Collectivism is one of those loaded words that sounds like I am trying to create a furor. Unfortunately, in this case, whatever the personal intentions of Texas Governor Abbott when he called Friday, January 8, for a Constitutional Convention, the actual release http://gov.texas.gov/files/press-office /Restoring_The_Rule_Of_Law_01082016.pdf may be one of the more deceitful documents I have ever read. It is deeply irritating to continue to be referred to as one of ‘the governed.’ Although since I live in Georgia, perhaps it is only Texans that are to be quietly subjugated at this point. Perhaps the author of the paper, a Texas Public Policy Foundation (another Atlas Network member) employee, Thomas Lindsay, who was previously with the National Endowment for the Humanities, is unaware that the phrase ‘We the People’ is now being used by radicals all over the world to promote the concept of a binding, collectivist, normative view of ‘democracy’.
Maybe the call of UT-Texas prof Sanford Levinson in his 2006 book Our Democratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) for just such a Con Con that is tied to the Soros-financed American Constitution Society’s desire to have a new Constitutional vision by 2020 (began in 2005 as explained here) http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/progressive-polyphonic-federalism-invisibly-binds-people-and-places-to-the-just-society-vision/ was somehow news to TPPF and Dr Lindsay. It certainly looks like a Convergence, however, especially given all the insistence in the paper that the Rule of Law is the core value America was founded on. Excuse me?
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that ‘We the People’ just happens to be the name of an initiative Community-Organizer Extraordinaire Harry Boyte, who inspired President Obama and has worked on White House education initiatives, has created to be the so-called Third Way, neither Left or Right, to use education to get his ‘cooperative commonwealth’ vision in place. https://www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/product-downloads/We_The-People_Politics.pdf Maybe it’s a coincidence that Boyte created that paper originally for a Dewey lecture in 2007 and it just happens to fit John Dewey’s vision for how to create the right kind of consciousness via education to fit a normative democracy where the law would bind everyone to the common good vision. The one laid out in the 2008 Democracy in a Global World book that I tracked from looking at Amartya Sen’s work covered in the last post.
Let’s start pushing on all these ‘coincidences’ headed in a common direction. The quote that “Our nation was built on one principle above all others–the Rule of Law” is not simply false, it is false in a way that is useful in jettisoning the principles our Nation and its existing Constitution were founded on–the primacy of the individual. Lindsay is correct that at the federal level, politics is broken. That dysfunction, however, is no reason to reverence the Law so state and local governments can turn each individual into merely the Governed. It is facetious to argue, as that Con Con advocacy paper does, that “The whole point of the rule of law is that we comply with it even when we do not want to; otherwise, it is the will of man and not the rule of law that reigns supreme.” Huh? That’s the kind of sophistry a wannabe tyrant would assert.
As Daniel Hannan quoted Baron de Montesquieu as saying in his 2013 book Inventing Freedom: “I am in a country which scarcely resembles the rest of Europe. England is passionately fond of liberty, and every individual is independent.” When the phrase ‘We the People’ is used in various American 18th century documents it is referring to independent, sovereign individuals who believe in a “unique legal system that made the state subject to the people rather than the reverse.” That TPPF framing of the Rule of Law is the Continental View of the Law that Hannan contrasted with the very different “philosophy…from the common-law conception of a free society as an aggregation of free individuals.” It is a view of law grounded in collectivism, as Hannan noted, and “in particular, from Rousseau’s belief in the ‘general will’ of the people in place of the private rights of citizens.”
A conception of the Law grounded in the visionary who gave rise to both Fascism and Communism as the basis for a call to jettison the current Constitution is apparently what the admitted Left as well as quite a few Atlas members want as well. A reverence for individuality is an obstacle to the Convergence apparently. The US Constitution is in the way. I am going to use a particular essay “The Global Public and Its Problems” to illustrate what was meant by John Dewey by the term ‘Creating a Public’ through educational practices. In 1927 Dewey wrote a book The Public and Its Problems which called for a communitarian form of citizen loyalty as being necessary to create the public will and values to make democracy sustainable. This is not democracy as some kind of representative government with periodic elections, but democracy in the sense that Boyte calls the cooperative commonwealth, Marx called the Human Development Society, and the UN now calls Dignity for All by 2030.
In other words, there are reasons that the concepts from a 1927 book remain relevant in the 21st Century as the first chapter of my book Credentialed to Destroy made clear. Dewey defined the Public as a community where “its members recognize a common interest in confronting problems they all face and see resolving these problems by means of collective action as a common good.” Regular readers will recognize the current concept of Fostering Communities of Learners as the measure of what constitutes being an Effective Principal as using the school to now prepare students for a future where they get to be a mere member of Dewey’s concept of a Public. Needless to say, Dewey’s Public needs a strong, anti-individual view of the law to bind individuals to this broader vision.
Here is where the story laid out in the essay gets really interesting and directly relevant to our Convergence today. “Problem-solving is used as a self-building process” where “education figures prominently.” In fact Dewey called on it, like Boyte, for “bringing a certain integrity, cohesion, feeling of sympathy and unity among the elements of our population.” This, of course, can only happen in socioeconomically integrated schools with no tracking. The kind of deliberative democracy envisioned then and now can really only go on at the local level. In the late 1960s, that essay announced that (my bolding):
“the Eurocommunists (misleadingly so described because they included Communist party theorists and leaders from Japan and parts of South America as well as from Italy, France, Spain, and Great Britain) rejected this standpoint [the bourgeois/proletarian distinction] in favor of one that posited general democratic and political norms, potentially shared by them and by champions of capitalism within their respective nations.”
Couldn’t we describe that as the model for today’s Convergence we are seeing by the so-called Left and Right think tanks? Doesn’t that fit with the video in the comments of the previous post of Pastor Rick Warren this year moderating a forum with Professor Cornel West and Professor Robert George, the founder of Atlas member–American Principles Project? Have we once again returned to Dewey’s view of education, political life, and social policy that the Eurocommunists also used that “resisted both sides of this orientation by seeking common democracy building social projects.” I was at a forum last week where Policy Link founder Angela Glover Blackwell was the Keynote Speaker and the admitted radicals seem just as hesitant to admit they are now working with Big Business and Chambers of Commerce to advance their vision of a Just Future.
Yet we know that is already going on in the required local and state WIOA boards. It sounds just like the Eurocommunists who were “prepared to respect those with procapitalist attitudes, including capitalists themselves, insofar as they were sincerely prepared to engage in joint democracy-enhancing projects.” Isn’t that arresting to read as we continue to stumble across these clear collaborations and common visions among public policy think tanks and politicians that supposedly have nothing in common. Governments at all levels are in charge of us with the law as the enforcer of the vision in a world where suddenly “a Deweyan public comprising adherents of both egalitarian and neoliberal philosophies is possible, provided that neither camp is hypocritical in its professed commitment to solving common macro problems.”
No wonder Atlas member employees suddenly seem so fond of citing Justice Brandeis that “it is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” If the citizens consent. That must be why the University of Texas-Austin is working with Stanford on the national Growth Mindset study and doing such a loud and explicit declaration of experimenting on students to change their conscious and unconscious mental models. All consensual. Not.
Reverence for the Rule of Law and Education for Democracy are just the thing in a nation where a Republican Governor calls for a Constitutional Convention with a paper that tells us again that “It is wise, therefore, in every government, and especially in a republic, to provide means for altering, and improving the fabric of government, as time and experience, or the new phases of human affairs, may render proper, to promote the happiness and safety of the people.” That’s the view of Law from the Continent where as Aldous Huxley noted, rights are taken, but never given.
That’s the world of the Governed, the serf, and the subject, which is indisputedly where both WIOA and ESSA and a world where the White House has a Behavioral and Social Sciences Team working to change the nature of citizens at the levels of their minds and personalities. I just was not expecting the State of Texas to play such a prominent role in launching this new view of education and what it will now mean to be an American in the future.
Remember with Dewey’s methods comes the totality of his underlying vision. Suddenly the title’s reference to Collectivism is perfectly on point.
Can Bicameralism and Proper Presentment now bind individuals to everything 21st Century state and local governments choose to impose?
No wonder there is such a consistent push to teach through ideas, concepts, and themes now instead of a body of facts. Facts are a useful tool of the individual, but inappropriate without permission for the ‘Governed.’
There just doesn’t seem to be anyway to escape the inevitable. They are everywhere!! They have taken control in so many aspects of civilization I don’t see anyway to get rid of them.
Who is ‘they’, Karen? To the extent that this Plan is being sold as reining in the federal government, the actual purpose of this Con Con gets missed. The actual paper was not easy to find I noticed and took some digging. To the extent that groups like USPIE make the federal Department of Education the culprit instead of a dramatically different view of what governments are being stautorily empowered to do at all levels, there’s no ability to fight against this usurpation effectively.
The paper for example, wants to “force their leaders in all three branches of government to recognize renewed limits on federal power.” Excuse me, I don’t need anyone at the state or local level assuming they are the rulers either yet this is the tone of this paper. The Constitution does not exist to protect the rights of the ‘governed’. I am not governed by anyone just because the head the executive of a state, sit in the legislature, or even because they reside in the White House. The purpose of the Tenth Amendment is not to change the level of tyranny so people can move if they notice in time.
The Constitution is certainly not, as this TPPF paper claims, a matter “in which “we the People’ came together to ordain and establish a government that was accountable to law and democracy.”
Why did the Texas Governor tout this paper as the basis for his call for a Con Con? Did he even read it? When I said this was a concept of the Far Left and radicals I wasn’t kidding. http://www.tellus.org/pub/GTI%20Perspective%20-%20We%20the%20People%20of%20Earth%20-%20Toward%20Global%20Democracy.pdf Radicals love subsidiarity. just like they recognize that the local is the most effective place to gain the findamental transformation because this is the level that best controls people and place.
When the local governments as with Bloomberg’s What Works Cities or ESSA are using the behavioral sciences, the subjugation is real, “evidence-based”, effective, and largely invisible.
THEY are many and don’t stop with the federal government. We either start somewhere or we just lay down and wait for them to come. I choose to fight back. The enemies are many but we gotta start somewhere. The state is no longer the answer. The states are nothing more than 50 branches of DC. We may not accomplish anything but we can say we tried to do something. The news for this country is bleak. What is YOUR solution?
To accurately tell this story. To actually read the underlying documents and not settle for sound bytes. To have actually read both ESSA and WIOA and recognize when people want to oppose for fundraising purposes, but still benefit under ESSA provisions such as evidence-based charter management organizations.
When you uppercase like that, you come across as a petulant troll challenging me on my blog. I know you just did it for emphasis. but it did not exactly come across that way.
Well if you know I did it to emphasize (and I did) then how could it come off as challenging you on your blog?? I am interested in your solution. I have studied the ESSA and WIOA and much much more and my knowledge of those documents fall on deaf ears at our state capitol as it has on most state capitols. They listen to the paid lobbyists that write campaign checks not those of us that read and educate ourselves on the issues. Educating the people has been what I have been doing for years but they too just want to go back to watching TV and deadening their frustrations. At this stage of the game we need some real solutions. We all know it is bad. Does it really serve any purpose to keep beating the drum? If we don’t come up with some real solutions we will find at the end of the day we have a head full of knowledge as we are sitting on the bread line with hand out for the next piece of bread from the government.
It was meant to emphasize as you stated so if you felt it was meant to emphasize why would you also state it comes off as arrogant? I am well versed in the ESSA and WIOA and many other documents but what good has that knowledge done to help those that hold the power change their minds. We have educated a lot of people but those that make the votes ignore us and the passing of ESSA with an overwhelming majority is another demonstration about how they totally discount those that elected them. Yes there are many more people awake but not enough willing to take action or get engaged. We take our knowledge and facts to our elected leaders (?) and they ignore us as they put their hand out for the checks from the paid lobbyists and then proceed to sell out children’s future for a few pieces of silver. I was interested in your solution and I agree education is important but we don’t need any more education about how bad things are. We need to take what we know and formulate a plan of action because time is truly running out. We have known for a long time ESSA was bad (I disagree about the good part being Charters..but that is for another day). I think at this point we have exhausted the conversation but please know that I am totally against an Article V Convention and have hosted many educational summits on the subject. I truly understand how utterly dangerous this will be for our country.
Karen, What is Your solution? There are at least 3 constitutions ready and waiting in the wings which I am aware of that would see the liberties we have known in this nation reduced to ashes. Reinventing our constitution is the biggest deception for the cause of liberty ever foisted upon the American people.
Nothing in life is inevitable. Nothing, perhaps, but death and taxes as the saying goes. And the degree to which the latter can be made worse or better for the average citizen is always negotiable.
The planners proclivity at the moment to assume rights AND responsibilities that are not theirs to take without informed consent is certainly a problematic concern. Their over reach into areas of personal property, privacy and personal sovereignty are impressive and their potential success in achieving their goals of quietly subjugating all of us without our notice is disturbing to put it mildly.
But their plans for all of us are not carved in stone. Not even the Georgia Guidestones. Too many of us are aware of the game that is afoot. And our knowledge will keep a light shining on those who would rather hide in the shadows and behind others to achieve their aims.
Too bad for them we have lots of flashlights, long life batteries and even longer term working memories. Tools and skills we pass down to our children. It aint over till its over.
The solution is Knowledge. The solution is sticking to the facts. Insisting upon them even as we are told they don’t matter. Of course they do. The solution is bearing witnesses to when facts are distorted or misused and speaking about it. Over and over and over. Eventually people catch on. We just have to keep at it.
This is all the Planners have done. We were bamboozled. Now we are not. Now they have to share the stage with facts . Their Newspeak does not get to grandstand any longer. Time is up.
I am 100000% against a CON CON and if you would read the thread you might understand I was commenting on how bad things are in this country and that it seems to have infiltrated every aspect of our globe. How do we fix it. I would appreciate it if you would carefully read before you attack. There is nothing I said that says I support a CON CON. I am adamantly against it.
Just an observation — I don’t read the above comment as mc accusing Karen of anything. I also didn’t read anything hostile into Karen’s initial comment and response, Robin, but that’s just me. I haven’t had some of my work co-opted, either….though I have no reason to believe Karen is that sort of person. Karen, are you truly looking for answers? Robin has done a herculean amount of research and has tied all sorts of relationships and philosophies and plans together. I am indebted to her for helping me to see what is going on (at least in my limited way!!!). I have to say I wish there was a magic light that could suddenly illuminate all the minds that have been clouded so they would then take action and shift the tide that is rolling, but I know there is no such thing other than continuing to try to get the word out. So, why not continue to stay abreast of what is happening here, and maybe, just maybe, we can find some louder (or more widely listened-to) mouthpiece to get the word out by giving Robin a platform from which to speak while we each do our part. I strongly suspect that much of what is going on only has a spiritual solution, so all our human efforts may be for naught without Divine intervention. We should ask for that as well.
I honestly do not understand why it has become so important where you stand on Con Con, Karen. The fact that often people associate themselves with people and organizations on both sides of policy issues for reasons known only to themselves creates doubt regarding their sincerity. Don’t know if that has become an issue in this case.
This is not really about a Con Con so much as these omnipresent false narratives that mask what are clearly coordination efforts. This view of the law as an affirmative weapon to bind individuals to visions they would never consent to, as with the Tranzi OBE view of education, is something that simply must be grasped. One of the most deceitful points of the paper is that view of law is the ultimate weapon against the so-called “rule of men.” So are these neuroscience initiatives where the qualities, values, and interpreting concepts are all supplied and practiced so the student will be come the desired malleable cog in the compliant ‘public’.
I made an allusion to David Barton and that Stand in the Gap Tour in September 2014. He said the first purpose of education was to teach religion, next morals, then knowledge, and finally thinking skills. That’s essentially what McREL and Robert Marzano want as well or the NC Plan that cited Richard Paul and his Critical Skills Framework. Just substitute guiding and motivating belief system for religion and we are looking at the same cybernetic template.
This is the ultimate “rule of men” going on via education, the law, and this explicit coordination among think tanks that claim for fundraising purposes to be about free markets and limited government. It’s not limited government to specify what must be done and then say the providers can be private or nonprofits as long as they follow our stipulations.
Anyone think that the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences has been doing research into anything other than how to implement Marxist Humanism using the behavioral and social sciences since it was founded? That is the ultimate rule of men and most of it is shrouded in the very deceit I have been systematically ripping away. Once again the law is being used to make the desired implementation binding, but here the explanation for what was being done turned out to be so explicitly bogus to anyone who actually knew history. It also helped that I was determined to get my hands on the underlying document Abbott was shown to be holding and not just a summary.
The in-state Atlas member was pushing the Con Con a few years ago and I looked up the so-called expert from the Goldwater Institute, another Atlas member. It was this guy http://goldwaterinstitute.org/en/authors/nick-dranias/ I just looked him up and the same person is also shown as having ties to the Mackinac Center in Michigan and the Heartland Institute in Chicago, both Atlas members.
Now we know a Con Con is the deep desire of both many, many members of the Atlas Network and also the far Left that wants to replace the Constitution and how it works altogether. The same Convergence also adores digital learning for similar reasons. It can be used to change the Public and remove barriers to this Human Development Society where individuals are supposed to be subservient to government edicts from any level.
My answer is simple even if it is a bit lonely on this precipice–No. As Thomas Jefferson noted, there have always been those who want to be booted and spurred to ride others for their efforts and their abilities. Now those with such tendencies seem to go into politics, work at think tanks, or become district school supers.
And if, no one is listening, the answer is still no.
Robin’s indefatigability and sacrifice provide a bounty of factual knowledge
that otherwise would remain largely unknown and that many of us have yet to
harvest fully. Surely most readers of Invisible Serfs Collar will agree that
the significance of her oeuvre is inestimable at present.
David Barton’s assertion that education is to teach “religion, morality,
and knowledge” is a reference to Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance that
codified the pathway for territories to become states, signed by George
Washington on August 7, 1789. U.S. Code lists the Northwest Ordinance is one
of the four organic documents of our representative republic, imbued with
all that organic implies.
“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and
the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever
be encouraged.” So reads the first sentence of Article 3. The purpose of
schools and education is stated unambiguously and readers know that
“necessary” does not mean “optional,” regardless of how much whole
language predilections distort interpretation. At a slightly higher level of
abstraction, the Founders viewed the purpose of education as nothing less
than developing within students the very bedrock that is necessary for
establishing and sustaining “good government” and “happiness of mankind”
— both discussed at length in the writings of Jefferson and other
Founders.
The Founders’ task during May-September 1787 was to develop a governing
structure that promotes Liberty while rendering monarchy, not to mention
despotism/collectivism/totalitarianism (i.e., the Marxist-Humanist project),
impossible to impose upon citizens who are suffused with knowledge of, and
allegiance to, that bedrock upon which American representative republic
rests. Education, in the Founders’ view, is essential for inculcating such
knowledge and allegiance.
The first sentence of Article 3 may be read, if one is so predisposed, as a
succinct summary of the American Founders’ view of the source for specific
values, beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions that are necessary to protect
individual conscience and produce individual sovereignty, Liberty, happiness
— and not insignificantly, Axemaker Minds. Can there be any doubt that
Mr. Barton’s statement that the purpose of education is to teach “religion,
morality, and knowledge” is but a reflection of the Founders’ viewpoint?
Those who may wish to trace the genealogy of the Founder’s thought might
begin with Richard Hakluyt’s 1584 “Discourse of Western Planting.”
Historian William Robertson writes “England is more indebted [to Hakluyt]
for its American possessions than to any man of that age.” May we rest in
the surety our children are learning about Mr. Hakluyt’s seminal
contribution in school?
What might Mr. Barton mean by “thinking skills”? He describes elsewhere
(see notes below) three specific items, all of which contribute to the
development of sovereign individuals who possess Axemaker Minds and who
revolt at the slightest whiff of a serf’s collar, invisible or otherwise.
After all, that which is unseen corresponds more closely to reality than the
corporeal.
First is “Forensics,” a Latin term originating in 1650 and meaning “to
learn the art of public argumentation,” or more specifically, the ability
to debate a topic using factual knowledge from both sides. In colonial
schools, a student would be assigned one side of an argument for the first
round of one-on-one debate, and for the second round, the student would be
required to argue the opposing side.
Aristotle classifies speech types as deliberative, epideicit, and forensic.
The latter always includes a judge (e.g., teacher) who decides on a winner
and loser — competition and consequences. “In the early American colonial
period, colleges and universities viewed the mastery of argumentation
through debates and disputations as a hallmark of a sound education.”
Our interest here is the development of Axemaker minds. Consider the
implications of arguing, in effect, against yourself. First, in order to win
—- whether for or against a topic —- the student must fill his
storehouse with factual knowledge, on both sides of an issue. Acquisition of
such knowledge places a premium on the student’s ability to read printed
material written at a reading level of grade 12 and above (my estimate).
Remember, the average age to enter college was 13 during the colonial era
and schools ended at eighth grade until around the 1920s. Given the
progressives’ assurances that students’ today receive a superior education
due to their radical reforms, surely graduation from 12th grade today must
be at least the equivalent of an undergraduate degree from a colonial
college (3-years), ignoring of course that the top 40 books teens read in
high school today are written, on average, at a fifth grade reading level.
To develop a persuasive argument, the student needs to evaluate each printed
piece in relation to the topic and develop a chain of logic and facts that
hopefully will be judged superior to his opponent’s. To win, a student needs
also to attend to the finer points of rhetoric, deferring to Aristotle’s
contribution.
Readers recognize this process has much in common with conducting research
before writing a persuasive essay or delivering a compelling speech. Such
are the preparatory activities that develop the mind and prevent the student
from clinging dogmatically to a single viewpoint, as seems to be the wont of
today’s college protesters. Finally, note that the responsibility for
thinking (developing arguments) resides entirely with each individual
student. Competition motivates students and, as the Founders might observe,
iron sharpens iron, and so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.
Second, catechism was used in early schools to build each student’s
storehouse of factual knowledge. The method of catechizing involves students
asking questions back and forth. Competition motivates and students switch
back and forth from questioner to supplying answers.
Mr. Barton is known to list (see notes) several textbook titles to
illustrate that catechism was used for virtually every subject, viz: A
Catechism on Ancient History. Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and
Geology. A Catechism of Entomology or A Brief History of Insects. 1001
Questions and Answers on United States History, Including the Constitution
and Amendments. Irving’s Catechism of Astronomy, Containing the Motion,
Magnitudes, Periods, Distances, and other Phenomena of the Heavenly Bodies.
Elementary Catechism of the United States.
Third, while not a method per se, Mr. Barton focuses attention on the high
expectations during the colonial era. Those who desired to enter college
(age 13) were required to know Latin, Greek, and English. A common first
year project was for each student to translate the Greek New Testament into
English, surely a task that contributes to the development of Axemaker
minds, or at least the Founders’ thought so. Mr. Baron illustrates (see
notes) these high expectations by displaying words from Noah Webster’s
Elementary Spelling Book, such as loquacity, armigerous, vertiginous,
bibliotheca, cogitation, etc. Other indicators of high expectations include
tests and math exercises that can be located on the internet.
In summary, early American educators held high expectations, used methods
that required students to develop their mind, and ensured transmission of
religion, morality and knowledge that Founders’ deemed “necessary to good
government and the happiness of mankind.” Their approach contrasts sharply
with Marx/Dewey/progressives who changed education from a student actively
involved in transmission and in thinking, to learning whatever the teacher
says and regurgitating on a test.
Many disagree with the substance of Mr. Barton remarks but he is not the
only one who adheres to the proposition found in the first sentence of
Article 3. Tocqueville, for example, observed that the men and women who
colonized America “brought a Christianity which I can only describe as
democratic and republican . . . . It was religion that gave birth to . . .
America. One must never forget that.”
Those with affinity for social science may find Robert Woodberry’s piece in
the American Political Science Review of interest. Using an instrumental
variable with a two-stage least-squares regression, he found:
“Statistically, the historic prevalence of Protestant missionaries explains
about half the variation in democracy in Africa, Asia, Latin America and
Oceania and removes the impact of most variables that dominate current
statistical research about democracy. The association between Protestant
missions and democracy is consistent in different continents and subsamples,
and it is robust to more than 50 controls and to instrumental variable
analyses.” Woodberry’s findings support the Founders’ Article 3 proposition
concerning the attitudes, beliefs, and values that precede Liberty. For his
efforts Woodberry received the usual reward reserved for those who produce
methodologically sound studies with findings that puncture the Academy’s
politically correct hegemony. He was fired — another casualty in the
Slaughter of the Dissidents.
Two final comments. First, believe nothing you read in this reply, for none
of us is free from error. Instead, investigate references in the notes
below. You will discover quickly the Founders’ viewpoint is greeted by most
academic historians and educators with a dismissive sneer at best, derision
and malicious action whenever possible. Further inquiry often uncovers
academics’ allegiance to the Marxist-Humanist project. What is the outcome
of that set of attitudes, beliefs, and values? The Black Book of Communism,
J.R. Rummel’s work on democide, Stefanescu’s list of the top 100 books on
totalitarianism, and rare academics such as Robert Conquest provide the
inevitable answer.
Second, Robin’s January 11 post promoted yet another spate of “What is your
solution?” responses. Any sentient being who loves Liberty and reads Robin’s
findings cannot but recognize the overwhelming enormity of the forces
arrayed against Liberty. “What is your solution?” is sometimes an
expression of fear, a cry for hope in a sea of hopelessness. While fear is a
powerful motivator, it often paralyzes the imagination. Recall that the
Founders were ridiculed for making a stand that pitted the world’s most
powerful military against them, with British soldiers living in colonists’
homes. The loud voices raised in opposition to Liberty during Patrick
Henry’s March 23, 1775 speech is but one example. Faced with Britain’s
overwhelming superiority the Founders nonetheless “mutually pledged to each
other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” Such a pledge requires
immutable ontological certitude and recognizes sacrifice as one’s constant
companion from now onward. When a person has such certitude, the only
solution that counts is the one he sees the mirror.
Notes:
Bartanen, Michael D., & Littlefield, Robert S. 2014. Forensics in America: A
History. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 2.
Barton, David. http://www.Wallbuilders.com — not a member of the Atlas Network
Barton, David. 2014, Mar. 22. Why Common Core is Harmful. Orlando, FL:
Operation Education Summit. Available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bNl3qhBDcM
Bergman, Jerry & Wirth, Kevin. 2011. Slaughter of the Dissidents. Port
Orchard, WA: Leafcutter Press.
Conquest, Robert. 1991. The Great Terror. Oxford University Press.
Courtois, Stephane and others. 1999. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes,
Terror, Repression. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Trans.) Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Hakluyt, Richard. 1584. Discourse of Western Planting.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/exploration/text5/hakluyt.
pdf
Henry, Patrick. 1775, Mar. 23. Liberty or Death. Available:
http://www.patrickhenrycenter.com/Speeches.aspx
Jefferson, Thomas. 1819. Letter to John Adams. In The Writings of Thomas
Jefferson , Lipsomb & Bergh (Eds). 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04.
Vol. 15, p. 234.
“Their minds [must] be informed by education what is right and what wrong,
[must] be encouraged in habits of virtue and deterred from those of vice by
the dread of punishments, proportioned indeed, but irremissible. In all
cases, [they must] follow truth as the only safe guide and eschew error
which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless
succession. These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure
basis for the structure of order and good government.”
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Wow. That’s quite a reply. I hope you are right that Barton’s comments in that Dothan church during the Stand in the Gap tour in fall 2014 reflected his love and advocacy for an Axemaker Mind, but that is not how it rang for me. Perhaps it is because I have spent so much time looking at what goes into the construction of an internalized cybernetic keel, but that is what it reminded me of. It was also reminiscent of how a curriculum for Thinking Skills that Robert Marzano created for McREL or how the Critical Thinking program Richard Paul created that we covered when it became the advocated plan for North Carolina to replace the Common Core. Purportedly it was what Sandra Stotsky and Jim Milgram had proposed.
There is a Con Law class that Barton has pushed in the past and that his sometime collaborator John Eidsmoe pushes now http://www.campamerican.com/category/the-constitution/page/2/ that makes it perfectly clear that terms like ‘worldview’ and ‘seeing through lenses’ that we now associate with a Leftist or behavioral science or Tarbiyah effort to guide interpretation of life experiences as well as what is salient and thus gets noticed at all, is clearly being used in how the Constitution is to be taught by them. That’s not how Con Law was taught when I took it in Law School and it is how the ACS would like it to be taught now.
That bothers me, and fits with something I noticed when I looked at the UK efforts to guide madrassa education. They wanted the Koran read conceptually as well. Since I understand how Close Reading actually works, my question has become is everyone interested in transformational change pushing the same cybernetic vision for various ends. That is what it looks like to me, but I would love to be corrected.
Meanwhile I found the advocacy reasons and the pushing by both the OECD and the IB globally for this Fadel book Fourth-Dimension Education to be both troubling and consistent with what I now shorthand as the internalized cybernetic keel. Take a look at what I mean. http://curriculumredesign.org/ccr-launches-new-book-at-oecd-and-ibo-praised-by-andreas-schleicher-carol-dweck-and-many-other-education-thought-leaders/
I have ordered to book to verify. I am also reading a 2014 Cass Sunstein book to make certain that what I think I am looking at is in fact widely understood by many with political power to work precisely as I fear. The short answer is Sunstein, Martha Nussbaum, and Amartya Sen all know where we are going and what needs to be altered. I fear though that the company that also knows includes many people who have created that Atlas Network of influential think tanks. Essentially making concise talking points is another way to say you want to manipulate and use how people frame reality. In fact, it is looking like the only people not using the implications of all these behavioral and social science research is we ordinary people just getting by day to day.
Thanks for your support.
Speaking of which, the Behavioral Insights Team’s framework on how to nudge using talking points. http://38r8om2xjhhl25mw24492dir.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/BIT-Publication-EAST_FA_WEB.pdf
Or this discussion on the ethics of what we have tracked into the new federal ed legislation–ESSA–as well as What Works Cities and evidence based policy generally. http://economicspsychologypolicy.blogspot.ie/2015/11/ethics-of-nudging-bunch-of-reading.html
Fadel, Schleicher, & Dweck launching students into the 4th dimension. What could possibly go wrong? Ordered book. Thanks.
And thanks to Bob as well. Helpful information.
Take a look at this as well. http://www.beyonddemocracythefilm.com/ Notice all the references to training schools to run this way.
I just finished the “We the People” book this morning and am stunned with how tightly this vision aligns with what I know is being forced onto schools and classrooms. Remember my covering Enschede in my book? All the schools in Enschede are now organized sociocratically. Basically it amounts to consenting to be a component of a collective instead of as an individual and then it provides the steering mechanism for the collective without phrasing it that way. By hiding this concept in schools as Discourse Classroom, Circle/Sharing Time, Structured Design Dialogue, or even Fostering Communities of Learners we are acclimating students to believe that decisions for all belong to the group. That you state your objections to what is proposed to bind all or you are deemed to have consented and are bound to then carry out the ‘agreed’ aim.
All the emphasis on aims is a reminder that that’s the definition of Competency when we are talking about individuals. And if sociocracy requires everyone in the group to be deemed as Equivalent, there is the impetus for the kind of intellectual impetus that Common Core under its various names now and Competency-based education generally push. Also fits with the emphasis in ESSA on performance. It’s the doing, not the knowing. It will be interesting to see what Fadel adds. Did you read the recommending blurb from that Cisco exec? Chilling in what it takes as given in Our Brave New World.
This is a list of participants in the December 2015 first ever Aspen Institute Workforce Development Leaders. http://www.aspenwsi.org/2016/01/12/new-network-of-workforce-leaders/
The fact that Georgia’s state Economic Development Workforce Division had two representatives there is honestly devastating to where Governor Deal is actually taking education.
As usual Oregon right on target.
http://www.sociocracy.info/lost-valley/
follow that to the video and the Lost Valley site. Now you get a peek at the real Portland. One day you really should come and people watch here, It is like they are all under an angry social change trance. Eugene is also where all of the Soviet conference plans years ago on OBE was fully implemented.
The alignment between the actual implementation in P-12 to how corporations are now supposed to work to Metropolitanism etc and the vision laid out in that We the People: A Guide to Deep Democracy book is arresting. In fact, when I get overwhelmed by the likely consequences of what I am reading and what I now is being mandated under a variety of provisions, I get sleepy. After I started that book the other day, I had to stop and take a nap.
I was thinking last night of those Laszlo books and others that were advocating the MH vision, but had the books published in the Netherlands. I also found it interesting that the school created by Kees Boeke in the 30s to push this vision in education (looks a lot like the real implementation now with same language on goals) was attended by the children of the Dutch royal family. Think about that now that the list of who gets invited to the Bilderberg meeting actually gets published. We have the vision laid out in those 1947-48 UNESCO documents and familiar to the very people who created that group of global elites.
I can’t believe that’s another lost invite. Perhaps someone knows I had to get dressed up and prefer jeans.
Let’s add the confessions in this video to things that need to be on our radar. http://nlg-consulting.net/2016/01/16/pearson-and-the-london-knowledge-lab-present-intelligence-unleashed-education-and-ai-in-the-lab/
That would be Artificial Intelligence, which if you remember aligns with what Tom VanderArk wrote after going to the GEFF forum in Russia last year. We really need to take people at their word.
Here is a great break down of the cybernetic spin of sociocracy.
Sounds horrific to me. I keep picturing a hive of bees buzzing from one activity to another. Blech. I can see how some personalities are naturally drawn to this. And I can just as easily see how those of us who are not exactly joiners will find this stultifying. Im trying to imagine how both types of personalities and everything in between will adapt to the cybernetic , neurobiological teaching and learning that attempts to embed the happy hive mind in everyone. It will work seamlessly for some. But for many, many others it will cause incredible discomfort and potentially neurosis/psychosis.
http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/Decision_Making_and_Democracy/Sociocracy/Sociocracy_and_Consent.pdf
This is gross. A.I. monitoring “learner’s” ( that would be a child, a/k/a human being) emotions? Tracking classroom conversations and ideas- “Hey Johnny, Great idea! Robbie over there has had the same idea. YAY. You are both aligned in thinking!” Huzzah. What in heavens name is wrong with these teachers? They SEEM like normal people…..
Excuse my non compliant, bad attitude but Pearson can got to #@*&%.
Pearson is not the only one doing this. This kind of adaptive learning is what ESSA now mandates as personalized learning with data to get 21st century schools funding. It’s how the charters reliant on ‘achievement’ to get renewed build their model around. I have been to enough of their sales pitches and I even once asked Sajan George a question to make sure I got him to confirm what he had actually just said. People will be shocked it was a breakfast of an Atlas affiliate.
Use this template and you get to be one of those magic CMOs cashing in under ESSA.
I said I had finished the sociocracy book. You will love how ‘consent’ works. Something gets proposed and if any member does not find the proposal within “their range of tolerance” they must state their objections. With stated objections comes the attempt to address the objections within the range. Magic point, all bound.
It reminds me of reading that Sunstein book. I kept thinking this is why the word sophistry was invented.
Robin has offered valuable knowledge to take with us upon our journeys into our kids schools, state forums or community. What do you suggest as a plan of action when all areas are infected? That includes the online movement with its controlled narrative and blogging world of those actually employed by Atlas and willing to push the narrative.
Thanks CO. This rather graphic explanation came out from the Convergence Policy Institute and their well-connected Re-Imagining Education Project just before Christmas. I haven’t seen it cited anywhere. http://education-reimagined.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Pioneering-Issue-4_FINAL.pdf
Only about 12 pages, but it includes their take on ESSA.
Call me a skeptic but without knowledge there won’t be a real solution. Political activism based on partial information is a dangerous engagement, which is why Robin’s work–while difficult to digest–matters.
Hopefully my posts do not require a dose of Pepto Bismol with them. I don’t really choose the topics these days so much as respond to this fast moving train. You and I have talked a lot about Finland and what is really going on there. Have you seen this? http://www.oph.fi/download/135542_learning_and_competence_2020.pdf
Prescribed knowledge is much different than bodies of unapproved knowledge developed by someone with an interest in an area. Prescribed knowledge accepts the false narrative and the manipulative framing. Unapproved knowledge understands immediately what is false and looks to where the falsehoods are headed.
Well, there seems to be a lot of “steering” taking place in Finnish education. The metaphor is apt, and it’s terrifying how many fail to question the implications of an education system that promises (though it’s really a threat) to treat everyone the same.
Takes me back to an early UNESCO on teacher training that explained how schools of Ed would push the desired values top down but were to have no say in determining which values were essential to shaping the future–exactly what you’re pointing out with prescribed knowledge.
Wish more understood that what’s happening here in the US isn’t new, isn’t distinct from Dewey, Marx etc.
Or Luria, Leontiev, Vygotsky. Deeper Learning takes us back to Piotr Galperin and Evald Ilyenkov and this just came out today. http://www.jff.org/publications/why-what-where-and-how-deeper-learning-american-secondary-schools
Jobs for the Future so tied to all sorts of initiatives. I think it does matter immensely that this is accurately understood in advance by some parents and teachers.
This is the 1947 UNESCO Memorandum on Human Rights. It was part of my research over the holidays. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001240/124068Eb.pdf I found a reference to it in a footnote and pulled all the documents I could find from that time. It’s one of the reasons I could tell the Atlas member think tanks were calling for the same vision using the same rhetoric even before I finished Easterly’s book.
Another on Deeper Learning. http://www.jff.org/sites/default/files/publications/materials/Effective-Schools-for-Deeper-Learning-010416.pdf
That UNESCO doc predates the one I was referring to by three decades. It’s clear that education is the mechanism intended to unite the ideals of western liberty and “the dictatorship of the proletariat.” (While the first is fading quickly, we can watch the second in real time on college campus across the country.) And why must these ideals be unified? Because “political freedom by no means guarantee[s] economic or social freedom.” Apparently, personal freedoms necessitate centralized planning and oversight. And this is where all of those heavily funded political think tanks feel justified in usurping individual liberty for the sake of, ahem, freedom. This document is quite prescient.
I found my note on what caused me to go down that particular bunny hole. It was Hayek in that Appendix to his Theory of Justice I described in the last post. That unapproved knowledge that allowed me to know for sure that Easterly and the Atlas Network have both taken to misdescribing Hayek. In a footnote he referred to these writings published during the formation of UNESCO.
I have other papers from that same conference. This one is an excellent synopsis of what the Human Development Society meant then and now. And by the way, Democracy in a Global World cited in this post is also tied to Richard Falk and WOMP–the World Order Models project. I have been living with these ideas for a number of years now and just expanding my evidence base and the interconnections. This is by a Philosophy Prof, John Somerville of Hunter College in NYC:
“The hope of mankind really lies in reaching that condition wherein people everywhere will possess both political freedom from arbitrary government action and social freedom in relation to the means of physical and mental development. Put in other terms, our hope should be that Soviet society, as it grows, will extend its conception of human rights more and more to the political sphere, and that Western society will extend its conception of human rights more and more to the social sphere.”
In connection with the presence of the term personalized learningin ESSA as a requirement to get 21st Century Schools funding, this is from the same Teilhard de Chardin discussed in my book and translated from French into English:
“The problem is to cease organizing the world for the benefit, and in terms of the isolated individual. and to direct all efforts toward the complete development (“personalization” of the individual, by wisely integrating him within the unified group, which must one day become the organic and psychic culminating point of humanity.”
In case you think I am making too much of that personalization definition, on the next page Chardin insisted that “These three points must be made explicit and guaranteed in any Charter of Humanity.”
Drumrolls, please and I’ll supply the numbering and bolding for emphasis.
1) “Each human being has an absolute duty to work and personalize himself.
2) Each human being has a relative right to be placed in the best possible conditions for personalization.
3) Each human being within the social organism has an absolute right not to be distorted by outward coercion, but to be integrated within the organism by inward persuasion, i.e., in conformity with his aptitudes and personal aspirations.”
Would the world really be better off if I stopped explaining what we are up against?
And by ensuring our Freedom via Economic and Social Planning our overlords mean that they will liberate us from the burden of having choices. We will be free of freedom as a concept.
Actually to quote EH Carr from the same UNESCO papers from 1947 and 48: “Similarly, although the manner in which a citizen may influence the government under which he lives varies with the forms of government, the trend toward democracy seemed, until recently, universal. The change that has come into these problems in recent years is not so much due to a change in these tendencies as o the introduction of differences in the interpretation of what constitutes ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’
We are dealing he said then and I am warning us now that we have education being transformed because of unpublicized assumptions on the “problem of how far opportunities to which men [supposedly] have a right must be secured by governmental action.”
“problem of how far opportunities to which men [supposedly] have a right must be secured by governmental action.”
Whoa X 100.
“Hubris.” These jokers should have looked up the meaning before they began writing down their thoughts for posterity. Of course had they done so they would have then debated interpretations of said word for optimal deception and concealment…erm… I mean..Best Practices. Huzzah .
Listened to a webinar today discussing how ESSA will impact CA. There was much talk of how data can / will be used to track not only learning outcomes but also “learning opportunities.” Of course, such “opportunity” must be regulated by federal & state guidelines. After all without big government, the governed would be forced to bear the responsibility of being free and all related risks that come with individual agency / choice.
Remember in the previous post I mentioned that Scotland is ahead of us and specifies-Es and Os–Experiences and Outcomes?
Funny you should use the terms Agency and Choice since those terms permeate Deeper Learning and any cybernetic vision generally. Once the desired Outcomes are internalized, a person regards themselves as making free choices when the truth is both their conscious and unconscious decisions and even what is likely to be noticed or disregarded in those everyday experiences is completely managed. This is a global edict that is still cranking up but in the US it ties to that White House Office of Technology and Science Policy. The one John Holdren heads that also oversees (not coincidentally) the League of Innovative Schools.
Basically there is an illusion of freedom in this template when the reality is no genuine freedom at all. Yet another reason to push people away from books. That was one of my problems with the Project Veritas video. It hides the extent to which textbooks themselves are going away. It also obscures the real money flowing to those who can claim to parents and homeschoolers that they are Common Core free when I can take one look at the materials, presentations, or charter and immediately see that it is pushing a Transdisciplinary vision or Deep Learning or the creation of a desired, internalized mental model.
Again all those go to students and eventually adults who regard themselves as free when Goebbels himself barely had more ambitious plans for social engineering and innermost physiological and psychosocial manipulation.
Take a look at this and ponder the implications. http://www.routefifty.com/2016/01/san-jose-demonstration-center-starfish/125082/?oref=rf-today-nl
Now remember that the children of the city are having their very minds and personalities manipulated so they are the malleable cogs in this vision that societies can be planned and thus forced to be equitable.
Remember the planners and politicians will have access to precisely what the mental touchstones created via education are. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. Remember too that Silicon Valley is where the US meeting was held in April that the Laszlos and Tom VanderArk were involved in. All ratcheting up for this month’s Davos summit. At least we are accurately tracking in real time and this Article V Convention push was to play a key role in removing the barriers here in the US.
This came out yesterday and is designed to create the talking points template in the Presidential race as well as other elections. http://www.knowledgeworks.org/sites/default/files/education-playbook.pdf
Figured ISC readers want the playbook too.
Not on topic but …
https://www.projectveritas.com/posts/news/undercover-common-core-executive-says-i-hate-kids-its-all-about-money
Undercover in Common Core: Executive Says “I hate kids, it’s all about the money
James O’Keefe, president and founder of Project Veritas, released a powerful and troubling new video today showing a regional sales executive at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, one of the country’s leading textbook publishers and profiteers of Common Core admitting that Common Core is all about the money.
In this new video, Project Veritas journalists visit with America’s top textbook publishing companies, the moneymakers of Common Core, in an effort to expose how crony capitalism is taking over America’s educational system. Shockingly, our journalists caught a publishing executive mocking her own immoral behavior and then laughing about it on hidden camera.
In O’Keefe’s latest video, Dianne Barrow, the West Coast Accounts Manager for Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt was caught on camera saying, “You don’t think that the educational publishing companies are in it for education do you? No. They’re in it for the money. The fact that they have to align the educational standards is what they have to do to sell the books.”
…
Thanks. I know it is about the money and various ways to get it. I watched it this morning and was confused by the misdescription of the Common Core. It is NOT what students should KNOW at the end of a grade.
Let’s compare that description to the Deep Learning cites above. To the extent, as awful as these sound bytes are, that we keep the pretense that CC is about a different way to teach information, this video also perpetuates the alarms remaining in the OFF mode about the crucial shifts going on in K-12. The outraged line about comparing textbooks to t-shirts is one they are products to be sold but textbooks are no longer used in many places.
It was a sad video, but it also seemed to be misdirection. I normally enjoy O’Keefe’s revelations.
On the SOTU right now.
A new economy: that works for us all.
I might be sick.
Lots of the research in this paper out today comes from your state. https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/12043721/Pre-3Alignment.pdf