The previous two posts illustrated real-time proclamations from just the last few weeks that fit with what we are going to cover today–the quietly imposed Common Framework for the Ethics of the 21st Century issued by UNESCO in September 1999. It grew out of Universal Ethics Project begun in 1997, imposed invisibly by education, P-12 and higher ed, under obscuring terms like learning, outcomes, standards, and competencies. The Framework was referenced in a footnote I came across while trying to chase down the common education agenda being pushed by the admitted Left Pincers (in this case communitarian prof Amitai Etzioni) and American Principles Project founder, Robert George, as a representative of the School Choice pushing, but headed in the same actual direction, Right Pincers.
Before I could write up the implications of that Framework, we suddenly had Ms DeVos’ statement about the moral obligations none of us may abdicate and the Positive Education practices mandate coming from the World Government Summit. Since they each seemed to assume the shift into the obligations of a Framework few of us are even aware of, I went with the “this is coming now” approach in the previous two posts. Now that the Imminence is crystal clear and not speculative, let’s take a look at what is being concealed from us. Because this is a blog, not a book, this post will be followed next by how I know for sure that this is where all the deceit surrounding the Common Core and School Choice really leads.
Those who have read Credentialed to Destroy are aware of just some of the evidence I cite on why I believe the ending of the Cold War was somewhat stage-managed to let education quietly assume the transformational reins. Let’s add to that body a Gorbachev book, The Search for a New Beginning, I did not have then telling us what Perestroika was really about. Gorbachev wanted to “join politics with morality” and create a Framework for new forms of required interaction and new forms of thinking. Instead of “artificially constructed utopian schemes” that “are not workable anywhere,” he called for:
“The recognition of the world as an integral whole [which] calls for a change in our value system, or to put it more precisely, for actualizing the initial values that are inherent in the nature of the human being as a social and spiritual entity. In one form or another, and in varying degrees, those values are reflected in the world religions and in the great humanistic doctrines.”
In a preview of what will be coming in the next post, substitute the word ‘Virtues’ for ‘values’ in that quote above and we quickly get to precisely where Classical Education is taking Privates and Charter Schools. First though let’s get back to Gorbachev’s bluntness because it explains so well the language we will cover on the need to shift away from traditional views of Individualism and rationality. (the italics are in the original text)
“The future of human society will not be defined in terms of capitalism versus socialism. It was that dichotomy that caused the division of the world community into two blocs and brought about so many catastrophic consequences. We need a paradigm that will integrate all the achievements of the human mind and human action, irrespective of which ideology or political movement can be credited with them. This paradigm can only be based on the common values that humankind has developed over the centuries.”
We will leave Gorby now and shift back to the supposed new values, ideas, and principles that people need to internalize from an early age (enter education tied to behavior and the Whole Child which is precisely what performance standards mandate) so that everyone can “flourish” in the 21st Century. Sure enough, that particular uncommon verb is ubiquitous now throughout the UNESCO Ethics Framework, the Positive Education Practices we encountered in the previous post, as well as the NIH-funded and Templeton Foundation sponsored Science of Virtues going on now at U-Chicago. What are the odds of such common, uncommon, terminology?
The cool thing about the Ethics Framework is that there is no overt, publicized command that makes people feel coerced. The Russians and Chinese noticed those edicts from on high simply did not work as well as using a reenvisioned type of education that affected “the will of individuals in every and all situations in which he or she acts.” Once that Learning becomes a Habit of Mind we have installed an invisible internalized neural rudder that allows society and an economy to be steered and guided without anyone needing to be the wiser. Students will have Moral Dialogues grounded in “philosophical value knowledge” (just like the School Choice-advocating Manhattan Institute laid out recently in an odd “Republic in the Atlantic” piece in City Journal).
The goal of education then, whether marketed as “knowledge, skills, and dispositions” in K-12 or Essential Learning Outcomes in higher ed, is actually aimed at using reading, classroom conversations, group projects, and virtual reality adaptive learning aimed at:
“developing the capacity of individuals to make right evaluations of others’ actions, of events, situations etc., and to find out, in the light of philosophical value knowledge the implications of such a will: what they should, or can, do, so that human dignity can be protected or be as little damaged as possible in the given unique situation, in which they have to act, as a whole.”
If that aim is not graphic enough that what the Universal Ethics Framework, instilled via education, seeks is a “paradigm shift in consciousness” so that we can all “apply our minds collectively and …work towards a new intellectual and spiritual renaissance,” let me use another. This quote from Paris, March 27, 1997, bemoaned that:
“whereas humanity is transiting to the global society, our minds are still mired in pre-global concepts. And it is this difference, it is this gap between the emergence of the global society and the non-emergence of a global consciousness, that is at the root of many of the problems that we see in the world today.”
If the means of closing that gap and creating the desired new thinking and ethics is new ideas and values, is it coincidental that suddenly the relief offered from the horrors of the Common Core is framed in terms of Character Education, Positive Psychology, Conceptual Understandings and Core Disciplinary Ideas as the ‘content knowledge’, and Virtues?
Does anyone else feel like the remedy offered is actually grounded in this little discussed Ethics Framework? Because apparently reenvisioning the human future is “affected and even determined by the behavior of humans acting on the basis of normative ideas and principles.” If education in the 21st Century is actually premised on the italicized “question: what values and principles may be mobilized in order to steer the forces of technological and economic change for the purposes of human survival and flourishing?”, aren’t we even entitled to know that is the foundational question behind all these imposed changes?
There’s that ubiquitous aspirational verb again. Anyone else wondering who will really flourish in this vision?
Oh my. However will I FLOURISH if I remain MIRED in pre-globalist thinking and my whole person is deprived of the mandated virtues that will ensure our collective survival and success as a species??
Perhaps, if I was on the tax free UNESCO & Co. payroll I might have a more innate appreciation and understanding of our shared task at hand.
After I wrote this post I was going through my emails and making one of my kids’ lunch. There comes along this post. https://jaypgreene.com/2017/03/13/see-you-at-the-crossroads/
As you know, the PEPG annual reports are just full of references to Jay Greene going back to when he was still a poli sci prof at U-T-Austin before turning to education reform as the elixir. https://www.manhattan-institute.org/expert/jason-bedrick Bedrick writes a lot for the Manhattan Institute I mentioned and Lindsey Burke writes for Heritage and was at the 2012 and 2016 Global Homeschoolers Education Conferences with their Rio Proclamations that fit right in with this Ethics Framework too.
What does this post do, but end with a mention of ‘flourish’ too. Do you think it’s subliminal at this point because it’s the word used at all the conferences they attend that we are not invited to?
It’s not just UNESCO. OECD has the same tax-free arrangement on top of good compensation and benefits and they openly refer now to their educational vision for our children as “developmental cognitive neuroscience.”
They both see School Choice as the panacea for their plans because the needed manipulation is largely out of sight of parents. As I have said, I could fix this but not without better recognition of what the poisons are and who administers them.
Stay warm.
Turns out Bedrick also has direct ties to PEPG–his Masters. http://educationnext.org/author/jbedrick/
There is great irony in making “trust the parents” the sales pitch when there is such an organized effort to mislead the parents.
Bedrick is now at EDChoice, which ties him to Greg Forster’s communitarian vision of Accountability. https://www.edchoice.org/our-team/jason-bedrick/
Notice Marty West was his favorite class and teacher. West was Lamar Alexander’s Ed Advisor on ESSA and testified.
“….who will really flourish in this vision?”
Power hungry psychopaths that, because of the cloak of weaponized terms, “neutrality”-so called, and political correctness, very few believes exists; that’s who.
Interesting article. Reminded me traditional mathematics being accused of racism.
http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/story/news/education/2017/03/11/test-meant-screen-teachers-instead-weeded-out-minorities/99050796/
How do they square all this Flourishing with their population hysteria? Oh right i am thinking of the ACTUAL meaning of the word. My bad.
Look at this P21 program in Chicago next month put on with the same UNESCO as who sponsored the Ethics Framework https://cosnconference.org/program/global/
Also CoSN–the Consortium for School Networking.
Remember that Milton Rokeach, when he first invented the word Competencies to mask the nature of the educational shift back in the 60s, said that it masked a values component that went along with the skills. Matching the internalized driver with the external behavior is how we now understand that.
Parents have no idea that their neighborhood schools are tied to these global organizations. For so long the “leaders” of the anti CCSS groups refused to acknowledge any global ties. If you mentioned UNESCO you were called a conspiracy nut. And now we have P21 partnered with thousands of K12 schools and hosting a global competencies conference with UNESCO. While parents were fighting standards, they were intentionally left in the dark about the shift to competencies, about the global powers driving this reform, about the hidden agenda to steer thoughts, beliefs and actions. Systematically, parents have been marginalized. And now that they are wildly ignorant, they can enjoy the illusion of being involved.
Since I happen to have UNESCO’s current definition of Competencies handy let me quote it. It also explains why I found what I found in Credentialed to Destroy that Competencies and outcomes-based education language always go hand in hand. Personally I think there is a good case to be made that all this organized deceit across state lines to get taxpayer money rises to the level of RICO violations once accurately grasped. There’s just no good Italian food to be had as a side benefit of all the coordinated collusion.
“Learning outcomes are essentially evidence of having acquired competencies. They attest to the effectiveness of educational systems at delivering quality education and effective learning…It is generally understood that a competency implies an articulation of knowledge, values, skills, know-how and attitudes that learners can mobilize independently, creatively and responsibly to address challenges, solve problems and carry out a complex activity or task in a certain context. In other words, a competency is ‘what the individual achieves in results, in an action, or in a way of behaving.’ It is the ability to act effectively, backed by knowledge but not reduced to it.”
Fits perfectly with what ESSA mandates as the requisite challenging state academic standards with the required accompanying achievement standards. The manifestation is behavioral–performing a task or engaging in an activity.
If we think back to where the lies begin in earnest it is always to try to prevent a recognition of the desire to control the internalized neurobiological decision-making capacity of future behavior. We could ask why, but I already know the answer. It’s to obscure they are pushing for the same vision as is quite clear from this Utah Conference being pushed by the What is Common Core blog. https://www.agencybasededucation.org/conferences/2016-conference/ These deceivers, whether for salary, to create ‘well-ordered souls’, sell books, or whatever the individual reason, and their Paymasters at these think tanks and their foundation supporters, want the benefit of these behavioral science tools over the human mind and personality without that being recognized. There is no actual dispute about what is going on. Anyone who has read my book and particularly if they also read this blog can follow the rest of the story.
How many parents who go listen to Duke Pesta are aware he is a fellow at the Heartland Institute? That its School Reform News is a listed partner in the Kennedy School of Government’s PEPG. That it thus works closely with the Gates Foundation on educational reforms.
Would they agree with the Classical Education push to declare http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/11/individualism-root-error-modernity-george-stanciu.html ? If you restate the Marxist Humanist vision without using the M word does it turn into a ‘conservative’ idea if it is misleadingly labelled that way?
Robin with every one of the presenters in this hyped conference
https://www.agencybasededucation.org/conferences/2016-conference/
There is fuzzy education juju language mixed in.
Like “Doctor” Pesta, really putting on a good show but just another education player in the play.
Central casting working overtime!
There is a good reason. http://education.jhu.edu/PD/newhorizons/Journals/Winter2011/Schlitz explains the Worldview Literacy Project and how it fits with state academic standards and the Common Core. Brought to us by the Institute for Noetic Sciences. That means Willis Harman who we have covered via his Global Mind Change book.
I think the Agency-based Learning focus makes more sense when we search the term “construct worldview integrated learning” and the first results are all about the integration of faith and learning. That may sound lovely to a believer but it means students are being trained to believe whatever is instilled that is useful to those seeking to control future human conduct.
Part of Amitai Etzioni’s Responsive Communitarianism, that I can now tie all this deceit surrounding the Common Core and Classical Education and misexplaining Tranzi OBE and competency to, is to take the prescribed ideas, principles, and categories as articles of revelation and then apply them in real contexts and interpretations as what now constitutes reason. That sounds just like the Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete theory created in the USSR in 1962 as part of the New Dialectical Thinking launch to be a component of Marxist Humanism. The idea grounded in Uncle Karl’s earlier work that once capitalism had produced sufficient levels of technology and wealth, societies and economies must transition to meeting the needs of all. That vision requires a new kind of consciousness, which is precisely what a worldview is.
The way out of this nightmare is to grasp that it is a nightmare and wake up and take charge against the reality of what is being attempted. We do not have an obligation to assume these toxic worldviews because it is lucrative or convenient to people crafting these narratives while lying to parents and taxpayers about it.
This cannot be accidental and explains Betsy DeVos’ blind devotion to School Choice. As I mentioned above I am following up on the “construct worldview integrated learning” search based on something that popped out of a “universe of obligation” search. It pulls up the Christian Schools International 2016 Worldview Summit that just happens to have been last summer at Grand Rapids Christian School. I recognize that as where both the DeVos and prince family are from so I do a search for ties. http://www.dcaw.org/ Probably the building where the conference was held.
That would suggest whatever Mrs DeVos personal level of knowledge about what is really going on with education reforms, her family is tied to this constructing worldviews/controlling consciousness vision. Then she should own that and quite hiding behind obscuring euphemisms like School Choice and everyone’s moral obligations.
The presenter http://www.calvin.edu/~jks4/bio.htm is a prof at Mrs DeVos’ alma mater, Calvin College. http://www.csionline.org/2016-worldview-summit
The 2014 Summit had Willard Daggett as its keynoter. http://www.csionline.org/2014-leadership-conference Although Bill Spady is better known as a creator of the Tranzi OBE template, it has always been a component of Daggett’s push too.
And it turns out Christian Schools International is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There 2017 Summit was in Orlando in February. Had sponsors from as far away as Australia. Hope beth the serf reads this.
JST is correct as I have said before the online movement and its content is tightly controlled. Glad to see you didn’t let them stop you from searching.
I just posted this rather long reply to a parent hoping for state legislation to control the social and emotional pushes in the school and noting accurately that Georgia’s Student privacy legislation actually explicitly authorized ‘adaptive learning’. The explanations in it may help others and I am still fighting tendinitis and getting faucets replaced in my more than 20 year old house. Ever scrubbed to get rid of the crud and staining left when an old faucet is removed and a new one installed? Yuck.
“That Student Privacy legislation Georgia passed was a model piece of legislation that did authorize the highly intrusive adaptive learning as you noted supposedly in the name of protecting Student Privacy. It came from Jeb’s group and Georgia was the first state to enact. I consider much of the PII/database hype to be a False Narrative to get legislation that actually allows adaptive learning.
So it’s not that it failed to regulate ‘adaptive learning”. Adaptive Learning was the Trojan Horse that was quietly inserted in the middle of the statute that was the reason for the False Narrative in the first place. Let me introduce you to the new definition of the law. It is the “enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules.” That’s from a recent book by a law professor that was developed while she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. CASBS is the same outfit that created every notorious education reform over the decades and that is no accident.
The World Bank in its 2017 just issued report called Governance and the Law states point blank they will be using legislation globally to target people’s internalized ‘preferences’ in order to implement their agenda of a just society globally that meets everyone’s needs. The think tanks and lobbyists tell the legislators fictional stories about legislation that they do not read and they behave like parrots reciting what they are told. Then language like that ‘adaptive learning’ or the ‘soft skills’ in the HB 186 I covered in my book are in place. The legislators were told the soft skills language was about students learning to tie shoes and HB 186 was passed on the last day of the legislative session and not listed in either the PTA or Chamber of Commerce’s passed bill language. Binding but not discussed.
Intrusive neurobiological reengineering is the whole point of education in the 21st century. It’s what the required annual assessment of higher order thinking skills in ESSA, the federal legislation, mandates. The way to control that is for parents to grasp what is really aimed at here and why. Until that happens no ‘model legislation’ can fix this because it’s is not a side component of academics.
Academics to the extent there is any in the sense once understood instead of just a course name designed to mislead parents is simply a tool for that neurobiological reengineering. It’s where the tasks are embedded. It’s where the ‘moral dialogues’ occur. Just how much various think tank employees coordinating to push a false narrative on parents has been a recent online topic on my blog, including yesterday, and offline for a while. As painful as it is parents need to grasp that, that is the fix. That’s what they have to be telling legislators.
Using school to neurally reengineer children to specs created by politicians, think tanks, and anyone with a EdD, even online, is horrific. Accepting that is the intent and calling a spade a spade is essential. Until Tranzi OBE as described in my book is fully grasped and the reasons for Whole Language and competencies are grasped, the fact that the online provider or private or parochial school using the same template cannot be noticed.
As the link I put up yesterday in the Comments at ISC to the most recent post laid out, the What is Common Core site is pushing Agency Based Education as a supposed alternative to the Common Core. Its sessions make it clear it is all about the internalized reengineering. The aim is ubiquitous once the template is properly understood.
Read Ed Choice’s paper on Accountability Greg Forster wrote. Accountability is premised on what the student internalizes and thelanguage confesses point blank the desire to control what is regarded as moral. The language is straight out of Amitai Etzioni’s Responsive Communitarian work.
When I asked Jane Robbins (who does lobby legislatures and who I do not trust based on personal experiences) why APP allowed that ‘adaptive learning’ language that had the effect of authorizing it and creating an affirmative right, she said “it was important to get something. We can always amend later.” Stupid comment. As you know, that is a horse that is hard to get back in a corral, much less a barn. Well, it turns out APP is an affiliate of jeb’s group so there’s that.
This was a long reply, but where your parents are in their understanding of what is really going on and how this all fits with what these ed reforms are really about is crucial for any fix legislatively.”
Look what just launched at Harvard GSE– http://www.gse.harvard.edu/uk/one-and-all It advocates for teaching students they have a “universe of obligation”. Not news to me, but consistent with the MH, communitarian, antirational mind and individual thinking we now find ubiquitous.
They did use the other common synonym for flourish–‘thrive’. So we have the classroom about “Strategies to Protect Students, Reject Bullying, and Build Communities where Everyone Thrives.”
Won’t that Ethical Framework come in handy?
This posts reminds me of the documentary called Thrive going around the ‘spiritual’ communities years ago. It was created by a Proctor and Gamble heir and proposed a Utopian/collectivist vision as the answer to all our troubles. Made it look very appealing in the film. It’s on youtube.
This week the National Academies of Science issued a report based on a June 9-10, 2016 Forum on “Implementing Evidence-Based Prevention by Communities to Promote Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Health in Children.” It made it quite clear that the term ‘thrive’ is a euphemism for creating mental health. Thrive NYC was the exemplar and it insisted that public health should be seen as “the practice of social justice using the best evidence possible.” It would be an affirmative program with schools as only one part where “a systems approach to public health that focuses on populations and equity can engage all levels of communities in collaborative decisionmaking and shared accountability for actions and change.”
They have lots of plans for us in simpler language. This agenda for the upcoming What Works Cities Summit is the same emphasis. It includes the first mention I have seen of the Obama Foundation. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4SK5peGcfxzU0V5dG5Jd0tlMjg/view It’s on page 5 “Nobody Left Behind: Using data to Address Inequity”
Notice this open acknowledgment of what student-centered really means from New Zealand. https://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2017/03/18/learning-is-not-about-covering-the-curriculum/
Once again we have the language about Flourish.
Also notice the open admissions in this new release on “How Students Thrive: Positive Youth Development in Practice”. http://www.springpointschools.org/media/filer_public/02/39/02397a7b-8a45-4fef-b116-1b238c485c5f/springpoint_how_students_thrive_-_positive_youth_development_in_practice.pdf The link at the end from Michele Cahill and 1992 makes it crystal clear that Positive Education is not some theory that began in 2002 as the IPEN paper tried to make the narrative. Just as I said, it is a renaming of Tranzi OBE’s aims after they became notorious after Columbine.
Good to get the confirmation as I covered in Credentialed to Destroy of how seminal Turning Points was to what would be framed as Tranzi OBE and competency-based education. Positive Education now sounds so lovely doesn’t it?
https://www.amazon.com/Flourish-Visionary-Understanding-Happiness-Well-being/dp/1439190763#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1489455419626
Do they all not have anything better to do? Buddinski’s. Seligman and Duckworth really need to get a life. Trying for ” the world as it should be” must be exhausting.
Instead of the Dr Seuss book title Oh the Places You’ll Go, the admission here feel like Oh the Things Being Confessed To. http://bold.expert/small-steps-to-big-change/
“Alongside the new empirical frontiers in neuroscience is another, new interdisciplinary frontier blending the theoretical insights from the behavioral sciences and social psychology with those from economics and child development. This is turning a new lens on poverty, parenting, and intervention design from early childhood to adolescence; and it is also turning our attention to the merits of small steps and small changes.
Most of us agree that most parents want to do what is best for their children. No single social science or human development theory can accommodate the inevitable ways that busy lives, distractions, and crises contribute to decisions that deviate from parents’ good intentions. Constraints on parents’ attention and self-control, how parents see themselves in certain situations, and elements of our social environment (what our peers do and perceived norms) interfere with such good intentions.”
Robin,
I have a 12 year old daughter in Catholic School. The school adopted CC this year (no parental knowledge or consent) and I began to notice the extreme change in curriculum (no notice went out).
Similar to what you have said, when you really understand the flavor of CC, you can sniff it out no matter what name they call it – I began having meetings with the Principal, writing letters and emails and I just receive the same talking points every time. I get “we use the Archdiocese standards”, while they completely elude my direct question of whether they adopted CC.
I literally had to scrub the internet to find the Archdiocese standards tucked quietly away in a pdf buried online and it basically read that the Archdiocese decided to fully adopt the standards (2016). It even spoke about creating social justice young people and the need for equity and equality (same rhetoric the public schools are using).
Now, we are stuck until the end of the year and I am so incredibly frustrated and sickened by this. We are paying approximately $7,500 in tuition for this mind control garbage; our family took on this financial burden to get away from CC.
When I originally uncovered CC, I took my daughter out of public school (5th grade) and homeschooled her. For the next year, 6th grade, she wanted to be in more of a social setting, so I enrolled her in a small Catholic School down the street from our home. The school emphasized a Classical Catholic education.
Last year was fine; this year much different. Now, it is all about essays like “the story of my birth”, what she likes, dislikes, feels about this, feels about that. They spent 2 weeks being indoctrinated on how wonderful Islam is (and I have no problem with Muslim’s; I have dear friends who are Muslim). But, this was propaganda material, whitewashed, with historical lies and inaccuracies. Her math is now all online at Discovery Learning – no doubt datamining every click and response. The math is way too difficult, convoluted, and inappropriate. It seems like it is more of a test of perserverance or who can withstand the frustration long enough.
We have been round and round with the math teacher and she has the gull to tell us we should hire a tutor! I was in the financial industry for over 20 years – I know math!
My daughter is given leftist articles from NewsELA to read and answer the questions at the end (to ensure full obedience and indoctrination – a gift from Bill Gates).
I am homeschooling her next year with online 100% CC Free school, Freedom Project Academy. Dr. Duke Pesca, who has done years of work educating people on the horrors of CC, is head of this online school. Thank GOD we can still homeschool – at least for now.
Meanwhile, we are stuck at St. Agatha. We were deceived, lied to, ignored. My child learns nothing. I am deeply suspicious of everything they give her to do. She is made to answer questions with sentences written in an affirmative seal-realized voice: ie. I identify more with the life of the peasants than the …. because …” – they put words in her mouth!
Any suggestions? Is there hope? I live in Portland and people here just don’t seem to get it or want to get it. The truth is a hard thing to swallow, but I will take the truth, no matter how hard, any day.
With Gratitude for your amazing work and the blogs I always look forward to ~~
Niseema Young
Truth Seeker at Any Cost
Thanks for sharing your story Niseema and welcome to ISC. I started this journey accidentally in much the way you did, picking a prestigious private school because it was not using Everyday Math and said it never would. Ha. Then the Lower School Principal was not only angry I noticed and that I recognized the nature and purpose of the shifts, she then proceeded to threaten my children and asked me “didn’t I know how hard the school was to get into.” I was so shocked at her utter viciousness and insisting that if my son scored in the 99% across the board on ERBs it showed they had to be teaching him well and I needed to shut up.
That has not worked at so well has it? I wish you good luck with the online Freedom Project Academy. My research indicates it is still an ideas/principles and values first curriculum, not a factual curriculum with ties to the same people pushing Hillsdale’s Barney Charter Initiative in earnest. There is actually a word for this focus that seeks to control the categories the mind is trained to use to guide perception and interpret daily experiences in certain predictable ways. It’s called guiding the taxon system and this method that is grounded in cybernetics was laid out by the ASCD more than 20 years ago.
Be on the look out for that with any curriculum and you will be able to keep your daughter common core/ steerable noetic rudder free no matter where she goes. If education seeks to instill at a neurobiological level the concepts, principles, and values as “philosophical value knowledge’ to be taken as given of what the student “ought to do and how we ought to live”, you as a parent are entitled to know that. If taxpayers are funding that, they should have the right as well. No more of this nonsense where school boards are being trained not to question anything because “they have an education degree”.
Again good luck and I have shared your heartache. Yes, the truth is a hard thing to swallow, but there are rarely surprises at what is coming at you or your family. The nicest compliment is when someone meets one of my now adult children and aks what it takes to raise a kid like that. Part of it was seeing reality dead-on and talking about it.
This report that came out this morning from the same Fordham that took over the Project Education Reform : Time for Results hypes that same Newsela you have had a bad experience with. https://edex.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/publication/pdfs/%2803.14%29%20The%20Right%20Tool%20for%20the%20Job%20-%20Improving%20Reading%20and%20Writing%20in%20the%20Classroom.pdf
So that is what School Choice actually gets you. Curriculum designed to manipulate the internalized common core that guides your child’s worldview.
This is not comforting but it does explain why constructivism is so amenable to people who want to control Worldviews because they believe it furthers their vision of Christianity.
https://acmsonline.org/home2/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/KlandermanBarrett.pdf It’s not a huge surprise to me as I come across the desire to create a ‘well-ordered soul’ a good bit in tracing these ideas. If people though want to use education to control your child’s consciousness so it can come to meet their specifications, that reality needs to be on the radars of all parents. That would be an essential component of true choice.
I get what you’re saying. What do parents do? There is such a squeeze on us.. When you began to uncover this when your kids were still in school, what did you do? We, as parents, seem to have little to no choice – just as it was designed.
I am very aware of the globalist agenda and “educations” connection to Agenda 21. Portland is one of the ground zero prototype cities for Agenda 21 and the engineered communitarism/transhumanism/collectivism (all the ism’s) agenda is being played out and succeeding while people go on absolutely oblivious.
I am trying to find hope in the midst of all of this. Perhaps the hope is in the knowing.
As George Carlin said “the game is rigged and we are not in on it”.
Your question is one we discuss a great deal here, online and off. My youngest has now exited K-12. Those with younger children tell me that yes, the hope is in the knowing.
They can spot the worst examples of schools determined to create steerable rudders and supplement as best they can. It is rather ironic to be accused of ‘bankrupt research’ on a previous thread after a subsequent one makes it far more clear where I am actually going and what I have tied together. Before this dust-up I had ordered Neil Flinders book on Agency-based Education stemming from my concern over what was stated at the annual Conference link above as well as on Cristel Swasey’s What is Common Core site. Cristel works for FPA and her distinction between agency-based ed and competency-based ed doesn’t fit with my knowledge of both terms.
That book arrived yesterday and it is on my reading list for today. It was published in 1990 by the Mormon Press and I will examine its view of “creating Christian agency” in light of this hysteria over any questioning of FPA. I also found this article by Dr Pesta from February https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/item/25295-freedomproject-academy-accomplishments-ambitions-and-opportunities seeking donations so it could expand using his ties and the school’s to the John Birch Society.
Is that widely known? Given the language of the Call to Civil Society I began discussing in the subsequent post Monday hyping “ideals and institutions” to strengthen our ‘Constitutional Republic’ has my spidey sense tingling. Apparently though reading materials on a public website and watching video presentations posted to encourage people to listen is not OK if I happen to have Specialized Ears on this issue. I am supposed to contact people for further interviews and refrain from discussing ‘Curriculum’ unless I have some kind of ed degree?
If this remains your best option for now (and that may well be the case), it is important for you to recognize that in any Ideals/Virtues first program, the exact nature and purpose for instilling the Ideals matters. Both you and your child are entitled to an awareness that a noetic keel is being carved and why.
You are right. I’m living right in the middle of it. Watching it slowly creep into my town along with Metro.
This phrase “marketplace for results” not only fits with Project Education Reform: Time for Results, it is clearly tied to evidence-based policymaking in general. http://www.strivetogether.org/blog/2017/03/creating-a-marketplace-for-results/
Nobody but me apparently is jumping up and down and saying “look at the whole picture. Controlling the mind, perception, and desired behaviors is just the start.” This really is Uprvaleniye just as that What Works Summit 2017 details if we are familiar with that concept.
Archdiocese of Philadelphia had Bill Daggett on the payroll for 10 years bring you what is there and what you are experiencing at your school. It was him ( chaching) selling his snakeoil for the globalist Toads to the bewildered social justice minded clergy while laying low in the wake of pedopreist revalations. He one of a cadre of same in other levels of academia and institutions.
He is now scrubbed from their website like a ghost.
I am old now and memory gets a little faulty, but there are some clear images that have not changed. One of which is, I believe, critical to your proving this point. Its an event that took place in a small university on the west coast. Would you please remind me of who was Gorbachov”s third man in power. There was Gorbachov at the top and two guys under him when he freed Russia. Please tell me the names of the two guys under him and I will make an important link for your case.
This article mentions Revenko and the more well-known Yeltsin. http://articles.latimes.com/1991-09-06/news/mn-1741_1_soviet-union
Robin: Your ignorance of Duke and his motivations are overwhelming. Clearly you haven’t spoke with him, someone on his staff or even fully looked into his efforts. Yet based upon your bankrupt research you form an opinion. Sad. Telling. Duke has been a tireless advocate for years against common core. He’s given a few hundred talks in almost all of the states. As far as I know he’s never asked for more than reimbursement for his flight and hotel for those talks. In fact, I know he’s absorbed some of those expenses in certain circumstances. Apparently you have superior information and will be posting that here shortly. Until then, you have NOTHING as to his financial motivations and owe him an apology for such misaligned “research” that was put in your opinion piece. It is now incumbent upon you to either cite your sources or disengage from your implications that Duke has nefarious motivations.
I went back and reread what I wrote about Freedom Project Academy and it is not the least bit nefarious. He is a fellow at Heartland and they are tied to PEPG.
I have questions about FPA, which is what I have said and having multiple proxies come on this blog to defend someone else with hyperbolic ranting bereft of facts is not giving me a warm, fuzzy feeling. I know he is an advisor to US PIE and I have a real problem with that organization pretending that the whole problem is the federal government pushing Tranzi OBE. I have a problem with any level of government pushing such mindlessness.
My research has consistently shown that the premises behind Classical Education of Ideas and Concepts first are problemmatic, even when the ideas sound lovely. The Peanuts Gang as an exemplar of Christian Redemption certainly sounds interesting, but is that in fact a transmission of knowledge curriculum? The site certainly looks like it seeks to create “philosophical value knowledge” in the student. If all the parents and the students are fine with that kind of curriculum than it’s fine with me, but Classical Education is not another name for a traditional transmission of knowledge orientation. Too many parents assume that is what “Common Core Free” means.
Your vehemence on this issue, as well as Karen Bracken’s exuberence for FPA that I deleted as this blog is not an infomercial, has caused me to go pull my fairly large library on Classical Education now that we have the CLT, the IAV’s Call for Civil Society, and Hardwired to Connect. I will go back through Doug Wilson’s Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Gene Veith and Andrew Kern’s Classical Education, and Marvin Olasky and Herbert Schlossberg’s Turning Point and continue to examine precisely how FPA fits the Classical template it so vocally embraces.
People with good factual cases rarely throw around as many emotional adjectives as you did in your comment. I have very good reasons for being wary of any education that is a euphemised version of Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete or fits with the cybernetic model of controlling the conceptual mapping that guides perception. Again, I have been concerned that that is what FPA does in part because if it is the internalized basis in the mind being targeted, it is disingenuous to hype being Common Core free. There is still a desire to create a common core of ideas and values that will guide future behavior as a habit of mind. To me, based on my research, that is what both Classical Education, Tranzi OBE, and competency-based education all seek to do.
My attitude towards education research is whether a person goes where the evidence leads or tells only part of the story. I go where the evidence leads. Your fact-free vituperation simply reenforces my wariness on FPA and Professor Pesta. If he doesn’t want people to be wary, he shouldn’t associate with people that in my experience deceive parents about what is really going on in education reforms.
Are you actually telling me that FPA would not benefit from states passing ESAs? Does the FPA curriculum prepare students for what are known as ‘high-quality assessments’? If so, that’s a curriculum targeting the internalized basis for future decision-making in the student. I asked that question of another Heartland fellow, Lennie Jarrett, when he spoke in Marietta last fall. Not surprisingly he preferred the term ‘test’ to my quoting ‘high-quality assessment’ from the paper Vicki Alger did for TPPF/ Independence Institute on the Texas ESA legislation. My question was whether high quality assessments would be the norm in any ESA legislation or was unique to Texas. Jarrett’s disingenuous answer was that ‘a test’ was a small price to pay for the money.
Not once the meaning of the term ‘high-quality assessment’ is understood accurately. It also fits perfectly with Herbert Wahlberg’s work over the years in education and he is on the Heartland board. But yes, let’s pretend that Heartland fellows and their education work need not adhere to the Heartland institutional template.
Well before you start throwing uneducated stones at an organization you could at least talk with FPA. I did. And I did my own research. Diane Ravitch belongs to some very questionanle organizations (The Gordan Commission) don’t hear you bad mouthing her. But I did contact her about it and she told me the exact same thing Duke did about Heartland. Your vicious attacks on people is why you don’t and never will have much of a following.
Did that feel good to say Karen?
I was actually the first person to call attention to the Gordon Commission and wrote about Diana Ravitch’s alarming work for the Bradley Commission on History as well as the significance of her creation of subject matter frameworks for California in the early 80s.
Who is attacking whom viciously?
For readers who are unaware of some of the underlying alliances, here is Karen and Duke Pesta speaking together in January 2016 at the It’s about the Child conference pushing ‘classical education.’ http://www.itsaboutthechild.com/speakers.html
They are called ad hominem attacks and I am not the one engaging in them.
By the way it is the Gordon Commission with two o’s.
I will let my readers decide who is being mean here and not making their case based in facts.
As a long time reader of this blog I have to say that I do not perceive vicious attacks upon any person in the posts. I do appreciate this blogs fact based and in depth research.
Why does it appear that the people who insist there is character assassination afoot so often pepper their own self righteous comments with ad hominem attacks?
Robin’s information is as usual timely and on point. Professor Pesta is one of many Ed types her investigative eyes have landed upon.
Fascinating though that ya’ll have decided defending him and FPA and chastising Robin is high priority right now.
A response to un-researched or unverified comments, atypical of lawyers, is warranted.
Robin, you have made no attempt to contact Dr. Duke Pesta or me, the Curriculum Director for FreedomProject Academy from its inception. It was my responsibility to develop the curriculum that was then reviewed with Dr. Pesta. This collaborative effort involved only the two of us. There were no outside parties involved and no curriculum was pasted and copied from any other source. A study of our curriculum will reveal a variety of sources. As long-time educators, Dr. Pesta and I drew on our experience and knowledge to put together a strong curriculum to provide our families with academic excellence. If you had spoken with either of us, Robin, you would know that to be our motive. Judeo-Christian principles guide our selection of textbooks but don’t negate them as being fact-based.
Our academic strength can be found in our elementary reading series that provides our students with age-appropriate literature to read. The elementary students use study guides to develop vocabulary and comprehension skills while the older students learn critical thinking skills as they complete writing assignments for the literature portion of their English classes. Our English classes for grades 6 to 12 also include the study of grammar and mechanics of writing. To see the booklist for yourself, go to http://www.fpeusa.org . You will find the booklist under the parent/student tab. How can such literature and emphasis on reading and critical thinking skills be considered less than a preparation for a fact-based education?
We offer math courses through calculus and science courses through physics. In addition to the usual high school courses – physical science, biology, chemistry, and physics – we offer Advanced Biology and Astronomy taught by a teacher associated with NASA who wrote the book for the course. A look at our course list will make our emphasis on history apparent. Our students are exposed to the humanities as well. The study of philosophy, logic, and economics is required. Only someone who has not reviewed these texts could wrongly state that they are not fact-based.
In a brief reference to another response you made, Robin, regarding Dr. Pesta’s titulary fellowship with Heartland Institute, I state the following as his colleague. His passion for fighting against the grievous education policies of the past three or four decades and before then have led him to accept positions on many boards as a way of showing solidarity. Never has he been paid by Heartland, given a talk for them, or been consulted about policy. This is the same for U.S. PIE who has accomplished nothing in the last year.
I would never presume any expertize in legal matters and hope in the future that you will never presume to be an expert on curriculum prior to research.
Mary Black, Curriculum Director
FreedomProject Academy
Again, I have published your comments, but once again you are ignoring the concern about concepts first, not facts. A list of books is nice, but are they read in a manner analogous to Close Reading since you brought up comprehension?
Please address the substance of my concerns and quit telling me I cannot be concerned by the company kept, the ideas expressed, the presentations on video, and now this series of attacks that actually never get to the issues I stated I was concerned with.
It seems activist on both sides of the aisle find it permissible (and even desirable) to use education as a mechanism to shape the values and beliefs of the next generation–as long as those values align with their own.
The anti CCSS groups were made up of some strange bedfellows. For a time, I watched liberals embrace the likes of Dr. Pesta and even Glen Beck while conservatives followed Ravitch and Peg what’s her name. But this coming together was based on an intentionally deceptive narrative tied to the opt out movement, something Robin understood early on.
In my experience neither side is really after an education system based on knowledge for knowledge’s sake. When you drill down on either side, education is a means to an end and sadly the end has more to do with shaping values / behavior than it does knowledge.
Robin is the only person who consistently addresses this problematic phenomenon. She has been equally critical of both sides using education as a means for anything other than disseminating knowledge. Why? Because she understands the real agenda and its devastating potential. That said there is no question the FPA intends to shape student values based on their website: “FreedomProject Academy is committed to changing culture and restoring the nation through Classical education, teaching Judeo-Christian values, and preparing the next generation of patriot leaders.” The end it seems is “changing culture” and preparing a particular brand of leaders. If the ideology fits your own, of course, this goal may seem admirable. If by “changing culture” FPA meant the school and its curriculum were dedicated to social justice and tolerance, many may feel less at ease. The truth is an education system aimed preferred beliefs and future behaviors smacks of tyranny, which is Robin’s concern. Based on WIOW and ESSA alone, she’s right to question anyone packaging education as a means to a sociopolitical end. Period.
If CCSS is based on shaping attitudes, beliefs and values in order to steer behavior (and it is) then offering an alternative based on a different set of values ought to be clearly understood by parents at a minimum.
Instead of ad hominem attacks, maybe we could discuss whether it is ethical to use education as a tool to shape beliefs & behavior. If so, under what circumstances and at what point does doing so become dangerous?
Look what our friends at the Frameworks Institute want us to believe now. http://frameworksinstitute.org/assets/files/PDF/reframing_school_discipline_comms_playbook_2017.pdf
Notice the George Soros Open Society funding to find race and racism everywhere! Clearly it’s not just children whose attitudes and beliefs need to be manipulated to fit with Our Brave New World. I noticed the old Upravleniye post was suddenly getting traffic since Monday’s post. Fascinating.
Oh heck no. It is not just the kid’s attitudes being targeted in k-12. In my youngest’s chichi private school the faculty are treated monthly ( At Least ) to compulsory ” Diversity ” training in order for them to reframe, recalibrate, recondition themselves to the desired 21st Century lenses and frameworks. Those teachers that don’t proclaim to have seen the light are gently ushered out of their chosen profession by not having their annual contracts renewed.
Wowzer! If you think Robin is unresearched you are not familiar. Maybe reading the blog would enlighten y’all a little bit.
History reveals alot as does an archive of reference books and docs from the entire stable’s mouth.
If Robin has no followers why would you care what she says?
Was reading your thread here and a friend on Facebook just posted this…someone who has nothing to do with education.
“The children who think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.”
~John Dewey, father of public education
(1859-1952)
I did not see a personal attack here towards Mr. Pesta made by Robin. Can anyone address the specific questions she asked? This thread reminds me of the similarities that used to happen if someone questioned Ravitch and her Bats, out come the claws of bias. I am completely in favor of those Judeo- ChristIan values and materials but because they have that label does that mean we are not to question them?