Back during a previous coordinated stealth assault on our economy and political structures, Professor Benjamin Barber published a Clarion Call book called A Place For Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong. It is the perfect illustration of why I see the actual Common Core implementation and the real End Game intentions so much differently than anyone else. Not only am I reading documents and regs that will control what is to happen, I read the support for the vision as well. Which includes Professor Barber. And simply withdrawing the book from library shelves will not stop the analysis. That merely emphasizes how important the vision and the explanation in the book actually is.
That nerdy expression from the previous post “Generative Metaphor” from Donald Schon’s tool chest to get us to a new society or my new favorite “anticipatory schemata” from a different well-known prof will certainly come in handy if the Goal is the “transformation of the role of work in our economic system will hence have to await the transvaluation of our civic and moral systems.” No need to make an issue of what Political Ideology you want people to embrace thoroughly. You just make it a supplied concept or metaphor or schemata that their school uses from an early age in the classroom to help the young tykes frame their takeaway perceptions from their daily experiences. Now you didn’t really think that all the talk about activities and tasks and actions was really about a better way to learn, did you? It’s a better way to unknowingly imbibe deeply of ideology and never even be aware of it. Students learn to perceive experiences through the supplied framing concepts.
Next thing you know students believe deeply what all these professors want us all to be shifting towards (from Barber’s conclusion).
“Democracy can be our most magnanimous employer. Citizenship can again be the most human of all occupations. .. [history] appears now to be conspiring with [civility]. In a provocative realization of Marx’s prophecy anticipating a new world of abundance no longer rooted in endless labor, our society is moving toward conditions that could nourish the resuscitation of civil society–not just public work but public play, cultural leisure as well as civic labor, fun no less than ferment, the joys of living in place of the burdens of earning a living.”
Barber is not the only one who sees all this Systems Thinking and reimagining of education as moving us towards a new future vision grounded in what Uncle Karl wrote so long ago. Others though leave out the explicit mention that is probably what got Barber’s book pulled off the shelves. When I read Shoshana Zuboff’s 2002 The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism I went back and reread Maurice Berman’s passage on Marx and Modernization in his book to doublecheck that meeting everyone’s needs did in fact form the essence of Uncle Karl’s ultimate economic and social vision.
Yep, so her new enterprise logic of a “distributed capitalism” based on everyone’s “need and support” as its organizing principle basically gets us to a 21st century version of the M word. She wants “Buyer-beware” to give way to “United We Stand” and a reinvention of the employment relationship and the idea that “all enterprises should work for them.” Honestly this vision, which also fits with Senge’s Fieldbook from the previous post, will have the least capable employees the most assertive about their right to be consulted. Capable people tend to be too busy. I am not picking on Shoshana. She has a right to her beliefs just like we have a right to recognize the political and economic theory she is describing as well as the significance of citing Erik Erikson’s theory of human development in her creation of the “psychologized individuals” who will be demanding that society be changed. Won’t the real Common Core come in handy for that if the goal is to create “powerful drives toward interdependence, affiliation and community-building, but in ways that no longer depend upon a priori criteria such as kinship or geography?” Not to mention the real definitions of College and Career Ready we have tracked down.
So K-12 schooling is where those individuals get “psychologized” so they are “educated, opinionated, rights-claiming, and keen to act. They have concepts, ideals, and information.” Shoshana left out schemata as what organizes their view of the world and I’d be willing to bet most of the information supplied will not be accurate. Shoshana’s new individuals will be primed by school and then university to “demand a high quality of direct participation and influence.” Probably in inverse proportion to the genuine value of their contributions to the workplace apart from showing up. But if you believe in the “evolution of the human-spirit” education is your tool of choice.
And Shoshana is not the least bit alone in her aspirations. http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/develop-support-dna-new-capitalism was a McKinsey award winner last fall at Harvard B School to reimagine a fourth sector of the economy tailored to needs. These ‘for-benefit’ firms will integrate social, environmental and financial value creation. All at the same time. And if that sounds pie in the sky. http://www.fourthsector.net/attachments/39/original/The_Emerging_Fourth_Sector_-_Exec_Summary.pdf?1253667714 shows North Carolina on board to foster this new sector that blurs the distinction between public and private. It has Aspen Institute support which means virtually all the big foundations involved with Common Core are also involved with promoting this Fourth Sector idea. Won’t this go well with Aspen’s Effective Teacher eval push? Evals will likely go a long way towards forcing the classroom teacher to cooperate with “psychologizing” individual students as envisioned above. Plus I found this same paper being pushed in Australia. That means this is a global reimagining.
In the last post I talked about Otto Scharmer’s Seven Accupuncture Points paper but not what he called Capitalism 3.0. What his and Senge’s Systems Thinking work in the schools and businesses and on higher ed campuses is intended to achieve as the End Game. And remember we have the UN-affiliated IHDP describing Senge and Scharmer as pursuing the vision of the future that they and Paul Ehrlich’s MAHB are also pursuing globally. I am thus not alleging anything. Scharmer’s economic vision functions much like Zuboff’s distributed capitalism. He envisions value-chain relationships of the politically chosen enterprises in “distributed situations” that “link all players along the value chain, from sourcing raw materials to the end consumer.”
Scharmer wants a “new coordination mechanism” other than private choices driving this value chain of goods and services “that revolves around creating collective action that arises from shared attention and common will.” That does sound decidedly like central planning and coercion but I am sure the generative metaphors and schemata and social and emotional learning in K-12 will prime the personality not to mind this time. Then Scharmer moves on to what is really the essence of what everyone really seems to be wanting from Systems Thinking. And I say that after tackling Donald Schon’s very graphic 1971 book Beyond the Stable State yesterday. Just trust me or we will be here all day. If these profs do not actually use the M word as Barber did they keep describing its fundamental tenets as their aspirational vision.
I am going to cite a long passage from Scharmer (p 12 if you pull report) but he is speaking for a large number of others and this is the End Game that goes with both global education reforms AND all the hyping about whether manmade carbon dioxide is leading to imminent catastrophic global warming. Think Vehicle for Change. Excuse for Change. Desired Vision of the Future.
“are we willing to accept that we are not separate from each other, but are economically and socially a highly interdependent field of interrelationships and communities?
And if we agree that the multi-level connection exists, are we willing to lend a hand to each other? If the answer to that is yes, then the highest-leverage economic intervention would be to simply create a basic human right to a basic income for every human being that, if combined with free or inexpensive access to healthcare and education, would create a level playing field that gave everyone a chance to pursue their aspirations and dreams–to put their real creativity into the service of the larger community.”
That’s what all these profs envision. It’s what Uncle Karl and his good friend Friedrich wanted too so long ago. It’s what the Fourth Sector is getting at and Capitalism 3.0 and distributed capitalism. And it utterly ignores human nature and the results of comparable aspirations in the past. And I tackled the futility of this before with some help from Friedrich Hayek here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/being-grateful-for-what-we-know-and-appreciating-why-it-matters/
But we all deserve a public debate on what is really being sought and whether it can work. I am ready. But right now this vision is coming in the backdoor uninvited while we are in another part of the house or at work ourselves.
We have every right to insist if it wants another chance in the 21st century, this radical vision must knock on our front door and make its case. To all of us.
I am trying to get my friends to look at your blog. It is so important that we understand all you are finding. I thank you for your investigations so we can see what is happening. It is scary and frightening what they are doing to our children. Please stay strong .
Thank you for your kind words. I have said that understanding all this in the context of the underlying history of comparable desires to get at control over people and economic resources helps me to keep it all in perspective. And for many of us education always involved so many lies and false statements that the speaker believed that finally getting past that to the people being cited in the books we weren’t supposed to read is a relief.
I did not go looking for this story but I did have the background that enabled me to recognize what I was looking at several years ago. Then I became the Due Diligence lawyer I am trained to be and went after ALL the drivers in education. Over the last century.
I don’t blame anyone not wanting to look unpleasantness in the face but widespread recognition of what we are dealing with here is the only way to stop it. So many of the people pushing this have spent their adult lives with a paycheck or grant magically showing up if this is the vision they pushed. One of the books I did not cite but got after Pearson pushed it is using stone age societies as proof that equal societies can work. Well the average reader may just accept that but I have looked at tribes and the Stone Age carefully and there was no mass prosperity there. In fact survival was a real issue because envy becomes a real problem where equality is the focus and no innovation occurs. Innovative people quickly got accused of somehow using magic and their lives were at risk.
And the Swedes when they went to these same ed reforms in the 50s and 60s said it was to get toward economic egalitarianism.
I think many administrators pushing this either have a chip on their shoulder or have always been more comfortable with “thinking” that was really emotion-driven. They do not understand what forcing emotion driven thought as a reflex response does to genuine Axemaker Minds from home. Nor do they understand that the ed school insistence that all mental differences are environmental and therefore not legitimate is a political theory converted into social psych. It is aspirational to cause change not grounded in fact. That is true of a great deal of pedagogy now.
Parents and taxpayers need to understand that.
Robin, I have spent years trying to educate people on the communist movement (John Dewey and the Frontier Thinkers) in education. You better believe I’m sharing your blog with everyone and anyone interested in this subject. You have your finger on the pulse of what is transpiring now and I can’t thank you enough for all this information. Sincerely………….
Thanks Carol. Honestly it is an angle I had never thought about until I was trying to figure out why what worked in education was being shut down under Race to the Top and what had always provoked controversy was being expanded. Then a chance remark by Linda Darling-Hammond that the real purpose of the Common Core was social and emotional learning plus her report Democracy at Risk made me wonder if her push for “just enough content knowledge” was connected to what Dewey was really interested in.
Coming across the Netherlands interest in Joseph Dietzgen helped crystallize just how important the mind and consciousness are to someone with totalizing political ambitions. Or just someone who wants to radically change current society.
I am having fun with what I am working on this morning. A prof openly admitting what I have always guessed would be the effect of little accurate knowledge coupled with officially supplied framing concepts. Those concepts or metaphors or “anticipatory schemata” become the “information-pickup device” students use as they encounter daily experience. So the hands on focus and activities means it is all experience and heavily influenced by the senses and there’s little book knowledge fighting against seeing the world in the way desired.
A most excellent scheme. I think we should start referring to the common core for what it really is–an attempt to gain widespread common filters of daily perceptions in a way that will be politically useful. useful that is if the goal is wholesale political, social, and economic change.
I knew something was up and it was solidified for me when my mother suggested I read John Stormers book, None Dare Call It Treason. That alerted me to the manipulation going on in the school systems. What you are presenting brings me up to speed and I’m sharing it with all who might read it and take interest. Problem I run into is most people don’t want to administer the brain cells or time necessary to pay attention. We are in a sad state of affairs in this country. Please look at PJTV and look into the program Allen West is now presenting on it to get through to the younger generation. Your info certainly would open their eyes as to what they are up against! Have a great weekend Robin!
I have stumbled across your site a few times. Our children are currently homeschooled and will stay that way as long as possible–unfortunately, it might not be too long. Because I have several children, I am not able to take the time necessary to read through all of your posts. I want to share your information with others but without a doubt, there is too much to get through. Most–I would say a majority–of parents are not near the understanding you are in this battle. It is more than most can handle to get the kids to school let alone actually look at what they are being taught at school. Wish there were a shortened, cliff note version of your information. I know that is part of how we got here in the first place–sound bytes–but the fact of the matter is, people will not, can not take the time to educate themselves.
When I read Sebastian Haffner’s Defying Hitler, I was shaken. 1930’s Germany–what was pushed through all the schools, towns, etc? Sport. All people should get into sports, become physically fit, active, competitive. So, they all got busy competing, playing; neglecting what was going on around them as there was practice or a game to attend to. Why don’t our current parents have time to look at this kind of information? They are busy shuttling their children to sports practices, dance lessons, and other group ‘instruction’. They have been so in-grained that children must be ‘socialized’ in these group settings and thus they have no time to see what is actually being taught to their children in the classroom.
Lastly, I fear that we may be too late as the teachers coming out of colleges these days don’t know anything different.
Hi beth and welcome to the site. I am weaving a story here using a fraction of the mounds of evidence I have for a very wide audience. I hope to have the book that is written at an easier level out by the fall. It is written but the events subsequent to finishing it that I have been profiling on the blog took me away from finishing editing, art work, and footnotes and stuff like that. First stop the fire has been the motto of the blog. The book is written at a lower vocabulary level than the blog. In the blog I will say impediment. In the book I will use obstacle or roadblock.
is a radio podcast interview I did within last two weeks that people are finding to be a good overview of the Common Core and what is really going on in education and why.
I know my posts so if you will tell me what most interests you I can find an applicable post. I post longer now and less frequently precisely because the stories now have considerable moving parts.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/comparing-the-real-common-core-to-notorious-authoritarian-social-engineering-disasters/ is a free-standing, historically interesting post that is a good introduction.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/if-standardsoutcomesobjectives-what-is-the-real-common-core/ is from early days of blog and is a good intro to the issues.
I think my next post will provide stunning leverage against what is going on in colleges of ed and with Common Core. My hands were shaking last week when I realized the proof I had in my hand just following up a footnote of concern. The book also contains stunning stories that I have in their own words on intentions.
Welcome and comment anytime with questions or experiences or just looking to commiserate.
Robin,
I have just visited this blog for the first time and read two of your
articles here, this one included. I also followed some of the links and
how close would this be to what the END GAME is……………
A PSYCHOLOGIZED WORKFORCE FORMED BY COMMON CORE
THEN BLENDED WITH DISTRIBUTIVE CAPITALISM GUIDED BY THE
EMERGING TRANSGLOBAL FOURTH SECTOR ?
PSYCHOLOGIZED WORKFORCE + CAPITALISM 3.0 + FOURTH SECTOR = END GAME
END GAME = MODERN DEMOCRATIC PARTY OR (PROGRESSIVISM) WITH STATISM
WITH EMPHASIS THAT PROGRESSIVISM IS INDEPENDENT OF POLITICAL PARTY AFFILIATION OR NATIONALITY
Please let me know if this is close. In any case it is making the plan in progress a little more clearer and your work is greatly appreciated to connect the dots for
us. Thank you.
That’s close to what the blueprints have in mind. You shut down Creative Destruction’s ability to come up with a better competing product by levelling away the minds and sticktoitiveness that can create that technology or those ideas. So the current politically connected businesses hope to be the preferred vendors in that needs economy. The Big Picture downside is not something they are focussed on. Pretty sure none of the decision makers were history majors.
The whole point is that a nomenklatura wants to retain or increase current levels of politically created or reinforced power. But the old USSR simply did not produce enough revenue to the state coffers (especially after Saudi Arabia opened the spigots in the mid 80s) and they could not either develop or buy (limitations on what US would sell them) the computer technology they craved. They have been quite sure that ICT was the magic technology Uncle Karl and Engels always envisioned and they did not have it. The excuse given for Communism’s demise was trying to graft it onto a predominately agricultural economy.
So in this manifestation of the nomenklatura control people and resources, there is enough consumption that people are not all in gray and long lines. People are not assuming that what goes on in the schools is designed to change what their kids believe so their guard is down. By the time they understand what happened, enough future voters are fundamentally changed to pressure politicians to get them what they expect. And DO something. And enough is produced that the public sector has funds to buy enough constituencies to keep power electorally.
It’s more complicated than that but snarkiness aside that’s the essence. And it’s the norm throughout history. The one our federal system and divided power were supposed to be a bulwark against. political power does not want to share or give it up. We are apparently about to have a real time 21st century history lesson.
You might want to go back and read this post http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/morphing-the-common-core-into-a-new-rewritten-us-constitution-by-mandating-false-beliefs/. It was on the money when I wrote it in November and all the ways this vision is seeking implementation are only increasing.
If you can find a corner and start with http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/who-knew-karl-marx-had-a-human-development-model-or-that-it-fit-our-facts-so-well/ in early February and come forward you will have a good idea of the sought social, economic, and political transformation. Using education as the means to change the guiding values, attitudes, beliefs, and feelings.
Sometimes I am asked if this is a conspiracy. It’s really a classic case of rent seeking. People who want the coercive and revenue and regulatory power of government to do things for them and take care of them. This is not the Orient Express. This is what people will do with sovereign power if they can. History shows that. Our Founding Fathers knew it from experience in the Old World. We are the ones who have forgotten.