Straight "A's" Deserves an "F"
By Kathleen Flanagan
Note: The following was a response to Chester
E. Finn's testimony to a Congressional panel. Both Finn's testimony and this response
were carried by Wednesday on the
Web.
Chester E.
Finn, Jr., proposing a remedy for improving government-run schools is akin to
President Clinton extolling the virtues of marital fidelity.
It is Chester E. Finn, Jr. who is
recognized as the "architect of America 2000," marketed by the Bush
administration, now known by the updated title "Goals 2000" under the
Clinton administration. [1]
Researcher and
columnist Berit Kjos has written of Finn's lofty reformation promises:
Since both Republican
and Democratic change agents know what American parents want, they speak
glowingly about parental involvement, high standards, and the other misleading
ideals of Outcome-Based Education.
Few tell us what they really mean.
Chester Finn, who helped Lamar Alexander and President Bush market
America 2000 to the public, promised early in 1995 that the new Republican
leadership was determined to 'straighten out' public education and 'repair the
damage' done during the Clinton administration. He offered what parents want: 'local control,' 'quality results,' and
'decentralization.' [2]
Contrary to what parents presume is
meant by "returning local control," Chester E. Finn, Jr., has
provided his definition:
The school is the vital system, the state is the policy setter
(and chief paymaster), and nothing in between is very important. This formulation turns on its head the
traditional American assumption that every city, town, and county bears the
chief responsibility for organizing and operating its own schools as a
meaningful function. That is what
we once meant by "local control," but it has become an anachronism no
longer justified by research, consistent with sound fiscal policy or
organizational theory, suited to our mobility patterns or important to the
public...
Perhaps the best way to enforce this standard is to confer
valuable benefits and privileges on people who meet it and to withhold from
those who do not. Work permits,
good jobs, and college admission are the most obvious, but there is ample scope
here for imagination in devising carrots and sticks. Drivers
licenses could be deferred. So
could eligibility for professional athletic teams. The minimum wage paid to those who earn
their certificates might be a dollar an hour higher. [3]
Finn's "Straight A's"
proposal states the conditions for "freedom":
It must boost pupil achievement on
instruments of its choosing which may include state-level National Assessment
results or other tests and assessments.
This is nothing but the proverbial Hobson's choice: you may choose, but you must choose only
from Reform A or Reform B. There is
always a missing alternative. For
those who don't comply with the conditions, the loss of funds is threatened
— the "stick."
Finn does not elaborate on what is meant by "student
achievement." Those who expect
that the standards of "outcome-based education" translate to
"academic achievement" are sadly misinformed. As B. K. Eakman uncovered:
Here's the real definition of
outcome-based education, the one the professionals use. It was published in the January 1991
pamphlet by a federally funded group called Outcome Accreditation (OA) at the
Central Michigan University, Center for Accreditation. Outcomes: 'the influence the school has on the
student.' Two of the coveted
outcomes named in the pamphlet focused on 'how students behave and feel about
themselves.' This same pamphlet
explained where testers were to get this kind of information: from 'anecdotal records, attitude
inventories, writing samples...Changes in attitude or 'performance' [read:
behavior] are tracked over time to find out if the curricular programs are
working — programs geared to the emotions, remember, not the intellect.
Today under the cover of 'mental
health' and 'student assessment,' consultant-industry psychologists are using
the government grant process as the primary vehicle for infusing experimental
therapies, many of them medically dangerous and/or politically motivated, into
school testing programs and curricula.
Most parents believe the assessments administered by
their local school is gauging academic knowledge and progress. [4]
Misled parents presume these standards
and assessments reflect their children’s academic achievement, but
educators are assessing feelings, beliefs, and conduct in order to prepare
youngsters to take their places as "group members" in the workforce
of a collective global society.
These "assessments" have been proven not only to measure
beliefs, feelings and conduct, but to influence them as well. Parents of students at Jefferson High
School in San Antonio, Texas (a state which Finn commends for its approach to
monitoring academic achievement in its schools) were shocked when the
"assessments" revealed dozens of invasive questions which had been
posed to their children:
1.
Have you ever had penis to vagina
sexual intercourse?
2.
If so, how old were you the first
time? Age? Grade?
3.
Did you use some sort of contraceptive
(birth control) the first time you had sex?
4.
When was the first time you experienced
deep mouth kissing? Age? Grade?
5.
Have you ever had sex without birth
control?
6.
Have you ever had oral sex?
7.
Have you ever had anal sex?
8.
Have you ever had homosexual sex?
9.
Have you ever had homosexual thoughts? [5]
Finn applauds Congress for The
Workforce Investment Act, commonly known as School-to-Work. Congressman Henry Hyde has summarized
Outcome-Based Education/School-to-Work as
a concept for
dumbing down our schools and changing the character of the nation through
behavior modification...It moves away from an academically intensive curriculum
to one that is integrated with vocational training, productional
training, producing skilled manpower for the labor market. The economy will be controlled by the
federal government by controlling our workforce and our schools. [6]
Finn's endorsement of this program
would delight the staunchest Marxist.
This is precisely what Marx and Engels called
for in the Communist Manifesto:
...centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the
state and the combination of education with industrial production.
Through "workforce
development boards," a new bureaucracy composed of non-elected officials
will utilize a "labor market information system" — in other
words, a database of outcome-based assessments collected on all students
— and will decide who will be trained for what job in the global
economy. California Congressman
Steve Baldwin has noted that
STW (School-to-Work) attempts to
track children early on into specific career pathways, a failed model that is
commonly used in socialist countries who centrally
plan their economies. [7]
Ohio is at the forefront in implementing STW,
and contemplates inculcating work skills in kindergarten, and requires that all
students prepare a Career Plan by the 8th grade. [8]
Once STW is
implemented, the "reformers" of the government-run school system have
another novel scheme waiting in the wings:
the full-service school, which will provide "mental health care,
physical health care, including immunizations, family home support, health, and
social services." In Illinois,
Goal 8 under Outcome-Based Education mandates that every child shall receive
"support services."
Already enacted in Colorado under the Children's Welfare Act,
parents are required to participate in a "Home Visitor Program" so
that social workers may assess childrearing practices. [9]
Lest some parents escape governmental
"assistance" in childrearing, "home visitor" programs are
being implemented at the moment a child enters the world. Robert Holland reported in The
Washington Times,
The ultimate social
intervention — just one short step from state licensing of parents
— entails nabbing first-time parents when their newborns are still in the
hospital nursery. The idea is that
agents of social uplift will go into private homes to 'train' these parents for
up to 50 visits annually per family.
Expectant parents are enlisted by being asked to sign permission forms
at the hospital.
In the wake of the
Columbine tragedy, it is likely that more schools will be ready to take the
carrot of federal funding and institute "mental health care," which
conforms with several of the Communist Goals, as
placed in the Congressional Record, January 10, 1963:
If the definition
of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over again while
expecting a different result, trusting Chester E. Finn, Jr., to
"reform" the very system he helped build is the epitome of mental
illness. Make no mistake that the
advocates of the America 2000/Goals 2000 package and its accompanying reforms
intend to create politically acceptable, compliant workers for the global
economy. Thirty years of continuous
"innovative school reform" has produced students who are nearly
illiterate, but believe that animals are equal in value to humans; children who
can't do sums without a calculator, but know how to place a condom on a
cucumber; kindergartners who are taught that Sally having two mommies is an alternative
lifestyle; graduates who cannot write a coherent paragraph, but are well versed
in "death education," as "in Oregon [where] students were taken
to the local mortuary to view how a dead body was processed." [11]
In 1988, a Department of Education
Report documented that "less than five percent of high school juniors and
seniors have the skills necessary to comprehend a primary-source historical
document." [12]
Although "reform" has been
promised year after year, true academic knowledge continues to plummet. In a New York Post column
on May 27, 1999, Maria Alvarez reported that
two out of three city
fourth-graders failed to meet strict new reading and writing
standards...Sixty-seven percent of the city's 75,400 kids who took the state's
new English Language Arts exam in January fell short or performed abysmally.
Instead of chasing the
"carrot" and cowering from the "stick," it is time to
consider genuine alternatives. In
his September 9, 1998, column, Vin Suprynowicz wrote:
If you're talking about how we can reform the current
government-run, socialist/redistributionist, public-employee-union-dominated
school system, to make it 'work better,' then there are no 'solutions' —
because you are seeking an answer to the wrong question.
The Constitution grants no authority for the federal
government to be involved in education.
Therefore, freedom from government interference in education is an
individual right, under the 9th amendment. Under the 14th amendment, it became
illegal for any state to deprive any United States citizen of such a
constitutional right. Therefore,
all government interference in education (federal OR state) is
unconstitutional, as well as extremely dangerous to our other freedoms (since
it exposes our children to 12 years of pro-big-government propaganda, in some
of their most crucial formative years.) [13]
Before the collectivists of the 1800s
had "marketed and sold" the government school system to a rightfully
leery public, most Americans knew that a demagogue would like a people half
educated; enough to read what he says, but not enough to know whether it is
true or not. Although succeeding
generations of government school students have missed this vital lesson, the
concept has not been lost on government school "architects" and
"reformers."
NOTES:
[1] America 2000/Goals
2000 Research Manual: Moving the
Nation Educationally to a "New World Order"; Compiled and edited by James R. Patrick; Sarah Leslie, Who
Really Wrote America 2000?;
(Citizens for Academic Excellence, 1994) [Back]
[2] Berit Kjos, Brave
New Schools; (Harvest House Publishers, 1995); See: http://www.crossroad.to/index.html
[Back]
[3] America 2000/Goals
2000 Research Manual; Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.;
"A Chronology of Education with Quotable Quotes" [Back]
[4] B. K. Eakman, Cloning
of the American Mind: Eradicating
Morality through Education; (Huntington House Publishers, 1998) [Back]
[6] The New American; July 21, 1997; Life-Sentence Career Planning [Back]
[7] Karen Holgate, School-to-Work, Goals 2000 and Other School
Atrocities; Parents National Network [Back]
[10] See Chuck Baldwin Live [Back]
[11] Karen Holgate, School-to-Work:
A Formula for Failure [Back]
[12] David Barton, Original
Intent; (Wallbuilder Press, 1996) [Back]
[13] Vin Suprynowicz,
The Libertarian, Mountain
Media [Back]
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