Back in the 1960s during the era of both the Cold War and the Vietnam War and thus dramatically different circumstances, we still find the foundations of the sought social, political, and economic changes being imposed through education “reforms” now. Off our collective radar screens but no longer off mine, we can find the reports of the Carnegie-funded Commission on the Year 2000. It sought to shift the US away from “hackneyed notions about decaying capitalism or creeping socialism” so that the US could transition to a “national society committed to some form of directed social change.” And none of us were consulted about who would be steering that wheel or holding the compass and issuing directions. I guess we can assume though Carnegie officials believed they had ringside seats from financing the plans.
Systems Thinking creator Kenneth Boulding’s writing about the Great Transition and what was needed to achieve it from the last post was cited by Commission members. Just like Lester Milbrath in the 1980s and UNESCO and the OECD now, there was a call for “some sort of computing and planning agency outside the legislative process” that would be in charge of “weighing of interrelationships within the society and within the technological processes.” In fact, Harvard psych prof George A. Miller wrote of “large, centralized, integrated data bases in the social sciences. Without them, the planners in the year 2000 will be scarcely better off than we are today.” Gulp. Gulp.
And how will such intrusive databases be created? Why computer systems used as part of education of course. In fact, Miller writes of a concern that there will be a “temptation for government to keep complete dossiers on all its citizens, and particularly on those who are intellectually most active.” Should we all just wave now? Hi NSA. Just fulfilling an old dream of the “application of computers to the study of man”? Seriously. Ponder this MIller quote as Common Core and blended learning launch us into the era of personalized learning and adaptive software and mandated Statewide Longitudinal student databases:
“The computerization of psychology is already well advanced, and the other behavioral and social sciences are not lagging far behind. Larger data bases and more ambitious data analysis are only part of the story. The machines can be programmed to simulate complex psychological and social systems, to conduct experiments, and to provide communication among scientists. The computer could become as important to the behavioral sciences as the microscope is to the biological.”
Harvard was not alone in being the Cambridge representative on this push. Perhaps getting ready for all its Limits to Growth social systems computer modelling work and urban planning and Peter Senge’s version of systems thinking, MIT Neuroscience prof Gardner Quarton wrote that “one can safely predict that techniques for controlling behavior and modifying personality will grow more efficient by the year 2000.” Maybe this post should come with a warning about reading on an empty stomach. But I want to put the shocking shifts in the nature of what is now being imposed on classrooms and what must be shunned to avoid teacher demerits, if not downright dismissal, within the context of what is REALLY being sought.
The SRI Rethinking Education link from the last post and the related “Naturalizing Assessment” article need to be seen through the Lens of the declared social science aims. That’s why we find statements about how “the conception of knowledge shifts from ‘in the head’ facts, procedures, and professed attitudes, to participants’ abilities to participate meaningfully in valued activities while bringing to bear personal, material and social resources.” In other words just showing up and being ‘engaged’ will do.
This shift in the classroom is not a dispute about how students best learn. It is about what kind of education can best propel the sought sociocultural shift. And to do it at the level of the student’s mind and personality.That emphasis will alter the future even if the actual consequences are not as planned. It’s also how you “manipulate the public” as the Commission admitted it sought to do. As SRI has sought to do as well over the decades.
Social psychologist Lawrence Frank helpfully lets us know that “the need for a political theory for this emerging ‘Service State’ is, therefore, especially urgent.” And what’s a Service State we ask? Why it sounds just like the OECD’s current focus on citizen subjective well-being as the purpose of 21st century governments. The Service State is to be “oriented to the enhanced ‘wellbeing’ of everyone.” And explaining so much behind the inexorable growth of US governments at all levels since the 60s, the Service State:
“marks the acceptance of human conservation as the basic democratic task; each year sees the enlargement and extension of services furnished directly or financed by the Federal Government and reinforced by state and local agencies. These services embrace medical and health care, improved housing and urban rehabilitation, educational facilities and programs from early childhood into adult years, plus the improved care and support of the indigent, the handicapped, the impaired, and all others incapable of fending for themselves in our money economy.”
Sound familiar? Nothing wrong that the social sciences and policies to “revise anachronistic and obsolete institutions” can’t fix. Just keep minds empty of facts that might pick up on the flaws in these plans so students will design away for better societies in the future. And if the parallels to what is being pushed today are still not apparent enough, how about Frank suggesting that “a promising model for a political theory is that of a communications network, with many different channels for transmitting a variety of messages.” Just like the background on the slides at that Atlanta (co)lab summit? Or as former SRI employee Marina Gorbis laid out in her recent book, including a visual on its cover, as I described alarmingly here? http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/weak-humanscomputersexpert-modelling-of-captured-data-is-this-your-approved-vision-of-the-21st/
Interdependence, holistic thinking, and a systems approach were touted as a means to “unify now separate social sciences” to reframe “what we believe, value, and aspire to” so we will have a different political philosophy impacting the “choices and decisions that guide our individual and group living.” If all of this was about a new planned social order in 1965, the same ideas and intentions remain about that in 2013. Even if those pushing these ideas have never heard of the Commission on the Year 2000.
And all of this gets accomplished now by (quoting SRI in 2010 again) “adjusting one’s conception of knowledge or the nature of valued outcomes” as well as the nature of “participant assessment.” And as SRI put it, to accomplish the sought Mindset and personality changes “these shifts need to occur in tandem.” All these think tanks like SRI, Rand, Gorbis’ Institute for the Future, or Willis Harman’s Institute for the Noetic Sciences are all fascinated by a hoped-for ability for the “intervention of man into the evolutionary process.” Yet such manipulation is the lied about and hidden push by a self-appointed elite over masses of people just trying to make their lives work and erroneously assuming K-12 schooling remains about the transmission of knowledge.
A more accurate Image (to use Boulding’s term) for where the sought preschool, the K-12 Common Core and digital learning reforms, and the massive changes in the nature of higher ed should be filtered through one more Daniel Bell quote as he concluded where the Year 2000 Commission sought to go:
“The formulation of social policy that seeks to reknit underlying social networks and solidarities as it works toward manifest solutions is, therefore, one of the important intellectual tasks for the social sciences if our goal of ‘understanding’ the future and making meaningful choices is to be realized.”
Education in 2013 has become all about imposing such social science theories on real people and schools and then seeing what happens. Only a background devoid of solid knowledge or polluted by a desire for radical change or driven by acute greed could fail to see we have a disastrous future building up if these plans continue their march toward full implementation.
Awww…part two of a nice feel good piece. The nausea is strong the closer we get to the spiritual aspects of the devil’s plan….me thinks to myself…..as I type on my Google Nexus NSA tracking device…worrying about what you are confirming just now….
In case you have not guessed Part 1 is the importance of the right vision even if it’s fictional. Part 2 on why limiting knowledge is a bad idea. Part 3 goes to the data plans that just happen to align with that Commission report and go far beyond education.
As you know I try to be patient until I locate outright confessions.
I am sure you will locate more confessions. Be sure to bring any power point down a few grade levels or more than a few. Focus on the most alarming relevant confessions. I usually scare them to death and then get tuned out.
Mercy I would never do a powerpoint at this level but given the atrociousness of what I am describing and the feds mandating that Student “Growth” be the new measure of student achievement it was important to quote directly so there could be no doubt about intentions. And how long they have existed. It certainly corroborates what was in book.
Do you remember the Donald Schon posts and his use of the term Generative Metaphor to be the same Image as what Boulding described? Schon was part of this commission as well. So was Margaret Mead.
Has this for a learning activity? http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2013/11/popular_simcity_video_game_now.html?print=1
Notice playing Sim City IS the assessment.
Here is a cartoon and an excited teacher describing this new mindless view of assessment as the activity itself and then reflecting on what you learned.
http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/assessment-as-learning/
So you ‘learn’ the false assumptions about how you can plan a city and how the planet is at an ecological crisis and how the economy is a system that can be modelled and adjusted and none of it is true.
You get the feeling that all of the class statements can be summed up by the one that says “I can fly”. All the others are equally likely to be true.
Or “free unicorn rides every Thursday after ice cream sundaes.”
SimCity as an assessment! This is down right scary on a whole new level. 3,000 points of data. Where are the data points stored and to whom do they belong, and with whom is the data being shared with? What exactly are they assessing, certainly not academic content by any means, perhaps how much my child accepts climate change and will push it in the future?
Once I followed the trail of data from my state through ED and on to more. The amount of tracking is incredible. I am sure you have read the reports that come out of these groups. The scary part as a parent, you cannot opt out of this system of information gathering, principals and supers and even the state claims they do not gather PII.
http://www.imsglobal.org/membersandaffiliates.html
http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/default.aspx – education statistics global.
LL-This post is getting ready to frame the data story. I downloaded my favorite “true confessions” can’t now take it back documents and will be incorporating them along with the confessed intended use of the data in the next post.
It really is the activity coupled to how student comes to see the world attached to whether they are starting to move through Kegan’s stages that is being assessed.
The really scary part is tracking this to the UN sub based in Moscow and seeing that most of the documents on intentions remain in Russia. I put the quote about psych manipulation via computer. It was in the 60s as an intention. As you know book nails it as 70s intention. And it just keeps snowballing.
Part of reason UN wants this data as well as OECD is this agenda http://www.post2015hlp.org/inourhands/
“The Millennium Development Goals will expire in 2015, and a new global agenda will be implemented. It’s critical that this new, post-2015 agenda include concrete steps to eradicate extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2030, and deliver on the promise of sustainable development.”
Lord help us, we are about to see dome dynamic shifts in this world.
I wasn’t sure if it was noted on any comments that institute of play is funded by Gates and MacArthur Foundations.
Is there anything left that is not funded by Gates? 😉
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/new-mindsets-and-changed-values-tied-to-ict-as-the-long-sought-marxian-mode-of-production/ is the older post from June that first laid out the idea of gaming as assessment and the MacArthur agenda.
Gates agenda to be quite honest benefits microsoft and the tech industry generally because it makes genuine innovation of the “there goes the value of your patent” variety far less likely in the future.
And this is the post on the MacArthur Foundation’s Connected Learning agenda. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/avenue-for-achieving-the-broader-social-vision-of-equity-full-participation-and-collective-contribution/
Remember the SRI article from previous post came from MacArthur’s related Rethinking Education being pushed in conjunction with the federal DoED.
And MacArthur just gave a genius grant to Angela Duckworth, the Vygotskyian/Tools of the Mind/positve behavior psychologist who now masks these same theories under her Grit work.
As in that notorious February report from DoEd everyone tries to pretend was an aberration instead of using adaptive software to access personal info about individual motivation and the extent of tenacity in holding onto beliefs.
Old School-
If you remember it was RSA’s Social Brain Project and push of Robert Kegan’s stages that brought them on my radar. Since Kegan worked with Peter Senge’s to evaluate the Common Core implementation for Hewlett looking for deep learning, I thought you would appreciate this link. http://www.rsablogs.org.uk/2013/enterprise/big/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rsaprojects+%28RSA+blogs%29
I may be somewhere no one else is YET but I am there with lots of evidence. The line of “nothing but the human mind and spirit” to be the history-making, revolutionary vanguard under this vision should make the interest in education crystal clear.
Maybe RIDICULE And COMICS Will Help Us Understand
Robin gave this link yesterday, which shows a cartoon that illustrates our overall disbelief about the substance and the means of enforcement of 21st C Learning.
http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/assessment-as-learning/
Today, this comic strip jumped out at me in my papers, and after the link, I copy the comment I provided to the discussion on this comic strip. [Please note the other comments — people really ARE completely ignorant, or totally unbelieving that something like this could be happening in front of their very noses — that inmates are to run the asylum!]
http://www.gocomics.com/zackhill#.UoZ1NWRxujQ
TunyaA said
Please, People, Watch This Comic
This is the FIRST I’ve seen of a very perceptive observer doing a wonderful portrayal of an enforced and coercive cultural change in the Western World and saying it in pictures for us all to understand.
This strip captures the very essence of a deliberate TRANSFORMATION of public education — common core in the US, 21st Century Learning in Canada, personalized learning and projects everywhere.
It is a SHIFT from “sage on the stage to guide at the side”. Watch for the generational, philosophical and political issues to emerge — old traditional styles vs new modern untested efforts. Watch HOW this is being coerced into place — without the knowledge or CONSENT of the paying public (taxpayer) or the intended client base — parents and students. And, it’s being dumped on the teachers without preparation, and often despite their professional judgment.
Poor Ms Anderson will now helplessly have to stand back and let the kids find “meaning” and “knowledge” and develop skills on their own. Big Question: Will Ms A retire or speak out against this as more of the “dumbing down” trend or will she buckle under and do what “the system” now decrees?
BRILLIANT COMIC !
I hope comments were not misunderstood. This site and Robin’s book have offered me the most insight into common core more than any other. I read the blog daily to catch up to current posts, and follow all the links provided and do my best to understand the complex compilation knowledge. I am a huge fan of her work and value her thoughts nothing but respect for this information and her. Hopefully, my attempt at humor regarding gates funding was not misunderstood. My sincere apology if I offended.
LL-you certainly did not offend me and I appreciate the kind words. Hopefully the holidays will give teachers and parents a chance to read the book as it in conjunction with the blog or alone allows virtually everything going on now in almost every sphere of politics, economics, or society to fit into a recognizable blueprint.