Charlotte was not like the other bureaucrats. She was only supposed to be a place-holder in President Reagan's US Dept. of Education until the department would be eliminated -- which never happened. While there she was shocked to find documents detailing federal plans to control the hearts and minds of our school children, leading to the ultimate goal of a planned economy. She went public years ago with her findings, but received scant attention.
Implementation of the Common Core, which appears to be the culmination of 40 years of planning, brings new immediacy to Charlotte's discovery.
I found the interview below compelling, and well worth the 1 1/4 hr spent watching it.
Charlotte Iserbyt Interview - The Secret History of Western Education (1 1/4 hr)
For more information:
Charlotte's Book: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America
Documents: AmericanDeception.com
5 comments:
Don't sell the farm yet, Strike. There's hope. I smelled something as soon as the film rolled with its lurid beginning as Charlotte read from a book that was never identified, and the film clips of pinched-faced men and ladies of a few generations ago play-acting their small minds. I can't count the times I have been approached by someone attempting to persuade me that the sky is falling by holding up a book in one hand and mouthing edited phrases from somewhere designed to scare the daylights out of me about the coming Armageddon. This video has it all, including the somber scenes from a rainy day stitched in among the gloom. Forgive me that I didn't watch it through to the bitter end. Was there mushroom cloud film clip at the conclusion?
Skinnerism? Old B.F is today passe. And Pavlov was a Russian? My God, Katy bar the door!
This old broad, who evidently spent her undergraduate days at Katherine Gibbs worrying about Communists under her bed, has evidently never been told that the purpose of government is indeed to try to control the economy, to protect itself, to go to war, to educate children, etc. It isn't the lack of those features that produced America. It is the moderation of those features that provide freedom AND wealth. It is what we do with these capabilities that makes us a great nation. It is our mispending of these abilities that today is our problem.
I am well aware there exist people who would strip away our freedoms in a heartbeat and some of them are in high positions of government, academia and business. But it doesn't mean they will be successful and it doesn't mean they have a very good chance of accomplishing their goals. I have an abiding faith in America and the people in it. They will take only so much. Yes, we are sliding down a slope, but it's more a slope of self-absorption and indulgence. Everyone knows it, including Charlotte Iserbyt who would take advantage of our feelings of guilt with her agenda to no doubt replace the bogeyman with her own set of values and restrictions, necessary (she might say) to forestall the coming of the barbarians at the gate. But Charlotte strikes me as just another messenger with her own slant on the world. There are so many. If we ever discover which of the many people at the gate are the real barbarians, please let me know.
I will have to disagree with you here, Dave. I discovered Charlotte a few years ago which was a year or two after I had already formed a sense that children were intentionally being kept ignorant, while simultaneously being trained to work in groups to "solve problems" ... meaning they would be the perfect workers and too dumb to question what they are doing. At the time it seemed like an outlandish idea -- the stuff of conspiracy theories. But along comes Charlotte, in a position to know, and she documented same in her book (a difficult read -- not the best of writers). But it all makes sense.
At some point you have to take a look at the changes in education in a broad overview. Forty years ago education was about transferring knowledge from the older generation to the next. Something easily identified and quantified. It morphed to "performance" standards over the last 30 years. Twenty years ago I faced a class of college students on Long Island as a guest speaker on environmental law. I engaged the students in conversation to get a sense of what they knew. I was shocked to discover that they had no clue of how our federal government is set up and what the source of its legal authority was. Their professor later confessed to being shocked as well.
People need to understand the fundamentals of our government if they plan to properly use the law to protect the environment. Now, many years later, we see the results of these people now being in charge abusing their authority.
Might makes right and due process be damned.
I hope you're wrong, Strike. But you might be right and it seems to me in either case it would behoove parents to educate their children outside of the school setting. I.e., let them get their 3 R's in the classroom, but form study groups at night to cover what the parents want their children to learn about the workings of government and the rights of citizenship. Catholic families
have a similar activity with evening instruction for children on faith issues. It could be an uphill battle, of course, since children want to be like their peers and today they have scant time left over after a ridiculous system keeps them busy 16 hours each day, parents work, etc.
Years ago I sent my son to a highly religious school because of his learning disabilities, but along with the excellent learning environment came a myopic view of the universe and a rather negative theology. So I made it my business to engage him a few evenings each week and discuss his current dose of brain washing. It helped.
Several years ago (approximately 40+ years) at college, I was invited to attend a global economics series that placed me in classes with several foreign students. I will never forget how impressed I was with their knowledge of – not only the workings of their respective country’s governments – but they processed an intricate understanding of how the U.S. government operated. Today, foreign students have an even keener awareness of global intergovernmental relationships. This begs the question if our present day U.S. students are being taught a respective curricula? Are we already feeling the failure of improper education? I dare say that we may be witnessing the results of an ignorance of history as we witness the present administration(s) repeating strategic mistakes that should have been averted. We should be genuinely worried for this country’s future.
G.B. wrote: "I dare say that we may be witnessing the results of an ignorance of history ..."
And it's really hard to believe it isn't purposeful. The way I read American history, a prime purpose of education was to prepare an educated public for the polls so that we might govern ourselves, a facet of living in America that has gone astray. Over the past 3 or 4 years I have spent time in conferences with many Canadians in their land. I'm always impressed how they follow their government and can discuss its operation intelligently. Most are just as aware of our government in the US and when they meet an American want to know what we think of one issue or another. I've seen a few of my fellow Yanks embarrassed when asked about something they should know about.
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