Public Schools

Dumb Down Agenda

Meanwhile, elementary and secondary school curricula suffered a vast dumbing down. Phonics and traditional arithmetic were censored out. Students were allowed to graduate without learning to read or calculate. While tolerating massive illiteracy, the public schools are now powerfully impacting our culture by inculcating the values of situation ethics, diversity, and the easy acceptance of sex outside of marriage. American history and literature courses now teach the doctrines of U.S. guilt and multiculturalism instead of the greatness of our heroes and successes.

By the 1980s, the public schools were rejecting the Meyer-Pierce doctrine that parents have the fundamental right to control the upbringing of their own children. The Meyer-Pierce doctrine is described in two U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1920s, which we thought was settled law.1

By the 1990s, public schools had adopted the attitude best described by Hillary Clinton: the “village” (i.e., the government) should raise the child. Public schools, backed by anti-parent resolutions adopted by the National Education Association at its annual conventions, have become fortresses in which the administrators exercise near-absolute power to determine the students’ values, morals, attitudes and hopes, while parents are kept outside the barricades.

The Bush administration introduced the ‘No Child Left Behind’ curriculum that continued the dumb-down by lowering the requirements to the lowest common denominator, or teach to the level of the dumbest child so that no one is left behind. Then came Obama’s Common Core. For many of the teachers, it is the mandated cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all straitjacket ObamaCore imposes. For many parents, it is the subversive, anti-Christian, hypersexualized, pro-homosexual emphasis of the National Sexuality Education Standards, which were developed by the radical Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); the pornography-promoting Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS); the abortion behemoth Planned Parenthood; and the National Education Association — among others. For many Common Core opponents, it is the invasive, privacy-destroying data mining that attempts to subject all students to surveillance worthy of an Orwellian police state.

In Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children, Samuel L. Blumenfeld and Alex Newman lay bare the rot that runs to the core of Common Core. However, this book is about far more than Common Core, which is but the latest iteration in a long line of revolutionary programs imposed through the government school system by the educational establishment to deconstruct America — socially, politically, psychologically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually: look-say reading, the “new math,” death education, values clarification, sex education, multiculturalism, sensitivity training, outcome-based education, etc. (Source)

Using activist judges to shore up their monopoly power, the schools persuaded the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court to rule in 2005(2) that a public school can teach students “whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise,” and that parents’ right to control the upbringing of their children “does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door.” After heavy criticism in the U.S. House, the court tried to soften the “threshold” sentence but reaffirmed its decision.

The meaning of “whatever” is spelled out in anti-parent, pro-public-school decisions handed down in five circuits within the last two years. Federal courts upheld the right of public schools to indoctrinate students in Muslim religion and practices,3 to force students to watch a one-hour pro-homosexual video,4 to force students to attend a program advocating homosexual conduct that used minors in sexually suggestive skits,5 to censor any mention of Intelligent Design,6 to use classroom materials that parents consider pornography,7 to force students to answer nosy questionnaires with suggestive questions about sex, drugs and suicide,8 and to deny a divorced father’s right to get his son’s school records.9

If you think that the government schools are “neutral places” where all social, political and religious beliefs are tolerated, then you are either ignorant or you are delusional. The truth is that very specific social and political agendas are built into the curriculums of most public schools. Often, these social and political agendas are the same ones that are being force-fed to public school children in other western nations. If your children are attending a government school, a system of “right and wrong” is being pounded into their heads that is probably very different from what you would teach them. In one recent New York Times article, a district superintendent admitted that particular agendas are integrated into classroom instruction anywhere that they will fit….

“We’re trying to integrate it into anything where it naturally fits,” said Jackie Taylor, the district’s superintendent. “It might be in a math lesson. How much water are you really using? How can you tell? Teachers look for avenues in almost everything they teach.”

If you want to see where all of this is going, just check out what is going on in Europe. In the UK, teachers that don’t promote the “correct agenda” face harsh disciplinary action. Those that control the public schools don’t just want to “educate” your children. They want to indoctrinate them.

Big Brother and Education Data Collection (from The New American)

One of the more disturbing aspects of the U.S. Department of Education is its obsession with data collection. But it all makes perfect sense if you see it from the point of view of the educational totalitarians whose aim it is to use behavioral psychology for the purpose of modifying and controlling human behavior. Thus, the National Center of Education Statistics has been designated by the psycho-educators to be the recipient of the full computer dossiers on every school child and teacher in America.

According to Beverly Eckman’s Educating for the New World Order, the super computer already exists. It is called the Elementary and Secondary Integrated Data System, and it is linked with all of the other federal computer networks collecting data on American citizens. It was former Vice President Al Gore, as a Senator, who introduced the Supercomputer Network Study Act of 1985 which Congress enacted into law.

That this data collection program has been in the works for some time is indicated by the existence of a Handbook issued in 1974 by the National Center for Education Statistics on State Educational Records and Reports. In their section on Student/Pupil Accounting, they list the major categories of student information. A three-digit system is used to categorize the data. For example, Personal Identification falls under 1 00: Name 1 01, Student Number 1 02, Sex 1 03, Racial/Ethnic Group 1 04, etc. Note the use of an identification number which will probably be the individual’s Social Security Number, which has become the American citizen’s all-purpose ID number.

Family and Residence data fall under 2 00, Family Economic Information 2 40, and Family Social/Cultural Information 2 50. Physical Health, Sensory, and Related Conditions fall under 3 00, starting with the Student Medical Record Number 3 01, and then covering every aspect of the student’s physical health and medical life. Mental, Psychological and Proficiency Test Results and Related Student Characteristics fall under 4 00. All data collected through psychological testing will be placed under that category, with Specific Mental and Psychological Characteristics under 4 30. Enrollment information falls under 5 00, with Type of Program entered 5 23, and Type of Class for Instructional Grouping 5 24. Performance falls under 6 00, Transportation under 7 00, and Special Assistance under 8 00.

The most recent version of the Student Data Handbook for Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education that we’ve had a chance to study in depth was released in June of 1994 (NCES 94-303) and the Staff Data Handbook: Elementary, Secondary and Early Childhood Education (NCES 95-327) was released in January 1995. But who will have access to all of this intimate private information, and for what reason? Will potential employers, recruiters, and police departments be given this data? Is the U.S. government now to become involved in dispensing private information about its citizens as a new information service? Suppose that some of the information may lead to emotional harm of the individual? Who will be responsible for that harm?

Indeed, who will own all of this information? If the government is not going to make this private information available to others for whatever reasons, why then are the bureaucrats, at great cost to the taxpayer, collecting it? The government of a free people does not collect dossiers of personal private information on all of its citizens. A police state does. Have we become a police state? According to the Declaration of Independence, the purpose of government is to secure the unalienable rights of its citizens, which include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Is not privacy one of the most important rights of a free people?

The 2001 edition of the Data Handbook states its purpose:

To make appropriate, cost-effective and timely decisions about students, educators must have accurate and complete information. Recognizing this need, most education systems have moved from paper documents in filing cabinets to automated student information systems. These systems provide teachers and others concerned with effective program design with day-to-day access to information about the students’ background, learning experiences, and performance. They also provide the flexibility necessary to supply aggregate data to school boards, state and federal governments, and other interested parties; and to conduct program evaluations. To be effective, however, these systems must record data accurately and comparably for all students, in all places, and at all times.

The Student Data Handbook for Elementary, Secondary, and Early Childhood Education was developed by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to provide guidance concerning the consistent maintenance of student information. This handbook is useful to public and private education agencies, schools, early childhood centers, and other educational institutions, as well as to researchers involved in the collection of student data. In addition, the Handbook may be useful to elected officials and members of the public interested in student information. This handbook is not, however, a data collection instrument; nor does it reflect any type of federal data maintenance requirements. It is presented as a tool to help the public and the American school system make information about students more useful and effective in meeting student needs.

The writers of the Handbook seem to contradict their own words. The Data Handbook is indeed a data collection instrument. What else could it possibly be, especially since every individual in the system is identified with his or her own number? Of course, it may also be used for general information gathering purposes. For example, since the religion of a child is part of the data collected, the government can release general information about how many Catholics, or Baptists, or Mormons are in the public schools. But they can also identify the religion of any individual in the system.

The federal government’s original rationale for collecting all of this data was that it was needed to see if the nation was reaching the national education goals set by Goals 2000. Well, Goals 2000 have come and gone. The program was a failure. But the government nevertheless keeps collecting more and more data on students and teachers.

To understand how all of this works, you have to get down into the bowels of Washington’s educational bureaucracies. For example, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the grand overseer of all of this data collection. In 1991, it awarded a three-year contract to the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) “to facilitate the implementation of a national education data system.” The project was called the Education Data System Implementation Project (EDSIP). Two years prior to EDSIP, the NCES began constructing “an interstate student records transfer system currently called ExPRESS,” an acronym for Exchange of Permanent Records Electronically for Students and Schools. The function of ExPRESS is as follows:

The activity has included the development of standard data elements for inclusion in an electronic student transcript and a pilot exchange of student records across school districts and from districts to institutions of higher education. The system is now ready for further development, including the appointment of a Governing Board, making formal arrangements with a communications network for exchanging the records, and expansion to more sites.

EDSIP also included implementing a Personnel Exchange System for sharing state expertise in solving education data problems, the development of an Information Referral System for sharing information to improve data systems across states, and the development of student and staff data handbooks.

The CCSSO has carried out two other projects for the NCES. The first, the Education Data Improvement Project (1985-88), “analyzed each state’s capacity to provide standard, comparable and timely data to NCES on public elementary and secondary school and school district, staff, students, revenues and expenditures.” The second project was the New Education Data Improvement Project (1988-91) to provide technical assistance plans for each state, which addressed the state’s problems in responding to Common Core Data requirements.

It is obvious that the long-range goal of this linking of all of the states’ education data to a central computer in Washington is to further the nationalization of American public education. Public schools have always depended on local real estate taxes for their financial support because the local people technically controlled their local schools and were concerned about their performance. But this quiet building of a national data collection network is just a prelude to the kind of total control the totalitarians in Washington hope to achieve over all the schools in the country.

That is one good reason to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education and return the public schools to local control, where they belong. There is no need for bureaucrats in Washington to control the public schools. Neither Goals 2000 nor No Child Left Behind improved American education. For example, Goal 5 of Goals 2000 stated: “By the year 2000, every adult American will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.”

Yet, in 2007, the National Endowment for the Arts released its grim survey on the decline of literacy in America. The survey, entitled Reading at Risk, reported that more and more young Americans are reading less and less. The Endowment’s Chairman, Dana Gioia, stated:

This report documents a national crisis. Reading develops a capacity for focused attention and imaginative growth that enriches both private and public life. The decline in reading among every segment of the adult population reflects a general collapse in advanced literacy. To lose this human capacity — and all the diverse benefits it fosters — impoverishes both cultural and civic life.

As I have amply documented in my previous articles, the decline of literacy in America is the result of a carefully thought-out plan by the progressives to lower the literacy level of the American people, beginning with John Dewey’s 1898 essay “The Primary School Fetich.” And there is no one in the federal government education bureaucracy who will acknowledge this. In other words, the only way to address our ongoing education crisis is to get the federal government out of the education business. As soon as this is done, local communities can begin to address the problems of their local schools in a manner that makes sense.

Joel Turtel is an education policy analyst, and author of “Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children.” He notes 15 Ways Public Schools are Harming Children:

1. Public schools cripple millions of children’s ability to read by using the “whole-language” instruction method (now called “balanced reading instruction” by many public schools).
2. Many public schools spend almost 50 percent of the school day on non-academic subjects that waste children’s precious time. The rest of their time is spent on classes such as sex-education, personal safety, consumer affairs, AIDS education, save-the-environment, family life, study halls, multiculturalism, homeroom, electives, counseling, or sports activities.
3. Public schools teach “new” or “fuzzy” math (sometimes called by different names). These instruction methods can cripple children’s ability to learn basic arithmetic. Students who fear math are less likely to pursue good careers like computer science and engineering that depend on a love of and competence with math.
4. These schools force children to read dumbed-down textbooks in English, History, and many other subjects. The textbooks are often geared to the slowest learners in the class and water-down the subject matter. Dumbed-down classes based on dumbed-down public-school textbooks therefore waste children’s precious time. This is especially true for children who are quick learners, who must endure 12 years of excruciating boredom in public school classes.
5. Public schools force children to study subjects they might hate, can’t learn, will never use in their lives, or which bore them. For example, many public schools force students to study a foreign language. Children learn better when they study subjects that interest them.
6. Author John Gatto, in his book “Dumbing Us Down” said that a child eager to learn can learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic in about 100 hours. Yet our public schools keep children locked up for 12 years, yet can barely teach millions of kids to read.
7. Public schools force parents to pay heavy school taxes for an inferior, often mind-numbing education for their children.
8. Public schools are a government-controlled near-monopoly. Bad schools don’t close down because compulsory taxes prop them up. Incompetent or mediocre teachers aren’t fired because tenure laws protect them. That’s why public schools will never improve and will always waste children’s precious time.
9. Many public schools subject children to drugs, bullies, violence, and values many parents disapprove of.
10. Public schools pressure many parents who have bright, normal children to give their kids potentially dangerous mind-altering drugs to make the bored kids “behave” in class. Over four million allegedly “unruly” kids line up for Ritalin every day in public schools across America. Methylphenidate (sold as Ritalin) and cocaine are both listed in “Schedule II” of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
11. Public schools are compulsory. They therefore violate parents’ natural and constitutional right to control the education of their children. Public school authorities, whose salaries we pay with our taxes, force parents to hand over their children to government employees called teachers and to schools that give an inferior education.
12. Public schools can destroy children’s love of learning and self-confidence as learners. This can cripple children’s ambitions and desire to go to college. This in turn, can force these children to end up with low-paying jobs for the rest of their lives if and when they graduate high school.
13. Public schools force millions of Christian parents to hand over their children to public schools which are decidedly anti-Christian. For example, many social studies textbooks used in public schools have censored out references to such words as ‘family,’ ‘marriage,’ ‘religion,’ ‘fidelity,’ etc. Many textbooks today refer to a family simply as people choosing to live together.
14. Public schools force children to witness sometimes shocking or obnoxious sexual material in sex-education classes, without parents’ knowledge or consent.
15. The public-school near monopoly and compulsory-attendance laws cripple parents right and ability to choose a quality, low-cost school in an education free-market that has been squashed by the public-school monopoly.

Parents should consider taking their kids out of public school permanently. Parents can take advantage of quality, low-cost education alternatives available to them right now, such as the new Internet private schools that have low tuition costs.

Our Public School Kids Are Being Forced To Take Large Numbers Of Vaccines.

All over the nation, children that have not received all of the “required vaccines” are being banned from school. Many parents do not want dozens of toxic vaccines injected directly into the bloodstreams of their kids, but in many states today you will not be able to send your kids to the public schools if they don’t submit to the shots. This is just another reason why all American families should pull their kids out of these government schools immediately.

Vaccines Required…

1. Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925).
2. Fields v. Palmdale School District (2005).
3. Eklund v. Byron Union School District (2005).
4. Boyd Gay-Straight v. Boyd Board of Education (2006).
5. Brown v. Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions (1995).
6. Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005).
7. Evans-Marshall v. Board of Education (2005).
8. C.N. v. Ridgewood Board of Education (2005).
9. Crowley v. McKinney (2005).

The level of control that is exerted over the lives of children in many of our public schools is absolutely frightening. One 4-year-old girl had her lunch confiscated by a control freak at one U.S. preschool because it did not meet USDA guidelines….

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs – including in-home day care centers – to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

Do you want sick control freaks inspecting the lunches that your kids bring from home every single day? If not, perhaps it is time to pull them out of the government schools.

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