Education Reform: Reframing the Debate

With the advent of education reform, parents have been deluged with catch phrases, terminology, rhetoric, painting education reform in aesthetic terms and disparaging the "old way of doing things." [1] Parents are caught up in the jargon and only begin to see the reality as they see the system being implemented.

…all children can learn… All children certainly can learn. However, in the context of education reform what this means is that children cannot learn unless the conditions of learning are absolutely perfect within the school, within the home, within the community as defined by education reformers.

…children learn in different ways… This is based on the theory of Multiple Intelligences. A theory is something that has not been proven. However, in education reform material, this theory has been transmogrified to fact. It is not fact, but does serve the purposes of education reformers who are promoting it at every turn.

…children come to school incapable of learning because of their home life… This is another of those whoppers that is theory, not fact. If this were the case, the children who went to school during World War I and II, during the Korean War, during the Vietnam War, during the Great Depression would have learned nothing. The stress those children were under, with their fathers off to war or gone from home in search of work to feed the family, their mothers also working to feed the family, is not less than what children are under now. The problem with children now is that we, and subsequently they, have become a society of victims where the cop-out is that it's someone else's fault; something someone else did must be the cause of our problems. It's a cop-out that has allowed the schools to implement more and more social programs that have exacerbated the youth problems so prevalent in our society today. The greatest deterrent to juvenile crime is literacy and the schools have not been producing literate citizens for twenty plus years.

…students must become life-long learners… We are all life-long learners unless we are brain dead. In the context of its use in education reform, this phrase really means adhering to the politically correct way of thinking from womb to tomb — life-long and life-wide.

…children must become critical thinkers, problem solvers… In the context of education reform, critical thinking or problem solving, the child is brought, through systematic questioning, to the wanted way of thinking. Dr William Coulson states that the terms critical thinking/problem solving/decision making are synonymous with values clarification.

…standardized achievement tests rank children… Standardized achievement tests measure the factual knowledge base of children. With the advent of education reform, standardized test scores began to drop. To counter something that would obviously draw the attention of parents, tests of low achieving children were pulled before the scores were tabulated. This is why "100%" rarely appears under the "number tested" column on the Washington state district level summaries. This effectively skews the scores.

…world class standards… The United States had, until the 60's, the best education system in the world. Even with the dumbing down of the last thirty years, more foreigners attend institutions of higher learning in the United States than vice versa. America has always had the highest standards. For us to achieve world-class standards, we must lower our standards across the board. That is what is and will happen under education reform with outcomes more aligned to process, to changing attitudes, values, and beliefs, than to cultivating and disciplining the mind of the child.

…the Taylorian education system was intended to produce factory workers… This is a tactic intended to label the education system of yesteryear. That (pre-1965) education system did something that education reform will not — it educated children, it cultivated and disciplined the mind, children were challenged to use the scope of the knowledge they had learned to formulate a reasoned conclusion as an individual. The new education system is to socialize the child — the same education system used in socialist countries.

…parents must become involved in their child's education… This rhetoric sounds wonderful at the outset. What this really means, however, in the context of education reform, is that parental participation and buy-in must be solicited so when opposition to reform mounts, the claim can be made that education reform is the result of parental participation. In other words, parents are being used.

…Goals 2000 is a national program, not a federal program… If you look the word national up in the dictionary, you will discover that it means belonging to or maintained by the federal government. Not only this but Goals 2000 is codified into federal law. Yes, the law sunsets in 2000 but the system it will have put in place will be maintained by the ESEA in 4 or 5 year plans.

…Goals 2000 is voluntary… This is true as stated numerous times in the act itself. However, if a state wishes to receive Goals 2000 money (and currently all fifty states are), then the state must write its grant application over the requirements of the Request for Proposal (RFP) sent out by the federal government to solicit grant applications for the Goals 2000 grant money. This RFP lays out what the state must incorporate in its grant application, in accordance with Goals 2000, if the state wishes its grant application to be considered for funding. When the state writes the grant to meet the requirements of the RFP, when the grant is signed by someone with the authority to do so, when the grant is accepted and funded by the federal government, the state and federal governments have entered into a de facto and legal binding contract. Also, HR6 — the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Act (ESEA) of 1965, renamed the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994, and the funding mechanism for Goals 2000 — makes it very clear that compliance with Goals 2000 is requisite to receiving the Title funding that schools have received for years under the ESEA. These are facts that are carefully left out of the discussion.

…education reform is grassroots… This is one of the biggest whoppers to come down the line. Grassroots means coming from the people. Education reform is not "coming from the people." The what has already been decided, the how being relegated to the "local" level is a very structured process which defies deviation. In order to receive Title I money, state and federal grant money, the school district must abide state requirements and provide proof that they are doing so; in turn the state must abide Goals 2000 and likewise prove that they are doing so. Education reform is by no means grassroots.

…opponents of education reform are negative… Being proactive is not synonymous with truth. When the truth is labeled and called negative, our nation is in more trouble than we know. Those who call others negative for opposing education reform should be prepared to provide the proof that what they are doing 1) aligns with our Constitution and form of government, 2) has the validated research behind it to prove that it is not more than an experiment on children, 3) is fiscally responsible, 4) meets the definition of local control and 5) does not violate parents' rights.

…opponents of education reform are enemies of education… The key word here is education. Education reform is not about educating children, is not about cultivating and disciplining the minds of children, it is about socializing children, about making children cooperative, collaborative team players willing to work for minimal compensation for the good of the collective whole – in final analogy, the socialist state. The real enemies of education, of our nation, are the advocates of education reform.

…opponents of education reform are conspiracy theorists… A conspiracy is a secretive plot… Nothing about education reform is secretive. Everything that is being done is being done right out in the open and is available to anyone who wants to take the time to research, read and study. The conspiracy theory hype of education reform proponents is nothing more than another labeling tactic intended to digress from the issues.

…opponents of education reform are right wing fundamentalists… This is a term intended to label and castigate, it is meant to reframe the debate, leading people to believe that those advocating the restructuring of our nation as the mainstream, neither right nor left, moderate, centrist. This is about as far from the truth as one can get. The term fundamentalist means those individuals who truly believe in the teachings of the Bible as they were set down. This is as opposed to those who believe that the teachings of the Bible are open to interpretation or are just a story. Our country, our form of government, was founded on Biblical principle, on fundamentalist principle. Therefore, those who believe the Bible is open to interpretation are not mainstream, centrist, or moderate. The New Age religion, prevalent in the ideology and semantics of education reform, is not a Judeo Christian religion. It is an occult, pagan religion.

…we must become global citizens… We are not global citizens; we are American citizens. The only way we can become global citizens is if we dissolve all national boundaries.

…we live in a democratic society… The United States is a Constitutional Republic. We were purposely set up that way because of the oppressive tendencies of democracies; the Federalist Papers stating that democracies are as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths. Democratic societies adhere to the tenets of socialism.

…we are a participatory democracy… A participatory democracy is a government of men in which the representatives of the people are appointed not elected. Participatory democracies prevail in oppressive nations such as Russia.

…we are a representative democracy… Care must be taken in how representative is defined in this context. If representative is defined as someone elected by general ballot issue, the this is accurate. If, however, this is defined as someone appointed to represent others, then this is inaccurate. Care must also be taken in the use of the word democracy.

…we must decentralize the schools… What this means, in the context of education reform, is that the governance of the school must be moved from the elected school board to site councils comprised of administrators, certificated and classified employees, and parents who are appointed to represent the community. Such is a move to participatory democracy in a democratic society.

…we must link workforce training to labor market needs to be competitive in the world economy… First of all, in a free nation such as was constructed by our Constitution, the economy serves the people. In oppressive societies, the people, referred to as human capital, human resources, or human resource units, serve the needs of the economy. If we become a world economy, it will only be because our leaders have committed us to such — not as a natural progression of events.

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[1] As a matter of clarification, the education system referred to by education reformers as "the old way of doing things," lumps together both the education systems of pre- and post-1965. The pre-1965 system educated children, cultivating and disciplining their minds. The post-1965 education system progressively dumbed children down as more and more social programs were implemented. In many places, elements of the new education system were being validated (tested to ensure they would produce in children the wanted effect) by pilot projects in schools. [Back]

© April 1996; Lynn M Stuter

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