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Some of the dumbing down of the youth is deliberate.

http://www.deliberatedumbingdo...

There is a reason for that...

http://www.deliberatedumbingdo...

Dumbing it down, funny you mention that, and if you want to read why...

http://www.deliberatedumbingdo...

I don't agree that we need to throw metric assloads of money at the issue, we simply need to revert education to classical education instead of what we have done for the last 50+ years in forcing schools to teach workplace education. Politicians broke our education system when they forced all schools to teach to "standards testing" instead of teaching people to "think!"

The fix does not require tremendous amounts of cash as you suggest, simply a different method of education and curriculum changes that correspond.

We also need to get government grants out of schools that support political agendas. Sex education is a waste of your tax money, plain and simple. Why are we not making people accountable for their actions, which in turn reduces sex among minors. Are you ignorant enough to believe that in 1800s minors were not experimenting with sex? Hell, they probably experimented as much or more than kids today. The difference is that if you knocked someone up you started work and supported your family. If you wanted to go to college, you kept it in your pants (or were extremely careful flailing it around), the nanny state did not try and fix things for you.

There is a tremendous amount of information regarding how our education system has been changed, and not for the better. Thisis a good place to start, as is this. It does not take billions to fix, it takes reverting the politician's changes and going back to the system that worked for well over 2,000 years.

Nothing positive happens with the current shitbags in politics either, time to wake up and start getting these assholes out of office and in to jails where they belong. Better yet, since they are treasonous I think we toss them in to exile and let them fend for themselves. I'm sure North Korea would take in some new "happy citizens"

You speak like the modern age has had a fundamentally different attitude towards science.

From what I'm told (I didn't live during that time, so I don't have firsthand knowledge), we used to have a government that strongly encouraged scientific research and development and considered it part of the greatness of our nation. Whether you consider it a problem with faith or with politics or with capitalism or education or whatever, I don't think you can say that about our relationship with science today.

The political class is endangered by a properly educated populace, and keeping the educational system from actually educating people has been done deliberately. I used to think it was just hyperbole, and the problems with the education system was simply an accident of incompetent administration, but I have come to realize it has been done on purpose.

It's no wonder you can't find kids interested in pursuing a career in science the way it is presented in school these days.

"I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers." - John D. Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller, his grandson, said of his grandfather: "He didn't break any laws . . . but a lot of laws were passed because of what he did."

For the folks who don't know who John D. Rockefeller was, he was the Bill Gates of the 1800's, but with oil instead of windows.

It's no wonder he got lots of resistance against his peers, administration and teachers union. Public schools are not about education, its about creating dumbed down automatons who are easily controlled.

"I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers." - John D. Rockefeller

Yes, that's what really goes on in the halls of power of public schools. Public school officials are totally the loyal minions of the wealthy elite, and care deeply that their beloved masters have a vast lower class of morons to exploit when the kids grow up in 10 or 20 years.

"Or maybe the system just sucks and you're a hippie conspiracy-mongering idiot." --Me

How am I defending "the forces that tore down Escalante's progress?" I think you suffer from reading comprehension problems.

Did you miss the quote I was responding to?

It's no wonder he got lots of resistance against his peers, administration and teachers union. Public schools are not about education, its about creating dumbed down automatons who are easily controlled.

"I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers." - John D. Rockefeller

It isn't the government that benefits from churning out uneducated drones, it is the owning class. I never said the owning class was leading the charge to bring meaningful change to schools, I said the opposite. The owning class wants uneducated drones, and they are arrogant enough to come right out and say it.

It's no wonder he got lots of resistance against his peers, administration and teachers union. Public schools are not about education, its about creating dumbed down automatons who are easily controlled.

"I don't want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers." - John D. Rockefeller

If you are really interested in researching this, you can start here.

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/ Pretty insightful read.

Before you troll and bash "fundamentalists" with no proof you should read a few books on why education in the US is in the state we now see.

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America By Charlotte Iserbyt

An Underground History of Education by John Gatto

Or read the Dodd Report to the Reece Committee which investigated Tax Free Foundations in the early 1950's.

Is it the teachers that are shitty, or is it an educational system that demands teachers teach a certain way?

It's definitely the system. The 40's and 50's brought massive application of B.F. Skinner's methods to the public education system. The less said about the 60's, the better. The 70's gave us the "gift" of "Mastery Learning", which focuses on by-the-numbers learning instead of independent thinking. The 80's continued this disturbing trend with "Results-Based Education" (later renamed to "Outcome-Based Education" to avoid criticism. Ah, semantics.). And the 90's through the millennium saw the application of principles such as "No Child Left Behind", social promotion, curve-based grading, and other bullshit methods for accepting failure and passing it as achievement.

And now, we have an education system that is thoroughly and completely fucked.

American teens' test scores are consistently around the 25th place compared to the rest of the world. (And this is considering the fact that the vast majority of public education is geared towards "teaching to the test", with special prep courses and example tests given out. Even when we cheat, we're still losing. Badly.)

I count myself lucky to have gotten a European education - and a first-hand look at the difference between that and American public education system. Having seen the system from the outside and from within, I can safely say that unless we drop the liberal (not Liberal as in political party, but liberal in the socioeconomic sense, settle down) bullshit of OBE, NCLB, SCANS, and all the other mediocrity-promoting crap, we'll soon be left in the dust.

Of course, this will never happen as long as the teachers' unions are in power, and as long as the politicians can sell the same bullshit to the public year after year.

No, I don't have a solution. And I'm not qualified to offer one, either. Just throwing my opinion out there; mod it as you wish.

P.S. Check out Charlotte Iserbyt's excellent "The Deliberate Dumbing Down Of America" (all over Amazon and a free download at http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/ (6 MB PDF, about 520 pages).

P.P.S. By the way, Akido37, your local professor isn't the only one who's gotten in trouble for teaching "to the brain" instead of "to the test". There are at least 20 (that I've come across personally) well-documented cases around the country.

Three reasons.

1. The media downright worshiped him during the campaign. Read this book and watch this documentary.
2. He's excellent at reading from a teleprompter.
3. The majority of Americans have been dumbed down and poisoned with sodium fluoride to the point that plants are smarter than them.

Also, watch this to see the complete ignorance of Obama voters.

...if they switched back to education first instead of social political correctness indoctrination and brainwashing of the children.

In case you missed it, George Bush isn't a right-winger. Most conservative right-wingers want to get rid of the Department of Education and government out of education all together.

If you want to blame someone, blame everyone. Just read this article about how brainwashed kids are becoming. They are making kids religious zealots, although its not Christianity.

Maybe you should read this book, The deliberate dumbing down of america. The author of this book was one of the top people inReagan's Department of Education.

You should also check out the Reece Commission, which investigated the tax-exempt foundations in the 1950's. Then you'll find out that this was completely deliberate. You'll also find out it has nothing to do with political parties or the false left-right paradigm we're fed on the TV all day long.

Of course you'll probably just call me crazy without looking at the documents. All I ask is you look at it yourself, then call me crazy ;)

All this study does is show that the methods being used are in fact working as part of The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.

• "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America"
  http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/
  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966707109/ 104-5327902-9960761
• Mercury ion complexes added into your drinking water decreases your I.Q. instantly. : http://crashrecovery.org/Lor2_QTS_700kb_QD.mov
• Computerized T-valves were added in 2004 into the Los Angeles water supply system to remotely facilitate customized additives into the drinking water. Public Extermination Project http://la.indymedia.org/news/2004/08/115676.php by Janet C. Phelan

Our high schools have long been designed to provide worker bees, and some argue this is deliberate...

Don't mistake me for being smarter as you. I guess i'm a average B- to speak in USA grades terminology. I however suggest you have a look at this book :

Barnes and Noble #1 Bestseller in its History of Education category.: "The Deliberate Dumbing down of America"

Robert

Stop Socialism before it's to late.

The true purpose of schooling, according to Gatto, is to produce an easily manageable workforce to serve employers in a mass-production economy. Actual education is a secondary and even counterproductive result since educated people tend to be more difficult to control.

To anyone interested in this topic, I'd suggest also reading Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt's book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America . It'll make you want to homeschool your kids.

As a counterpoint though, the US education system does exactly what the powers that be need it to do by turning out unquestioning conformists that can be easily placed into low-tech, low-wage positions with a minimal amount of uproar.

For more detailed info on just that, here's an interesting book:

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

This "dumbing down" was done on purpose, and she has the paper trail to prove it. hard to go forward as effectively in research when the defaultposition is to brainwash the kids into being corporate moo slave consumers and statists instead of just a quality education.

Then look at the trends in finance where we developed the technique of corporate raiding, junk bonds, hedge funds and derivatives, and lying at top levels of the economy as a proper business model, and you can see that the get rich quick, something for nothing attitude has become more important than actually researching and producing products and services as the top priority for the nations "business community". There's no way around it, long term research won't equate a "postive cash flow" in this quarters statements, so they abandoned it. When eventually it lead to a severe decline in profits (as it was bound to), they switched to outsourcing what they could, in sourcing cheaper labor for that which couldn't be outsourced, and bribing politicians more to keep laws passed that would maintain short term profits over longer term profitability and stability.

Now look at something else, back to the children, we've also seen the most curious phenomenon of the forced drugging of children in the schools, to go along with the deliberate brainwashing and dumbing down. Been going on a long time now, now it's quite normal, but it was simply unheard of just a few decades ago, it's totally new, and completely wrong. I think it's funny as all get out, I can drive into town and go by an elementary school, outside they have a DARE sign, when inside 1/4to 1/3 of the students are drug addicts on purpose. The irony is delicious but disturbing, because few of the parents and even fewer of the JBT "drug warriors" can see it.

And my pet peeve, the thoroughly ridiculous emphasis on schools being the farm teams for the major professional sports leagues, and addicting generation after generation of people into their complete scam profits machine. And it's not just the schools, look at any local news broadcast in the evening, 1/3 of the total non commercial time is devoted to this "bread and circuses" to keep up the addiction. How much of that news time do you ever see any reference to the hard sciences, or anything actually intellectual compared to the scores for the "big games"?

We lost it culturally on purpose, it's not good enough to be our own smart workers anymore, we need managers, marketers, entertainers, middle man skimmers and gamblers, and most importantly, mercenaries-but not deep thinkers or actual productive workers. Our foreign policy now, both civilian and military, is based on L

As for public schools, they've been dumbing down American kids for a long time now. Charlotte Iserbyt's excellent book explains all --

"I applaud Iserbyt for her shocking, completely documented expose. A dynamite book which presents a clear chronology of educational restructuring. Compelling evidence shows school reform, supported by all political stripes, to be a totalitarian plan using Skinnerian behavior modification and other equally manipulative psychological techniques to subjugate future generations in a state of ignorant bliss."

O. Jerome (Jed) Brown, M.A., 25 yr. teacher, former candidate WA State Supt. of Public Instruction

"This country, if it is to remain a sovereign, free and independent America, depends upon the greatest number of Americans reading and acting upon the information in this timely book."

Ann Herzer, M.A., Reading Specialist, 20 yr. teacher, former candidate AZ Supt. of Pub. Inst., member Dau. Am. Rev.

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

If you read nothing else, read Charlotte's article, No American Left Alone. It's an eye opener --

President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" could be referred to as "No American Left Alone" since what we are looking at is what the National Alliance of Business, which supports "planned economy," refers to as Kindergarten through Age 80 Education/Training. This is basically the United Nations Lifelong Learning- Brainwashing Agenda under the umbrella of what will eventually be "unelected" school and community councils (council is defined as "soviet" in many dictionaries) which will make all decisions for us at the local level. Former Senator Bill Bradley, N.J., called for this on one of the Sunday morning talk shows about four years ago. The Governors, very recently at their NGA conference, discussed the use of unelected (politically-correct?) citizens to police our communities. This is so unbelievable I find it hard to even write about it. (...)

As for public schools, they've been dumbing down American kids for a long time now. Charlotte Iserbyt's excellent book explains all --

"I applaud Iserbyt for her shocking, completely documented expose. A dynamite book which presents a clear chronology of educational restructuring. Compelling evidence shows school reform, supported by all political stripes, to be a totalitarian plan using Skinnerian behavior modification and other equally manipulative psychological techniques to subjugate future generations in a state of ignorant bliss."

O. Jerome (Jed) Brown, M.A., 25 yr. teacher, former candidate WA State Supt. of Public Instruction

"This country, if it is to remain a sovereign, free and independent America, depends upon the greatest number of Americans reading and acting upon the information in this timely book."

Ann Herzer, M.A., Reading Specialist, 20 yr. teacher, former candidate AZ Supt. of Pub. Inst., member Dau. Am. Rev.

The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

If you read nothing else, read Charlotte's article, No American Left Alone. It's an eye opener --

President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" could be referred to as "No American Left Alone" since what we are looking at is what the National Alliance of Business, which supports "planned economy," refers to as Kindergarten through Age 80 Education/Training. This is basically the United Nations Lifelong Learning- Brainwashing Agenda under the umbrella of what will eventually be "unelected" school and community councils (council is defined as "soviet" in many dictionaries) which will make all decisions for us at the local level. Former Senator Bill Bradley, N.J., called for this on one of the Sunday morning talk shows about four years ago. The Governors, very recently at their NGA conference, discussed the use of unelected (politically-correct?) citizens to police our communities. This is so unbelievable I find it hard to even write about it. (...)

enjoy

one reply for an AC

thank you and you are welcome for the comments

BTW,I don't do drugs or drink. Data is data, deal with it if you choose to, or ignore it. Your call, not mine.

It used to be that schooling had two functions, teach basics in a wide range of subjects,the traditional 3 Rs, etc, and also to teach the ability to think as opposed to what is going on now which is in large part giving a politically correct answer and maintaining your herd and "caste" mentality status.

It is easier to command and control populations if they are ignorant and cowed and have a parroting answer that the various "commanding authorities" want to hear. People who can think for themselves are a threat to this mass two class society globalization effort.

For an overview of this I would recommend the writings of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. This is a paste from her bio:
"Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms."

It's a rather disturbing revelation.

Here is an interview with the author.

Sunday, May 13, 2001
SUNDAY Q&A
Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school?
Geoff Metcalf interviews former U.S. education adviser Charlotte Iserbyt

Editor's Note: Most parents want their children to receive a quality education. Yet, low test scores, drugs and violence on campus are increasingly prevalent in public schools and the disconnect between parents, educators and administrators is widening. Why is this situation occurring when so much time, money and attention are being directed toward improving education in the United States?

Today, WorldNetDaily staff writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf interviews someone who has some shocking answers, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. During the '80s, Iserbyt was a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education and has also written "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," a chronological history of the past 100 years of education reform. In this interview with Metcalf, she discusses the impact of the federal government, the United Nations and influential corporations on the American educational system and a little-known program called "School-To-Work."

Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.

By Geoff Metcalf
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

Question: The first thing I have to ask you -- I'm still not sure if this is a blessing or a curse -- but ever since I returned to talk radio ten years ago, I promised myself I wouldn't interview any author until I read their book. I was intimidated when yours arrived in the mail.

Answer: I don't blame you.

Q: It is a big puppy. 714 pages worth.

A: It is a big baby.

Q: What led you to this project? You were with the Department of Education in the '80s -- why the book?

A: I actually started collecting research in the early '70s. I was on a local school board after living outside the country for 18 years for the United States Department of State. When I came back, I was very upset with the changes I had seen in our school district -- which had happened to be a pilot-school district for change. The kids were rolling around on the floor -- they didn't have to learn grammar or anything -- and I was shocked. I started asking questions and, as the only parent who ever complained, I would go to school board meetings and ask very legitimate questions like, why don't they teach grammar?

Q: How dare you ask such a silly question?

A: And, finally, a retired teacher came to me and she said, "You are right on! I want you to go for some training to become a 'change agent.' We're going to find out what is going on." So, she paid for me to go to this training. The training came out of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was funded by what was to become my office in the U.S. Department of Education. It was funded earlier in the '70s -- and it was still funded under Ronald Reagan, by the way. This particular project was called "Innovations in Education/Change Agents Guide."

Q: So what did you learn in the training?

A: I was taught how to identify the resisters in my community. Those people who -- good people -- good Americans who have seen and know clearly these programs in the schools were not there to help our children academically.

Q: Hold on. This sounds as if instead of any modification in curriculum, the objective was to go after the people who were complaining about changes in curriculum?

A: Complaining about "values clarification" and complaining about "sex ed" and complaining about all of these subjects that have education hanging off the end of them. You know, we didn't used to have "math education" and "reading education" -- that's not really education. When you have "education" hanging off of it, you know that they have another agenda (except for "Drivers Ed"). Anyway, these were the people in our communities in the '70s who were saying, "I don't like that sex education. I don't think it is up to schools to teach my children there's no right or wrong." And saying, "I don't like that drug education and what's that critical-thinking education?"

I was trained because they didn't know who I was.

Q: Who were you?

A: I was a resister. I was actually being trained to identify myself. And I didn't like it. The other part of it was, I was trained to go to the highly-respected people in our community ...

Q: Wait a minute. So, once you identified these so-called resisters, these people who were critical of people who defend the indefensible, then what do you do?

A: That's a very good question. No other talk-show host has ever asked me that. It's a good question. What do you do? You identify them and then the superintendent will try to get them onto a task force and make them have "ownership" and ...

Q: Ahhh -- a re-education program?

A: Yeah -- you got it! That's a very good question -- really, truly -- I've never had a talk-show guy ask me that question.

Q: It seems like an obvious question.

A: It is a very obvious one, and that's why it took me a while to come up with an answer. But that's exactly what the reason was. And, then, the other thing I was going to do was to identify the important people in the community -- good people, good Americans who have really been used with the Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Garden Club -- go to them and convince them that these programs are vital to the survival of this country, of the world: The world is changing we have to have these programs.

I was really shocked. I was absolutely appalled. You have to remember: I had been out of the country 18 years and I had left a country that was red, white and blue, mom and apple pie, and all that.

Q: You were a dinosaur.

A: Well, yeah! I was a dinosaur. I had lived in socialist countries and I had traveled in communist countries and I had seen a lot. And, I thought to myself: "What the [blank] is going on in my own country?"

Q: Charlotte, what about teachers? There are some good teachers who are genuinely dedicated ...

A: Many. Many, many more than most people think -- and they have to keep quiet.

Q: Yeah but what is their reaction when they are presented with these controversial, non-academic methodologies that don't have anything to do with teaching anyone anything?

A: They are very unhappy, and they try to continue to do something that does have something to do with teaching and learning. I just recently heard the state of Oregon has passed legislation to get rid of tenure. I was always opposed to tenure. Now I'm in favor of tenure because what they are going to do now ...

Q: ... now, see, I'm opposed to tenure. Why do you support it now?

A: Because of the way they are going to use it. Now, they can get rid of the good teachers without any problem. It used to be getting rid of the bad ones right? Now, they are going to get rid of the academic teachers. The teachers who do not agree with George Bush's education agenda -- you know the outcome-based, direct education, teach-to-the-test. These poor teachers -- these poor children -- and they do not agree in the changing of the definition of quality teaching.

Q: Charlotte, I'd like you to explain to our readers at what point did it become more important to manufacture this concept of self esteem -- and the fact that if you can "feel good" about the process, it doesn't matter what the results are. When did that happen?

A: Well, you know, it all started in 1934 when the Carnegie Foundation set the agenda for the next hundred years and that was to change our country from a free, individualistic economy to a planned economy -- and to do it through the schools. And the way they would do it, would be to change the social studies so nobody would know what our form of government is -- and how precious it is -- and to not teach the Constitution. This is the Carnegie Corporation plan -- to implement a planned economy through the schools. And it is going in right now.

Q: OK, that's the background and foundation. But at what point, recently, did they effect the significant change in direction, content and product?

A: At what point did all the touchy-feeling stuff happen? Carnegie happened in 1934, the United Nations in 1945 ...

Q: The only touchy-feeling stuff I encountered in school was if you didn't do what you were supposed to do -- when you were supposed to do it, the way you were instructed to do it -- Brother Benilde would smack you up side the head with a book.

A: Well, that's right, but they don't want people to be educated, and this is a very important point. I know there are people out there who think: "Goodness, I thought the whole purpose of the corporations forming partnerships with the public sector (which actually is corporate fascism) was so that the schools would give our children better academic skills?" That's not true. According to David Hornbeck -- Mr. Carnegie and the big honcho for "School To Work," he said in his book, "Human Capital," which he wrote with Lester Solomon, that the corporations do not want educated people.

Q: Why?

A: Because educated people are very difficult -- they ask too many questions, they quit their jobs, etc.

Q: Actually, the way it has developed now, (and I think the primary reason they want to maintain the Department of Education) the corporations will identify what vacancies and needs they have and "train" workers. Charlotte, I want you to explain "School To Work" because I get so angry and seething when I think about it -- and try to talk about it -- that I sometimes butcher it.

A: So do I. I think the best way -- and I really recommend Congress do this, because it would be cheaper than going to Europe -- I would like all of them to go down and spend six months in Cuba. Is that a good answer?

Q: If they don't come back, it would be great.

A: Well, go down to Cuba and you will see the same system implemented there that they are implementing in Oregon, in California and in Maine and everywhere. Where the children are identified at a very early age, psychologically profiled -- fourth grade in some cases. In fact, the whole idea of work is started in kindergarten.

Q: Hold on a moment, Charlotte, because we have to stress something here.

A: What?

Q: This is not fiction. This is not something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie. This is something that is going on right now!

A: That's right. It is in. It is not vocational either -- which is something I have always supported. I'd like to share with your readers the story I sent you about the 12-year-old youngster in Minnesota. He understood what I was talking about and he said to his mom, "I want to choose my own future!" And he went to a big rally they held in Minneapolis at 12-years old. Isn't it interesting that this 12-year-old understands what "School To Work" is.

Q: And, beyond that, what about the people who don't "find" themselves until they are 40?

A: You're not kidding. I'm a bit older than that and sometimes I wonder if I've found myself ... I'm still looking for myself.

Q: I often joke when people ask, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" Duh? It presupposes I will grow up and that I will know. I'm still working at it.

A: We all have a lot of talents we don't know about until later on when something happens. You are absolutely correct. The thing is that is the German dual-track system of education and work-force training. It is the Soviet system -- people don't like to use that word. It is the Cuban system.

Q: What people need to recognize is they are trying to identify kids at an early age for what their aptitudes are. Not based on what the kids talents and abilities are, but what the corporation need is.

A: That's right. Actually everything is focused on the good of the state now. It is the state that is important -- not the individual's upward mobility, the individual's future life. That's the way education used to be. You asked me earlier when the change took place.

Q: Are you going to answer it now?

A: Yes. It really took place in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. And that followed the agreements that Eisenhower signed with the Soviet Union in 1958. I feel they very strongly influenced our agenda in education.

Q: I just dodged the bullet. I graduated in 1966.

A: You were lucky. In 1965, they couldn't get American educators to implement this agenda that the Carnegie Corporation wanted. Also, an incredible psychologist -- Brock Chisholm -- at the United Nations recommended getting rid of the conscience to the World Health Organization. And he recommended doing that through the schools by training the teachers to be little psychiatrists.

None of this was accepted by any American educator until 1965. I don't think even at that time they really accepted it but it did pass. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a major, major shift. It moved our marvelous system of education -- which, up until 1960, was the best in the world -- from academics, what you know in your head, to a performance-based system which we're screaming about: outcome-based education, mastery learning and Skinner (who said "I can make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule"). I think your readers can understand the difference between knowledge based in your head and performance based. Performance is how you perform on the job -- that is not the role of the public school system or any education system that I can see.

Q: And it changed in 1965?

A: That changed in '65. From that time on, all these incredibly horrible values-destroying programs were developed: values clarification, survival games, critical thinking. Geoff, I have a manual published in 1967 that is three inches thick of values-destroying programs. And people say, "Why Columbine?"

Q: Let me ask you this -- because I've spent a fair amount of time talking and writing about it -- the connection between the epidemic prescribing of psychotropic drugs to kids as a means of controlling them?

A: Absolutely. There's a very interesting appendix in my book about a Hawaii Master Plan in 1968. A pilot project for the whole country that was carried out in Hawaii and federally funded and it included just about everything that is taking place right now. But there was a recommendation in there to use these psychiatric drugs on our children. This has been planned for a long time. They don't want independent little active monsters running around in the classroom.

Q: There is an interesting sidebar to this. There is a woman in the San Francisco Bay area who has home schooled all her kids. Her daughter just went in the Army. The recruiters were surprised and elated that she scored remarkably high in just about every test. They gave her something like an $18,000 bonus for enlisting. They couldn't understand why she was so far superior to all the other recruits. Obviously the key reason is she was shielded and protected from public education.

A: There is no question if a parent is able to do that (and not all are -- I'm not sure I could have) they certainly should be home schooling. Or, if you can't home school, try to find a private school.

Q: But that shouldn't be necessary if the public schools had not been so corrupted.

A: It shouldn't be necessary, but we need to note that there are good public schools. Although there won't be for long because of the redefinition of academics -- and that good teaching is no longer what it used to be -- so we won't have really much of a public school system. There'll be nothing left in a few years because of the legislation that is going through Washington, D.C., right now and the way they have been crashing the public school system ever since I left my office in the Department of Education. However, right now, you have to look carefully at private schools. In many cases, they may well be worse than the public schools at the moment.

Q: So what do you suggest to concerned parents?

A: Well my recommendation is different from anybody else's because I guess I'm naive and have stars in my eyes and wear rose-colored glasses ...

Q: ... and you are sheltered in Maine.

A: Oh yeah ... sheltered in Maine ... well, I'll tell you when I moved here I thought I had moved out of the country. People don't quite understand "School To Work" here either and we are very important in "School To Work." But the only solution to this problem -- and it is a big problem because it doesn't just deal with education -- if we allow this so-called "education" system to continue, this country hasn't got a chance to hold on to its freedom.

They are taking our form of government -- Congress did this in the '90s with this legislation where they effectively changed our free system of government to a planned economy. A planned economy is not a free system at all. And if Americans think it is, they ought to go down to Cuba and take a look. In my opinion nothing short of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education will take care of this problem. And that means not back to the state level but back to the local level.

Q: Weren't the Republicans going to do that?

A: Yes, Ronald Reagan promised to do that when I was there. And I think many of us were really disappointed that this didn't happen. There is no way for us to cure the problems in American education and for this country to stay free as long as that building is allowed to exist there in partnership with the Department of Labor. It gets all of its instructions ...

Q: Charlotte, I got a correspondence a couple of years back and the letterhead had both departments at the top of it.

A: That's right. They are in partnership. But, another thing is, they do not put the United Nations on top -- that is where the whole thing actually comes from. What we're putting in now -- I don't think people realize and this -- includes the school-choice proposals I'm talking about. What is going in now is international. You have the same school-choice proposals, charter schools, et cetera going into Russia. You have the Outcome-Based Education / Direct Instruction in Hong Kong. And for people to feel this is even a national program -- it is not. It is international.

I think that Benjamin Bloom is probably the behavioral psychologist who came up with the outcome-based ed and mastery learning -- he was a big U.N. guy. He died a couple of years ago. The purpose of education, as far as the United Nations is concerned, is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of students. Bloom went on to define "good teaching" ...

Q: What ever became of the concept of seeking out knowledge and information?

A: No, no -- people have to understand and it took me long time too -- when we see all these failures, we put all the money into the system and then the test scores go down, and we keep saying, "Why? Why? Get with it folks!" I finally realized about 10 years ago when I finally started putting all the stuff together, when we think it's a disaster, to them, it's a success.

Q: They are accomplishing their objective.

A: Absolutely. Because they don't care whether our children can read, write, count, et cetera -- they really don't. When they put these programs in like Outcome-Based Ed -- and we have proof of that one -- because we have the evaluation of the major outcome-based education program that went in under Reagan ...

Q: What did it say?

A: The evaluation said that, no, it really didn't work, that success -- academically -- was not there. But it was successful because it turned the system on its head from inputs that we used to have to outputs. Output is performance, and it's necessary for workforce training.

Q: If the government took all the money that is whizzed down that rat hole of the U.S. Department of Education -- and didn't give it to the states -- but somehow distributed it through block grants or something to the local schools, and put the local schools in competition ... I remember my wife used to brag because she went to high school in Lexington, Massachusetts, and once upon a time they had the best school system in the country ...

A: Yep ...

Q: Not any more ... but if you allowed the local schools to compete, the quality of education would go up just through the benefits of competition.

A: I think it's true, but you are always going to have the strings attached as long as you have the federal money coming in. That's why I would like to see us just abolish the U.S. Department of Education -- in which case, all the state departments of education are going to collapse because they get up to 80% of their operating budget from my old office.

Q: Cool! That would be a good thing.

A: Wouldn't it be wonderful? And, then, we go back and restore the finest system the world has ever known. Now that to me would be even more devastating to the United Nations people -- the internationalists -- than getting out of the U.N. Because if the biggest country, the most important economic power in the world, the United States, all of a sudden decided to jump off board of the "School To Work" agenda, which is an international one, they are going to be in such trouble they will not know what to do.

Q: Therein is the problem -- selling it. What about George Bush continuing with this?

A: He wanted it all along. Bill Clinton was certainly involved in "School To Work" but it was George Bush the elder who initially put his big message into the Congressional Record. The elder Bush was big on apprenticeships and "School To Work." And, I hate to say it, but Ronald Reagan was the one who actually contributed the most to "School To Work" by implementing the concept of Public-Private Partnership. That's in the Communist Manifesto -- Industry and Government.

Q: Don't be shy or reticent. I have been telling people as long as I have had a forum, it is not a question of who is right or wrong but what is right or wrong.

A: You're right, but that is very sad. When Reagan went along with the partnership concept -- which, like I said, is in the Communist Manifesto, merge industry with the government -- then he signed the agreements with Gorbachev on education, Then, the Carnegie Corporation got involved -- and what they are giving us is the Soviet system.

Look, in my book, in 1932, you saw William Foster, chairman of the Communist Party USA write a book "Toward a Soviet America" and what he called for was a United States Department of Education, the Pavlovian method that is going in under direct instruction. He called for the scientific method. He called for the teaching of evolution. Get rid of patriotism. All of this has gone in.

Now you can't tell me that George Bush doesn't know this. He was the one who recommended keeping the U.S. Department of Education last July. When the Republicans wanted to keep in the platform to get rid of it -- to abolish the Department of Ed -- he took that out. He purposefully took that out. He knows, although he talks local. He says we're going to have local controls. How can you have local control when you have the United States Department of Education dictating every single thing to our schools right now? There is no way we have any local control left.

Q: We have heard from some people about a Japanese concept of Kai Zin. It but basically it deals with tearing down in order to build up something new.

A: That is absolutely correct. In order for them to implement the new system they have to destroy the old one. David Hornbeck is the majordomo on that. He's been in I don't know how many states. He's destroyed Kentucky, he's destroyed Philadelphia. I don't know where he is now but you have to watch him. It is so sad that parents do not see what we see because it has been so gradual and now, when you have George Bush and Ted Kennedy agreeing on George Bush's education agenda, that doesn't really leave any room for anybody to be concerned.

Q: When the allegedly rabid left and right start agreeing without compromise that in and of itself is cause for concern.

A: That's right. But where do we go? George Bush is the controlled right and Ted Kennedy is the controlled left. Control -- that is the point. And they have met at the radical center. These are the people who are supporting the communitarianism idea which if you look in the dictionary it says, "communistic form of government." Who on earth would ever dream that the Republican Party could end up with someone in the White House who is supporting a concept -- communitarianism -- that is defined in any dictionary you want, as a communistic form of government?

Q: But the dumbed-down American populous either doesn't believe you or they marginalize you as just a conspiracy theorist. Despite these people being in your face with it.

A: You're right -- the most important documents with the proof, of course, are the very old ones. Yeah, they are in your face but they are not in the faces of the average good American who has really been manipulated. It has been a very diabolical plan. They use the three-pronged fork. They use semantic deception, which are words that sound so good like "basic skills." Then they use gradualism like the frog in the cold water -- you heat it up over 50 years and the frog is dead. And then you have the dialectic where you deliberately create a problem -- and you get people to scream and go out of business -- and then you impose the solution and people are so upset at the problem that they accept anything. That's the three-pronged fork, without which we never would have been taken. Plus, the dumbing down -- because if the American people do not understand the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and that we do have a special form of government here, we are not going to know when those things are taken away from us.

Q: And those in our Congress were either intentional or manipulated co-conspirators.

A: That is exactly what has happened with the Congress when they voted for this change in our economic system to make it like Cuba -- they obviously didn't know that we had a wonderful free-enterprise system that had brought people to the shores of America for the past 150 years.

Geoff Metcalf is a talk-show host for TalkNetDaily.

It used to be that schooling had two functions, teach basics in a wide range of subjects,the traditional 3 Rs, etc, and also to teach the ability to think as opposed to what is going on now which is in large part giving a politically correct answer and maintaining your herd and "caste" mentality status.

It is easier to command and control populations if they are ignorant and cowed and have a parroting answer that the various "commanding authorities" want to hear. People who can think for themselves are a threat to this mass two class society globalization effort.

For an overview of this I would recommend the writings of Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. This is a paste from her bio:
"Charlotte Iserbyt is the consummate whistleblower! Iserbyt served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration, where she first blew the whistle on a major technology initiative which would control curriculum in America's classrooms."

It's a rather disturbing revelation.

Here is an interview with the author.

Sunday, May 13, 2001
SUNDAY Q&A
Are children deliberately 'dumbed down' in school?
Geoff Metcalf interviews former U.S. education adviser Charlotte Iserbyt

Editor's Note: Most parents want their children to receive a quality education. Yet, low test scores, drugs and violence on campus are increasingly prevalent in public schools and the disconnect between parents, educators and administrators is widening. Why is this situation occurring when so much time, money and attention are being directed toward improving education in the United States?

Today, WorldNetDaily staff writer and talk-show host Geoff Metcalf interviews someone who has some shocking answers, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt. During the '80s, Iserbyt was a senior policy adviser in the U.S. Department of Education and has also written "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," a chronological history of the past 100 years of education reform. In this interview with Metcalf, she discusses the impact of the federal government, the United Nations and influential corporations on the American educational system and a little-known program called "School-To-Work."

Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.

By Geoff Metcalf
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com

Question: The first thing I have to ask you -- I'm still not sure if this is a blessing or a curse -- but ever since I returned to talk radio ten years ago, I promised myself I wouldn't interview any author until I read their book. I was intimidated when yours arrived in the mail.

Answer: I don't blame you.

Q: It is a big puppy. 714 pages worth.

A: It is a big baby.

Q: What led you to this project? You were with the Department of Education in the '80s -- why the book?

A: I actually started collecting research in the early '70s. I was on a local school board after living outside the country for 18 years for the United States Department of State. When I came back, I was very upset with the changes I had seen in our school district -- which had happened to be a pilot-school district for change. The kids were rolling around on the floor -- they didn't have to learn grammar or anything -- and I was shocked. I started asking questions and, as the only parent who ever complained, I would go to school board meetings and ask very legitimate questions like, why don't they teach grammar?

Q: How dare you ask such a silly question?

A: And, finally, a retired teacher came to me and she said, "You are right on! I want you to go for some training to become a 'change agent.' We're going to find out what is going on." So, she paid for me to go to this training. The training came out of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and was funded by what was to become my office in the U.S. Department of Education. It was funded earlier in the '70s -- and it was still funded under Ronald Reagan, by the way. This particular project was called "Innovations in Education/Change Agents Guide."

Q: So what did you learn in the training?

A: I was taught how to identify the resisters in my community. Those people who -- good people -- good Americans who have seen and know clearly these programs in the schools were not there to help our children academically.

Q: Hold on. This sounds as if instead of any modification in curriculum, the objective was to go after the people who were complaining about changes in curriculum?

A: Complaining about "values clarification" and complaining about "sex ed" and complaining about all of these subjects that have education hanging off the end of them. You know, we didn't used to have "math education" and "reading education" -- that's not really education. When you have "education" hanging off of it, you know that they have another agenda (except for "Drivers Ed"). Anyway, these were the people in our communities in the '70s who were saying, "I don't like that sex education. I don't think it is up to schools to teach my children there's no right or wrong." And saying, "I don't like that drug education and what's that critical-thinking education?"

I was trained because they didn't know who I was.

Q: Who were you?

A: I was a resister. I was actually being trained to identify myself. And I didn't like it. The other part of it was, I was trained to go to the highly-respected people in our community ...

Q: Wait a minute. So, once you identified these so-called resisters, these people who were critical of people who defend the indefensible, then what do you do?

A: That's a very good question. No other talk-show host has ever asked me that. It's a good question. What do you do? You identify them and then the superintendent will try to get them onto a task force and make them have "ownership" and ...

Q: Ahhh -- a re-education program?

A: Yeah -- you got it! That's a very good question -- really, truly -- I've never had a talk-show guy ask me that question.

Q: It seems like an obvious question.

A: It is a very obvious one, and that's why it took me a while to come up with an answer. But that's exactly what the reason was. And, then, the other thing I was going to do was to identify the important people in the community -- good people, good Americans who have really been used with the Rotary, Chamber of Commerce, Garden Club -- go to them and convince them that these programs are vital to the survival of this country, of the world: The world is changing we have to have these programs.

I was really shocked. I was absolutely appalled. You have to remember: I had been out of the country 18 years and I had left a country that was red, white and blue, mom and apple pie, and all that.

Q: You were a dinosaur.

A: Well, yeah! I was a dinosaur. I had lived in socialist countries and I had traveled in communist countries and I had seen a lot. And, I thought to myself: "What the [blank] is going on in my own country?"

Q: Charlotte, what about teachers? There are some good teachers who are genuinely dedicated ...

A: Many. Many, many more than most people think -- and they have to keep quiet.

Q: Yeah but what is their reaction when they are presented with these controversial, non-academic methodologies that don't have anything to do with teaching anyone anything?

A: They are very unhappy, and they try to continue to do something that does have something to do with teaching and learning. I just recently heard the state of Oregon has passed legislation to get rid of tenure. I was always opposed to tenure. Now I'm in favor of tenure because what they are going to do now ...

Q: ... now, see, I'm opposed to tenure. Why do you support it now?

A: Because of the way they are going to use it. Now, they can get rid of the good teachers without any problem. It used to be getting rid of the bad ones right? Now, they are going to get rid of the academic teachers. The teachers who do not agree with George Bush's education agenda -- you know the outcome-based, direct education, teach-to-the-test. These poor teachers -- these poor children -- and they do not agree in the changing of the definition of quality teaching.

Q: Charlotte, I'd like you to explain to our readers at what point did it become more important to manufacture this concept of self esteem -- and the fact that if you can "feel good" about the process, it doesn't matter what the results are. When did that happen?

A: Well, you know, it all started in 1934 when the Carnegie Foundation set the agenda for the next hundred years and that was to change our country from a free, individualistic economy to a planned economy -- and to do it through the schools. And the way they would do it, would be to change the social studies so nobody would know what our form of government is -- and how precious it is -- and to not teach the Constitution. This is the Carnegie Corporation plan -- to implement a planned economy through the schools. And it is going in right now.

Q: OK, that's the background and foundation. But at what point, recently, did they effect the significant change in direction, content and product?

A: At what point did all the touchy-feeling stuff happen? Carnegie happened in 1934, the United Nations in 1945 ...

Q: The only touchy-feeling stuff I encountered in school was if you didn't do what you were supposed to do -- when you were supposed to do it, the way you were instructed to do it -- Brother Benilde would smack you up side the head with a book.

A: Well, that's right, but they don't want people to be educated, and this is a very important point. I know there are people out there who think: "Goodness, I thought the whole purpose of the corporations forming partnerships with the public sector (which actually is corporate fascism) was so that the schools would give our children better academic skills?" That's not true. According to David Hornbeck -- Mr. Carnegie and the big honcho for "School To Work," he said in his book, "Human Capital," which he wrote with Lester Solomon, that the corporations do not want educated people.

Q: Why?

A: Because educated people are very difficult -- they ask too many questions, they quit their jobs, etc.

Q: Actually, the way it has developed now, (and I think the primary reason they want to maintain the Department of Education) the corporations will identify what vacancies and needs they have and "train" workers. Charlotte, I want you to explain "School To Work" because I get so angry and seething when I think about it -- and try to talk about it -- that I sometimes butcher it.

A: So do I. I think the best way -- and I really recommend Congress do this, because it would be cheaper than going to Europe -- I would like all of them to go down and spend six months in Cuba. Is that a good answer?

Q: If they don't come back, it would be great.

A: Well, go down to Cuba and you will see the same system implemented there that they are implementing in Oregon, in California and in Maine and everywhere. Where the children are identified at a very early age, psychologically profiled -- fourth grade in some cases. In fact, the whole idea of work is started in kindergarten.

Q: Hold on a moment, Charlotte, because we have to stress something here.

A: What?

Q: This is not fiction. This is not something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie. This is something that is going on right now!

A: That's right. It is in. It is not vocational either -- which is something I have always supported. I'd like to share with your readers the story I sent you about the 12-year-old youngster in Minnesota. He understood what I was talking about and he said to his mom, "I want to choose my own future!" And he went to a big rally they held in Minneapolis at 12-years old. Isn't it interesting that this 12-year-old understands what "School To Work" is.

Q: And, beyond that, what about the people who don't "find" themselves until they are 40?

A: You're not kidding. I'm a bit older than that and sometimes I wonder if I've found myself ... I'm still looking for myself.

Q: I often joke when people ask, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" Duh? It presupposes I will grow up and that I will know. I'm still working at it.

A: We all have a lot of talents we don't know about until later on when something happens. You are absolutely correct. The thing is that is the German dual-track system of education and work-force training. It is the Soviet system -- people don't like to use that word. It is the Cuban system.

Q: What people need to recognize is they are trying to identify kids at an early age for what their aptitudes are. Not based on what the kids talents and abilities are, but what the corporation need is.

A: That's right. Actually everything is focused on the good of the state now. It is the state that is important -- not the individual's upward mobility, the individual's future life. That's the way education used to be. You asked me earlier when the change took place.

Q: Are you going to answer it now?

A: Yes. It really took place in 1965 under Lyndon Johnson. And that followed the agreements that Eisenhower signed with the Soviet Union in 1958. I feel they very strongly influenced our agenda in education.

Q: I just dodged the bullet. I graduated in 1966.

A: You were lucky. In 1965, they couldn't get American educators to implement this agenda that the Carnegie Corporation wanted. Also, an incredible psychologist -- Brock Chisholm -- at the United Nations recommended getting rid of the conscience to the World Health Organization. And he recommended doing that through the schools by training the teachers to be little psychiatrists.

None of this was accepted by any American educator until 1965. I don't think even at that time they really accepted it but it did pass. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a major, major shift. It moved our marvelous system of education -- which, up until 1960, was the best in the world -- from academics, what you know in your head, to a performance-based system which we're screaming about: outcome-based education, mastery learning and Skinner (who said "I can make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule"). I think your readers can understand the difference between knowledge based in your head and performance based. Performance is how you perform on the job -- that is not the role of the public school system or any education system that I can see.

Q: And it changed in 1965?

A: That changed in '65. From that time on, all these incredibly horrible values-destroying programs were developed: values clarification, survival games, critical thinking. Geoff, I have a manual published in 1967 that is three inches thick of values-destroying programs. And people say, "Why Columbine?"

Q: Let me ask you this -- because I've spent a fair amount of time talking and writing about it -- the connection between the epidemic prescribing of psychotropic drugs to kids as a means of controlling them?

A: Absolutely. There's a very interesting appendix in my book about a Hawaii Master Plan in 1968. A pilot project for the whole country that was carried out in Hawaii and federally funded and it included just about everything that is taking place right now. But there was a recommendation in there to use these psychiatric drugs on our children. This has been planned for a long time. They don't want independent little active monsters running around in the classroom.

Q: There is an interesting sidebar to this. There is a woman in the San Francisco Bay area who has home schooled all her kids. Her daughter just went in the Army. The recruiters were surprised and elated that she scored remarkably high in just about every test. They gave her something like an $18,000 bonus for enlisting. They couldn't understand why she was so far superior to all the other recruits. Obviously the key reason is she was shielded and protected from public education.

A: There is no question if a parent is able to do that (and not all are -- I'm not sure I could have) they certainly should be home schooling. Or, if you can't home school, try to find a private school.

Q: But that shouldn't be necessary if the public schools had not been so corrupted.

A: It shouldn't be necessary, but we need to note that there are good public schools. Although there won't be for long because of the redefinition of academics -- and that good teaching is no longer what it used to be -- so we won't have really much of a public school system. There'll be nothing left in a few years because of the legislation that is going through Washington, D.C., right now and the way they have been crashing the public school system ever since I left my office in the Department of Education. However, right now, you have to look carefully at private schools. In many cases, they may well be worse than the public schools at the moment.

Q: So what do you suggest to concerned parents?

A: Well my recommendation is different from anybody else's because I guess I'm naive and have stars in my eyes and wear rose-colored glasses ...

Q: ... and you are sheltered in Maine.

A: Oh yeah ... sheltered in Maine ... well, I'll tell you when I moved here I thought I had moved out of the country. People don't quite understand "School To Work" here either and we are very important in "School To Work." But the only solution to this problem -- and it is a big problem because it doesn't just deal with education -- if we allow this so-called "education" system to continue, this country hasn't got a chance to hold on to its freedom.

They are taking our form of government -- Congress did this in the '90s with this legislation where they effectively changed our free system of government to a planned economy. A planned economy is not a free system at all. And if Americans think it is, they ought to go down to Cuba and take a look. In my opinion nothing short of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education will take care of this problem. And that means not back to the state level but back to the local level.

Q: Weren't the Republicans going to do that?

A: Yes, Ronald Reagan promised to do that when I was there. And I think many of us were really disappointed that this didn't happen. There is no way for us to cure the problems in American education and for this country to stay free as long as that building is allowed to exist there in partnership with the Department of Labor. It gets all of its instructions ...

Q: Charlotte, I got a correspondence a couple of years back and the letterhead had both departments at the top of it.

A: That's right. They are in partnership. But, another thing is, they do not put the United Nations on top -- that is where the whole thing actually comes from. What we're putting in now -- I don't think people realize and this -- includes the school-choice proposals I'm talking about. What is going in now is international. You have the same school-choice proposals, charter schools, et cetera going into Russia. You have the Outcome-Based Education / Direct Instruction in Hong Kong. And for people to feel this is even a national program -- it is not. It is international.

I think that Benjamin Bloom is probably the behavioral psychologist who came up with the outcome-based ed and mastery learning -- he was a big U.N. guy. He died a couple of years ago. The purpose of education, as far as the United Nations is concerned, is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of students. Bloom went on to define "good teaching" ...

Q: What ever became of the concept of seeking out knowledge and information?

A: No, no -- people have to understand and it took me long time too -- when we see all these failures, we put all the money into the system and then the test scores go down, and we keep saying, "Why? Why? Get with it folks!" I finally realized about 10 years ago when I finally started putting all the stuff together, when we think it's a disaster, to them, it's a success.

Q: They are accomplishing their objective.

A: Absolutely. Because they don't care whether our children can read, write, count, et cetera -- they really don't. When they put these programs in like Outcome-Based Ed -- and we have proof of that one -- because we have the evaluation of the major outcome-based education program that went in under Reagan ...

Q: What did it say?

A: The evaluation said that, no, it really didn't work, that success -- academically -- was not there. But it was successful because it turned the system on its head from inputs that we used to have to outputs. Output is performance, and it's necessary for workforce training.

Q: If the government took all the money that is whizzed down that rat hole of the U.S. Department of Education -- and didn't give it to the states -- but somehow distributed it through block grants or something to the local schools, and put the local schools in competition ... I remember my wife used to brag because she went to high school in Lexington, Massachusetts, and once upon a time they had the best school system in the country ...

A: Yep ...

Q: Not any more ... but if you allowed the local schools to compete, the quality of education would go up just through the benefits of competition.

A: I think it's true, but you are always going to have the strings attached as long as you have the federal money coming in. That's why I would like to see us just abolish the U.S. Department of Education -- in which case, all the state departments of education are going to collapse because they get up to 80% of their operating budget from my old office.

Q: Cool! That would be a good thing.

A: Wouldn't it be wonderful? And, then, we go back and restore the finest system the world has ever known. Now that to me would be even more devastating to the United Nations people -- the internationalists -- than getting out of the U.N. Because if the biggest country, the most important economic power in the world, the United States, all of a sudden decided to jump off board of the "School To Work" agenda, which is an international one, they are going to be in such trouble they will not know what to do.

Q: Therein is the problem -- selling it. What about George Bush continuing with this?

A: He wanted it all along. Bill Clinton was certainly involved in "School To Work" but it was George Bush the elder who initially put his big message into the Congressional Record. The elder Bush was big on apprenticeships and "School To Work." And, I hate to say it, but Ronald Reagan was the one who actually contributed the most to "School To Work" by implementing the concept of Public-Private Partnership. That's in the Communist Manifesto -- Industry and Government.

Q: Don't be shy or reticent. I have been telling people as long as I have had a forum, it is not a question of who is right or wrong but what is right or wrong.

A: You're right, but that is very sad. When Reagan went along with the partnership concept -- which, like I said, is in the Communist Manifesto, merge industry with the government -- then he signed the agreements with Gorbachev on education, Then, the Carnegie Corporation got involved -- and what they are giving us is the Soviet system.

Look, in my book, in 1932, you saw William Foster, chairman of the Communist Party USA write a book "Toward a Soviet America" and what he called for was a United States Department of Education, the Pavlovian method that is going in under direct instruction. He called for the scientific method. He called for the teaching of evolution. Get rid of patriotism. All of this has gone in.

Now you can't tell me that George Bush doesn't know this. He was the one who recommended keeping the U.S. Department of Education last July. When the Republicans wanted to keep in the platform to get rid of it -- to abolish the Department of Ed -- he took that out. He purposefully took that out. He knows, although he talks local. He says we're going to have local controls. How can you have local control when you have the United States Department of Education dictating every single thing to our schools right now? There is no way we have any local control left.

Q: We have heard from some people about a Japanese concept of Kai Zin. It but basically it deals with tearing down in order to build up something new.

A: That is absolutely correct. In order for them to implement the new system they have to destroy the old one. David Hornbeck is the majordomo on that. He's been in I don't know how many states. He's destroyed Kentucky, he's destroyed Philadelphia. I don't know where he is now but you have to watch him. It is so sad that parents do not see what we see because it has been so gradual and now, when you have George Bush and Ted Kennedy agreeing on George Bush's education agenda, that doesn't really leave any room for anybody to be concerned.

Q: When the allegedly rabid left and right start agreeing without compromise that in and of itself is cause for concern.

A: That's right. But where do we go? George Bush is the controlled right and Ted Kennedy is the controlled left. Control -- that is the point. And they have met at the radical center. These are the people who are supporting the communitarianism idea which if you look in the dictionary it says, "communistic form of government." Who on earth would ever dream that the Republican Party could end up with someone in the White House who is supporting a concept -- communitarianism -- that is defined in any dictionary you want, as a communistic form of government?

Q: But the dumbed-down American populous either doesn't believe you or they marginalize you as just a conspiracy theorist. Despite these people being in your face with it.

A: You're right -- the most important documents with the proof, of course, are the very old ones. Yeah, they are in your face but they are not in the faces of the average good American who has really been manipulated. It has been a very diabolical plan. They use the three-pronged fork. They use semantic deception, which are words that sound so good like "basic skills." Then they use gradualism like the frog in the cold water -- you heat it up over 50 years and the frog is dead. And then you have the dialectic where you deliberately create a problem -- and you get people to scream and go out of business -- and then you impose the solution and people are so upset at the problem that they accept anything. That's the three-pronged fork, without which we never would have been taken. Plus, the dumbing down -- because if the American people do not understand the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and that we do have a special form of government here, we are not going to know when those things are taken away from us.

Q: And those in our Congress were either intentional or manipulated co-conspirators.

A: That is exactly what has happened with the Congress when they voted for this change in our economic system to make it like Cuba -- they obviously didn't know that we had a wonderful free-enterprise system that had brought people to the shores of America for the past 150 years.

Geoff Metcalf is a talk-show host for TalkNetDaily.