ from the perspective that a full measure of control is maintained while everyone is blissfully unaware of it as they are caught up in the ‘neon lights’ of entertainment or existing in a perpetual state of petrification, leaving no room to do anything but struggle to survive. It is an effective system because people are so disoriented by the sheer amount of cognitive disinformation fed to them on a daily basis. This begins by brutally breaking children down before they have even developed themselves, like breaking the wings of a baby bird only to have it gratefully accept a place in the cage because it would otherwise not have survived.

The fact that politicians, market economists, financial tycoons and policy-makers are operating with two different agendas when it comes to education is remarkably obvious. Imagine for a moment a society where everyone knew the actual purposes of schooling: We would not be able to claim to live in a democratic society. In fact, we would live in an openly fascistic and totalitarian society, not unlike Orwell’s nightmare vision of 1984. What happens in such societies is that the citizens eventually revolt. We saw it in the French revolution, the Russian revolution, in Chile, in Venezuela and in many other countries around the world, obviously never with an outcome that actually changed anything for the better – because we never changed the foundation of our education systems and thus ourselves as humanity in the process.

So what are the solutions?

The Purpose of Schooling: The five dogmas:
1. Truth comes from Authority

2. Intelligence is the ability to remember and repeat

3. Accurate memory and repetition are rewarded

4. Non-compliance is punished

5. Conform: intellectually and socially
As a solution to subverting the dumbing-down of our children and the subsequent destruction of our planet, let’s have a look at reversing these dogmas into practical living principles that will teach children on a real and fundamental level to become adults who will take on the guardianship of this earth with humbleness and compassion.

1. In our search for truth in this world, all we seem to find is more lies. As such what is required is stop focusing on truth and within that teach children to live on a lie and to instead teach children the necessary deductive skills to asses information critically, equally and within common sense. To do that they obviously need to be able to read and write, eventually at such an advanced level that no literature or document is beyond their comprehension. Segregating people through language proficiency levels and the extent of vocabulary is one of the most effective ways to ensure the acceptance of inequality. Through this principle of teaching all children to asses information at an equal level, they will be encouraged to be “sovereign” and thus empowered in such a way that they can make decisions that are not only best for them, but for all living beings. But more importantly; they will be equal in their understanding of the world, which means that socially engineered disinformation will be prevented from being disseminated as truth.

2. Intelligence must be measured based on the degree to which it contributes with ensuring a world that is best for all. It is really as simple as that. There is nothing ‘intelligent’ about inventing technologies that has no other purpose than to destroy our habitat or to regurgitate theories for no other reason than infatuation with intellect.

3. Education ought to be self-rewarding in the sense that we as individuals should be able to evaluate ourselves and accordingly measure our development within a particular learning process, so as to see where improvement is possible. In the current system rewards and punishment are used interchangeably to create compliant and fearful people that spite and ridicule each other. Again, if we measure intelligence according to which it contributes to a world that is best for all, this will then also be the reward of each individual’s efforts: to contribute to the creation of a world that is best for all and so for oneself. That is real value.

4. The problem with compliance is that it relies on followers that are complying out of fear. They are never making self-willed decisions and as such they will not take responsibility as co-creators of a business or a society. Instead they are merely following the scripts that are placed before them, while making no independent effort to optimize production processes or working conditions. The result of this is a faulty system where truck drivers fall asleep at the wheel and where doctors accidentally kill patients and where no one really puts any effort into anything they do, because after all: “I just work here.” Furthermore, having people comply out of fear always proposes the risk that they will eventually revolt in some way or another or at least carry a deep-seated blame causing them to never fully commit or give the system their all. For this world to thrive it is imperative that we as human beings become responsible, not only for our own lives, but for the world as a whole. This is our home and if we do not take responsibility for it, no one will. When each stand responsible for themselves and for the whole, they will have an ownership in what they do and thus an interest in the success of all involved. The work of each individual will therefore become valuable in a completely new way where it will not be necessary to use fear to motivate people because each will understand their value and as such be self-motivated.

5. Forcing people to conform to a system that was built to be broken, as Richard Grove from Tragedy and Hope puts it; simply creates nothing but broken people. Broken people makes broken world, which eventually will lead to the demise of all of us – with animals and nature standing on the front-lines as the cannon fodder. So instead of wanting children to conform, we must assist them to transform, so that when they grow up, they do not make the same mistakes we did. To do that we have to transform ourselves, because we obviously cannot teach children anything that we ourselves have not yet learned.

We as adults can utilize to transform ourselves and reverse the conformity that has already been long stuffed down our throats, stifling any and all authentic expression. There are many other authors and trail-blazers through which we can initiate the re-education process of ourselves to become “sovereign” human beings that can stand as solid examples for the children entering this world. But the responsibility is, and can only be, our own. What is so fortunate about this day and age is that all information is virtually accessible through the Internet. All that is then required are the development of critical skills of discernment to circumvent the cognitive disinformation – and actually get to the real information about what is happening in this world. We do that through expanding our vocabulary, through cross-referencing what we find with others and through relentlessly unveiling ourselves from seeing what is really going on.

In a way it is quite simple; we have to stop living the lie. But as someone once said, self-honesty is the most difficult thing in the world because it forces us to take responsibility for who we have become and within that we have to let go of the wonderful world of illusion that we’ve created through the lie. Whether we like it or not, we’re together on this sinking ship we call an earth. More wanted more and we were willing to pay any price to get it, even risking the future of all mankind and the earth in the process. This is what, up until now, has been the ‘evolution’ of humanity. The question is: can we afford to keep lying to ourselves when the world is falling apart around us, and at what price?

Related:

Principles of secondary education: Alexander James 1879 …

Progressive Pioneer: Alexander James Inglis (1879-1924)

In Memoriam Alexander Inglis (1879-1924)

The Purpose of Schooling

Education for Sustainable Tyranny | lisa’s leaks

At whatever age smart people develop the idea that they are smart, they also tend to develop vulnerability around relinquishing that label. So the difference between telling a kid “You did a great job” and “You are smart” isn’t subtle. That is, at least, according to one growing movement in education and parenting that advocates for retirement of “the S word.”

Related:

Scholarly articles for multiple intelligences, Howard Gardner

Howard Gardner | Hobbs Professor of Cognition and …

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

Race to Nowhere | TRANSFORMING EDUCATION FROM …

New study concludes that a history of abuse is not just a predictor of future incarceration—it is a cause

If we truly believe that children are our future—all children—then it is imperative that we stop the cruel and unjust funneling of victims of abuse into incarceration, and improve the lives of sexually abused girls currently in our Juvenile Justice System.

Recently, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, and the Human Rights Project for Girls released a report, “The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story,” with groundbreaking new data on this problem. Among the study’s many findings are data confirming that sexual abuse is a “primary predictor” for involvement with the juvenile-justice system, and that girls of color are the most disproportionately affected.

“When we don’t talk about what’s happening to our girls, it’s often implied that they are doing OK. It’s important to know from this report that girls and girls of color not doing OK.”
—Yasmin Vafa, the Human Rights for Girls

Juvenile detention centers are filled with girls who have survived trauma and abuse. According to the report, 31 percent of girls in juvenile justice report being sexually abused, a rate four times higher than boys. Furthermore, 45 percent of girls in juvenile justice suffer complex trauma.

In many states, the level of sexual or physical abuse is stunningly high—over 80 percent. In South Carolina, 81 percent of girls locked up in the juvenile justice system are victims of sexual violence, and in Florida this number is at 84 percent. In Oregon, 93 percent of girls locked up are survivors of sexual or physical abuse.

A recent U.S. Department of Justice study shows that the increased arrest and incarceration of girls over the past 20 years has not been the result of increased criminal activity or violence. Instead, more and more girls are being arrested and incarcerated because of the aggressive enforcement of non-serious offenses, many of which stem from abuse and trauma.

Gender stereotypes contribute to the problem, as the decision to arrest and detain girls in many of these situations is negatively influenced by whether the decision-maker perceives girls to have violated gender norms—even though such deviation is actually a response to trauma.

In fact, girls are ending up in the juvenile-justice system as a result of behaviors directly connected to their sexual abuse, such as running away, truancy, or substance abuse. Outrageously, girls who have been trafficked are often arrested for prostitution—even when they are too young to consent to sex when they enter the juvenile-justice system.

At the nonprofit organization, Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, or FFLIC, have seen the devastating impact of sexual abuse, including the alarming and shameful increased incarceration rates of girl survivors. This is not only cruel and unjust, it also fails to deal with the underlying trauma that results from sexual abuse. As a result, victims are further traumatized by the juvenile-justice system.

There are many parallels between the sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline mentioned in the recent report and School to Prison Pipeline issues. Rather than providing the care, counseling, and support these young people need, we are allowing vulnerable youths to be pushed out of schools and into the juvenile-justice system. We are failing at providing the safe and supportive environments young people need in our schools and communities, particularly for youths of color.

Through an initiative called the Let Kids Be Kids Campaign, address the failure to care for our most vulnerable youths. They are raising awareness about laws in place that effectively criminalize children, and are working to ensure that all children have the necessary support to grow, thrive, and reach their full potential.

For example, we are working to reduce the number of youths suspended from school for habitual absence, tardiness, or “willful disobedience”—a subjective categorization susceptible to racial bias that schools are often ill-equipped to deal with. Approximately 56 percent of African-American youths in the juvenile-justice system report a prior school suspension. Out-of-school suspensions cut classroom time for children who need it most, and research demonstrates a correlation between harsh discipline practices, dropouts, and incarceration. Students with multiple suspensions are three times more likely to drop out by 10th grade than students who have not been suspended. Our group urges educators to work to ensure that children who are in crisis or exhibit challenging behaviors are kept in school, where they are surrounded by sources of knowledge and opportunity.

Another approach we stress is “positive behavioral interventions and supports,” or PBIS, a rehabilitative practice focused on developing and nourishing support structures for students to help improve their lives, both in and out of the classroom, and strengthen positive behaviors. Rather than centering exclusively on reactive disciplinary approaches, PBIS uses modeling and positive reinforcement to foster a good learning environment for young people.

These restorative practices are based on an understanding that children are not problems; children have problems. If children are suffering from sexual abuse, that trauma can manifest itself in acting out. In fact, research has consistently linked problem behavior in girl offenders to abuse and a traumatizing home life. In such situations, children need support, rather than suspension followed by incarceration.

The “Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline” report includes the story of Sasha to illustrate how current school structures and dynamics can fail girls who are victims of trauma. Sasha was raped as a high school student. The details of her assault spread via social media and led to judgment and harassment from her peers. Sasha felt unsafe at school and became truant and dropped out. Two years later, with the support and assistance she received from an educational advocate, Sasha successfully returned to her education, attending an alternative school. But without this kind of help, her story could have ended very differently.

For more of these promising endings to terrible life stories, both educators and whole communities must implement rehabilitative practices like PBIS, and provide the care and support our children need. If we don’t act now, we may lose a generation of children of color and victims of abuse.

The Nature of This Flower Is to Bloom.

Related:

The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline – Rights4Girls

Juvenile-Justice System Not Meeting Educational Needs, Report Says

Feds Urged to Do More to Track School Sexual Abuse

Education Week: Opinion

– Photo:Kids do not belong at a desk 7 hours/day. This is no way to optimize learning. We wrongly identify education with schooling because most of our education happens outside of the school environment.

Kids need less school rather than more, our current system of education stifles the natural curiosity, joy and a love of learning, and that between school, television, video games, and the internet, kids today are left with less than 12 hours a week “to create a unique consciousness.”

It appears to me as a schoolteacher that schools are already a major cause of weak families and weak com­munities. They separate parents and children from vital interaction with each other and from true curiosity about each others lives. Schools stifle family originality by appropriating the critical time needed for any sound idea of family to develop — then they blame the family for its failure to be a family.

Why, then, are we locking kids up in an involuntary network with strangers for twelve years?

Look again at [what I consider to be] the seven lessons of school teaching: confusion, class position, indifference, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, and surveillance. All of these lessons are prime training for permanent underclasses, people deprived forever of find­ing the center of their own special genius. And over time this training has shaken loose from its original purpose: to regulate the poor. For since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy as well as the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exact­ly as it is, has enlarged this institution’s original grasp to the point that it now seizes the sons and daughters of the middle classes as well.

Observations and valid criticisms

1. What’s gotten in the way of education in the United States is a theory of social engineering that says there is ONE RIGHT WAY to proceed with growing up.

2. Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders.

3. I’ve concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress genius because we haven’t yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

4. Children allowed to take responsibility and given a serious part in the larger world are always superior to those merely permitted to play and be passive.

5. The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.

6. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make education happen — certification probably guarantees it won’t.

7. This was once a land where every sane person knew how to build a shelter, grow food, and entertain one another. Now we have been rendered permanent children. It’s the architects of forced schooling who are responsible for that.

8. School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

9. Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns — by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880s, when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.

10. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents but should instead rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

11. Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new.

12. The paradox of the schools is evident: increased expenditure escalates their destructiveness at home and abroad.

13. Most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only in so far as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives.

14. Skill teachers are made scarce by the belief in the value of licenses… Most teachers of arts and trades are less skillful, less inventive and less communicative than the best craftsmen and tradesmen. Most high-school teachers of Spanish or French do not speak the language as correctly as their pupils might after half a year of competent drills.

15. Institutional wisdom tells us that children need school. Institutional wisdom tells us that children learn in school. But this institutional wisdom is itself the product of schools because sound common sense tells us that only children can be taught in school. Only by segregating human beings in the category of childhood could we ever get them to submit to the authority of a schoolteacher.

16. Once a man or woman has accepted the need for school, he or she is easy prey for other institutions. Once young people have allowed their imaginations to be formed by curricular instruction, they are conditioned to institutional planning of every sort.

17. School initiates young people into a world where everything can be measured, including their imaginations, and, indeed, man himself.

18. School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence.

19. The public is indoctrinated to believe that skills are valuable and reliable only if they are the result of formal schooling.

20. School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is.

Related:

John Taylor Gatto

Weapons of Mass Instruction

Cesspool of Humanity: Regna Lee Wood on literacy

Fool’s Gold: Why the Internet Is No Substitute for a Library

The Dumbbell Curve by Regna Lee Wood

Education System’s Most Infamous Critic

The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher, by John Taylor Gatto

Deschooling Society

Ivan Illich Deschooling Society – The New Observer

Philosophy of Education — Ivan Illich

Public School Is a 12-Year Jail Sentence

A critique of the modern education system, by – India Together

How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why – The …

Criticism of Public Education – Inequality of Opportunity, Highly

School System (Learn in Freedom)

Let Them Be Themselves – FamilyEducation.com

John Gatto | Thrive

American Journal of Education

Memory and intellectual improvement applied to …

MODERN METHODS AND CURRENT CRITICISMS OF …

Criticism of Modern Primary Education System – EssayForum

A Critique of the Modern University part I: Education