Education Reform In a Nutshell
The following was written as a response
to a mother who removed her child from the local government school because the
Gestapo principal demanded that her 13 year-old son
shave off his peach fuzz. The
mother could not believe how ridiculous the school was being and how it was
usurping her authority as a parent.
Her question was why was this happening? What follows is my response to her and
really sums up the education reform/school-to-work initiative.
You are experiencing
what many of us have tried to tell parents would happen from the outset of
education reform. You see,
education reform is not about academics, it is a system, and is actually known
as systems education. If you go to Systems Thinking,
you can learn about the systems philosophy and how it applies to education.
Briefly, however, under systems
education, we decide what we want the child to look like
(referred to as the exit outcomes, learning goals, essential learnings, etc) when he/she exits the system; then the
curriculum, instruction and teaching methodologies are aligned to the exit
outcomes to ensure that the child achieves the exit outcomes (teaching to the
test), the assessment being the measure of the child's progress toward
achieving the exit outcomes.
This is a system intended, not to
educate the child, but to produce a world class worker. This whole system is centered around what is referred to as polytechnical education
— education to produce a workforce.
In this system, your child is no longer a little individual, your child
is a human resource or human capital to be molded in accordance
with regional economic development strategies and regional labor market needs
as decided by regional labor market boards established under the Workforce
Investment Act at the federal level.
Each business is being standardized so that each job within that
business falls within the standards descriptors of the National Skill Standards Board
(NSSB) established as an outreach of the SCANS (Secretaries
Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) competencies. All schools are aligning their
job-training programs to NSSB specifications for
jobs.
Because this is a closed (managed)
system, in which workers are produced; such, then, necessitates that the
authority of parents in the education of their children be removed. This has been done by establishing
NON-ELECTED committees (the we noted above) at the school level that
decide what ALL children in that school will look like when they exit the
school, yours included. Those
NON-ELECTED (appointed) committees are said to represent the community in
the education of the children of that community. Note that it is not what the parents
want in the education of their child, but what the collective community
(socialistic) wants in the education of their child that matters. The authority of the individual parent
is effectively terminated, the child becomes the property of the community, and
social services becomes the club used to keep parents
with the program.
By necessity, via state and federal
discretionary and legally binding grants provided to the government schools,
what the child SHALL look like aligns with state exit outcomes and the eight
goals of Goals 2000 at the federal level.
The principal is given the authority to enforce whatever rules are necessary
to bring that about. The removal of
facial hair .... genital
exams .... school uniforms .... bans
on free speech .... bans on free exercise of religious
beliefs ....
And because this is a closed system,
ALL must be included to make it work.
That is why you keep hearing "ALL children (this) and ALL children
(that)...." ALL, ALL, ALL....
Children exiting this system will not
be well-educated, will not be innovative, creative, intelligent individuals
with the intellectual capability to reach for the star or stars of their choice
on completing their education, the children exiting this system will be a
cooperative, collaborative team players, willing to work for minimal
compensation for the good of the collective (socialistic).
Does this sound like Nazi Germany
— producing good little workers under the direction of the state trained
brown shirts? Yes, it most
certainly does. But until parents
see this for what it is and are willing to stand up and say Not
with my child, you don't, it will continue.
Lynn M Stuter
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