Being Thankful We Know About the New Mandate of Student Success to Create and then Sway a Group Mind

Most years since I started this blog I have published a particular post originally called “Being Thankful for What We Know and Appreciating Why It Matters.” That message remains timely, especially given the gravity of everything I have laid out in recent posts. First though I want to provide a few updates since the last post. I had an opportunity last week to speak with Security Policy expert Frank Gaffney in a recorded conference call about the implications of what I had found in the Tarbiyah Project and how closely it aligns with the actual, to be mandated, meaning of success or achievement under the new proposed federal legislation. https://soundcloud.com/alice-linahan/women-on-the-wall-esea-and-the-the-tarbiyah-project

As I wrote in the last post, the alignment between the actual mandated implementation I covered so carefully in my book Credentialed to Destroy and what Tauhidi described was breathtaking and clearly no accident. I covered systems thinking extensively in that book, but although it was created at the troublingly ubiquitous Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), some of its creators were always connected to Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and Research Center for Group Dynamics. http://www.rcgd.isr.umich.edu/history/ Michigan is where Tauhidi received both his Masters and Doctorate and its School of Education has always been a national leader in shifting K-12 education toward the behavioral sciences. To truly make education into a science of human development it certainly helps that the current Dean Deborah Ball also chairs the Spencer Foundation Board of Directors.

That would certainly explain the alignment I found. Establishing the Group Mind and making it influential, then guiding, and finally motivating, as the definition of increasing Proficiency toward being an ‘Expert’ was laid out recently here.  http://www.epiconline.org/essential-skills-and-dispositions-development-frameworks/ Lots of influential entities there and 3 of the essentials are from 21st Century Learning: Creativity, Communication, and Collaboration. The 4th, Critical Thinking, has been renamed as Self-Directed Learning. That would be the same term Tauhidi used in his Tarbiyah Key Outcomes & Indicators. It’s probably not accidental that Tarbiyah’s Essential Learning of Noble Character and Moral Literacy is the Self-Directed Individual, especially since the other 3 Cs are also in various desired new personal character traits with their names in Arabic script.

Finally, Congress just released a Framework for its new ESEA legislation http://edworkforce.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=399784 that also aligns with Tarbiyah and the goal of turning the student, at an internal, neurological level, into a designed, predictable system. That’s the ‘success’ within the legislation. I now have everything I need to prove those assertions after the legislation is passed and signed. Here’s the long-standing goal, taken from work on Burmese culture and Buddhist values, attitudes, and motivating beliefs funded by the CASBS with a shout out to Ralph Tyler, the creator of NAEP, the 8 Year Study, and so much more we still encounter today.

“Which brings us to the importance of this symbol for the integration of Burmese society. For it is through their reverence for this common symbol of a shared ego ideal that the Burmese, I believe, come to identify with each other, as Freud puts it, they ‘have put one and the same object in the place of their ego ideal and have consequently identified themselves with one another in their ego.’ [no individualism left as the West knows it] And this is how Burmese society achieves its highest degree of integration. To the extent that members of a social group identify with each other, to that extent is the group characterized by social integration.”

That would be why Black Lives Matter in 2015 and All Lives do not. With that let’s go back in time. Remember all we have covered since forcing a required Group Mind and also the 2014 passage of WIOA, giving all governments unprecedented economic powers for planning society.

I had actually outlined another barnburner story but the day before Thanksgiving is no time to serve up indigestion. So I thought I would write a tale of appreciating why individual liberty has mattered in the past and why Freed Markets resulted in mass prosperity would be a nice tribute. And I do not mean that in a Pollyanish sense. One of the books I am tackling this holiday week is Robert P Moses’ radical equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project. I want every child to learn to the best of their ability. I want to really appreciate the desperation that is driving this Equality for All even if it guts the economy philosophy. It is why I read what attracted Van Jones to the Green Growth Economy as a manifestation of his self-confessed preference for Communism.

I think the history lessons of the Predator State declaring its Goals for People and then using its powers to coerce are too easy to forget. It’s not an ideological preference. It’s a factual story. A repeated pattern once government reaches a certain size of the economy. I think history consistently bears out the truth of what Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek said in his 1945 lecture Individualism: True and False. I give extra credit for people who have first hand experience in what led to most of the great tragedies of the 20th Century. It’s called Walking the Walk and there is great validity to the hard-earned wisdom it imparts.

“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is a condition of a free society, the second means, as De Tocqueville described it, ‘a new form of servitude.”

There is just no getting around the fact that government officials and their Business Allies deciding they get to fine tune personalities and reset Values, Attitudes, and Beliefs to guide an Individual’s Future Behavior is a 21st Century form of servitude. Especially when the inappropriately named Positive School Climate is now a tool to retrain each student’s filtering Mindset. The worldview they will use from now on as they encounter daily reality. With their preferred non-Axemaker Mind and habits grounded in emotion. All quite consciously cultivated and monitored.

But we now know all this up front and that really is something to be Thankful for. As an active pursuer of these plans and blueprints this is decidedly unauthorized knowledge that was not supposed to become available. A 2012 Deerstalker Gold Star Award for Me. The most common question I get from frustrated parents especially is Why? What I am saying simply rings too true with their daily reality to discount it. But why the Deliberate Operant Conditioning towards a Future that’s not really about prosperity?

Like I have said, I take great comfort in putting all this in its Historical Context and its real Self-Dealing Context. Because honestly that is where it belongs. So I am going to quote you a passage from Hayek’s 1944 book The Road to Serfdom (page 176 in my 2007 copy). He really nails the drivers behind making education miseducation. Notice he also nails down the frequent unholy alliance between government and the media. Simply refusing to report or cover accurately anything that might caste a poor light on desired government policies. My bolding and snark is in the brackets.

“Facts and theories [Sustainability, Man-made Catastrophic Global Warming, Diversity, Social Justice] must thus become no less the object of an official doctrine than views about values. And the whole apparatus for spreading knowledge–the schools and the press, radio and motion picture–will be used exclusively to spread those views which, whether true or false, will strengthen the belief in the rightness of the decisions taken by the authority; and all information that might cast doubt or hesitation will be withheld. The probable effect on the people’s loyalty to the system [Peter Senge just swooned that we so understand the essence of Systems Thinking and Why It Must Be Pushed] becomes the only criterion for deciding whether a particular piece of information is to be published or suppressed. [Benghazi; Actual Employment Numbers]

The situation in a totalitarian state is permanently and in all fields the same that it is elsewhere in some fields in wartime. Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. [Hard not to think of Candy Crowley and that 2nd Presidential Debate]. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with conditions elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions–all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.”

There you have the incentive of Government officials for using education for merely Competent, Mentally Hobbled Citizens. Especially ones who are being bred to see a Duty to the State. And the Business Angle. They are politically connected and want special privileges and protections from their Cronies. That’s not Capitalism though. It’s Mercantilism where there is no mass prosperity. It is what Adam Smith rejected as he accounted for Britain’s phenomenal 18th century economic growth.

So enjoy your friends and loved ones on this cherished American holiday. Whatever happens in education in 2013, we WILL understand what is really going on and what the likely consequences are actually going to be.

And that really is something to be Thankful for.

102 thoughts on “Being Thankful We Know About the New Mandate of Student Success to Create and then Sway a Group Mind

  1. Thank You Robin. I am forever grateful that I stumbled on your blog back in 2012. Wishing you and your family a very Happy and Thankful Thanksgiving as well. 🙂

    • Thanks. Cornbread cut up and drying. College kid wanted pomegranates and clam chowder from scratch when she gets home today. That’s secure, but I have been to several places to get inexpensive port to make cranberry sauce. Had to wait for liquor stores to open.

      Enjoy your children and family as well. Everybody be careful and alert in this dangerous world. I suspect the gun ranges will be busy this weekend as people know better somehow than to trust the government that wants to force them into servitude to keep them safe.

        • Somebody’s under the misimpression that people actually want to do this diversity nonsense, and that diversity theory has any relationship to reality.

          Speaking of Yale, when will they expel “shrieking girl”? Her single mom lives within 30 miles of me. Her identity is on the internet so nobody in their right mind would hire her, but she’s a senior and will graduate during Obama’s term, so she’ll probably get a secure government job.

          • A lot of the Diversity push is embedded in accreditation criteria that you have to catch and know about before the continuation of the agenda gets covered up in unappreciated definitions. Perfectly calm campuses are trying to radicalize students to “support mizzou” and Black Lives Matters.

            I had to tell these ignoramuses wanting justice for Michael Brown that he got justice and that Trayvon was not 13 or looking for skittles. They are outraged over false narratives

      • Are the pomegranates and clam chowder served together? Love a good chowda! We do oyster stew from scratch for Christmas, its my turn this year. Pomegranate with port instead of cranberry? I like your thinking if so…I am epicurious about your menu Robin! Your a great mom among other things.

        • No, my college kid loves to take the pomegranate apart and just nibble on the seeds. The cranberry with port recipe is actually from the Houston Junior League Stop and Smell the Rosemarycookbook for beef tenderloin. I just use it now with turkey or pork tenderloin too.

          I first started making this clam chowder with cornbread on christmas eve before we had kids. Now I do christmas eve dinner with my inlaws at my house so we were not trying to do 3 places on the same day. My parents come too and usually I make pasta bolognese where you use veal, pork, and beef and cook out milk then white wine and serve on pappardelle egg noodles. The year I home schooled so we could travel we spent a month in Italy. We even had an apartment on the Tibre two blocks from Castel San Angelo for a week. The pomegranate college kid and I would walk when she was 8 down to campo di fiore in the mornings to the market. That was when we learned artichokes come with long stems that get cut off.

          No clams at college so this was her request for tonight. I have also promised to make crab cakes while she is home for same reason. Given the dark stuff I read it is fun to cook good meals and sip wine and hang out. Got half a cord of firewood delivered last weekend so we are ready to shelter in place if need be.

          I did not start cooking until my 30s and when I picked up a second foreign language in high school my dad did ask when I was going to take home ec. I wasn’t, but first meal I cooked when I was dating my now husband called for a clove of garlic. There I am in front of the Macormick spices looking for a clove. Learned a lot since that mistake.

          • Some family angst about in-your-face tattoos and feminist statements on shaving among the cousins that I found out about later. I thought the tension was from a previous blowup, but my cornbread dressing with bacon and chopped red bell peppers was a hit with my parents and my family at least.

            And I substituted 1/4 cup apple cider and 1/4 cup maple syrup for 1/2 cup dark corn syrup in a sweet potato puree with granny smith apples. I do not like sweet potatoes that are like candy.

            Think of the implications in your state and everywhere on integrating health care into educational outcomes. http://www.wholechildeducation.org/about/globalschoolhealthstatement

  2. Robin said:
    “The probable effect on the people’s loyalty to the system…becomes the only criterion for deciding whether a particular piece of information is to be published or suppressed. [Benghazi; Actual Employment Numbers]” This rang a bell so I thought I would comment with examples.

    The book The Party (Richard McGregor) describes The Communist Party in China. The MSM filters everything about China so all we get is sound bites and video clips. The book describes how dissent is usually tolerated in China. If a dissident tries to establish a national following or national movement they may end up in a labor camp.Short of that critical writings are ignored by the party and they are allowed to languish. They are simply not picked up by the national media. This sounded like the US MSM.

    From memory, Pat Buchanan pointed out that the Matthew Shepard story (gay tied to a fence/murdered in WY) went viral but another story of two gays raping and killing a young boy were not picked up by the wire services outside of Kansas. The narrative being served is what counts.

    I notice more and more the MSM bias is in what story is covered. Why is this newspaper space telling this story instead of that story?

    Stories of the police killings of Miriam Carey, Ricky ‘Maya’ Shawatza Hall, and Milton Hall (and more) were never picked up long term by the MSM. Police in the first two refuse to release any video evidence. Miriam Carey was shot 5 times in the back through her rear windshield in DC trying to get away from police, who were shooting at her. Ricky ‘Maya’ Shawatza Hall and friend were in a stolen vehicle with cocaine when they made a wrong turn from hell, into an off ramp leading to an NSA entrance. When they tried to leave (apparently, from the photos) a cop car blocked their path and was hit by their vehicle and both were shot, one dead.The driver lost control AFTER being shot. Milton Hall was a mentally ill guy with a pen knife executed by police. See Youtube. All these people were black BTW but the MSM has such group think that the stories die, after misleading headlines and conclusions. Compare to Travon Martin or Michael Brown. This is not liberal bias or racial bias.

    I only mention this as an example of group think and of the lack of analytical ability to ask what happened first, second, third, etc. These stories may be examples of the CC collectively arrived at shared reality. They remind me of the govt hunting down a purported bad guy broadcast on TV in Fahrenheit 451.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3020408/Transgender-woman-shot-dead-trying-ram-entrance-NSA-identified-homeless-prostitute-facing-prison-time-20-year-old-friend-car-probation-stealing-tip-jar.html

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/officials-respond-to-incident-at-nsa-on-fort-meade-campus/2015/03/30/08bdfe56-d6e1-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html

    • Great illustrations and I watch the network news fairly regularly to see what the media wants me to believe about the world. Interesting how often now they even use the word lens like the world is supposed to act like sociology or anthropology theory.

      Just to clarify. Hayek said and I repeated because his insights from historically pertinent experience fit today’s facts so well. I maintain that Hayek and Von Mises had no one who understood and tracked their writings quite like the same Ralph Tyler mentioned in this post did. They made observations and then the CASBS started research to use education and systems theory to try to bypass the valid point.

      If you want to buy yourself a book that will prove lastingly relevant for these times get the same Last Exit to Utopia by Jean-Francois Revel that I quoted in the lead-in to my book. Revel was dealing with similar aims that were not obscuring the nature of their vision.

      Yesterday I was reading something and the prof looked to Martin Heidegger to bolster support for the validity of his theory. Nobody is supposed to have a solid grasp of facts because then they would do what I did. Don’t use the Nazi;s favorite philosopher to try to claim something is a good idea.

  3. Great example of US msm similarity to chinese news media is the coverage of the ” rape culture” on college campus’ vs the k-12 educator pedophile/molesters.

  4. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
    Your epicurean journey sounds wonderful! We’ll enjoy the traditional goodies and I’ll make potato soup this weekend.
    Just one point–I know you meant “2016” instead of “2013” in last paragraph. Either way, we’re ahead of the curve with the information shared.

    • No I didn’t. Once I said here we go, I stopped updating and just went with the old post. There’s a poignancy to me this far out with how apt it was and is.

      So I left all the dates and side-references as what seem to illustrate perfectly then. I thought it also helps figure out what is suitable now.

      My clam chowder could qualify as a potato soup too. Not diced but nice sized and I had ordered some Nueskes bacon for now through christmas knowing my cornbread dressing also calls for bacon.

      Enjoy your holiday. Ready for Monday. Did you see the blurb in EdWeek about requiring states assess SEL?

      We are so totally on the right track with where the real end game was and is. Time to buy the book people. This is where I saw it going three years ago watching what was being legally mandated in the interpretation.

      I also have a fiction book I think I will read fr a change.

      • My hubs has our freezer stuffed with Benton’s bacon. Kinda smokey for some recipes.
        I will get some Neuskes if you recommend.

        • Nueskes is very smoky as well, which I love, I get the Applewood smoked, thick sliced. We used to get Wrights at the grocery store, but they have changed the texture or something.

          One of my kids needs the protein so I wanted to have good bacon as a treat anytime college is out.

          What you sent me offline by email on early childhood learning standards led me to this very graphic layout from Georgia. http://gelds.decal.ga.gov/Documents/GELDS_Resource_Guide.pdf Notice this all started in 2010. This is the fundamental transformation and there are constant references to how these Birth to 5 criteria dovetail with K-12. Now marry money in K-12 following the child and the mere factual existence of ‘needs’ becomes the entire basis of a meet needs, but non-growth economy with governments at all levels steering the people and their ‘development’. It’s completely unsustainable, but that is hard to explain to adults who have sucked off the taxpayer or charitable foundation teat all their working lives. They have no concept of where money really comes from or what developed the wealth they assume they can just reassign.

          These visions emulate how pirate economies work, but without the Jolly Roger to alert us all quickly to the folly.

          • Instead the skull & crossbones is on tea towels and kids sneakers. Lovely. Extremely passe as fashion goes but still persistant symbology petmiates pop culture to a grotesque and yawn worthy degree. Unfortunatly we are adults and get it but the kids think they have magic powers zombies are real and skulls have replaced flowers in their doodles.

            AND congress will pass ESEA, despite the latecomers efforts to stop it, and congress betraying America, Where were they in January? Are they pirates in sheeps clothing?

          • GELD, i am falling over! Our kids are being gelded. They are geldings. Physically and psychologically.
            There are no accidents, Robin

          • Did you notice they even explain how to pronounce the acronym with the ‘g’ sound of genius and not the ‘g’ sound of ghost.

            There may not be coincidences, but the timely uncovering of all this in time to analyze ESSA accurately is certainly fortuitous. I have uncovered the UK Frameworks that ESSA is clearly trying to put in place in the US. Stumbled across this morning as I traced out references in bibliographies of reports that fit with what I know of the implementation.

            It has been a good morning, but I was taking a break to read the Pendergast book Blue Labyrinth.

            Oh. My. Word. Look what I just found following up on the UK materials and the implications of what is being imposed on K-12 as a duty of the school. http://blogs.coventry.ac.uk/researchblog/unaoc-memorandum-of-understanding/

          • Geld.. What bad taste these peoples jokes on us… Jelled, geld, schyld… whatever. We get it.
            And this
            “The United Nations High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations” are they kidding with these titles like galactic high wizard and grand poobah.
            These people are playing a giant game of dungeons and dragons. Sadly trying to capture our children and nation.

  5. Have a wonderful time with your family Robin! Your menu sounds wonderful. I have a reprieve from preparing the full meal this year, desserts only. I am prepared for pumpkin cheesecake , fresh NW Apple pear pie with caramel from scratch and real whipped cream, and a fallen chocolate souffle with raspberry puree. I thought my list was completed but now the little kids are asking for sugar cookies and I can’t say no easily when they ask for special items. Youngest loves being in the kitchen.

    Did you hear that the Climate Conference was a ‘powerful rebuke’ to terrorists? Seriously, what planet is that man on?

    • I did. They just want an emotional, catastrophic reason to explain the shift to Marxist Humanism as the real money gets substituted for debt.

      I do know what it is like when certain foods exemplify how families interact and embrace the holidays.

      • From yesterday.
        “Empower students with the skills and attitudes required to succeed in the 21st century. Promote tolerance, peace, and respect for diversity. Education systems need to go beyond the standard topics taught in schools. In our program, GCI employs the 5 Cs of communication, collaboration, creativity/innovation, and critical thinking/problem solving skills, and character.
        http://gettingsmart.com/2015/11/strategies-for-engaging-global-learners/

        • LL, doesn’t it bother you all this ” empowering” of our kids in school? ” knowledge is power” is not what they mean we know, but certain knowledge, opinion, ideas. Installed neurally to ” empower” our kids for the 21st century… For the spaceships, dungeons and factories…
          Such total BS…

          • It does bother me immensely. My younger two attend a small private school, less than 200 kids. The school has fought many battles to exist including one at the 9th circuit supreme court. It has been under attack for its academic focus. I do not see this at the elementary level any longer but my oldest, a senior is surrounded by it at our local high school. I regularly attend board meetings at the local school and city council meetings. It seems like others have forgotten reality. As I have mentioned to Robin before, the new types of humans and attitudes they desire permeate the Portland area. Seriously, it is like a strange planet full of demanding utopian soldiers.

        • I am also one of the interviewees featured in this new documentary. http://www.agendadocumentary.com/

          In case anyone wants to put a face with my posts. Curtis Bowers interviewed me for it more than two years ago just before the book’s publication date. It is the sequel to Agenda: Dragging America Down. He had read my blog posts on the Belmont Challenge and the Earth System Partnership and decided I understood the actual agenda for the Common Core.

          Originally supposed to be out in February 2014. I just got the email asking where to send copies of the movie containing my “excellent interview.” Woohoo.

          • Curtis’ work is not like Global Road to Ruin. I never met anyone else he interviewed and he contacted me because no one else had written about the Belmont Challenge and he could tell it fit with his research. He had a set of dates he was coming through Atlanta for a few interviews. He asked for an hour and stayed two with his nephew who was the cameraman. His wife emailed me Saturday the videos were on the way.

            My book editor had been a fan from his first movie and came to meet him and listened. I had never seen or heard of it or Curtis. She said it was all so factual as I laid out how things relate and work from all my research. Just imagine how much more detail I have now and ESSA is locking carrying out this Masters of Deceit/UNESCO/serfdom for all but the designated political elite. Back to work.

  6. Here is a gem from NCEE/ National Center For Education and the Economy.
    Harvard Forum on Swiss Vocational Education and Training. The presumptuous articulated here about what the serfs should be allowed to learn depending upon what their betters, in govt and business, desire is breathtaking.
    Swiss Education Planner Ursula doesn’t see the U.S. constitution getting in the way of a well oiled Business Planned/Govt mandated Ed systems plan at all.
    http://www.ncee.org/2015/10/international-spotlight-harvard-forum-on-swiss-vocational-education-and-training/
    Nancy Hoffman, VP/Senior adviser for Jobs For the Future is on the panel. She Loves the Swiss System. JFF is a fan of the New Standards project. Standards that will be Competency Based Ed ( Common-UNESCO- Core ) for All. i.e.,Reading a receipt a la the PISA Standard

    Somehow I don’t see kids signing contracts at 15 to go the vocational route in a specific “profession’ ( like CODING???) to then better themselves with theoretical higher ed knowledge as these benevolent dreamers suggest will happen.

    • Great link mc. Yes JFF is lso an early, vocal advocate of WIOA back just after its adoption. http://www.jff.org/blog/2014/08/04/passage-wioa-adult-learners-still-need-%E2%80%9Cability-benefit%E2%80%9D

      They clearly take great delight in neural redesign from their change in K-12 instructional emphasis. http://www.jff.org//sites/default/files/BrainyApproachesToLearning_Infographic-PDF_032713.pdf

      And their Student-Centered Learning reports are driving the classroom changes and are likely embodied in ESSA’s language. http://www.jff.org/initiatives/students-center

      Have a happy thanksgiving with your family

      • Creating ideal active civic dispositions for democratic engagement. Wow. Wow. Wow.

        After a lovely meal our family watched the third installment in the Hunger Games movie franchise. As I watched I noted blatant rip offs from the classic silent film Metropolis but perhaps more than ever I saw how the conditioning narrative for revolutionary participatory democracy is being embedded in mass consciousness at the level of allegedly benign entertainment.

        Watching some scenes with collective fists raised in solidarity I had flashes to images of the fact free outrage and ignorance about free speech demonstrated by the college students at Missou.

        We are seeing the first wave of Active Civic Engagement on our college campuses now. These kids are the highly emotive and fact free advocates for justice ( ” forget the law! What about humanity?” ) who will drive us to the edge.

        They are the generation upon whom sel was informally practiced . But they were taught to be sufficiently irrational to move the needle. The students that come up behind them – second wave – will still be highly emotional and irrational but they will be taught to control themselves when they are directed to do so through mindfulness.

        The new active civic minded citizen. Fact free, stirred to passion easily when desired ,conditioned to go still and compliant when desired as well. Perfect for aspiring overlords.

        • http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/?k=9781137377210 in Smart Cities as a Panapticon except they falsely credit Foucault.

          I know just how Jeremy Bentham must feel. It is truly terrible when other people read your hard put-together research and developed insights and then parrot them as if they were their own. Lot of that going on unfortunately. Apart from stealing from me, others have no access to the underlying knowledge like knowing that before digital games James Paul Gee pushed Whole Language and for the exact same reason of disrupting academics and reengineering the mind.

          • I agree David. The books were not quite as obviously ideologically slanted as the movies were. Although…. I always question timing in any successful media campaign. The Hunger Games trilogy was a good read but so perfectly timed to the angst of the occupy movement and growing social justice narratives. The author did very little press if any that I am aware of and yet her books sold like wildfire. Unusual in today’s book sales climate. And she came out of nowhere more or less. May be nothing, may be something. Just something of note I file away in the back of my forbidden store of connections.

          • The most interesting thing to me about the author of the books, is that she lives in Sandy Hook CT, a village which soon became famous for the shootings at the closed elementary school.

            And the most interesting thing about the books was that the “futuristic” technology described basically already exists. For one example tracker jacker venom makes you forget things and form new memories, to “change history” in Michelle Obama’s words. We can already do that, using oxygen uptake inhibitor or something like that in the brain.

            My main takeaway from the books was about the need for performance in the face of cold, cynical greed and exploitation. That heroism often consists of retaining one’s logical faculties when it feels impossibly hard to do so. A completely different message from what this actor wants the message to be from the movies.

          • For “logical faculties” I could have said “axemaker mind” — and retaining it when the chips are down is likely impossible if one has not developed it somehow in earlier life.

          • I did not read the books and only saw the first two movies. What bothered me was that the existence of this massive federal govt was just existing and assumed. Some other teen oriented movies share this.

            BTW Donald Sutherland is in the 1% and apparently suffers from white privilege. Cough up all your money white boy.

    • IF districts in the US adopted the ‘Swiss model’ I doubt it would look anything like the Swiss model when put into practice. US ‘educators’ do not like reality which is what the business people would bring to the table. I am not saying that the Swiss model is bad or that we cannot learn positive things from it.

      The US ‘educators eliminate shop classes, decide almost everyone should should go to college, and now this latest shiny object.

      • I read the 34 page PDF report on the Swiss system. It was interesting.

        It would be interesting to see examples of the entrance and exit exams for secondary schools. Something tells me they look nothing the exams which the CC people want to or have instituted. Videos of daily instruction in a couple secondary school classes would be interesting. I doubt they comport with the CC model for US high schools.

  7. Its a fantastic system but few know how it works and fewer have a voice to call out the illegal manouvers and tricks tried and succeeded on the Hill. The ignorance cultivated over years of neglectful factual civics government and history education have created a populace that think wishing and magic beans make it all work. Completely blind and doubtful of reality and corruption because of really crackerjack “critical thinking ” skills. Blissing out on Brain Breaks, polishing self esteem and watching oprah.

    • They never just sit down and read the Constitution, starting with Article 1, in high school. They skip the whole basic text laying out the rules and blather on about a few favored amendments and a slanted view of what they supposedly mean. Including 12th grade civics.

      If this isn’t encouraging ignorance, I don’t know what is. But it’s probably been that way my whole life. Civics has been about “citizenship” more importantly than about learning the nuts and bolts of the system enough to think coherently about it.

    • Stopped last night at Literacy Education for All. Now resuming. This is the antithesis of returning control to the states and localities. Love that consistent weasel word ‘specific’ as the qualifier on the feds not saying what to do if states and LEAs take $.

      Here I go again.

        • All the groups that have tried so hard to block access to my book and insights are trying to read that in a hurry. Yet understanding what is intended already actually makes this very smooth reading.

          It is fascinating because it is such a clear power ploy by our political class to enslave American children via their minds and the very existence of poverty anywhere.

          • Something that is meaningful aligns with the student’s worldview and is caught up in their emotions and previous experiences. Something that is meaningful guides behavior and influences interpretation of experiences. Deeply meaningful, produced by Deep Learning of the sort the OECD, Senge, Rand, the White House, gates, the Hewlett Foundation, etc are also pushing prompts action. It motivates behavior and the drive is generally unconscious to the person acting.

            ESSA is embued with the behavioral sciences insights desired for the classroom in order to change students lastingly at a neurological level. If that seems like a bad scifi movie, look what came out yesterday just in time to marry with ESSA in the real implementation. http://gettingsmart.com/2015/12/knowledgeworks-forecast-4-0-partners-in-code/ Yesterday was quite the day.

          • I am absolutely appalled and scared. How to get my kids out and save as many others as I can? Thanks Robin and everyone here for helping me understand. I try to get the word out. Reading the chart in the document Robin links below Partners in Code. Wearable devices, Visual Feedback Tools, Robot Relations (?!), personal machine/digital partners (How about a teacher’s eyes and ears and brain as appropriate visual feedback tools?!) Learning tailored to a learner’s “self-defined identity.” YUCK. Clearly teaching is being outsourced to computers and all children will be connected to the matrix. Child’s school just started using 3 different personalized learning computer game software programs to teach and track progress (math and ELA for now). Wants to spend hours a night earning stars in competition with classmates. I counter with Latin and cursive and literature after dinner.

          • Martha-please do not forget how connected Knowledgeworks is. In fact, my reading of ESSA is that KW’s Strive Network will be an eligible entity to get taxpayer funds as a provider of some of the stipulated services that school districts must provide to meet student ‘needs.’ KW has spun off the New Tech Network after seeding it, but the White House has used it as the exemplar (as had UNESCO and the OECD) of high school reform for the 21st century. It also fits ESSA’s language.

            CCSSO has contracted with EDucation Counsel to create its competency-based education template and its well-known partner, Clinton’s former Ed Sec Richard Riley, was on the Board of KW last I looked. I got this notification http://www.edelements.com/blog/clear-signals-and-other-lessons-from-a-season-of-personalized-learning-at-fulton-county of the personalized learning Fulton has embarked on that has student data being used to neurologically rearrange student’s brains and personalities with parents being none the wiser. That’s the kind of authorization that was actually put in place by the district’s conversion charter. That’s what happens when the law gets used to mandate this kind of shift from transmissive to transformative ed. That is also what ESSA does. My point though is that the lawyer who wrote that charter is a partner at Richard Riley’s law firm. I got an announcement last week that the same law firm has been hired to do a national search for a new superintendent who will of course be in charge of continuing to carry out that personalized learning, manipulate the child agenda.

            It is a very short walk from what is going on in League of Innovative School Districts like Fulton that Tom VanderArk consults for and that Forecast 4.0 he linked to. The shift in children’s brains is being forced under legal instruments like charters, social impact investing that ESSA calls Pay for Success, the ESSA language, the terms of grants, and state laws like the HB 186 I described in my book. Education is being used to force neurological change and the law is being used to force the shift. At every point greed for federal dollars or the revenue from local property taxes or proceeds from bond sales that then go to short-term technology, whatever must be done to access taxpayer dollars or get dollars from debt, that is what is happening now.

            Agree to implement this template? OK, charter management company, here’s lots more taxpayer dollars so you can expand and manipulate more children’s minds and personalities. Parents won’t know because we will call the changes Learning, Success, student achievement, or Growth. The mere existence will entitle the cmo to get its lucrative contract renewed and we all roll along.

            Instead of using education to become internationally competitive, we are cannibalizing the minds of our young people for personal profit. Sometimes the profit goes to politicians, public sector employees, nonprofit providers, cmos, lawyers, but everyone gets to cash in as long as they agree to push the desired transformative agenda.

            Pirate economies though do not thrive. Obviously I have been mulling the implications of all this. I just do not want people to think that Forecast 4.0 is distant from their kids or without legal power to be implemented. That would be a failure to appreciate the conflicts of interest now driving all education policy globally. Bipartisan and Bicameral. Federal, state, and local. Think tanks across the spectrum all wanting money yesterday on Giving Tuesday.

  8. In a sane world just one glance at this Content list of 1000 plus pages of over reach and an individual would have a fit of hysterics reconciling the fact of the document’s existence with the additional fact that the federal government is not supposed to play any role at all in education in this nation.

  9. The NGA endorsed Every Child Succeeds Act…what’s that people are staying about this bill freeing states from CCSS. First bill they’ve endorsed in 20 years.

    • States like being in charge of the economy which wioa provides and now ESSA says if you agree to do x to the children, here’s lots of federal money for you and your cronies. This whole document just reeks of ways for connected insiders to be eligible entities designed to cash-in on the money flow. It also lets them do what Pritzkers and GS did in Salt Lake on the Social Impact bonds–take advantage of the known change in the nature of education that makes it easy to know that outcomes can be achieved.

      There’s even a Posthumous pardon in ESSA. I am done, but nailing down some of the euphemisms used to stop me from doing exactly what I am doing. Took me 13 hours to read it.

    • Gee, it’s not like our Data Mining Overlords (she waves) have expressed any interest in using education to push a transformative, social justice vision. https://www.thersa.org/action-and-research/arc-news/5-videos-on-tech-change-and-the-power-to-create/

      Doing it in the UK totally severs the connection from applicability in the US.

      The funny thing is that in the effort to use euphemisms in the Every Student Succeeds Act to prevent damning quotes that might derail passage, the language used actually implicates the UK Social Cohesion and Race Equality as legal mandates and the UNESCO papers on how to best develop a harmonious personality as the purpose of Preschool through high school than did the graphic language from what passed the House and Senate. Ooops.

      • I just about fell out on the floor! Listening to houselive.gov discussion of bill. Not sure if he was an R or a D – but he said – rising in support of the bill “this bill represents a NEW common core – focused FIRST and foremost on mental disciplines and healthy schools” talked about brain science, SEL, etc. wow – no question what the end result will be on this one.

          • Love c-span. D Rep. Tim Ryan – Ohio – starts at time 1:29:30 of the video – – http://www.c-span.org/video/?401484-101/us-house-legislative-business&live&start=4966
            (I misspoke he didn’t rise in support of rule but he is in support of ESSA)…
            some high points…bill provides for well rounded education, Inner Resilience social and emotional learning programs, Mind Up Program, “bill helps us get back to redefining what the common core is…teaching kids mental disciplines…regulate own emotional state…comes well before science, technology and math… before you can even get to academic disciplines…new way of educating our kids is emerging here…

          • Alice-there is a video of you and Frank Gaffney on your site with you parroting the conclusions from Chapter 4’s title as if they are your insights?

            You mentioned after that conference call with Gaffney where I talked about the real concerns with the actual implementation, the ESSA language from the earlier drafts, and Tarbiyah that “when I go out and speak to groups about your book.” On what authority do you do that? I felt like I had been sucker punched. I do not research and write to provide you with talking material and ‘information’ to push. You did a video last week where you mentioned my name and read from my blog and basically continued to appropriate what is not yours.

            You admit you are pushing information that is not yours to push. Synthesizing from hundreds of hours of research to have you read it in a YouTube video is not disseminating ‘facts’. You have written by email to me that the I Can See workbook is about your personal journey of enlightenment and has nothing to do with my book yet you also said you speak to groups about it. Your website says it’s a workbook about the Common Core. Where are those insights coming from? You are contradicting what you wrote to me about the workbook.

            You told Frank Gaffney I would do the monograph when I has consistently said I am not giving away the insights I have worked so hard to obtain to either you or him. Your reply after the conference call was that you would “simply cite me anyway.”

            I commented on the hat tip in part because I am quite aware of how hard certain groups have tried to block access to what I write and what is in my book. There has been a great deal of offline speculation in the last week or so that people want to dilute what I am saying to prevent people from getting the actual details only I can give. I have read so much to put all this together and having you parrot me is very upsetting.

            If there had not been so much effort to block or censor my work, perhaps we would not be facing the tragedy that is enshrined in ESSA. They have federalized Whole Language and constructivist math and science as terms to now get federal money for all districts. Perhaps if people were listening to me rather than “people talking about your book” that would have been less likely.

            At least my kids are grown. What that statute does to our children is horrific and nobody was supposed to know. I just listened to an interview with Jeb Bush where he pompously took credit for “helping work on what is about to pass Congress.” That is a paraphrase, but that is basically what he said.

            I need to go make dinner.

          • So, Robin, I have a question- When I go out and speak to groups, which I am asked to do often. When I talk about who are the leading experts on the topic of this transformation in education. Who I read, who I trust as people who have done the research to know the facts. Do you want me to recommend you, your book and your blog site or not?

          • When I asked you to come to St. Louis with me, I was working on the #CaniSEE project. I was working on the Monograph project. I have never wanted to block your work. I have always promoted you, and your great work. I was working on the monograph and after reading your book, I knew there was so much more you had insight on that I could not possibly know. Frank knows, that what every I put in a monograph will be in large part because of what I learned from reading your book and from obviously from reading your blog and the Tarbyiah Project. I don’t want credit, I want the information out as far and wide as I can get it.
            By the way, I know the feeling of having information blocked. When I started promoting you and Anita, I knew I was on target. Just because of who did not want to hear it. I am with you on that. That is why I want to get your info out as far as possible.

          • By the way, that is why I value your work and especially the comments section because of the content that can be shared in bite size pieces from it.

            A perfect example; today after reading a great article by my friend Melanie Sturm in the Aspen Times….
            http://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/19418879-113/sturm-kindergarchy-and-our-clash-of-civilizations
            I sent her your blog and info about ‘Credentialed To Destroy’. I let her know about the Tarbyiah Project and that she really needed to start following your work. She was very excited to learn more. Building the Network, as my friend Ray Myers would say, and sharing each others work, is key in this battle.

          • Martha Sue said:
            “Some high points ….”

            I have posted this before. The words used are vague and sound entirely unobjectionable. Without knowing more I would be in favor of teaching this stuff. Sounds like motherhood and apple pie.

            Specific examples are what count and how this gibberish is carried out in specific examples. These are always missing in the laws and propaganda. They are also often missing in the objections to this motherhood and apple pie worded law.

          • eclectic-this confession came out today https://efareport.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/a-global-alliance-to-monitor-learning-gal/#more-6416 . It builds on what the Every Student Succeeds Act enacts though and seems to have been waiting for that piece of legislation to lock in the US to the global vision. To link it with the GRLI Open Letter I also put up this morning common Learning goals globally based on minimum proficiencies are actually a superb way to get to ‘universal agreement’ on any issue, whether true or false.

            I mentioned yesterday that ESSA enshrined both Whole Language and constructivist math as the required programs to get federal money. Having GAL mention wanting to come to a common global measurement of reading and math suddenly makes those provisions in ESSA make even more sense, especially since from the book we know what traditionally taught reading and abstract math can do to ignite that hard to tether or harness Axemaker Mind.

            I have joked this week about the lost 13 hours of my life reading ESSA, but I suspect we will keep seeing more announcements where provisions of ESSA dovetail with these global transformation plans. I also do not think it’s an accident that ‘personalized learning and the use of student data’ is an obligation of every LEA wanting federal money under the 21st century schools provisions. The same entity Rand, that did the Change Agent Study evaluation in the 70s of why the 60s implementation attempt did not work is the evaluator of the personalized learning efficacy evals just released. http://www.newschools.org/blog/exciting-new-evidence-about-the-promise-of-personalized-learning As I wrote months ago, the White House has also hired them to create the Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Competencies that actually will constitute what is euphemised in ESSA as both personalized learning and ‘well-rounded education.’ Tis the purpose of all those specified activities. It is also UNESCO longstanding term for education that is about the development of harmonious personalities instead of the transmission of knowledge. Looks like ESSA legally enshrined shaksiyah education after all as a condition of getting federal dollars to the local level.

            Way to supposedly return control to the states and localities. Using education practices created for ideologies like Soviet communism or Islam (as the collectivist political system it admits to being in addition to religion) as a required condition to receive federal education dollars now. Wish there was someone we could say “Heckuva job Brownie” to. I guess this is where a Congress run on Moneyball principles takes us.

            Time for my morning cup of China Rose.

          • I just read a reference to EIPs for Georgia–Education to Industry Partnerships from a transportation lobbyist who complains about people using the acronym RINOs. When I looked it up it brought me straight to Portland. https://sites.google.com/a/apps4pps.net/2014-educator-industry-partnership-series/home

            This is an article talking about the same breakfast where EIP came up. http://jaybookman.blog.myajc.com/2015/12/02/is-georgia-ready-to-leave-its-anti-transit-past-in-the-past/ Notice the open embrace of government policy instead of markets and people’s free decisions about what they want for themselves and their families. This is the new US of WIOA and ESSA and Bookman not pointing out that AJC is owned by Cox that just loves government edicts of Broadband for All at taxpayer expense. No wonder they prefer government policy directing the economy.

          • Alice Linahan said:
            “Building the Network, as my friend Ray Myers would say, and sharing each others work, is key in this battle.”

            Yes, information sharing matters. Knowledge is key. Its is also best taught by the people who have done the actual research and who know the ins and outs and tiny details that are essential parts to explaining what needs to be understood.

            Information sharing as a concept works at the personal, conversational level primarily. When an individual disseminates another’s work on his or her own branded blog, youtube channel, Facebook page, Twitter feed etc… and this research and writing is disseminated without consistent, clear attribution/links “sharing” is no longer the appropriate word to use to describe what is happening.

            Networks can be useful but they can also trap information in connected echo chambers.
            Ensuring that people go to The Source for relevant information when that source is willing and able and available to talk is a key way to make sure the Truth Will Out.

            Perhaps more interviews with the information originators is a better solution; either audio or written. Picking authors brains in real time and getting them to elaborate on concepts in their own words is always the very best way to get people to listen.

          • I have a hard time accepting that this education reform needs to be packaged in “bite size” pieces as Alice suggests. Isn’t that the precise reason so many reps voted yes on ESSA? Without question the majority of them did not read the 1,000+ pages and instead were spoon fed easily digestible bits. Most “representing” we the people have zero understanding of the bill’s horrifying implications and far reaching consequences. Taking action based on diluted facts won’t fix this mess, even with the best of intentions.

          • JT~ Good point, but, let me clarify my statement in bite size pieces.
            This admission by Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, when heard by people like you and I, people who follow Robin and others great work, hear it and instantly know it is an admission.

            The post in the comments section of this blog was was great but we have to be thinking, how can we take that nugget, that admission, and share it far and wide.

            That was why I made the 55 sec. social media video. I have spent the last several years and personal $$$ going across my state speaking to small groups of parents, who are trying to figure out what is going on. They are people who do not have the time to sit and read like we do. They are just trying to keep their head above water, working, raising a family and living life.

            When I go out and speak I am putting seeds of knowledge in so when they see a video like that 55 sec. admission. They see it and they know it is an admission as well.

            Like my friend Meg told me; Alice I hate that I met you, but I am thankful as well. “Before I heard you speak, I knew something was up. But I did not know what it was and how to find out what it was. Now I see it. I see it everywhere.” Now she is working with a local group of other Moms and Dads who are exposing it in their local community, in all the schools. Public, Private and Charter. She knows who Robin is now. She knows who to go to for information and who is a valid source.

            We all have roles to play in this battle. My role is to take the information to the Moms and Dads. Who now have that video to use as a tool to help the other moms and dads in their own community who they are empowering to step up to the plate and take action. Creating content is key, creating content in a way that can help expose the truth is also key.

          • Creating content from copyrighted material is against the law though. You appear to be quite cavaliar about that reality or what constitutes Fair Use. If people listen to your explanation of what I am saying instead of reading my book or this blog, everybody loses but you.

            Do you have any idea what the going rate per hour is for a lawyer for the kind of expertise I have? I have read all the primary sources that went into that book, this blog, and so much more.

            You admit you are appropriating my work in writing. I guess if someone is infringing it is nice to have a written admission, but I think we are all a bit incredulous that your sense of self makes you think you are entitled to appropriate other people’s work as if your mere time is every bit as valuable as genuine expertise.

            Whatever expertise you are trying to build is derivative and nonconsensual yet you seem to want to blithely continue on appropriating what is not yours to take.

            This is not a Children’s game where the reply can be “Nanny Nanny Boo Boo, you can’t stop me.”

          • Robin,
            Please show me where I have not linked back to original source. Show me where I have not promoted you? I have had you on the Women On The Wall call explaining the vision and promoting your book. Is that not correct! Do you want people to know about your work or not?

      • Robin said:
        ” the language used actually implicates the UK Social Cohesion and Race Equality as legal mandates and the UNESCO papers on how to best develop a harmonious personality as the purpose of Preschool through high school than did the graphic language from what passed the House and Senate. Ooops.”

        I am confused. Very confused. Not arguing against anything or hostile just confused.

        implicates?
        mandates?
        purpose?
        Do you mean ESSA uses the same euphemisms as something in the UK and UNESCO?
        If so then what does that mean for ESSA?
        What graphic language? Examples? If Congress passed this graphic language isn’t it still there?
        Best

        • eclectic-I will give examples, but not before the House passes or rejects this conference bill. In the earlier versions just about everything I called attention to got changed in the next draft.

          The stuff out of the UK came out of additional research on Tarbiyah someone sent me and asked me to read it. I can give you this link though if you want to poke around. http://tedcantle.co.uk/ I have already downloaded this all and I know how it relates to that Rapprochement of Cultures too.

          I need a definite this is what we adopted and then I will explain why I am so sure what it means and what it ties into. It is what I worked on yesterday and then this morning before running out.

          But basically Congress is about to mandate the entire UN wish list on education going back to when UNESCO was created and the computer was a mere glimmer of today’s technology. And the way ESSA has been set up to work is that it is the lure of the money that drives everything the Progs have ever wanted from education. Remember in Chapter 3 of the book when I talked about Hans Freudenthal and what he said about textbooks? All that PME push out of the USSR is involved in what these terms have meant for decades. They are using terms that were enthused about in the early 70s.

          No, astonishingly graphic language in both the House and Senate bills are gone. Things like the obligation to provide for mental well-being. of course the accreditors still require that and it is related to fulfilling what is mandated, but everything in ESSA wants th e force of law without providing any damning pithy soundbyte.

    • This is from the League of Innovative Schools fall meeting. http://www.digitalpromise.org/page/-/dpimages/league/%23LISPitt15/_LUMA_Digital%20Promise_LISPitt_Session_Summary.PDF openly calling education human-centered design. That fits with what is in ESSA as a requisite for all schools that somehow no one seems to be talking about yet.

      Look at Page 27 and that quote from a child about “maker minds making the move for social justice” and then the Equity doodle with colored marker. We are about to legally mandate neurologically meddling with each child’s psyche in order to make them believer’s in the prescribed visions of social transformation. That is the effect of the terms used in the statute the House did not bother to read. That is a manipulated mind trying to be alliterative in the propaganda they have internalized.

      Then page 34 is a quote from one of the most famous of the cyberneticians. I know because I have read several of his books as I researched the sequel. Given what the House has just mandated for all public schools that take federal money it is a good time to fully understand what this internalization is all about.

    • I am working on my ESSA post and how its implementation is driven by greed for federal dollars and the related links have literally brought me to a site called Moneyball for Government. http://moneyballforgov.com/

      With Speaker paul Ryan listed as an allstar, no wonder no one thought there was any need to read it. It also looks like Education Counsel’s Bethany Little had a hand in it. More ties then to Knowledge Works’ Forecast 4.0 and the Carnegie Corporation since Richard Riley is the Vice Chair. Oh, Look. Richard Riley is also listed as a Moneyball All Star. http://moneyballforgov.com/category/moneyball-all-stars/federal-all-stars/

      Also tied to the Clinto Global Initiative and that C40 initiative I have written about as the ‘evidence-based policy’ language has also popped me out here. http://www.bloomberg.org/press/releases/bloomberg-philanthropies-announces-first-cities-selected-to-join-what-works-cities-initiative/

      The partners pull in Cass Sunstein as he is at Harvard’s Kennedy School and that UK Behavioural Insights team is their version of his nudging and Lamar Alexander’s ed advisor Marty west is also at that Kennedy School. See why I needed definitive language to really let lose with what I know? See how nudging really works? Financial incentives for compliance with governmental policy dictates designed to create psychological behavioral change at a neurological level through education policy and law. Good thing I read this stuff, huh?

      This is also on odd way of returning power to the states and localities. http://nationalservice.tumblr.com/post/134411781622/sif-national-assessment-making-a-difference-for They are the administration points, but this is all the same nonsensical vision as this US Chamber document that community prosperity can be built on the Earned Income Tax Credit and it being refundable. https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/sites/default/files/publication/edu/ICW_EITCToolkitrdc.pdf

      • Sajan George’s admission on cmos and turnarounds fits right in with the language of ESSA. http://www.matchbooklearning.com/news/creating-a-movement-to-turn-around-failing-public-schools-momentum-builds?utm_source=Smart+Update&utm_campaign=c284e5102f-Education_Innovation_Edition_11_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_17bb008ec3-c284e5102f-290053253

        I have heard Sajan speak and once asked him a question about why he touted matchbook’s use of Ben Bloom’s Mastery Learning. He appeared not to know there was a controversy over the Taxonomy or that he had just confirmed this is all outcomes-based education redux. I do remember George is listed as a panelist at the 2011 Carnegie-funded Competency-based Ed summit that fed ED also actively participated in.

        It is easy to have successful student outcomes when the measures include emotional changes and that’s the focus or vocabulary and all the words are provided. The Core Knowledge blog yesterday made it clear they already know that is where the real implementation and closing the achievement gap intends to go in this post. http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2015/12/01/dear-chiefs-this-is-your-chance-to-close-the-reading-achievement-gap/

          • Yes, the idea is that you can socially engineer the desired traits and motivations for future behavior into human beings. Remember all the documents I cited in my book on the known importance of when the brain remained malleable? At that time I did not realize juts how neurological all these intentions are. Now we have all those NSF announcements that I have linked to in the past on Brain Research. LearnSphere is an example.

            Did you notice for STEM money ESSA enshrined what used to be called the NSF systemic reforms in math and science that were later the Constructivist Math and Science Partnerships? Basically Chapter 3 for any state or school district wanting those federal dollars.

            It is a lot to digest although it is what I had been guessing was the case ever since I heard Dr Dana Rickman of the IEL-affiliated Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education speak about the new Georgia funding formula in mid-November. Some parents in another school district asked me to come. Rickman, who used to be at the Annie B Casey Foundation, said she would take questions and I wrote one about how she kept referring to student ‘needs’ but both versions of the federal legislation contemplated community schools where the ‘needs’ were not just academic, where would the money to meet the rest of these needs come from? Then after reading the questions on index cards she decided not to take questions. So I started looking into the implications. When I stumbled upon the Rockefeller Foundation fairly quickly I knew I was onto something. All the references to measurable outcomes kept using the euphemisms ‘succeed’ or ‘achieve’ and I thought it’s probably not coincidental that’s the title of both versions of legislation.

            I meant to write about it but other things came up. Now I am glad I didn’t as the language would probably have been changed to make this trail less discernable than it has turned out to be. Today I am going back through all those papers and notes and cross-referencing to ESSA. Serendipitous, huh?

          • Take a look at this letter that has just come out on behalf of higher ed globally and its new vision for its purposes. http://cop21.grli.org/ It was created to be presented at the Paris meetings going on now to force ‘universal agreement’ as the letter says. It openly acknowledges needing to reengineer the student using ‘transdisciplinary’ learning (which I have written about before quoting Michael Fullan) in order to fit with the desired transformations of social, economic, and political structures.

            Since it is the earlier years when the brain and nervous system are most malleable, it again puts College Ready standards in a whole new light.

          • This story that came out today on using ‘quest-type games’ to meet ‘standards’ is actually stunningly graphic on the nature of the shift we are looking at. http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/12/04/pursuing-quests-how-digital-games-can-create-a-learning-journey/ It is all about accessing and manipulating what each student has internalized as their view of the world and what motivates them. That reality gets obscured in the hype about ‘engaging’ the student. It is engaging because it is training a different part of the brain than the maligned textbook, lecture, or worksheet vision for education.

  10. In regards to parroting the work of Robin.

    The best of intentions may not be to swipe content but that is what is happening. Taking content and using it to build a personal network, thereby benefitting the network and not the author is not exactly forthright. No permission or instructive guidelines from the author means the content may not have the original intent of the author.
    Transformative copyright laws come in to play when this happens. Transformative being altering the original with new expression meaning, or message. When commercialism enters the picture such as creating a personal name brand from another individuals work it then becomes more than just educating others about the information in the original authors content.

  11. Thank you, Anonymous and mc, for explaining the problem involved with Linahan’s appropriating Robin’s work believing that she is entitled to share it as though it were her own. To propose a publication that would use Robin’s copyrighted material as a base of knowledge would be like taking Henry Blackaby’s “Experiencing God” book and constructing a workbook around it and presenting it as your work.

    Alice has been helpful in introducing people through her outlets that might not have had a platform quite as early. But introducing people who have research and knowledge to share is not the same as having research of her own. Perhaps she should stick to what she does best and not risk legal entanglements with those who have ownership of material she wants to use.

    • I have never heard Alice take credit for anyone’s work. She is one of he most selfless people in the battle to save our children I have ever met. She shares information provided by others (as we all do) and always lets people know the source of her statements. None of us can be experts in all facets of education and we would be nowhere if we hadn’t used and communicated the work of others. Most research done is information that anyone could find. Just because someone else found it and printed it doesn’t mean it is off limits to others use. She plugs Robin’s book all the time. If Ms. Eubanks doesn’t want anyone plugging her book or quoting her research then maybe she needs to stop writing books. It appears to me there is a bit of paranoia going on here. Quoting others work, research and statements in a book is not by a long shot an infringement on copyright. Alice Lenihan has NEVER taken credit for other’s work. If you can prove otherwise please provide the proof in which she has taken Ms. Eubanks research and called it her own work.

    • To clarify, I have NEVER shared Robin’s work, appropriating that it was my own. I have always given full disclosure. I have on the other hand, clearly stated that because of the research of Robin Eubanks and her book, as a MOM, on the journey of understanding the big picture, in reading Robin’s book the lights went off and I began to understand. I have always been very thankful and forthright is saying that clearly. To assert otherwise is completely false.

  12. Cannot help but observe that you are making my point. Without Robin’s material on what would you base your workbook? That being the case, you are not in a position to appropriate her material as a base for your teaching tool without her permission, and from what I have read of her position you do not have that.

    • This will be my last post. This blog is very important and I should not be the focus of discussion. That being said, I have been working on the can I See? To I Can See! Project long before I knew who Robin was. After 3 years of Weekly Conference Calls and taking my own journey to understand the transformation in education, I have read and learned from a lot of great researchers and experts to which I am grateful to all of them.
      You can’t copyright a truth, this workbook is about empowering others to take that journey to find the truth.

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