We shouldn’t be surprised I suppose. After all churches and religions, like schools and universities, are cultural institutions. They therefore also make very useful tools for accessing a person’s inner values, attitudes, and beliefs and changing them. At a 2007 UNESCO Workshop in Spain we were once again not invited to, the world’s religions were called on to “assist in the great transition to a viable future for all species.” http://www.arcworld.org/downloads/Barcelona%20Report.pdf Religions were called on “to renew and transform themselves” in italics just like that and to begin to “present alternative visions to counter the allure of endless consumption and endless economic growth, opening us up to something bigger than ourselves.” The workshop declared that the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development that commenced in 2005 was “not just about the environment, it’s about social change and transforming economic and political structures.”
Education for sustainability “should aim towards ‘a change in mind and heart, changing who we are.” That intrusive goal of course gets much easier if schools globally are being pushed quietly to make new values, ethics, and moral development the invisible center of all instruction and assessment while religions are told they must now “come together” to push towards comparable personal and social transformations. The title quote comes from a Rabbi Arthur Waskow:
“the whole world is today in an earthquake: politics, economics, sexuality…all is off the ground. People look for something that isn’t quaking, desperately trying to find something stable, and so they don’t pay attention to the state of the Earth…Our calling today is like ‘learning to dance in an earthquake.’ This quaking will transform everything including religions: ‘We know what religious traditions were like three hundred years ago, but we don’t know how they will be after learning to dance in an earthquake.”
Now if an earthquake does come, I personally think survival will call on all my wits and knowledge about what has worked in the past and what consistently leads to tragedies. But then I am not a current or former politician or NGO bureaucrat. I am not even a professor. Just a lawyer seriously tracking all the things being pushed now in the name of Common Core in the US and why the required classroom implementation never looks like all the hype used to try to gain popular support for our own political and economic execution. If you are wondering how on earth today’s post veered into discussing religion when we were just overseas visiting with the Swedes from the 1960s, here’s my reply. It’s the same vision and really the same means as well.
In the kind of collaborative effort now going on between me and blog readers who have also read my book Credentialed to Destroy and thus really mastered the overall framework of the sought transformation, they find troubling documents and ask me to look at them. In this case it was UNESCO’s push of the acronym KSAVE as what the new assessments should be measuring globally as they looked for the students to change to reflect the desired Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, Values, and Ethics. At the center of what the student was to become via education according to UNESCO were the Core Values. Next was an outer circle of what were called Social and Emotional Competencies that coincide perfectly with what David Conley listed in 2007 in a paper for the Gates Foundation as “College Ready Skills.” Renamed duplicitously in the US to try to hold off a full taxpayer rebellion from the reality of Social and Emotional Competencies and a commitment to Communitarianism as the new goals of K-12 under the Common Core.
It was Singapore’s new vision that was featured in the 2011 Keynote Address in China for the vision of Next Generation Schools, which is interesting since I happen to know Singapore is a listed partner in the global Curriculum Redesign Project. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/drawing-back-the-standards-curtain-to-discover-the-global-coordination-to-redesign-the-very-nature-of-curriculum/ The key question of course is what values and ethics are to be that guiding core. That’s where both UNESCO’s entire Values Curriculum and Peace Education push and the determination to shift all religions in an Eastern spirituality direction came tumbling out. Quickly. With very little effort. Clearly a core component of the transformation via education vision.
So that’s why once again we have to talk about religion. It’s where the values, attitudes, ethics, and vision of the transformations and the future are coming from. In his 1989 book The Inner Limits of Mankind Ervin Laszlo, who we first met acting with the Dalai Llama to urge education to create a Holos Consciousness, described the Baha’i Faith as the emerging global religion. Apparently it is what all the others are supposedly transitioning to. The Encyclopedia of Peace Education from 2008 created by Teachers College at Columbia has an article by Marie Gervais laying out the close working relationship from the beginning between the UN and representatives of the Baha’i Faith. Me? I had never really heard of the “world’s newest major religion” until references to it began pouring out on where the values and transformative vision of education were coming from.
Interesting for us in trying to figure out the implications of all this is the acknowledgment quoted by Gervais from the Chancellor of the University of Maryland in 2004 that “What the Baha’i Chair is all about, is the elevation of the common good. It seeks this higher ground by focusing not on what divides people, but rather on what unites them…we must ensure that throughout their higher education journey, our students travel with an open mind while exposed to the widest variety of ethical, spiritual and philosophical thought.” Which of course the students are to view in the desired way much like marionettes on the end of a puppeteer’s strings. i don’t think the Chancellor was just referring to religion majors.
In the 2007 Workshop I wrote about above, one of the participants was Arthur Dahl. He is listed as representing the International Economic Forum based in Switzerland. In the 2012 UNESCO and Earth Charter paper called “Exploring Synergies between Faith Values and Education for Sustainable Development” Dahl wrote the Baha’i Faith vision (pages 44-48). He stated that the “transition to a sustainable world is the fundamental aim and purpose of the Baha’i Faith” and that this transformation “will entail no less than an organic change in the structure of society itself.” I know you will be stunned to hear that the vision then goes on to basically replicate what we have taken to calling Uncle Karl’s vision of a small c, Marxist Humanism, human development society (that the Swedes pioneered) that meets everyone’s needs in the world as a matter of right just from being born. Just think of all the administrative jobs trying to fulfill that vision the UN and governments at all levels get to create.
And guess what institution is first and foremost the way in? Yes, ten points, but it is not education in the traditional sense anymore. Here’s Dahl again in as concise an explanation of what transformative education is all about as I have ever read.
“If education is to effect the profound changes in the minds of people and in the structures of society needed to shift towards sustainability, the nature of the educational processes will need to be rethought. As a starting point, the programme of education must be based on a clear vision of the kind of society we wish to live in, and the kind of individuals that will bring this about. It needs to help learners reflect on the purpose of life and help them step out of their cultural realities to develop alternative visions and approaches to the problems at hand, and to understand the manifold consequences of their behaviours and to adjust them accordingly.”
I could go on and point out how the various elements of the required transformations, including the ubiquitous service learning, replicate listed elements and practices attributed by one of these cited sources to the Baha’i Faith. I could point out how the required Communities of Learners and Positive School Climates sound just like Dahl describing people working “constructively to shaping communities that reflect principles of justice, equity and unity.”
I think this is enough for now though. We really are dealing with an official vision that seeks to regulate through the schools AND religious institutions what MUST be believed and valued and thought.
Conspiracy is certainly the wrong term for such a coordinated effort to make each of us servile to the exercise of political and economic power.
Now that these goals and the means have been once again pulled out of the shadows into the sunlight, what shall we do?
Some things really do need to be repudiated by individuals learning to act collectively against taxpayer funded planned predation.
“What shall we do?” Well, I’ve decided that the only way to have an effect is to go to court. For years, I did the recommended discussing, consulting, advocating, lobbying, but because I’m not a lawyer, I left the legal end alone. Naive, perhaps, but I believed that a) people would not lie in court, and b) if they did, the courts would call them on it.
Some local events got me reading court decisions, and I realized lies were being told, and were getting by judges and tribunals. Under the scheme of collective bargaining, almost everything in education can be sequestered into the labour relations arena where the public has no standing, and also where it can be entrenched into the collective agreement. Wellington and Winter of Yale wrote a nice book in 1971, The Unions and the Cities, in which they discussed the effect on public policy making of the move then underway to replicate the private sector collective bargaining model in the public sector. They were prescient. There are two articles available on line that are a bit of a prelude to the book: http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/2178/ and http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1963/.
I’ve long studied the organizational design of the education system with a view to understanding its near-impenetrable resistance to change in the area of effective instruction. In my view, the law offers the only portal, and it is starting to be used to good effect, eg with some recent ACLU cases.
I came across a phrase the other day that perfectly describes the Achilles heel of the whole construct: it takes the coercion of children for granted. There is a point at which the moral and ultimately legal authority to require attendance at school or compliance with the curriculum has been lost, and at that point, we simply have to release the children and take them home. The courts are a way to pursue this goal.
As Robin points out, the machine is implacable and has ways other than the schools to reach kids. But democracy offers us myriad ways to evade those; the schools, in contrast, do not.
The entire essence and message at last weeks national catholic education association convention was a wholesale how to of what you describe. Robotic spewing of rhetoric and buzzwords delivered in a greasy giddyness by most presenters. Condescention towards parents and even children was pervasive. The superego out in full force. Not one big player presenter could answer teachers/admin/super’s simple questions on how to manage all that is expected of them to initiate and maintain this overwhelming behemoth of “reform” it was just headshakes and figure it out.
What seems clear is that the earthquake is meant to send good old fashioned Caring teachers for the hills to make way for the indoc pros from TFA or Columbia.
Quite an education last week for us!
Madmommy-
That 2012 paper I described has an article called “Catholic Social Teaching and the Earth Charter” by Sister Theresa Nagle that you should take a look at. A reader off-line has told me that Baha’i is headquartered in Chicago. I just looked it up and it shows Evanston. So we have the Baha’i Faith dedicated to using education for transformative purposes in Chicago as well as Loraine Ozar dedicated to using Catholic schools and the Common Core curriculum for the same purposes.
At least someone gets to save on airfare. The principals can just meet for lunch and plan what to push next on schoolchildren. It then gets masked under the amorphous terms student growth and student achievement. The change is the learning.
At least the following articles suggest that there is still an element of sanity in Catholic education circles:
The Pope Strikes Out at Common Core
http://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/the-pope-strikes-out-at-common-core/
The Common Core VS the Classical Roots of Catholic Education
http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/Portals/0/Common%20Core/Primer/Andrew%20Seeley%20The%20Common%20Core%20vs%20the%20Classical%20Roots%20of%20Catholic%20Education.pdf
It seems to me this is similar to the phenomenon of Liberation Theology’s inroads into the Catholic faith. Some go for it and push the political/social agendas, and some resist it.
Oh also,
The biggest take away was this, apparently the school handbook is considered by a superintendant presenter, to be a valid contract once received by parents, between the school and the parents. Now without reviewing mine i am guessing this document implies soft consent for all things objectionable when discovered by parents, leaving them legally protected. So the act of sendjng your child to school after receipt of the handbook implies your parental and legal agreement to all within, ie a contract. Now this presentation was a very full one in a ballroom and was about dealing with parents.
This idea was new to me.
And a mindblower if true.
Perhaps a parents handbook should be created and delivered to the school prior to your childs attendance to set up parents rules and to nullify handbook of school giving them immunity…
Robin waddaya think??? !!
Do they have the parents sign and return a notice that the handbook was received?
That would be key, but the entire argument shows how they know they are engaging in psychological abuse and manipulation with ties to previous tragedies a la Columbine.
But all these administrators want the future promotions and the resulting salary increases that then boost the pension for life. We are in a full scale kleptocracy just like a babana republic but with more wealth to loot.
http://sndatun.wordpress.com/
I almost put my daughter at a local Catholic school, but was alarmed by the curriculum, the sisters of Notre Dame were in charge of the school. They seemed to be all about the UN.
Liz, please read where I posted above. My daughter was thinking about Gonzaga Prep for her kids but I was wary of the Common Core adaptation of some Catholic schools. I suppose I better research what position Gonzaga Prep takes on the matter.
Well, this article lends credence to James Wanliss, author of “Resisting the Green Dragon,” who claims that environmentalism has become a religion, but one that has supplanted Christianity in the public square, including schools.
In Scotland we have rubbish like this to sustain the new curriculum: (Sorry I do not know how to provide links)
“Eco Drama firmly believes that drama is one of the most effective teaching and learning tools, as it places children inside the learning context; they become involved, active participants in the learning process.
The Curriculum for Excellence sets a challenge to educators: to engage with creative teaching methods and, make a difference. Drama has the unique ability to connect with different learning styles, reach greater audiences and encourage active learning; so it seems there has never been a more exciting time to engage with drama in education.”
Absolute garbage. Meanwhile children leave school who can act out dramatically , or dance, but are not able to read and write.
Actually, Scotland provides a fascinating step in a whole new direction of controlling families. The new Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill appoints a “monitor” for every child who can, it seems, override parental judgement. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-26208628 Here’s one critical piece: http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/children-and-young-people-bill-is-a-missed-opportunity.21163028.
Scotland has also been the home of good reading initiatives – Keda Cowley and Toe-by-toe? Which remains fringe, as Alice shows. The fact that the same patterns are evident everywhere can (one hopes) show courts that it is not a battle in which local specifics are really determinative.
Alice-that’s the role playing that supposedly teaches empathy and openness to other’s perspectives and motives.
There is a paper I have from the attendant research on the values education being pushed that also pertains to you. It was by Lourdes R Quisumbing and was presented in 2001 at the International Forum on Quality Education in Beijing–that bastion of human rights and social justice. It was called the “Values/Attitudinal Dimension in Quality Education.” I have written about what Quality Learning actually means before and traced it to John Dewey, but that paper is a nice overview about what all these references to Quality in internal ed are getting at.
How to make nice comrades out of all of us seems to be the idea.
I pulled it from unesco’s site but it is also here on learn-usa http://www.learn-usa.com/transformation_process/Beijing%20Paper.pdf since the US is really following the unesco desired model without wanting to publicly acknowledge that key fact.
Sorry, it’s Keda Cowling. And it appears there is a legal challenge forthcoming to the named person portion of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10650090/Scottish-ministers-threatened-with-legal-action-over-state-guardian-plans.html
I would like to make my position clear. I was brought up in the Presbyterian faith (Christian) and put that aside as a teenager. I knew the value of that faith because I had been brought up with it, but later decided that `faith` and `believing` without evidence was just superstition. As an adult I went into the sciences.
All of that was the natural progression of my life. I have always rested easy with different faiths and thought – if it brought people comfort – so be it.
I`m horrified that the UN are attempting to build the one world PLANET religion through the education of children – because of my love for science. I understand why they are attempting to do it, because children absorb their culture. Sustainability, global citizenship and the New World Order. As a person who could never accept the mantras, rituals, dogmas, and nonsense, I see this as a push back to the Dark Ages, without the tolerance for differences I have mentioned. I know history proves me wrong but obviously there is no space for discussion.
I do not wish to insult or upset anybody. I have just said how it was for me. This global agenda is the `mind numbing` of poor children and the clamping down of individual thought.
Alice,
No offense take at all. Your comment underscores the concerns of those of us who object to this surreptious indoctrination of youth. I love nature. I am an herbalist and I have lived in the woods most of my life. I am also a Christian and I give credit and praise to the Creator. And believe it or not, some of us in the country take time to read extensively on the sciences, philosophy and history. These northern winters get very long.
Thanks Sara. I also love nature and recognise that much folklore in connection with herbs is both wise and has stood the test of time but is under threat from the same forces under discussion in this blog. I would say, stand your ground.
Alice, you have a choice as i do to beleive what we wish.
But the direct link to the globalism using psychology/ social sciences and political theories as means to transform both our worlds and not for the better.
do you think some of the theories of the Social sciences seem to have been made up with questionable studies and data and assertions with no empirical eviidence to move along each dialectic toward this end we are heading toward with the UN covert hegemony?
Both Kinsey and skinner got their data in frightful and unscholarly ways and are highly scandalous and controversial.
Evidence exists right now in our media and entertainment that the anything goes culture is a neverending dead end.
Cut to mylie and jay z. Turn on tv.
For example critical pedagogy and critical theory and critical thinking, the ad nauseum posterchild for common core, were begun by the german socialists
( horkheimer) some of their progeny ( giroux, mclaren) and paolo friere, more theories churned out that are negative. to deconstruct and destroy.
Creating a ” science” out of criticism. Its absurd.
Love thy neighbor is not their bag, its hate thy neighbor.
Problem is they are feeding this poison to our children without our consent or choice. With deception. That is not freedom.
I mean no disrespect and do not want to offend either.
I do not recognise social science as a proper science. When I talk about science I mean the likes of chemistry, physics, biology, and so on. I abhor the misuse of science. I particularly abhor studying human beings as if they were laboratory rats.
http://www.gprep.com/s/766/index.aspx?sid=766&gid=1&pgid=1151
I can’t tell if this is the same school, maybe not. I get mixed up.
Liz,
I can see why you are concerned. Titles of courses such as Reconstructing the Social Order would give me pause also.
Here is another related link to the Pope and Common Core:
http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/CatholicEducationDaily/DetailsPage/tabid/102/ArticleID/3192/Pope-Francis-Defends-Parents%E2%80%99-Right-to-Decide-%E2%80%98Moral-and-Religious%E2%80%99-Education-for-Children.aspx#
St Louis Archdioceses took CCSS so why then are they going against the Pope as far as this speech? Hmmm…
Probably for the same reason as many pro abortion lawmakers push their agenda, or for the reason liberation theologians push their doctrines in the church. They don’t care what the Pope says.
A disclaimer: I am not Catholic.
Good point! I am not Catholic either but I value a classic Catholic education minus the liberation UN junk.
The UN can teach kids to worship rocks and tree spirits but not on my dime and not in free market private schools. That’s the bottom line for me, I have never been a Christian who thought Christian tyrannical government was some sort of goal, but the laws based on the Bible have given Western Civilization the reputation for more free than any other in history and communism has been proven the opposite.
Liz-
My sentiments exactly. Thank You.
Its funny but I was baptized Catholic, attended Quaker School and have practiced none of it formally as an adult. Which for me is entirely separate from a clearly defined sense of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. But however much I choose to avoid organized religion for my own reasons I have a deepened respect for the most wise tenets of Christianity that have supported western civilization as you stated. I’m a pragmatist in all things and I have become so repulsed by what I am seeing and reading that I actually told my 16 year old to sing the alphabet or row row row your boat quietly to herself in the event that she was ever asked to meditate in class or recite The Great Invocation. Im sure I sounded insane to her but she won’t forget that moment her mother lost her marbles. 🙂
And speaking of worshiping trees and rocks etc.. I saw recently somewhere ( I forget where! ) that Joel Osteen of that big Mega Church in TX speaks regularly to guides and /or spirits. He and his wife apparently.
No one is untouched by this contagion it seems.
Dont know a thing about Joel, I dont follow him.
Smart! I will teach that to my grandkids! Row row row your boat. I love that, totally love that.
Great post Robin. Thanks for translating all of this so we can understand it better. An enlightening thing to do is to visit the official Baha’i site and look at the map of centers. It’s truly shocking considering you rarely hear of activity from this group.
If I’m not mistaken, B has it’s roots in Islam and the headquarters is in Israel. That is of significance to those of the Christian faith. Unity is key in B faith, one religion together. If you dig, you can see that they push the school as community center. Members of the B faith love them some Laszlo. Darn right scary that B has a seat at the UN and those that speak out can be reported.
As for the talk above about Joel, just pay attention to how often his words align with scripture or if it’s even read. Don’t be fooled my a simple motivational speaker.
Read this last night. Tucker may be lying low but he’s certainly in the know.
http://www.ncee.org/2012/07/tuckers-lens-on-21st-century-skills/
B is also openly calls for a one world government and a universal house of justice. It sounded like a match for a French Revolution type values shift to me when I researched it before, meaning… you will accept it or we will hold public trials and executions, anyway that’s what I got out of it. I would not bow to the goddess of reason any more than the b international court of justice. B is a perverted form of Islam and Islam is a perverted form of the Talmud and Old and New Testaments. Islam has NO room for alteration, Muhammad was perfectly clear, so you will see B being persecuted in Iran, we have no part in that dispute.
The Twelve Principles Baha’i philosophy can be summed up in this statement: “The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.” Behind this maxim are the twelve principles of Baha’i thought:(10)
Oneness of God.
Oneness of Religion.
Oneness of Mankind.
Elimination of prejudice of all kinds.
Individual search after truth.
Universal auxiliary language.
Equality of men and women.
Universal education.
Harmony of science and religion.
Elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty.
World government.
Protection of cultural diversity.(11)
Thanks Liz. Yes, all true. I was trying to be tactfully gentle as not to offend. A bit hard for me to do at times as I do have a strong personality and firm beliefs. Those of us with traditional Christan faith know what is foretold, your description certainly fits the bill. I try to remind myself that much of this stems from a hatred of what we believe in. From the social planners to Islam. Across my fireplace sits a huge sign. Choose you this day whom ye will serve. The choice is there.
I am back online after last night’s storms. I think this post is timely. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/let-it-marinate-reflection-closing-joshua-block
Students working on a definition of religion. How useful, especially with the change your values inundation coming.
I ordered the books Laszlo cited on Baha’i. I have also been thinking of how RSA is pushing their Spirituality work in connection with the Social Brain Project and having Robert Kegan (Harvard, Integral Life, and OECD Key Competences) in to speak.
By the way when I was nailing down UNESCO’s Values Ed curriculum the reason we found communitarianism embedded as central to the definition of Career Ready became apparent. It comes from UNESCO’s decision to embed values ed in “technical and vocational ed and training.” It’s what is now called Learning to Do from the DeLors Report The Treasure Within. We looked at that a while back.
If teams from Portland keep winning “We the People” civics competition I think we can conclude it’s pushing a new kind of Constitution.http://new.civiced.org/programs/wtp
Perhaps it’s about thinking of the Constitution as a system or what was left out of the document that should not have been.
Never heard of that program. This school that was winning is right in the center of pdx. Not surprised they would push an incorrect or transformative civics view.
I’m from Oregon, hangs head in shame…
DON’T FORGET THE THIRD “C” — CITIZENSHIP !
The original documents on Common Core always had three Cs — Career, College and Citizenship Readiness.
The BIG QUESTION is — Why was “citizenship” dropped from much of the narrative when it is really THE MAIN AGENDA of all these 21st C Learning projects?
It’s been dropped, I surmise, because it was taking on an appearance, a perception, of “proselytizing”, and we know that’s WRONG. Public education is supposed to be secular — free of religion — at least in Western developed democratic nations.
So, Marxism (a political ideology acting like a religion), Social Emotional Learning, spirituality, and even the totalitarian “oneness” of certain established faiths are minimized while banging away at College and Career Readiness.
Yet, OBEDIENCE, mass obedience to one central command system — a New World Order — is still the assumption governing these high level conferences, their reports, etc. “Sustainability “ just happens to be the most acceptable excuse around with which to align formation and compliance with a rent-seeking society — citizens enslaved to public-centric jobs, services, and a dumbed-down Grade 6 education. Why Grade 6? Because that’s the target level of slick propaganda. Because Dummies books are at that level. And, because Grade 6 can be monitored and tracked through technology — all our games, phones, assessments . . . Somewhere it was established that a Grade 6 level would be most pliable and manageable! A small, educated elite can thus manage a two-tier populace.
What’s the quality of life in an unfree world? How can one be free when all is programmed? Figuratively, and biblically, why was the Tower of Babel split asunder into many languages and many nations? Doesn’t that make sense, today, when biological, economic, and psychological survival demands diversity and choice? “What shall we do?” I, for one, am seeking counter-measures to this mixmaster education transformation now being engineered.
So, I have a story to tell. Remember how our blog author feels so excluded from all these high level conferences? Well, I got invited to one, and can still register before tomorrow. Here is the item.
EdSource symposium to tackle ‘seminal’ public school reforms (about public ed reforms in California, in partnership with California State PTA — to bring everyone up-to-date with Common Core implementation).
http://edsource.org/2014/edsource-symposium-to-tackle-seminal-public-school-reforms/61134#.U17E_q1dVNK
Now, here’s the clincher, the keystone to make this conference really, really credible. One of the main speakers is Michael Fullan and here is how he’s described:
“ . . .school reform expert Michael Fullan, the former dean at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto who is credited with leading a whole scale transformation of the Ontario, Canada school system. He’ll keynote a session on what it will take to reform education in California.”
Now, I’m from Canada, and a professor in a teacher education faculty asked me a question to something I had written. Now, professors, are in a privileged level of knowledge about things educational, and he said, to this effect: “ I didn’t know Ontario was on board for 21st Century Learning, along with Alberta and British Columbia. Where can I find out about this?”
I pointed him to a document, APRIL, 2014, The Ontario Report is called — Achieving Excellence – A Renewed Vision for Education in Ontario, April 2014
http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/about/excellent.html
The irony of this Ontario exercise and this announcement and report is that it’s all PRO FORMA — an accomplished fact. Without real public knowledge or involvement Ontario has a new transformative education plan laid out.
A 1976 OECD report on Canadian education said Canada’s public consultations are largely “pro forma “ exercises, — done as a formality, perfunctory.
This’s how most of 21st Century Learning projects — world-wide — seem to be going. Does anyone feel “used”?
Tunya,
The Citizenship aspect is in both the Common Core Social Studies Framework that CCSSO formally sponsored all through its creation as well as the desired Dispositions to result from the Common Core laid out in its February 2013 report I have written about.
Did you notice that April 2014 Tucson Conference of the League of Innovative Schools called for Fullan to be their next speaker?
UNESCO’s Values Ed Modules reference Csik and his book Flow. It’s his definition of Excellence grounded in feelings and motivation that permeates all these uses of the term.
Fullan cites 3 sources for Ontario’s ranking as world class schools. We already know that the oECD looks to equity and social justice in its rankings and that PISA is not about knowledge. McKinsey is where Michael Barber was before moving to Pearson. Since he thought global citizenship made a nice replacement for Marx back in the UK, we can begin to appreciate his priorities on education and transformative change.
Finally, National Center on Education and the Economy is the same Mark Tucker that LL provided us a link for. He was heavily involved in directing the 90s version of Radical Ed Reform. He has kept a lower profile this time lest everyone recognize the links to OBE.
Yes we are being used as funding sources and the creators of guinea pigs to be used for social engineering attempts. As mad as I am about all this, I am also relieved it is not going on with few aware of what is being attempted.
Marc Tucker created the National Institute of School Leadership (NISL). This is from the bio of Marc Tucker on the NCEE website. NISL receives a lot of business from school districts through very generous and restrictive Federal Grants offered to those districts if they participate.
Robin, I placed a book review of your book on Amazon yesterday at their request. I gave it a 5 star rating with comments about its accuracy.
I hope to sell many more. Cunningham
Thanks Barbara.
So much useful information in that book. It really concerns me when others write about the book arising from this blog when it was the other way around. This blog’s areas of emphasis as the real implementation rolls along all come from what I first laid out in that book. It’s like it teaches us the concepts and framework of the desired transformations and the tools to be used.
The blog just hangs ornaments on that basic framework.
Hello Robin,
I’ve been rereading some of these older posts, in particular these with references to Baha’i Faith. Wow, from these descriptions it looks like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster!
As Liz has noted above, yes, those are the core principals around which Baha’i teachings revolve. But, it is not a matter of coercion or exclusion of those who differ in opinion or understanding. Some of these principals stem from eternal truths found in all religions: Oneness of God (there is only one eternal all-knowing Creator of all universes), Oneness of Religion ( meaning that if there is only one God, and He has made a Covenant never to leave Man alone and without guidance, He sends forth from His Realm on High divine beings in human form to 1- reinvigorate the spiritual life of man, and 2- to reveal a new chapter in our spiritual enlightenment… another chapter in God’s Book of Revelations. Same God, same teachings continued), One Race (of Man. We humans are all one species. Different ethnicities, different cultural practices, but all the same race). The other principals include the concept of Equality of Woman and Man (consider that this was revolutionary concept back then, and still is in many parts of this world), harmony of Science and Religion (is this blasphemous? As we discover more in he realm of science we are more fascinated by the evidences of an intelligent creator), universal auxiliary language (this along with everyone their mother tongue, so to better facilitate communication and clear understanding worldwide), universal education (speaks for itself), abolishing extremes of wealth and poverty (as in the likes of Warren Buffett or Carlos Slim and the extreme poor who try to scrape an existence in tyranny ruled parts of our world).
These are a few I have tried to clarify. As to the Universal House of Justice, this is only for the Baha’is, and it is not a court system. The word Justice here refers to spiritual aspects, not the workings of civic jurisprudence.
Baha’u’llah (prophet founder of the Baha’i Faith) was a Moslem, just as Christ was a Jew. Exact same thing.
And, Israel is the host country for the Baha’i world center due to the (relative) courtesy of the Emir of the Ottoman Empire in the latter half of the 19th Century. Baha’u’llah’s, His family and followers had been severely persecuted in Persia, had been sent out in exile and denied residency in various places until the Emir of Adianople permitted them stay in the prison city of Akka (Acre, Israel). Baha’u’llah died near there and all the central figures of the Baha’i Faith are interned there, on the side of Mount Carmel, in Haifa. Thus is our relation to Israel. God keep them strong!
Thank you, again, Robin, for permitting me opportunity to clarify. There are no secrets in the Baha’i Faith. Mysteries, perhpaps, as with all faiths, but no secrets.
Sincerely,
Fariba
Hi Fariba–you are welcome to clarify from your beliefs and experience, but that does not change the fact that it is the UN entities who drew my attention to Baha’i. They seem to believe it would be a useful set of beliefs for people they wish to dominate to have. Just like they see Digital Learning as a useful means to guide that inner perception of what the world is like.
These people, with their taxfree salaries so they can feel free to stick it to taxpayers, corrupt everything they touch. I have no doubt that your faith will be far worse when they get done eyeing it as a tool for binding consciousness and personality.
http://www.unfpa.org/culture/docs/fbo_engagement.pdf is the 2009 UN Guidelines on using Faith Based Organizations as Agents of Change. Every cultural institution, not just schools and universities and your religion, are being targeted to align their teachings with what the UN Oligarchs and their cronies deem acceptable beliefs.
As we have talked about before it is absolutely the antithesis of the Baha’i belief in the integrity of the individual. No faith or philosophy that treats the individual as sacrosanct or even legitimate is to be spared. The 21st century has been designated an age of collectivism. The way out is simply to recognize that fact and begin dealing with it.
We cannot do that if the UN announces it is going to use a particular religion as it has done with Baha’i, but we cannot mention that because it’s a faith. The way to protect the faith you clearly hold so dear is to explain it is under assault and why. That’s precisely what I did in this post because it has parallels to the use of the K-12 schools.