Sneaking Into the Cracks to Instill the Outlined Characteristics of the New Soviet Man While the Fatal Conceit Returns

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Once again what may seem like just a graphic means for me to try to grab attention to the level of sought intrusion turns out to actually be a quote of declared intentions from someone who matters. In this case we are back to the Remake Learning Playbook, where the Executive Director of the Mozilla Foundation, Mark Surman, described how to reach “everyone’s hands and minds. And this means everyone.” Now Hands and Minds may seem like a clever phrase, and I have heard State Ed Commissioners gush about it so we know it gets hyped in the meetings we are not invited to, but what it is really getting at is Action (Hands) and what will compel someone to act in the future (Mind; Emotions). Surman in hyping the potential for innovative learning experiences to force Equity and “tackle systems change”, pointed out that “networks have the potential to slowly transform potential by sneaking through the cracks.”

Hands and Minds and Sneaking through the Cracks–this may be an effective way to use the schools for transformation, but it’s an invisible to most one. When Surman wrote about “young people have the skills and mindsets they need to thrive in today’s world,” his writing could be taken from the English language and 2015 and the American continent and taken back to the 30s and Eurasia and translated into Russian. Stalin too was anxious to turn his young people into purposeful change agents ready to act on and to bring change to their surroundings. To shift the emphasis from the world as it had been and what currently existed to what might be with enough collaborative effort and the right set of guiding ideas.

As usual I am not speculating, in 1950 the Russian Research Center funded by Carnegie at Harvard under an initial 5 year grant that began in 1948 published a book by Barrington Moore on the Role of Ideas in Social Change. He wrote about the role of planning to the Soviets and their use of it as a “technique of deliberately controlled social change…Socialist planners, he [Trotsky] said, should not have the attitudes toward their figures that an astronomer has toward the movement of the stars, which he can predict but cannot control. Socialist plans [should not be] products of passive prediction, but rather [conceived] as tools for action.”

Now if anyone has any doubts that today it is people, especially children, who have been selected to be both the targets of such intrusive change and the means for achieving it in broader realms like the workplace, society, and the economy, take a look at the All-Inclusive Criteria for Becoming A Brilliant Star: Striving for Excellence. http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/brilstar/brlstr10.pdf is just the latest in the determination to make Learning about combining thinking, feeling, and action. There’s also a new Taxonomy by Robert Marzano schools and districts are being urged to use to turn students into Self-Systems, where their the “attitudes, beliefs and feelings that determine an individual’s motivation to complete a task” are being tracked and manipulated. ftp://download.intel.com/education/common/in/resources/dep/skills/marzano.pdf

Now just ponder the significance of those aims being on a tech company-sponsored site and their participation in the 21st Century Skills global push, ATC21S and Charles Fadel’s Center for Curriculum Redesign. http://educacaosec21.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Character-Education-Sao-Paulo-Charles-Fadel.pdf In the last post I mentioned Israel Scheffler, let’s see what he wrote back in 1960 in The Language of Education in proposing a “novel [hard to detect] use of the term ‘curriculum'” where the definition would be

“programmatic, that its point is precisely to apply the familiar term in a strange way, in order to rechannel the practice associated with it. In particular, the programmatic point is to extend the school’s responsibility, hitherto limited to a so-called formal course of study, in such a way as to embrace the individual social and psychological development of its pupils.”

Sounds like Whole Child to me or what ECAA called meeting the non-cognitive needs. No wonder the Rockefeller Foundation wanted Scheffler at Harvard in 1952 if in 1950 Moore wrote in the Section called “Today’s Dilemma” in the Chapter “Theory of Equality” that:

“In contrast with Western ideas, which begin with the individual and extend to the group and society as an instrument serving the needs of the individual, the Soviet concept of freedom stresses the role of society and the group. The Russians are fond of asserting that the full development of the individual’s capabilities and personality is possible only under the socialist organization of society.”

So what happens now when district administrators, statutes, and politicians at every level of both parties abbreviate that push as the “full development of the individual’s capabilities and personality” as the goal? Is that possible in a society where individuals still are empowered vs political institutions hyping Equity and necessary ‘governance’? What if those goals are set out in a Beta Credentials Framework created by Mozilla frequent Partner–the Lumina Foundation–http://connectingcredentials.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ConnectingCredentials-4-29-30.pdf that is intended to bind while remaining unseen.

What if that Framework discloses not just desired ways of Thinking and Personal and Social Skills, but that in the US and internationally there is a Tuning Process to standardize and circumscribe knowledge in each of the disciplines. Also notice the admission of what I warned about in Chapter 4 of my book-the US is adopting Qualifications Frameworks that will bind employers into hiring quotas. There is a recurring theme through the Playbook, the Agency by Design “Maker-Centered Learning and the Determination of Self” mentioned in the last post, and that Lumina Credentials Framework. Young people are to be trained, primed, and credentialed to act with no body of knowledge available to be a barrier to a willingness to act.

When the purpose of all education becomes about how can “students come to see themselves as capable of effecting positive change in their own lives and in the community” and “muster the wherewithal to change things through making,” we are back in the aspirations Nobel-Prize economist Friedrich Hayek called The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism in his last book. When the declared aspirations are to turn these fostered dispositions and beliefs into “habits of mind” guiding from an unconscious level, we cannot afford to be waved off from a discussion of the likely consequences because we may not have ed degrees and those with them think this is all A-OK. After all, I have listened to Ed Doctorate admins brag about using notorious brainwashing techniques on reluctant teachers without any idea there is any notoriety attached to what they are suggesting.

We parents, in other words, and just average concerned citizens who know what made this country great and what has always doomed civilizations in the past have to be the Cavalry. Even the rare politician with an excellent mind seems to get bad advice from their staff or the ‘conservative’ think tanks on the issue of education and that’s apart from not bothering to read the binding language they are willing to enact or appreciating the presence of a Scheffler Programmatic Novel Definition.  This parent read all the references to designing and making new ways of being in the world and remembered something Harvard psychologist Jerome Bruner wrote in 1951 in the Foreword of the other Russian Research Center book we have covered.

“speak of the need for a psychology that may support democracy. For man’s image of the nature of man is not only a matter of objective inquiry; it is and has always been a prime instrument of social and political control. He who molds that image does so with enormous consequences for the society in which he lives.”

Now we have this exact aspiration of molding going on, but hiding behind terms like Whole Child, learning needs, student-centered or personalized learning, Maker Movement and others that obscure the nature and purpose of the true K-12 and higher ed shift. I can at least track all these shifts and recognize the fallacies involved and go looking for someone far more authoritative and experienced with the tragedies of these idea to cite. What did Hayek mean as the Fatal Conceit? He described it as the socialist or Planning belief that “man is able to shape the world around him according to his wishes.” Sound familiar from even a typical city council meeting these days or a faculty luncheon?

I cover this somewhat in my book Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon, but with the Maker Movement and Agency by Design and engineered Competencies and Habits of Mind bringing all these aspirations once again to the forefront, let’s go back in history to recognize the likely consequences. Historically, economic prosperity arose in “those communities [where] individuals were allowed to make free use of their individual knowledge.” Now in the name of Equity we are limiting and prescribing what is to be known. That would be the Antithesis of what works and is entirely consistent with the norm noted by Hayek where “common local knowledge or that of a ruler determined the activities of all.” Make that rulers plural now between the mayors, legislators, governors, Congress, and the OECD and UN entities.

Talking about the fall of the Roman empire, Hayek noted that the decline and final collapse “came only after the central administration in Rome increasingly displaced free endeavour. This sequence has been repeated again and again: civilisation might spread, but is not likely to advance much further, under a government that takes over the direction of daily affairs from its citizens.”

That is precisely what is being attempted in the US and elsewhere all over the West in 2015 and education is the most formidable arrow in the Planning and Future Alteration Quiver. I do not bring back expressions like the New Soviet Man to hype, but as a reminder that the techniques are the same and so are the goals. The West, and especially the US, is supposedly the place with the technology and wealth to meet everyone’s needs globally. What Uncle Karl called little c communism and the Soviets never thought they were ready for.

The global entities and too many foundations and grievance interest groups think now is the time and we are the place to push for this peaceful shift via education, the ballot box, federal spending, and raw political power. It won’t work for the reasons Hayek cited, but we all have to be able to call a Spade a Spade and recognize what is being attempted, how, and why.

Stopped by powerful governments, parasitic officials, and obtuse politicians is not the epitaph any of us want with an upcoming 239th Anniversary of the Greatest Country in History looming.

 

 

46 thoughts on “Sneaking Into the Cracks to Instill the Outlined Characteristics of the New Soviet Man While the Fatal Conceit Returns”

  1. Children must be made aware of their obligation to mother gaia and the urgent need to help humanity by not making future babies of their own, if they are white. If their albion ableism male parts inflict harm upon global sustainability, they should chop it off and go full transgender disabled from making babies. When a white man makes white babies, he’s really just raping goddess equality and must be stopped. BGLAD Glisten can help, as well Caitlyn Jenner’s leadership.

    We must to more to erase the stigma of euthanasia. We need more enthusiasm for what is proven to work for all.

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    • Gracious timekept. I am afraid the population controversy comes from the Zero Sum Belief dominant in the UN. Since we are doing everything we can to stop the cultural transmission of most knowledge, Zero Sum would be optimistic. Negative returns a la lighting dollar bills afire is more likely from this Mind Arson.

      I was just looking at the criteria on assessments at the ccsso conference that starts today in San Diego. https://ccsso.confex.com/ccsso/2015/webprogram/meeting.html

      I do not really care what Bruce/Caitlyn chooses to do, but truly it is not the story of the ages.

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      • There is no Bruce. It’s Caitlyn now, only. Stop regressing. Join the future with the rest of us.

        It’s just now okay to foster hatred against hormone therapy and eradicated private man parts. Progress depend on more robust action- circumcision just isn’t enough.

        We must commit to teaching boys how to make these decisions for themselves before puberty distorts and obstructs the emergence of their inner transgenderism.

        For those unfortunate few who do make it to teenager with their sex parts unsnipped, they should never be allowed to be in an environment where all the girls aren’t dressing like dudes and wearing frowns and short hair and pants.

        If a man still has his man part, the least he can do to help us get untriggered from the triggered trauma of encountering dangerous masculinity is to vote only for women leadership, or more gays.

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    • This fits with that link’s hostility as well http://www.learningfirst.org/organic-idea-mechanistic-world , which helpfully tells us that the purpose of CCSSI is for all students who go through public ed to have the same basic level of competencies. That will be disastrous as this Big Data writer recognized recently as it eliminates the needed Diversity of Ideas and information. http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.03751

      Now it turns out the School Counselor trade group has developed a list of the desired mindsets and non-cognitive characteristics students are to have. Yet another thing not being shared with parents. http://www.schoolcounselor.org/asca/media/asca/home/MindsetsBehaviors.pdf

      Again, please tell me what aspect of the attitude of the Soviets of what they wished ed to do, we are not now intending to do in the West now in 2015? We have even reversed the historic presumption in favor of the individual.

      Came across this in this morning’s readings. It’s the American Planning Association’s fact sheet about Agenda 21 ‘myths’, which of course contradicts other definitive sources I have seen. http://www.planbayarea.org/pdf/Agenda21mythsfacts.pdf Nary a word I see about ICLEI or the Agenda 21 education curriculum created by UNESCO in 2002 for global use. Some conspiracy theory and ‘planning’ is not as American as apple pie. Touchy, touchy about the actual agenda being recognized.

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        • Also seeing these measures being used to push PATHS by name–Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies. Covered here a long time ago http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/promoting-alternative-thinking-strategies-is-this-really-mental-health-first-aid/ and worth revisiting with all the references to an obligation to meet mental well-being and learning needs in the ECAA statute to be brought up on the Senate floor next week on July 7.

          While I was gone a book arrived from the early 70s by Ervin Laszlo. I glanced at it yesterday and Richard Falk of the World Order Models Project had written the Introduction. We have a real coming together in my head and my documents and personal library now of virtually everything. When I was in Boston in April I came across quite a confession from Daniel Bell from the late 50s of the aspirations and vehicles. The only glitch is I hurt my left shoulder with all the nerve-wracking driving conditions so it is a good day for me to read and others to rereas that old post and others if anyone remains unfamiliar with WOMP or Laszlo’s Holos Consciousness being pushed with the Dalai Lama, Club of Budapest, and mandatory mindfulness. I also remembered his later founding in the 80s of the East/West spanning GERG–General Evolutionary Research Group with Csik of Education Excellence, Nel Noddings, Bela Banathy, and Riane Eisler among others.

          It’s like a spider web of people and ideas we know. No wonder Isakson’s had WIOA make systems thinking mandatory to be workforce ready.

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          • I was just in Greensboro on my way to DC. Cut up from there to Lynchburg and then Charlottesville where we had 9 am tickets for the Behind the Scenes Tour of Monticello.

            Did you know UVa is now a UNESCO World Heritage Academic Village? Want to guess how many times I read a pitch about ‘shared [fill in the blank]’? http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/442

            In 1600 miles of driving guess how many colleges I passed by that seem to be the regional source of employment in lots of rural America? Degrees Matter because everyone wishes to switch the US to Qualifications Frameworks where the workforce should reflect the diversity of the population, whether the hiring employer thinks they have the requisite skills and attitudes or not.

            I was talking to an attorney for a state university that is essentially open admissions and she told me they cannot use email with students because the students see that as too much writing. They will take that attitude and lack of an ability to express themselves beyond texting into the workplace. What real use is a college degree for someone who cannot and will not write? They have simply spent years supporting higher ed jobs, much like the grads of 2nd and 3rd tier law schools. They simply enriched profs and admins and impoverished themselves or their parents.

          • This just came out http://bellwethereducation.org/sites/default/files/Bellwether_ESEA_June2015.pdf and continues to show me that the progressives and the so-called right think tanks, as we saw in that America Next report Jindal touted, are actually pushing the same overall ed vision. It fits with the Local-Global vision and polyphonic progressive federalism.

            This nonsense about the states being free is an illusion given the language in ECAA, but it makes for a good talking point.

          • I cannot be the only person who sees the supposed conservative think tanks utter betrayal. Or can they just be that ignorant?

            This past weeks SCOTUS decisions tell just how much freedom we are truly lacking. Cannot help thinking “brace yourself” will be the phrase for the next few weeks.

          • People assume they are conservative because they claim to be, but they function like the right pincer in a desired synthesis. I finished the Laszlo book and it is stunning how well it fits with the actual implementation I tracked in my book and the research I now have for the 2nd book. I can see it in how the new version of ECAA was drafted. It’s all coming together, but it is not going to come together undiagnosed or accurately perceived for what it is and what it intends to do.

            Both Muddle-Headed Kennedy and Deceitful Roberts come across as products of some sort of re-education process while on SCOTUS. This is from something Kurt Lewin wrote in 1945 on the “Principles of Re-Education.” As we have discussed, I really have a fine library documenting confessions of social change, how to do it, and avoid being caught red-handed at this point. On that point, I think much of the hyping on School Choice comes from the behavior science research that what is chosen will be accepted even though the same pushes would be fought if the imposition and deliberate social engineering were accurately perceived. Here’s the quote, with italics in original:

            “…The re-educative process affects the individual in three ways. It changes his cognitive structure, the way he sees the physical and social worlds, including all his facts, concepts, beliefs, and expectations. It modifies his valences and values, and these embrace both his attractions and aversions to groups and group standards, his feelings in regard to status differences, and his reaction to sources of approval or disapproval. And it affects motoric action, involving the degree of the individual’s control over his physical and social movements.”

            Reading that certainly clarifies the need for conceptual frameworks, lenses, and Enduring Understandings, a Whole Child/SEL emphasis, and performance standards and performance assessments that are tasks or projects.

            It all just keeps getting clearer and it all builds on the need for the constructivism the book laid out. Plus it always comes back to John Dewey as well. By Name through the decades.

  5. I somehow missed this white paper by Fullan. Nothing like using K12 to fulfill a very ambitious and horrifying goal: “We can and will define the core learning outcomes as the ‘Six Cs of Deep Learning’, but we first must understand the existential essence of this new human being. It is no exaggeration to say that the new pedagogies have the potential to support a fundamental transformation in human evolution. The result is that action, reflection, learning and living can now become one and the same. This seamless ‘ecology’ of life and learning occurs during what we used to know as formal schooling, post‐secondary and higher education, but then continues throughout life. In this model, learning, doing, knowing, adapting, inventing and living become practically indistinguishable.” http://www.newpedagogies.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Education-Plus-A-Whitepaper-July-2014.pdf

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    • Take a look at that in the context of this new stunner that just came out. http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Wallace%20Report.pdf

      Page 10 highlights the continuing importance of what the CA CORE districts were/are piloting. “It will mean building a collective sense of responsibility for expanding the possibilities for all young people, not just our own children.”

      Unquestionably a document that just reeks of the assumptions of little c communism down to language about the “profoundly unjust status quo” and “all children grow to reach their full potential, regardless of which side of the economic divide they were born” [on]. Some writer was so full of outrage they left out the requisite preposition to complete the thought. Nothing like citing profs for this like Bowles & Gintis who in turn wrote in the cited work that they hoped the Marxist transformation of the US could occur without any or much bloodshed.

      Seriously. I have read that book and even wrote about it on this blog.

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    • Did you see this? http://www.digitalpromise.org/pages/a-summit-to-put-research-to-work

      Make sure you also download agenda and attendee list. Our children truly are being used as psychological guinea pigs in a comparable effort to what the Soviets called “engineering of the souls”.

      By the way I discovered that driving the Pennsylvania Turnpike from DC is far more alarming than the Pacific Coast Highway going south and we left Beckley, West Virginia this morning early. Coming down from the Blue Ridge Plateau lasted for 7 stunning miles.

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      • Btw, the superintendent who over sees the OCDE publicly admitted that Fullan is assisting in developing the new School Quality Index for CA. So I asked him after the meeting if he was aware that 40% of a school’s score was now grounded in SEL. When he said yes, I requested he write a public statement to correct the proponents’ testimony last fall that essentially denied this shift was occurring. He agreed they seemed unaware. I gave him Fullan’s Education Plus paper, and asked him to justify its goals in a free pluralistic society. He said he’d get back to me. I won’t be holding my breath. Now that they are admitting this sea change maybe we can start having some honest dialogue?

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        • The other side was quite angry I called attention to all the other aspects that come in under the banner of the Common Core. Remember the rebuttal attempt to deny this went on in California?

          I am glad you mentioned CCSR since it is part of where I am going today. I linked to Fulton’s involvement with the Clinton Global Initiative and we have tied them to the global Achievement Standards Network through their sponsorship of the Atlanta conference. Another paper says they are creating “enterprise architecture” to use with the student data being gathered. The Director of Accountability told me to my face they do not intend to let informed parents see the data being put together via formative assessments on the students. The new Director of Academics joked about a year ago in a public meeting I was at back when he was still a regional admin that they should use Kurt Lewin’s Freeze, Unfreeze. Refreeze techniques on teachers who were reluctant to go along with the forced changes in the classroom.

          The truth is all these pushes and the language of ECAA itself are about using Lewin’s Re-education techniques on our children to force a shift to collectivism. As an article on China and propaganda put it, we get to be individually ‘free’ but collectively in chains because who we can be is to be so managed via data and formative assessments and what HOTS is actually measuring.

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  7. How could I have missed that Ravich was previously a Brookings fellow? Yikes, that helped clarify some ties with Bats in Oregon.
    Have you noticed that Conley writes endorsements of Fullans work in most of his books? That connects University of Oregon and professor Zhao. No wonder Fullan was a keynote at last years superintendent conference.

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        • Pushing K-12 education is the whole purpose of NAEP. This is a quiet week in general, but I do think ECAA is hoping to gain passage while everyone has their mind on something else.

          That CCSR link is so disturbing in yesterday’s post. All the references to students internalizing the desired takeaway from their developmental experiences. Yet that fits with the bizarre meaning of Challenging State Academic Standards required by ECAA.

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        • This fits right in with the purpose of ECAA and the implications of using K-12 education to quietly rig the mental operating system to make collectivism the assumed necessity. https://ricochet.com/happy-dependence-day/

          As I wrote someone elsewhere, may all the holiday fireworks be the scheduled ones. I will be doing my assigned duty of feeding the Human Eating Machine in for the weekend. I have some pork tenderloins that have been brining since yesterday and some Beach House Baked Beans to make and then some baked whole tomatoes with pesto sauce inside that gets runny as the insides of the tomato soften.

          Hope everyone has the traditions that their families cherish. We will make it through what has been planned for us precisely because we are aware of it on the front end.

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          • Enjoy your celebration! It seems appropriate to focus on a good history lesson of what was created with American independence over our current state of affairs. It is still in the hearts of many and will not be forgotten.

            My family requested pulled pork sandwiches, corn on the cob, homemade mile high biscuits (so they can eat the fresh jam) and beans. For dessert homemade berry shortcake. The house will be full tonight!

            Now it’s time to go annoy my neighbors with my flags. Placing them reminds me of the years of dedicated military service within generations of my family.

          • Don’t forget your Don’t Tread on Me.

            I have never in my life considered putting out a Confederate Flag, but honestly it is frustrating to make that the point instead of the acute evil one young man spewed.

            As someone who had a Northern college roommate, the South made its peace with race for the most part a long time ago and more effectively than so many other places.

            The Dukes of Hazzard should be off the air because it’s a tacky show and belittled the South, not because of a confederate emblem.

  8. A Confederate flag is not in my collection. I do have a smaller tread flag below the main flagpole. Did every military brat receive lessons in proper respect, folding , and rules for our flag? Proper respect is important. I like to keep it classy. My Husband enjoys the Duke’s, but for the vehicles. That’s what I get for marrying a guy from the sticks. I’ll be darned if the tipping of his hat still doesn’t make my heart skip a beat.

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