Did anyone guess that we had embarked on another Trilogy, except this time it was in Reverse Order as my personal experiences starting with a phone call to my home on December 17 sent me looking for answers? For a while now, the false narrative being constructed by various employees or allies of the Atlas Network members has both interested and angered me. Angered because it is frequently built on parroting some of my insights and research conclusions. Read Robin’s book, pretend to be an expert, get people to trust you, and take them somewhere I would never go.
For example I would never describe Bill Ayers and Linda Darling-Hammond as “Marxist Humanists” because they are admitted Marxists and rather proud of it. Hint: this is why Ayers was willing to promote violence. Marxist Humanism (see tag) is a belief that because capitalism has reached a certain stage of technological feats, namely computers and the Internet and communications technology generally (abbreviated ICT), there is now enough prosperity in the world that there need be no poverty anymore within countries or anywhere around the world. It’s why the UN’s Post-2015 plans for us are called “Dignity for All” by 2030. As one of my UN news blurbs put it after New Years, we are now Post-2015 and this agenda has begun. Understanding it accurately is very important.
That gets me back to that phone call. After hanging up in anger at what was said and pouring myself a glass of wine while I made dinner, I began to think about what had changed that day. Well, I had made a comment on the blog that I had ordered William Easterly’s book The Tyranny of Experts that had been an Atlas Network supported Hayek Lecture in London. So I decided dinner could be late, went down and wrote up notes on what was said in the phone call, started looking for financial connections among the known players, and examining commonalities as they popped up. In other words, I started behaving like the Due Diligence experienced lawyer I actually am analyzing a set of facts. I also got up early the next morning and proceeded to see what was in the Easterly book that people might not want me to grasp.
That’s what I meant about a Reverse Trilogy as we started with explaining what a Nyaya concept of justice was and how I knew that Easterly’s book did not accurately portray Hayek’s thoughts on the subject of economic and social rights. I have more than a provided talking points knowledge of Hayek as that post laid out. I also know what Marxism Humanism looks like and Easterly’s book and the Atlas Network’s support for it does give good reason to start to whitewash what the term actually means. For parents, Linda Darling-Hammond’s (LDH) pushes in education and Bill Ayer’s past make them known nightmares to be avoided. We have talked about Amartya Sen and his Justice concept and Development as Freedom in the first two posts. He is laying out a Marxist Humanist vision as nyaya and really so is Easterly in his book. If no one has ever actually explained MH correctly though and you now connect it with Ayers and LDH, that actual reality will be missed.
Sen coordinates a great deal with Professor Martha Nussbaum (also tag) on what they call Human Capability Theory, which also describes where P-12 education globally is going. If anyone is thinking I cannot actually tie all this to Uncle Karl, they do not have a copy of Democracy in a Global World covered in the last post. I went into that described alliance for good reason. Nussbaum also wrote a chapter and she tied the vision repeatedly to Uncle Karl by name. It’s also another reason why I found the open-ended Con Con advocacy from the Texas Governor so pernicious. The Chapter was called “Constitutions and Capabilities” and here’s a sample of the kind of direct ties I mean.
“When liberal democracies make constitutions, they typically base their work on a small core of intuitive ideas to which specific constitutional entitlements are referred…The basic idea of my version of the capabilities approach…is that we begin with a conception of the dignity of the human being, and of a life that is worthy of that dignity–a life that has available in it ‘truly human functioning’ in the sense described by Marx in his 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.”
That’s what Easterly called for too without tying it to Marx. It’s what the Atlas Network’s members are actually promoting when they push his work or Sen’s. Back to my story of why I spent so much time researching over the holidays. I know John Dewey backwards and forwards from researching my book, but until I saw this post http://www.greattransition.org/publication/the-earth-charter-at-15 I did not know that Steven Rockefeller of the famous family had also written a bio on him published in 1991 called John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism. I ordered it in part because so many of the people who appear determined to control the narrative about what is really going on with the Common Core also aggressively wear their religious faith front and center. In fact, it seems to be a selling point on why their analysis can be trusted.
An example that had flowed out of my research was the Stand in the Gap Tour in fall of 2014 that David Barton had participated in. I had listened to a video of his speaking at a church in Dothan, Alabama and his description of what was desired reminded me of the cybernetic prearranged structuring of the Mind the behavioral scientists and admitted Leftists also want. That made Rockefeller’s book even more pertinent. As I read the chapter on “Democracy, Education, and Religious Experience” in particular I could see that this same Deweyan vision would create a desired worldview and amenable personality that would also work for a Muslim theocrat wanting to reconstruct the world starting at the level of the human mind (Tarbiyah) or a Christian fundamentalist also wanting to push social justice in the here and now.
I pulled the post title from the book and Stimulating the Inner Springs also fits with what the Hewlett Foundation and the CCSSO today push as the requisite Deep Learning. Isn’t this the real reason for wanting to control the narrative on education? Common means and common ends among interest groups and think tanks that are supposed to abhor each other? When I also mentioned the other day that Charter Schools that use cybernetic methods and adaptive personalized online learning are in a position to reap huge sums under the new Every Student Succeeds Act since those methods of manipulating the Inner Springs are effective and thus “evidence-based,” suddenly a drumbeat began online. That ended in that Project Veritas video that the Common Core was about textbooks companies wanting to make money. Well, they do but that is disinformation in an education environment where textbooks are going away.
In other words, like the phone call at home, do not write about the CMOs or online curriculums that also stand to benefit financially from insisting they are “100% Common Core Free” or who the financial backers are. No one may notice that the methods used are cybernetic and target those inner springs while telling parents this is a form of Classical Education. John Dewey understood that education “is a means of creating individuals” and David Coleman, Bill Ayers, LDH, and UNESCO are not the only parties at the education table interested in creating a certain kind of personality to fit with a desired vision of society and the future.
Last year I went to the Educational Policy Conference in St Louis and yesterday I noticed in a flyer trying to get me to attend that someone was parroting my Chapter 7 title language again, but also promoting the idea that the feds want to create a database of those values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors on students. Not really, educators want to know this so all those things can be changed. That actual cybernetic purpose keeps being ignored. The fact that Charters target these same areas and have to to expand and get their contracts renewed gets left out. Making Classical Education about ideas and not facts is another way to say it is also cybernetic. Looking into the Barney Charter Initiative Hillsdale has put together and its mention of the Circe Institute and its description of what is Classical Education, I thought “That’s cybernetic too and a good reason to control the narrative about the Common Core and shut down anyone who knows what ESSA actually says and who would actually benefit.”
I have long wondered in all the discussions of the College Board’s shift in its AP courses to Conceptual Frameworks and the use of core ideas as ‘lenses’ why people with Social Anthropology PhDs never accurately explain what a cultural lens is. APUSH’s restructuring was never about what facts to teach and yet people who by specialty are thoroughly trained in using cultural lenses never explain what they are. Now I know. If something reeks of the cybernetic means so many of the Atlas members are also pushing, it must not be part of the approved narrative. The truth is it is not only the admitted Left wanting to use education to force a “thoroughgoing democratic reconstruction of society” that “must be child-centered in the sense that it begins with the impulses, interests, and initiative.”
In other words, what ESSA calls “personalized learning with adaptive data” that entitles its pushers to funding as 21st Century Schools. It’s not just the admitted Left wanting to target, like Dewey, “the whole feeling, thinking, and willing person.” That’s why the parroting of values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors functions to inoculate the listener from recognizing that the person they are listening to may also have a comparable agenda. It’s not just the admitted Left and Dewey who want to frame what ideas are salient to the listener and what is likely to get ignored. Politics by Think Tank is all about controlling the Narrative.
It’s not just John Dewey or David Coleman who understand that “emotions are the reflex of actions” and that “if we can only secure right habits of action and thought, with reference to the good, the true and the beautiful [see what I mean about a Classical Education as the cited Circe Institute described it]”, then education will have created “a means of social control that does not violate the freedom of the individual child.”
Well, yes it does because all the false and controlled narratives keep the nature or existence of that control invisible. They make it seem like only a David Coleman, Linda Darling-Hammond, Bill Ayers, or other admitted Leftists have this goal for education in the 21st century.
I have run long again, but let me close with another quote from that chapter and a reminder that there are a whole lot of people pushing a vision of restructured American education using digital learning that they intend to financially benefit from. They also want a fundamental social and economic transformation where:
“To work and think in a community governed by this kind of democratic moral life is for Dewey the only sound approach to moral education in a democracy, which must rely to a large extent on a voluntary spirit of cooperation growing out of a multitude of common interests to maintain social order.”
Again, it’s not just the admitted Left that wants to enshrine collectivism invisibly and without outcry via education creating a “free play of instinctive sympathy and understanding.”
Lots of good reasons to control the Common Core narrative and guide and frame popular perceptions. Call me the mom who refused to play along and notices too much.
I am not as educated or as well read as you but could you explain the bottom line in this post? While I found it very interesting I am not sure as to the intent. Is it that you were trying to say that the enemy is not only on the progressive side of the issue? I am a simple person in need of a simple explanation. Thanks.
Yes, that is precisely what I am saying Karen.
I am saying that the progressive agenda is also being pushed by many who work for or are allied with supposedly conservative think tanks. The intent honestly seems to be an advocate for one vision in public policy and to fundraise on another.
Thanks. I thought that was your point but wasn’t sure. Guess I caught on better than I thought. LOL
Thanks. Just wanted to make sure I was on the right track.
2 sides of same coin. yin and yang of same circle. you have to admit it was a brilliant set up. all the controlled actors coming out of nowhere with real outrage. the know your audience Alinsky organizing frameworks and lenses to sell to each individual customer. like individualized learning for our kids, know the target. Cambridge Analytics type stuff. very OZ.
The Useful Idiot Defense is a little hard to stomach and someone with knowledge of Atlas’ ultimate program has obviously crafted the false elements. There is also the premise about Equality of Opportunity as a given, which again harkens to the MH model and especially Dewey’s concept of what his industrial democracy grounded in a moral community would actually look like.
The false elements all pointing in a common direction is hardly accidental, even if the Idea Pusher is ironically ignorant of the true aims because they are not actually an expert. This is not one person, but it is a common direction involved with everywhere I have looked and mulled over. The synthesis is easy for me to see because I truly do get all the elements, but parents and taxpayers will not. They will believe they have solid information.
The cybernetic elements come through when Dewey starts writing about the need for ideas and feelings to become a “vital part of their own being.” The book describes an address Dewey gave in 1903 on “Religious Education as Conditioned by the Principles of Modern Psychology and Pedagogy. Rockefeller clearly has access to materials no one else has covered in such detail, probably because this was all supposed to come together in radical Ed Reform Try No. 2 in the 90s.
Here’s another relevant quote: “When the values of social democracy and the experimental method are fully integrated into everyday experiences and are spontaneously affirmed in imagination and feeling as the way to social progress and meaningful existence, they give rise naturally to fresh religious expressions.”
Yikes!
Dewey’s desire that specific thoughts and feelings become a “Vital Part of Their Own Being “…seems to be a concept which is appreciated by the Atlas connected alleged champion of conservatives, Mr. Ted Cruz.
It strikes me, no pun intended, that Cruz’s campaign slogan “Catching Fire” is perhaps a veiled nod to those hustlers of cybernetic controls on the right and left that he intends to ensure that the deliberately directed pilot light of approved thought is lit internally in us all on his watch.
Possibly, but you know me if I can’t prove it I do not assert it. There certainly is an alignment among people pushing this faux, controlled narrative and hyping for Cruz. I have been getting emails from various states about USPIE wanting to create captains in all 50 states and then all announce for Cruz just before the Iowa caucus. The Do Not Forward is getting all the obedience that Do Not Copy tends to get in former Iron Curtain countries. That OCEAN framework from Cambridge Analytica is concerning as it gets at what is guiding perception and how people are likely to frame information. As a former IBM exec with the kind of PhD he has, Robert Mercer certainly understands cybernetics and how many decades this model has been systematically developed under the behavioral sciences and systems thinking banners.
On Dewey let me quote a passage that is this bio that I wanted to use , but had run too long. I think it truly gets at what works as an Unholy Alliance among what the behavioral scientists want, the Marxists who understand how the Human Development Society is to actually work, and people of various religious faiths is may be willing to coerce desired beliefs and values for various reasons. I will indent further when it is Dewey and not Rockefeller. Since I have the actual book, the quote of Dewey is from his book Reconstruction in Philosophy.
[R] The reconstruction of social life called for by the democratic ideal and the experimental method of truth has not progressed far enough. Dewey explains the dynamics of the social process that will generate a new religious orientation (my bolding):
As the new ideas find adequate expression in social life, they will be absorbed into a moral background and the ideas and beliefs themselves will be deepened and be unconsciously transmitted and sustained. They will color the imagination and temper the desires and affections.hey will not form a set of ideas to be expounded, reasoned out and argumentatively supported, but will be a spontaneous way of envisaging life. Then they will take on religious value. The religious spirit will be revivified because it will be in harmony with men’s unquestioned scientific beliefs and their ordinary day-to-day social activities.
[R] When the values of social democracy and the experimental method [think Big Data now and What Works Cities and evidence-based policymaking and social impact investing] are fully integrated into everyday experience and are spontaneously affirmed in imagination and feeling as the way to social progress and meaningful existence, they will give rise naturally to fresh religious expressions.”
Later on the following page Rockefeller follows another long quote from that same Dewey book with this summary: ” As Dewey expressed it in ‘Religion and Our Schools,’ a vital new religious spirit will be to a large degree the product of ‘unconscious, organic, collective forces.’ When it appears, it will come as an ‘unforced’ flower of a reconstructed society.”
It’s thus a combination of everything hyped moving in a common direction–remember the hyped Richard Paul Critical Thinking Framework to be NC’s successor to the Common Core?–and personal characteristics of the advocates and what they say they desire in other forums aligning with what Dewey saw education grounded in what would become shorthanded as cybernetics, produces.
John Raven seems to have said it best. Cybernetics creates an internalized keel that can be steered or as Andreas Schleicher of the OECD puts it– a reliable compass that will guide behavior. It’s literally internalized in the brain and nervous system and its presence is what the annual HOTS mandate in ESSA is actually all about.
That was long. China Rose Tea Time for moi.
Robin your statement about USPIE is not true and I would be happy to discuss this with you. I am interested in how you came to this conclusion. There will be 3 announcements at 3 different locations and there is a strategic reason why these particular locations were selected and it has nothing to do with supporting Ted Cruz. I personally am no fan of Ted Cruz. My political positions have no bearing on my involvement with the efforts of this group. But I would be very willing in discussing person to person if you are interested. Thanks
And it’s not true either that Duke Pesta, Jim Milgram, and Sandra Stotsky are some type of Executive Advisory Board for USPIE?
I did not know you were involved. I knew Sheri Few was. I met her at a luncheon she hosted last year at EPC. I think maybe some of the state directors are confused given what I have seen in the letters.
I am an apolitical person at this point in my life and pretty much vote for the “least worst” choices.
I am slogging through the CCR Fourth Dimension book this morning as well as handling a neighborhood issue as POA Pres.
Thanks for the clarification on USPIE. I will take your word it’s not about Cruz and disregard what the State Directors are writing.
I know that you are busy busy busy but if you have some time I really would like to give you the honest and accurate story of what we are doing. I don’t know what is being posted on the state sights. I try to keep up and when I see someone posting political stuff I politely delete it. Our state sites are to promote and educate on our efforts to abolish the US Dept. of Education and nothing political. I deleted some postings last night but keeping up with 51 FB groups is time consuming on top of everything else I do. Thanks.
I am not interested in what you have to say Karen. You are welcome to state your position in print so I and others can read it, but under the circumstances of what I am dealing with these past several months I don’t do chats with anyone but my kids, hubby, and life-long friends.
Whatever your personal intentions for suddenly deciding to comment regularly after telling me if I don’t want my work stolen, I should simply not write, others view your eagerness as indicating I now have an assigned monitor. Given the emails I am getting, I have more humor about it than others are showing.
I do happen to think though that abolishing the federal Department of Education now that ESSA is law and so much can be transferred to the Department of Labor, HHS, or to the states under terms that reliably guide what must occur is a start, but not a genuine remedy. It creates the appearance of a solution without any real aid.
And yes I am busy with personal matters.
I comment when I feel the need. I read all of your posts and I am not always compelled to comment. Most of the people that do comment answer any questions I might have. If my sporadic comments are deemed suspicious then I will cease to comment and only partake in reading. We do fully understand the relationship of education in many other departments and that will be dealt with accordingly. But BECAUSE of ESSA we can no longer do anything meaningful at the state level because our Governors are hooked on the money drug coming from DC and not a single one will ever buck the system. ESSA was written and shared with Governors long before the first vote was ever cast. That is why so many Governors started the rebrand process. So we will take our chances and go for the gusto. You write blogs and I believe in the big dream and there is a place in this fight for all of us. Thanks.
Has this cybernetics “internal keel” idea been shown to work, or is it just these people’s wet dream?
Or, somewhere in the middle, it hasn’t been shown to work yet, but they really plan to make it work this time?
Support for Trump shows at least that many people are rejecting what they see as brainwashing and a PC agenda, hard.
David,
Trump fascinates me.
I agree with you that the public response to his rhetoric indicates that not everyone is as eager to have globalist framed steerable keel . But I cannot shake the feeling that he is, if not exactly, a hired hand for Clinton, perhaps a sort of Canary in the Coal Mine for globalist keel designers.
Cruz has his Data mining operation working overtime so he can pitch perfectly to particular audiences …but could Trump be the ultimate human thermometer, working on behalf of all candidates to flush out what public ideas and ideals need changing for the success of our sustainable future?
Can’t help but wonder….
I hear you got it worse than where I was in NYC. My youngest and I had to seek refuge in lobbies twice on Saturday morning to ask the doorman if we were close. Then with subways shutting own and after we were safely back at hotel we made one more adventure out to see Central Park about 2:30. Yesterday she walked me through the park all the way up to and around reservoir, which I had never seen before. I have the perfect boots for all that snow bought years ago before a trip to the Canadian Rockies and glaciers. Unfortunately they were in Atlanta.
On Presidential candidates I am basically apolitical although I can spot when a plan stinks. Given the language in the already passed ESSA and WIOA and the powers of accreditors, hyping the Tenth Amendment now is a bit disingenuous. That’s not a swipe against a candidate so much as wondering if the advisors are weak or the hope is that we are all too stupid.
Hope you have dug out somewhat. I was in that blizzard as well and luckily had booked us in a hotel close to Grand Central so we could get around.
I think it has been shone to work in trials and this is the big overall launch. This is why there are so many references now on how ESSA and charters will be pushing ‘innovation’. The innovation is actually cybernetics or behavioral sciences. The two terms are synonymous with my resources, but this is something best explained in the CTD sequel and not a blog. In the mean time I do get to spot it by function, which is what I am doing.
While I was out and about I unexpectedly heard a presentation by some college students who were bragging about the unique curriculum that had been piloted there and that was now expanding to other schools. It was the familiar ‘thinking through ides’ that basically seemed to manifest itself as vocabulary terms that were being used to seem erudite and then every fourth word turned out to be ‘like’.
Think impressive vocabulary terms interspersed with the demeanor of a Valley Girl while the adult thinks they are quite ‘educated’. I almost typed edumacated.
Time for a cup of my beloved China Rose loose tea after almost a week.
This is Joy Pullmann’s thoughts on the O’Keefe video and her plugs for some interesting people. http://thefederalist.com/2016/01/18/james-okeefes-common-core-videos-are-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-part-i/
Notice just how much she touts Terrence Moore’s book without ever once mentioning that they have coordinated around opening a school together or already have. I forget which reader called that to my attention when I posted a previous story Joy did on classical education.
It’s also her use of the phrase “capacity for self-government”. Maybe she heard that idea when she was at Hillsdale or subsequently, but it is literally straight out of that Sociocracy push and the Deep Democracy book. That’s my point about teaching through ideas. The ideas come with unappreciated implications.
Or her advocacy of Joy Hakim’s work without mentioning (perhaps she is unaware) that Joy tells history through a known progressive slant. http://www.progressivepolicy.org/author/joyhakim/
Robin,
I thought Hillsdale was the last small liberal arts college that was not contaminated by any of this distorted narrative. But they have been subsumed into the borg as well?
And am I finally comprehending as well that Capacity as hustled so often by Martha Nussbaum refers to the cybernetically instilled internalized keel?
Speaking of Martha N. I was cleaning out my bookshelves the other day and I stumbled on a couple gems from back in the day (ten or more years ago) before I wised up but good. There really is hope for us all if I can use myself as an example of one who was suckered and is no longer.
One book ( forgetting name ) was an anthology of authors speaking on the topic of what makes a meaningful life. Martha N. was included as a sage. Her chapter was an interview she did with Bill Moyer. On three occasions throughout the interview she was sure to introduce the point about ” what should institutions do to support our collective meaningful existences.” Fascinating.
I also found a book by Ervin Laszlo ” The Akashic Experience” Science and the Cosmic Memory Field.” and The Return of Sacred Architecture. Both published by Inner Traditions Press.
Each book was working on its unique audience as part of the larger plan to instill the keel within the mind of the reader. All the cogs have been assembled and are now being fitted together to make the machine operate without so much as a squeak.
Or so they think.
Robin,
This book has just been released or perhaps rereleased as the information within was the basis for the author’s PhD dissertation.
‘Ecumenical Quest for a World Federation: The Churches’ Contribution to Marshal Public Support for World Order and Peace, 1919-1945 ‘ by Martin Erdman. ( can be purchased on Amazon)
It does an outstanding job of exposing the decades of activity laying the groundwork for a merger of church and state. Power elite leaders such as John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen began to drum up religious fervor as a tool to build their utopian vision of a global international order.
Im guessing they were familiar along with Rockefeller of Dewey’s grande hopes and dreams. Ive not read the book in full, although I have read excerpts and I’m familiar with some of the author’s other writings which are incredibly well researched.
Take a look. http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/other/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2016/01/05/1365688_3.pdf This is from about a month ago in Japan, which is part of the oECD Education 2030 Project per that Fourth Dimension book.
It will be hard to see US participation, even though we are, because it is Hawaii participating for the US and it is classified as a single school systems. Not exactly what gets noticed when someone goes on vacation. Puts this though precisely where the King Kamehameha Project occurred in the mi-80s. I have that book too.
Hi Robin how are you well I hope?
I have been reading the Don Bell letters that were mentioned in the comments of your site, the link was broken so I used the way back machine. It is a shame that all the letters were not saved and would you know any one who has a complete set of those letters? This is a link to one that is very interesting,
https://web.archive.org/web/20110713154559/http://www.kingsbenchletter.com/donbell/db19_47.html
The title of the letter is, AN EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTION
“WITHOUT THE BLOODBATH”?
And it has this sentence in it!
“When you consider that the ultimate goal of warfare is the control of the behavior of the vanquished by the victor, we are therefore, in the greatest conflict in the history of mankind. Welcome to World War III.”
It also mention’s some of the names in your book which I have now finished, very good work by the way. But you know when people say the 3R’s Writing, Arithmetic, Reading. May I ask does anyone know why, if you take the first letter from each word, it spells WAR and why any one call that the 3R’s?
I am also working my way through Vicky Davis’s web site and this is a good article about education she wrote, here is the link,
http://www.channelingreality.com/Education/Producing_Standard_Issue_From_Odd_Lots.pdf
and that leads to another link with what she calls a pearl, and I think you will enjoy here is the link,
http://www.channelingreality.com/education/OBE_words_have_exact_meanings_Arnold.pdf
It is still very hard work trying to get any of my friends or family to look at your work, and 5 of them are working in the state education system, I live in England the south east in a town called Margate, and my old school after I had left had Ken Livingstones, ex- wife as the head of the school and he is a very Marxist labour politician! Also I found out several years ago, their is what they call 10 black spots in England where they test out all new government policies, and the Isle of Thanet, which Margate is in, is one of them, so maybe the brain washing is stronger here. I also send your work to a teacher who works at my old school who I went to college with, as I met her when I was out one day and she said they could not muck around with Math. I never get a reply but some people I post to tell me when they try to reply they get a message that my email address does not exist, which is rather strange.
Be good cliff
Thanks Cliff. Stay warm, I understand it is a wicked winter in the UK. I am not sure I have looked a Don Bell before, but that looks interesting. Hopefully other blog readers may be able to help you.
I think people vary in when they feel the need to finally understand the true story and right now, many who think they know what Common Core is about do not appreciate all the management going on. I would not either, but as I said, I recognize the common directions, the aspects of the story people will never mention even though they are aware of the elements and why they are crucial, and the clear but below the surface ties among so many players when that also becomes a focus.
Thanks for your kind words and those links.
Many of the Don Bell letters can be found at americandeception.com.
Thanks Deborah. I really do not like the convergence I see going on here and hopefully I am being as respectful as possible. It is hard without having a copy of the Rockefeller book to fully appreciate just how much alignment there actually is. Another chapter “The Moral Life in an Evolving World” is even more profoundly on point than the one I am laying the foundation with in this post. This is not about faith, but the clear alliance some see with behavioral sciences techniques implemented invisibly and lastingly in Preschool through high school education.
I do not want McREL techniques being pushed in the name of religious education OR social cohesion OR Equity. Colorado knows best of all the dangers of these intrusive practices once bright minds recognize what the schools wish to do to them.
Robin, I am still slogging through all your posts and comments and I just this morning read the one about Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology (mid-November 2014). Oh. My. Word. I have also been turning over in my mind your critique of “classical education” initiatives. The Circe Institute. Any organization named after a witch who turned men into swine should be viewed with extreme caution.
I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to you for persevering in your march to ever lower levels of the Inferno. You are heroic.
Well I have to admit it can be conducive to craving an adult beverage or wanting to shower in the middle of the day sometimes. Steven R as I will call him clearly had access to mid-30s Dewey sources that I believe others ignore because it is so relevant to what is planned. To that Soviet concept of activity theory, let me quote from that new chapter I just mentioned:
“Dewey’s instrumentalism involves a redefinition of the nature of ideas…[so do the descriptions of Classical Education I have been reading since I first looked into Atlanta Classical Academy or Great Heart in AZ when I realized all the references were to changing the students] Reflecting on the role of ideas in experimental inquiry, Dewey proposes that ideas are guides to action in concrete problemmatic situations, that is, ‘plans of operations to be performed or already performed.’ They arise as a mode of response to a problem and they guide action so as to resolve the problem. Ideas are not correctly conceived as reproductions of what already exists, but as plans of something to be done and anticipations of some result to follow. They are tools, instrumentalities.'”
Factually, that’s not true, but boy does it put this now omnipresent idea of teaching through concepts (a la APUSH or AP bio) or Core Disciplinary Ideas and Cross Cutting Themes (a la NGSS) or cultural lenses (social studies framework) into the context reformers have in mind. Now we can tie it to Dewey and how he wanted religious education and all education to work. This is the part that also ties to evidence-based policy a la ESSA or FuturICT or the UN SDGs.
“The validity or truth of an idea can only be determined empirically by putting the idea to use and observing the consequences of the actions to which the idea leads.”
In actuality, that’s a philosophy of life and education that means we are breaking people and working practices based on theories that they can be redesigned to reflect intentions. History says that’s not true, but history via concepts does not. It encourages role play and imagining what might be different.
Given Steven R’s connections, this appears to be so familiar because putting Theory into Practice guides so much philanthropy now. People embued with ideals of doing good frequently do not appreciate what makes the world work as it does. Hayek knew because he saw the dysfunction created by comparable ideas in the past as did Von Mises. Their work now seems to be taught by assigned sound bytes or misrepresented altogether as I saw with Easterly and have also read Cass Sunstein do. It takes the being eliminated disciplinary factual content knowledge to recognize how widely Inapt Metaphors are being offered up as concepts to learn to act on.
Something has come up unexpectedly that I need to look into. Since it may be a few days before I can post let me leave everyone with a 15 minute video that may help you and others appreciate how teaching by ideas can completely change thinking altogether in ways that the Soviets simply called “teaching the dialectic” and I call cybernetics as it involves deliberately designing and building an invisible steerable keel within the mind and personality. It is what everything points to and this D,S, R, P Framework and TED Talk is both referenced in the new Center for Curriculum Redesign book as well as what the Laszlo and IBM connected International Society for Systems Science is pushing.
So much interconnected here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUqRTWCdXt4 Derek Cabrera is the prof’s name.
This may be one of my more naive questions but is this professor truly ignorant of the process he is advocating or is he a useful idiot believing his own sloppy thinking is golden having been accepted into the fold of self worshiping elitist educrats of Ivy League academia?
He is the very humanistic robotic model of the type of individual he wants more of who imagines his ideas are his own when in fact that student has been seduced and brainwashed to parrot beliefs of others never doubting for a nano second his thoughts are original .
I think I just answered my own question . This is what happens when you think without instruction .
Kelleigh Nelson is brilliant. I’ve read many of her articles but not this one. It is an excellent read and worth the download as well. Thanks for passing that along Cliff.
I know how excited you get when you see the word “design’ so here is something to rile you up now that winter’s chill is finally here. http://www.personalizelearning.com/2015/11/choice-is-more-than-menu-of-options.html
And then there’s this as dessert. http://www.personalizelearning.com/2016/01/continuum-of-voice-what-it-means-for.html
Don’t we just love pictures and such descriptive graphics?
Oh Gee Whiz Thanks!
Yep Nothing like Design Thinking, Thinking Tactics, Thinking Scripts to brighten my day. I just adore being told how to align my thoughts and those of my kids for appropriate and hygienically approved attitudes and future actions.
P.S. I mistakenly credited Kelleigh Nelson with the essay Cliff linked to. She is also a wonderful researcher/writer but the essay which I referenced to was written by Jeanne Georges. My apologies !
Reading this explanation of Design Thinking and Continuum of Choice graphic- moving from Teacher Driven to Learner centered- I am struck by so many thoughts. I also wonder why I am still surprised at the devotion of the hawkers and their intended teacher -facilitator audience to the patent baloney issuing from the pens and mouths of self appointed experts. There seems to be a willing suspension of disbelief among earnest educators. No one is questioning the vapidity of the ideas much less the repetitive verbiage. Learners Learning to Learn the Learning that is worth Learning…. blah blah blah blah….
1. Design Thinking as it is articulated in this article strikes me as pretty straight forward conditioning for internalized acceptance of Delphi Dialogue-ing beginning in high school. May as well ensure early that the kiddos are comfortable with handing over their brains to Thought Leaders in career and college discourse dialogue team building and productivity meetings. How else will they know what their personally and uniquely chosen Pathway for meaningful career is? The assessments and credentials alone won’t give them the voice they have a right to so that they can responsibly advocate for their needs.
2.And the exhortations to Change and Solve Problems and Advocate..sheesh…. this is participatory democracy 101 I know..but a quick scan of the comments from the Personalize Learning page and all of it seems to be flying right over the teacher’s head. No one is calling shenanigans and asking what the heck should 14 year olds be so hot and bothered about that needs CHANGING.
3. Entrepreneur-ship as Means To Self Regulation. Now this is brilliant. I’ve been waiting for a better reveal from early adopters about that one. I guess EntrepreneurSHIP becomes another way to identify how steerable a child’s internal keel has become.
4. Look at that Continuum Graphic – For accuracy’s sake if we really want to see what the effective outcome will look like, replace the cute little kid activist image with a graphic depicting the evolution of man- But in reverse. Knuckle dragging is the effective Outcome.
This is all impressively awful.
Thanks for the breakdown, MC. In relation to point #3 do you remember how Fullan reappropriated the definition of entrepreneur?!
“There is one big ‘E Squared’ that permeates this endless cycle of learning in action: Ethical Entrepreneurialism. This breaks the distinction between being able to work with your hands and your mind and gives a new, deeper meaning to the term ‘entrepreneurial’. In our conceptualization entrepreneurialism is not just about making money but also being able to identify and resolve complex personal and societal challenges locally and globally.”
Here’s a link to the doc…beyond ridiculous that so many are buying into these vacuous claims.
http://oucqa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/G.-Scott-Plenary-Talk-3-11.15-12.15pm-Churchill-Room-Handout-1-of-2.pdf
AHHHHHHH!
This is gold. Thank You JT. This is such drivel. But its all making more sense to me now. There is an independent school in my area that has been an early adopter of all these obnoxious trends for almost 10 years. The former head with her PhD Leadership degree was anxious to be in the club of approved Independent Ed apparatchiks . ( Said school is falling apart at the seams now as well. No accidents) But thanks to her they now have a Center For Entrepreneurial Leadership in their grades 9-12. Its utter crap. The main push has always seemed to be around ‘designing”, a la Design Thinking, micro-businesses involving bracelet weaving with indigenous peoples in third world countries and empathy tourism .
Kelleigh Nelson is supporting Donald Trump. She is just another side of the same coin pretending to be different. The Freedom Outpost is posing as Conservative, but it’s very Liberal. Like Robin said a lot of Conservative operations are not what they appear to be.
http://freedomoutpost.com/author/kelleighnelson/
I don’t understand why Trump is so popular. He has a history of paying off politicians especially the Clintons. Why would he suddenly be honest? He is no different than Hillary. He will say anything to get elected.
I think people are in for a big surprise if they think Trump will save us or even try to save us from all of this. Weird times.
Sorry you were in the que for so long. I have been out of town and then got stuck in the NE with the blizzard.
Hmmm.. Anon. …
Sorry to know that Kelleigh is supporting Trump. Yes Trump imho is no good. I think he is distraction for Clinton at best or possibly a human test monkey to determine the publics level of angst in general. Generally , I do not find him to be someone worth trusting.
And I do know Freedom Out Post is a ruse as well. But as with so many of these sites that are controlled opposition I find there are gems of information to be found amidst the hustle. Sometimes its just about reading between the lines to know what the real agenda is.
Is this really history? http://www.edutopia.org/blog/history-empathy-systems-thinking-gaming-matthew-farber
Here is the link to that reordering of college admissions so that priority goes to those who manifest empathy and actions for the ‘common good’. http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/16/01/turning-tide-inspiring-concern-others-and-common-good-through-college-admissions
Notice CASEL’s involvement–Roger Weissburg is listed as one of the named endorsers. I also noticed that Making Caring Common has a description of what is sought that honestly fits the criteria of the little c version of a notorious 20th century ideology.
The odd thing was the publicity launch was at the NYC Public Library on Fifth at 42nd and I was staying just on the other side of Grand Central and could have gone if I wasn’t in mama/Logistician in Chief mode.
A real organized effort going on to insist that being smart no longer counts, but I doubt if that is going to work out well. Plus it’s no wonder that history is being redefined as experiential and anachronistic role playing. Going back to Johann Fichte as described in CTD, the deliberate targeting of human nature by political authority has just never ended well. Perhaps all the AI degree holders who are now at Harvard or too many sociology degree lovers have warped the sense of what can and should be legitimate aims for governments at any level.
And this is The Future of Jobs report that came out of Davos last week. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf
All of the GEFF meetings we have been monitoring throughout 2015 and the 2030 vision the Laszlos, VanderArk, Knewton’s founder, and the OECD and UNESCO are all involved in were leading up to Davos.
thank you Cliff. I read the whole piece Words Have Exact Meanings by
Jeannie Georges .
I have read Robin’s book and the blog but I am not an expert on these issues. It was helpful to read something specific on OBE etc. The examples helped. I think more concrete examples, taken from actual classroom teaching, would help people understand OBE and Mastery Learning even more. It is difficult to anchor and understand concepts like OBE without specific examples.
At this point both terms indicate to me instruction that is designed to provide the internalized concepts, values, images, and beliefs that will then guide and ultimately motivate desired and predictable behaviors. It will take numerous chapters to explain all the research I have at this point, but there is a consistency now across decades and languages on desired intent.
I finished Connected Code this morning and it reminded me of that Project XQ redesign of high school Laurene Powell Jobs is funding that is also a White House initiative. Decided to see what was going on there and up came this news article from November that Jobs was the purchaser of Amplify from NewsCorp. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-news-corp-powell-idUSKCN0T930V20151121 Russlyn Ali, whose civil rights agenda I have watched since she was at Ed Trust-West with that Wireless Generation/Amplify technology may be a more alarming mechanism for levelling equity than even misinterpreting civil rights laws.
I am so tired of reading about the need to shift away from an individualist conception of thinking to a participatory mode and the joys of the Maker Movement. I will incorporate some specific examples of hoped for shifts in the next post.
By the way Connected Codeadmits it is all a reincarnation of John Dewey’s practical experience curriculum and for the same reasons. To promote seeing how the existing world can be altered politically and socially.
My houseguests are stirring. Back to cook mode for me!
Pricking Balloons
We’ve got our share of 21st Century dreamers and expeditors in Canada.
But, finally, we’ve got a credible professor, Dr David Livingstone, who is speaking out and getting a splash in the media.
This is the headline in the newspaper copy: BC kids guinea pigs in dubious public school experiment.
In the online story, the headline is: BC’s revised public school curriculum: Preparing for a Brave New World?
http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/editorials/opinion+revised+public+school+curriculum+preparing/11655627/story.html
Such a breath of fresh air from the stale, suffocating Fullan rhetoric!
So nice to read someone with a sound perspective. Great link, Tunya!
Fullan and Linda Darling Hammond are the leading experts in CA regarding the state’s new school quality index. Watching their theories shift into practice is rather dismal–so nice to hear a voice of reason from BC.
Hi Robin,
has W Clement Stone came up in your investigations or his foundation, W. Clement Stone and Jessie D. Stone Foundation, here is the link,
http://www.wcstonefnd.org/
And perhaps these interrelationships will be more easily understood if we show the interrelated involvements of three persons; William Glasser, Clement Stone, and Richard Nixon (not necessarily listed in the order of their importance).;
(He had something to do with Richard Nixon getting elected, and published school text books. cliff)
Now, let us remember that PPBS is a Fabian Socialist System. And Fabian Socialism relies on the twin powers of legislation and education for the “selling” of its end product.
This information is from this don bell letter,
https://web.archive.org/web/20110622180350/http://www.kingsbenchletter.com/donbell/db19_51.html
Don Bells real Name was Clarence Alton Belial, and he joined the USA marines to become a reporter and after 19 years abroad when he returned to the USA he knew something was wrong and had changed in the USA! This is all explained in this letter,
https://web.archive.org/web/20140408212936/http://www.kingsbenchletter.com/donbell/db23_52.html
Have you ever heard of the PPBS, Planning Programming Budgeting System, In the UK known as the PEP, Political Economy Planning? Well According to Don Bell it started in 1953 in the USA and the first 17 letters, at the way back machine are all about this. As far as I know he started to write these letters in 1953 and was still writing then in 1993,
So I think their are at least 40 volumes which would amount to 2080 letters, some thing for modern historians to study?
But would you believe it I was looking at the economic department at Oxford and found this,
Professor Vincent Crawford, Drummond Professor of Political Economy(PEP FROM THE DON BELL LETTERS? cliff), Fellow of the British Academy
Be good cliff
Cliff,
I was just explaining PPBS to someone this morning and how it changes education to be about creating employable werker units ( a/k/a kids ) for the state and that Accountability refers always to State pre determined goals.
Arg.
On one of your pet peeves. http://asiasociety.org/files/A_Rosetta_Stone_for_Noncognitive_Skills.pdf I saved all the emails where I knew I needed to save link or download when I got back.
Your comment on PPBS reminded me that one of those links is Alice Rivlin back in the 60s citing PPBS as the first official implementation of systemic analysis of the kind we now have whole hog with What Works Cities and FuturICT. Apparently Brookings is reissuing her book on the subject.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2014/systematic-thinking-for-social-action
Here’s the whole alarming disclosure and again this is the kind of thing Atlas members are pushing as well and not just a Center for American Progress, Brookings, or PolicyLink.
Basically the best way to implement public policy is to noetically change the electorate without telling them.
http://21k12blog.net/2016/01/19/next-generation-noncognitive-assessment-is-needed-now/#more-6764
Brilliant. This link is so timely. I am trying with all my might to explain to some friends who are as pissed off as I am why our independent school is suggesting it is at all valuable to have our kids answer a third party Bully Survey that asks for all manner of personal, private information .
Its all about the Accreditors. How all schools now must provide evidence of the social emotional, psychological underpinnings that guide the behavior of the student body. For the Common Good.
It also creates an expectation from an early age that there is no zone of legitimate privacy nor is there an entitlement to insist that personal beliefs anf values need not be expected to yield to the demand of governments or collectivists.
When a Ted Cruz or any other politician prattles on about the Tenth Amendment I want them to make conservatism grounded in the sacred character of the individual in the Western tradition, not a belief that Statism is just fine as long as it is local governments imposing. They do not impose it in the light of day. They use appointed bodies or delegated entities like the accreditors or disingenuous practices like a Whole Child emphasis, Competency, or formative assessment to neurologically change what guides and motivates behavior and how life’s experiences are interpreted or even noticed at all.
They also impose it at the Big Data level. It bothers me that this is what Cambridge Analytica does and also what Heidi Cruz’s two private sector employers–Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase push now as social impact investing. Who want a Bloomberg to run with all his post-mayorality work for the Clinton Global Initiative and What Works Cities.
Not a fan of anyone running in fact. It’s just that some of their work is more egregious than others. Hillary lied to those Benghazi families and could care less about preserving national security as long as the CGI’s work was not at risk.
Running errands after being gone a week and catching up on reading. I actually took a book of fiction with me-part of the Hangman’s Daughter Tales books. This one was called The Werewolf of Bamberg by Oliver Potzsch.
Paraphrasing from 21k12 blog:
We know that cognition cannot be changed but that PERSONALITY can be.
Also…Making Caring Common ….nothing less than Mandatory Volunteerism on steroids really .
“Love Your Servitude Serf..I mean…Meaningful Authentic Service….SERVICE! “
The field of candidates Is depressing. And voting for the lesser evil feels increasingly impossible. There isn’t really a lesser evil anyone imho.
Just the fact that HC is still a viable candidate even though so much $$ found its way into CGI coffers from people tied to the Canadian firm that sold its U.S. Uranium rights to Russia with HC’s approval while at State Department tells me that
our republic is corrupted in deeply fundamental ways.
I indulged in marathon viewing of the older HBO series Rome during Snowmageddon. So many parallels to the present. History repeats as they say. Painful to watch though…not the series….Our Present Reality.
Take a look at this “A Conversation between Amitai Etzioni–communitarian and Active Society architect and Robert George, Princeton prof and Cruz mentor and founder of Atlas member, American Principles Project and its affiliate Truth in American Education. http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/etzioni/M34.pdf
The comments on several articles regurgitating Harvard’s Making Caring Common initiative were fascinating. A number of them saw this move as discriminatory towards Asians. Most people missed the end game entirely and chose to accept the Newspeak at face value. But this one comment I read summed up the situation quite nicely. The author wrote:
“The goal of socialist intellectuals is to remove objectivity from every aspect of life. Doing so permits them to apply whatever fluffy, subjective standards are PC at the moment. To collectivists, “service” means “servitude”. Who receives the benefits of servitude/slavery? Collectivist leadership and government. Doom “
I forgot have you got a link for Kelleigh Nelson, mc, thanks cliff
Hi Cliff,
Sure, here you go!
http://www.newswithviews.com/Nelson/kelleighA.htm
That conversation between Amitai and Robert is a masterful representation of the Dialectic on Steroids . Wow.
Isn’t Etzioni’s ” society” simply The State coercing civil serf’s behavior at the local level??? It seems ( and I may be off base here) as RG follows this bit below with an alignment of their ideas he disingenuously suggests that both he and Amitai really advocate for “hands off governance” of the private, social realm. But in fact both, intellectual thugs, want to micro-manage invisibly every last detail of human existence.
Also fascinating to me is RG’s insistence upon Subsidiarity being something unique to his brand of social conservatism. He suggests Socialist and big govts in general do not appreciate that the law should merely be “helpful” and not coercive. Which is really hilarious to me given that as recently as last March I recall reading an article on Finnish ( maybe it was Swedish) Ed that insisted that its government was acting under the principal of subsidiarity when it provided Choice in education to the people. Nevermind that the CHOICE in schooling was simply location and brick and mortar design. The curriculum was the same regardless.
RG: “Turning now to the main point, you write that communitarians “advocate state restraint because they believe that society should be the agent responsible for promoting moral behavior.” And you suggest that this distinguishes them from social conservatives who would rely on the coercive power of the state.”
That conversation is apparently part of one of Etzioni’s books from the 90s. Pondering the implications pulled this up https://isistatic.org/journal-archive/pr/25_01/wolfe.pdf
It’s a review of George’s book from the early 90s, about the time George was mentoring Cruz on the possibilities of the 9th and 10th Amendment, on his book Making Men Moral. Hard not to believe that someone with that goal and touting the common good, rule of law, and social cohesion would not find education about internalizing a desired and invisible noetic keel to be highly useful.
What if Making Men Moral fits with the Tarbiyah goal of Making Men Inerringly Faithful to Its Vision and this new Making Caring Common and Kohlberg’s Moral Development as a Citizen and the behavioral scientist’s desire to make behavior predictable?
No wonder everyone basically covers up that Rockefeller book on Dewey. No wonder I read it and immediately realized how much it fit. I finished CCR’s Four-Dimensional Education yesterday in between restocking my frig and getting a new drivers license and the ending was describing sociocracy without using the term.
Had friends in town last night but I am going to go back and slowly reread that review and contemplate how controlling the narrative over education fits with Big Data and the usefulness of the cybernetic keel being installed.
Princeton is after all where the noosphere research goes on at and also where Richard Falk of the World Order Models Project was at for years.
“What if Making Men Moral fits with the Tarbiyah goal of Making Men Inerringly Faithful to Its Vision and this new Making Caring Common and Kohlberg’s Moral Development as a Citizen and the behavioral scientist’s desire to make behavior predictable?”
Yikes. Makes those Engrenage graphics all the more sinister. Something makes me think these actors have extremely rigid rules about how to properly load a dishwasher.
” Zee knife must go in Zees Vay and zee fork must feet in like zees, Ja? AGAIN.”
Digital learning means that the actual ‘learning experiences’ and the resulting internalized and external changes can be tracked. So the sarcasm of your dishwasher analogy is not actually off point. I keep thinking of a comment the Knewton CEO made about the data flowing from the Common Core learning tasks will finally provide the needed info on what works, on whom, and to what effect.
You do realize there is a word that combines the desired internalized aspects and its effect on personality along with the outward manifestations of behavior? Competency. When Milton Rokeach (has a tag) first developed that term in the 60s with federal research funding he said it combined values and behaviors in a seemingly innocuous term.
I am still wading through that critique, but George is alarmingly authoritarian. I made a note that if he believes that the criminal law may be used to combat a threat ‘undermining society’s constitutive morality and therefore social cohesion,’ how much better is a method of P-12 education that seeks to create a steerable keel within the individual’s mind and personality to create the needed “shared set of moral beliefs”?
The differing visions of all these dreamers, philosophers. and, quite frankly, political thugs, does not alter that everyone seems drawn to making education globally about creating this cybernetic keel. And we ordinary people were never supposed to recognize this was what was going on.
Yet we got here anyway, in part because of all this active coordination and deceit to subvert the facts documented in my first book and what I also now know from researching the sequel. The untethered human mind, stocked full of facts, is the most dangerous weapon to anyone with aspirations of tyranny. We have that at a Bipartisan and Bicameral basis and from the local to the statehouse and Governor’s mansions to Congress and the White House to the UN, OECD, and the World Bank. All coordinating a la Engrenage while we follow now in real time.
This says this dialogue is from an Etzioni book called The Monochrome Society. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7019.html
It also says that that particular book is part of a series that George is the editor of. This all does fit with there being a desired synthesis in need of a so-called Right and Left pincer to direct advocacy instead of simply dictating the synthesis from the get-go.
It makes it feel like there is choice involved even if that belief is illusory as a factual matter.
“They will not form a set of ideas to be expounded, reasoned out and argumentatively supported” – Dewey [from the robin post above]
That pretty much sums it up. It also explains why there is no liberal talk radio. How would you reason with a person having these ‘values’?
Robin: I think quotes like this from Dewey have value as distilling what they want.
Then you will really have fun with the post I just got up.
Having dug into Robert George’s work since I got back in town, his emphasis on a good and just society also fits with Dewey as Rockefeller describes him. It fits with what I know from writing my book, but Rockefeller seemed to have better access to the work from the 30s than others have been willing to use.
If Dewey seems innocuous, remember it was not just Lenin who used his work. He was also Mao’s favorite philosopher. He created a pathway to collectivism using education to tether the mind and personality.
Dewey was also Mao’s favorite philosopher.
???
Do you have any links or source for this?
I have a hard copy source for that. It says that Dewey was who Mao liked to read in the 20s. This is not my source but is consistent with that. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/article/viewFile/22/44
As is this http://www.academicroom.com/article/critical-evaluation-john-deweys-influence-chinese-education
And this http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2013/05/john-dewey-in-china/
IIRC Mao also let in NAEP designer and 8 Year project creator Ralph Tyler at a time China remained closed to foreign visitors.
There is also a paper where Benjamin Bloom’s wife talks about a tour of China they made in 1987 where “they were treated like royalty.” When I read that years ago I was just coming to grips with OBE and its implications and I wondered why.
Also this https://www.bookdepository.com/Comparison-Educational-Ideas-Practices-John-Dewey-Mao-Zedong-China-Xu-Di/9780773497993
And this one has made it to ERIC. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED325448.pdf