One of the primary creators of Systems Science and thus a behavioral science pioneer was a biologist, Ludwig van Bertalanffy. He was very involved in reconceptualizing K-12 education in order to implement research coming out of what he called the “emerging psychology of man”. He also called it “a new science of man or general anthropology.” This new type of ‘education’ and new ‘science’ views “man as an active personality system.” Please note that the Workforce shift in purpose I covered in the last post would require that activity emphasis in all K-12 schooling. Not coincidental in the least. In 1966 lectures, Bertalanffy described Menticide as follows:
“If a population is manipulated in the right ways, it cannot transmit, to coming generations, values and freedom it has lost itself; and this is precisely what psychological manipulation aims at and has widely achieved.”
He should know since not only was he a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto shortly after it was created in the early 50s, but he was also a presenter at a 1957 conference on “New Knowledge in Human Values” held at MIT. Organized by the Research Society for Creative Altruism, it resulted in a book edited by famed, or notorious Humanist Psychologist, Abraham Maslow. Shortly after that book came out the NEA hired Maslow and his associate Carl Rogers to develop the new K-12 education vision we covered here. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/psychological-approach-to-a-humane-politics-restructuring-the-west-quietly-and-effectively-via-ed/
In order to be able to spot the same vision implementing this desired ‘science of man’ in subsequent education ‘reforms’ we have to truly understand what was sought at conferences we were not invited to, even if we could get around the technicality of not being born yet. That’s what old books are for. Professor Robert S. Hartman also spoke about creating a ‘moral science’ and a ‘science of values’ by controlling the meaning people associate with words and images. As we read his intentions, let’s just imagine how much fun he would have had with his social engineering desires with access to today’s Digital Learning mandates, where the Images are controlled and dramatize whatever the creator desires for students to believe.
In the kind of naivete and hubris that can be hard to read in hindsight, Hartman said that “as natural science has changed the world, so moral science, once it is developed and fully known, is bound to change the world.” In fact, he believed that “There will come a time when the problems and conflicts that now plague us will be as forgotten as the tortures of the middle ages and the clubs of the cave men.” Talk about famous last words.
Hartman explained how the moral science principles “puts the spine in democratic ideology” and would be the “future science of moral humanity.” If it reminds anyone else of where the lesson plans for the UN’s Global Goals and the linked video for the World’s Largest Lesson from the last post are going, there’s a reason. Hartman related that he had written a report to UNESCO’s International Institute of Philosophy on the development of this value theory “over the last five years (1949-1955).”
I am asserting that the “worldwide intellectual potentiality” is still what is being carried forward by the Systems Scientists like Ervin Laszlo or Bela Banathy and embodied into K-12 via misunderstood terms like Excellence, Outcomes Based Education, Competency, and what GEFF is peddling. Another conference presenter, Erich Fromm (a member of the Frankfurt School of confessed cultural Marxists and transformational social scientists. See Tag) lectured on “Values, Psychology, and Human Existence.” In one of those jaw-dropping epiphanies that brings together so much, Fromm stated that such a human science would first change values. Then it would need to be able to get at–assess would be a good description for what is required–and then alter what he called “man’s frame of orientation.”
That single phrase so thoroughly captured precisely what all the actual Common Core/ Competency/21st Century Skills implementation is now pushing and has been since at least the 60s. I even used one of my very favorite bookmarks to mark the page. From APUSH “Conceptual Frameworks” to Social Studies ‘lenses’ to Cross-Cutting Themes and Core Disciplinary Ideas to Enduring Understandings and Whole Child, everything targets a student’s Frame of Orientation. Growth Mindset being required and exalted is just a way of insisting that the orientation and its frames must be malleable to the Learning Experiences supplied. When listening to the World’s Largest Lesson video or all the Climate Change hype, remember that Fromm told us that “even if man’s frame of orientation is utterly illusory, it satisfies his need for some [internalized mental] picture that is meaningful to him.”
No need to wonder now why relevance, real world applications, ties to “authentic local and global issues” and “assessment primarily concerned with providing guidance and feedback for growth” are the new required focus for K-12 education. http://www.ccsso.org/Documents/2013/2013_INTASC_Learning_Progressions_for_Teachers.pdf that is now being used for teacher professional development is just full of confessions on what teachers must be doing to the students so that they internalize what Fromm called a Frame of Orientation that will guide their future behaviors and perceptions. I especially liked page 27’s insistence that “the teacher understands critical thinking processes and knows how to help learners develop high level questioning skills to promote their independent learning.”
Apparently a neurologically embedded, deliberately created, and manipulated Frame of Orientation fosters independence and autonomy in this Orwellian vision of the future where Unknown=Independent. How does this creation occur? Why “the teacher understands how current interdisciplinary themes (e.g., civic literacy, health literacy, global awareness) connect to the core subjects and knows how to weave those themes into meaningful learning experiences.” There is an crucial confession here in this “Application of Content” vision. School subjects now exist in order to be the means for instilling the desired Frame of Orientation. Then students collaboratively practice projects and tasks until the new values and beliefs are locked in place at an unconscious level. “The teacher is constantly exploring how to use disciplinary knowledge as a lens to address local and global issues.”
That emphasis fits perfectly with the World’s Largest Lesson, but even more so with the UN’s expressed plans to use data, like a student’s frame of orientation and values, to also restructure the world’s economic, social, and political systems. To a UN bureaucrat, too many politicians, and most education administrators these days we are ‘systems’ to be redesigned with data. So apparently is everything else involving people. That is what the meeting in New York is about this week and the 15 year commitment where no one gets left behind that president Obama signed us up for is actually not really about stopping malarial deaths from mosquitoes. http://www.undatarevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/A-World-That-Counts2.pdf is the blueprint that confesses:
“It is up to governments to put in place the rules and systems to realise this vision, working with domestic stakeholders and in the multilateral system, at regional and global levels. Governments, through the legal systems they enforce, are the ultimate guarantors of the public good.”
Because it worked out so well for all of us when in 1928, governments signed on to abolish war. In more utopian hubris:
“it is governments that can balance public and private interests and create systems that foster incentives without creating unacceptable inequalities, adopt frameworks for safe and responsible use and manage the international system that can transfer finance and technical expertise to bring the least informed people and institutions up to the level of the most informed. And it is governments that are elected to respond to citizens on their choices and priorities.”
Mercy me, somebody spent way to much time absorbing theories and not enough time learning genuine history and its constants. Now wanting to be Pollyanna instead of looking this awful overreach straight in the face for what it plans, let’s assume this paper gets dismissed as merely “the UN” and president Obama will be gone in 15 months anyway. In 2012, the National Science Foundation created http://www.nsf.gov/cise/aci/cif21/CIF21Vision2012current.pdf establishing a Cyberinfrastructure for 21st Century Science and Engineering and we and our various ‘systems’ are what need to be socially reengineered. In 2014 grants “Laying the Foundation for Data-Driven Science” were issued. http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=132880 One of the bolded Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs) program is to “drive innovation in education.”
Headed by Ken Koedinger at Carnegie Mellon and funded as LearnSphere, this project is premised on “Educational data holds the same potential to guide the development of courses that enhance learning while also generating even more data to give us a deeper understanding of the learning process.” Whatever the personal intentions of individual professors, LearnSphere is precisely what Hartman, UNESCO, and Fromm hoped to one day have as a cultural tool for transforming human nature. Or at least trying. I am not done yet though. The CIF 21 document compares the kind of human systems data that will now flow from our Cyberinfrastructure to the astronomical mapping of an area of the universe known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The aspiration and intention is “from individuals and communities, to address far more complex problems of science and society than previously possible” and “advance innovation in society.”
One more tie so the inexorable nature of this juggernaut is indisputable. Remember MIT prof Alex “Sandy” Pentland from this post? http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/redesigning-education-globally-to-humanize-personalities-and-make0each0one-of-us-more-susceptible-to-peer-pressure/ He is not only involved with the UN groups that produced that What Counts report and many Working Groups, including Education and Workforce Development, to gain implementation at state and local levels. He is also involved in the Kavli HUMAN Project as an advisor. http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/big.2015.0012 It’s not just a Big Data project to “Understand the Human Condition”. It’s not just that Kavli used that same analogy to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It also seeks to yield “detailed behavioral phenotypes that characterize the myriad ways in which humans express their genetic endowment in different environmental settings.”
And we wonder why Opt Out is to be no longer allowed once a state or district gets “meaningful formative assessments” or why we all need SMART energy meters.
Because we and our children in Preschool through higher ed are to be part of “a discovery dataset that would revolutionize the social and natural human sciences.”
Now I’m done.