If we were playing Compare and Contrast with that title we would notice that the commonality is clearly horrendously destructive acts or events. Yet the last two are clearly planned and likely to be invisible to most of the people affected by the designed shifts being imposed on them. The first two just happen periodically, but their presence and catastrophic effects are immediately visible. Which is preferable? Most of the trauma from the last two could be prevented if enough people globally were aware of the declared intentions, the foreseeable likely consequences, and the networks forcing the changes.
That’s why I wrote the book Credentialed to Destroy and why I keep up this blog monitoring the current related shifts in real time. Welcome to Part Two of what I am calling the Treacherously Trying to Trap Us Trilogy. In the last post I laid out the existence of the Global CIFAL Network set up by the UN System starting in 2003 to get local officials on board with its agenda in education, the economy, and society generally. Today we are going to poke around a bit more into things designed to impact all of us, but beyond our line of sight. Since all my research has the effect of providing close to x-ray vision as I read and listen now, let’s pull some more plans into the sunlight while there is still time.
Let’s start with yet another troubling plan created by the well-connected, Palo Alto-based Institute for the Future whose vision for Recombinant Education and Future Work Skills 2020 here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/advances-in-neuroscience-redefine-notions-of-performance-and-cognition-allowing-social-justice-in-learning/ left some readers irate and others feeling like they had endured a stress test. IFTF in 2013 also created http://www.iftf.org/our-work/global-landscape/governance/governance-for-the-future-an-inventors-toolkit/ to “rethink the relationship between citizens and governance. Now is the time to explore the widest range of future possibilities and to reimagine society for an age of planetary challenges and human responsibility.”
Now before anyone says that stated purpose alone is no link to the UN System, let me remind us that the Center for Curriculum Redesign’s Charles Fadel touts IFTF’s work. But I can do better than that. On the last page, IFTF thanks “Dr. James Dator for providing the inspiration and methodological foundation for this toolkit.” Dator, a futurist professor in Hawaii, was Secretary General and then President for a decade of the World Futures Studies Federation, which IS part of the UN System and closely tied to UNESCO and its work in education and multimedia. So when the Kit urges people to “Re-Think: Examine your foundational assumptions about how the world works, how people behave, and what values you would like to see instilled in your society,” this is precisely the kind of Change Agent/social engineering work we also saw the CIFAL Network owning up to.
So out-of-sight but closely tied to what is planned for US K-12 education we have this Toolkit proclaiming that “Government has seen little structural change in 200 years. For example, the US Constitution was created in the 18th century, and while novel and in many cases admirable, it couldn’t have anticipated 21st century social, technological, and political realities. Societies must re-examine the principles upon which governments are based, and think carefully about the values, beliefs, and metrics upon which to build governance for the future.” Can you say impose without notice or consent? How about jettisoning what is still valuable?
Can you imagine students with precious little knowledge of history being told as part of a high school long-term project that “Values provide a moral compass for the governing systems you will create. Do you want a society that manifests freedom, happiness, justice, harmony, equality, security, well being?” Plus donuts for all that will never compromise your waistline and free internet that will always be serviced promptly, where ever you live. Sarcasm off. Let’s get back to the Toolkit: “Some absolute values may conflict with others. For example, freedom often affects safety or equality. But to thrive, a society must understand and express a vision of its common goals. Your Task: Clearly state the values that will guide the way governing processes and institutions are created. Don’t try to solve the tensions between values at this point.”
Now that last passage vividly illustrates the problem running through all these intentions and declarations. Many are factually untrue. Many societies have thrived without such a vision of common goals. Having such a vision will NOT make a society ‘thrive.’ In fact, believing such nonsense and having little factual knowledge primes people to act based on illusions. That’s good for statists wanting transformational change, but not so good for those of us footing the bill and being told what we must or cannot do in the future. IFTF though is not the only connected entity now pushing transformations of values in order to give “rise to new conceptions of global responsibility and human rights.” It’s not just the Rockefeller-affiliated Club of Rome involved. http://www.clubofrome.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/VALUESQUEST-The-search-for-values-that-will-make-a-world-of-difference.pdf
It’s not just the UN asking the Club of Rome and the ValuesQuest Initiative to “contribute to the creation of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals Programme.” Those are all bad enough for us. The real danger to all of us would be a failure to appreciate the intention to reconceptualize the nature of the purpose of “the law” globally to make these transformations binding. Because details matter when the stated transformational plans are so dangerous, when the Club of Rome or IFTF or anyone else cites a troubling document, I try to find it. http://eruditio.worldacademy.org/files/Issue_1/reprints/Reprint-The-Global-Values-Discourse-W.Nagan-G.Jacobs.pdf When I notice that Nagan is a law professor at the University of Florida and believes the law can be a tool for “charting a better collective future for humanity based on universal values for sustaining a world order in the common interest,” I sit up and start taking meticulous notes.
When the law is viewed as a means to force “social evolution,” I remember what Julian Huxley and Theodore Brameld wanted UNESCO to do (described in detail in my book) and know precisely what is envisioned for the 21st Century. The law can be used as means if someone wishes to “require fundamental changes in the normative foundations of global society in the 21st century,” but ‘can’ does not mean the results will not be comparable to the plague or a swarm of locusts in what is being destroyed. When that article describes an approach that “targets the institutions that control and regulate the production and distribution of these values,” K-12 education, the higher ed colleges of education, and the powers given to accreditation all fit the bill as such ‘institutions’. That’s why concentrating all those areas in a single person as described in the last post fits the desired template that “No One Can Stop Us This Time” so well.
The fact that his business partner is tied to CIFAL and planned economic development at the state and local levels also fits perfectly in the vision “for providing the normative guidance for the future of political economy of the world community.” Now, I cannot tell you how unexcited I am to see K-12 education, state economic plans created under WIOA by governors, the law as a tool of forcing collective group decision-making and a redefinition of individuality for the 21st century, and all these other declared plans for “economic democracy” and new institutions that replace “faith in impersonal mechanism” with “institutions dedicated to the rights, dignity, welfare and well-being of all humanity.” France has been entranced by this vision for more than two centuries and look what happened there last week.
The law as a “driving force for social activism” and a “powerful instrument for social development” as “New Paradigm for Global Rule of Law” phrased it, coupled to the Mind Arson and Psychological Manipulation I have been chronicling in K-12 education truly is intended to Treacherously Trap Us All, from the inside-out and all around, to the UN vision first laid out by Uncle Karl so long ago. Can we imagine the law and education of malleable minds dedicated to locking in the “Confucian idea of rooting morals and ethics in human interaction and reciprocal relationships” and the “African principle of Ubuntu. In effect, people realize their moral value in relation to other people”? No wonder we keep running into a communitarianism mandate everywhere from what Career-Ready Practices really means to the Positive School Climate mandates.
I continuously warn how invisible these planned shifts are until we know what to look for, but how is this for a confession from the ValuesQuest document? “Values need to be so deeply embedded within a culture that no one recognizes that they are values.” Perhaps, we should add and “chosen by someone else for the purpose of subjugation to someone else’s choices about the future.” See why “values, attitudes, and beliefs,” and whether and at what rate they are changing, is precisely what is being “assessed” by the new measurements? That’s the real reason the radicals do not want to give up a requirement in any rewrite of No Child Left Behind of some kind of annual “testing.”
Given that Milton Rokeach created the word Competency to obscure the presence of values manipulation in the new focus of K-12 education, having that word be the new global goal while the UN system and the Club of Rome write “values are actually what we use to guide our way through the possibilities and problems of life” is a dangerous way to hide in plain sight. It’s no accident values are also the focus of that IFTF Toolkit or the OECD’s Key Competences that PISA measures students in.
ValuesQuest says that “it is our choice whether to have an unequal or equal society.” Factually that is not true, but we may all be sharing poverty as the consequences of these designs are imposed on all of us via education, the law, and the public sector generally.
None of the Change Agents imposing all of this intend to become equal with those they are coercing. They simply recognize there is money to be made and power to be gained from hyping that it is “our value choice which determines whether we live in a world of opportunities for all.”
This is simply a currently connected oligarchy wanting to empower themselves with no way out for most of us.
Knowledge though remains the way out. That’s why there is such a deliberate, coordinated, global attempt to circumscribe it in the 21st Century.
Common Core and Mind-shift Origins
While we prepare for, and hopefully try to avert, the man-made disaster of deliberately engineered “unnatural” mind-shifts, it’s essential to stay abreast of historical developments. This website and book (Credentialed . . . ) is at the forefront of that effort.
Today this piece of history will help us understand more about the dismal trajectory we now find ourselves in.
“My Story As I Lived It in the Classroom: The Birthplace of Common Core”, Donna Garner, January 9, 2015.
http://www.educationviews.org/story-lived-it-birthplace-common-core/
Know that Donna, via the Internet, has these credentials ascribed to her — conservative Christian activist who has been involved in Texas education for many years.
Her story is fascinating in that she:
1 Worked on education matters in the administrations of Reagan and G H Bush
2 Distinguishes Type #1 (knowledge-based academic) and Type #2 (subjective, constructivist, affective domain) education philosophies
3 Discusses how “fuzzy” and “whole language” efforts came to be
4 Shows how “nationalizing education went into full gear”
5 Shows how “social justice” was added to an already progressive agenda
6 Provides a link to a 1991 summary of a larger 61 page report that describes how “competencies” are to become the new educational shift http://www.academicinnovations.com/report.html
[This is the best I can say at the moment as I try to digest both the overwhelming implications of this latest post from Robin and the new information from Donna. Heaven Help Us!]
Tunya-I do not write these posts to scare. The scary part would be if we still thought this was a discussion about what and how to teach academic content.
Notice that on page 24 of the ValuesQuest document there is the header “Manipulation of the Mind” and how advertising and PR firms also use these methods. That by the way comes out in the Frameworks Institute’s work as well.
“Discovering We Live By a Story” to me is so revealing of what is being forced onto classrooms and that acknowledgment by the World Bank before Christmas that targeting mental models was its vision. This idea that education is now to become about finding “the worldviews, the stories, the reality that is needed if we want to live in a sustainable, fair and equitable world where humanity lives within the possibilities of Nature and the possibilities of being truly human” is just ludicrous.
We should not acquiesce to such self-interested nonsense anymore.
If you read the Inventors Toolkit it talks about fining or imprisoning those who refuse to acquiesce to the Diversity vision. When I sarcastically write of fiefdoms and vassals, this is all created with an attitude of required submission.
Plus I may joke about Uncle Karl but all of this is up front about the links to Marxism, by name.
Notice that apart from the LNG–Liquid Natural Gas–focus, this British Columbia blueprint making K-12 about jobs training aligns with what the feds in the US are quietly pushing. http://www.bcjobsplan.ca/getskills/wp-content/uploads/BCs_Skills_for_jobs_blueprint.pdf
Tunya-if you go to page 45 of this link of the Puget Sound Unified Economic Plan that is so clearly grounded in Turchenko http://www.psrc.org/assets/8558/RegionalEconomicStrategy.pdf and read the regional description it includes British Columbia. Not about countries or states anymore.
Years ago we took the kids on an Alaskan cruise. Flew into Seattle, did Whidbey Island, and then I drove to Vancouver where I turned in rental car. Years ago on a Canadian Rockies trip we drove from Jasper across to Prince Rupert and then ferried to Port Hardy and I drove the length of Vancouver Island down to Victoria. For an Atlanta girl, I actually know that area.
And Oregon is a single MOP. Click. Click. Click.
“We must think things not words, or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
There is a lot to digest here. I continually find the use of CC language to obfuscate annoying at best. If there were concrete examples given along with these words it would be easier to understand what they mean, which is why the examples are not given.
“Governance” is a word I have only encountered in the phrase “corporate governance”, a legal phrase in corporate law which does not refer to government. In CC usage this passive word is used to obfuscate that a government (with police power to throw people in jail and take their stuff) is to force people to do what they would not otherwise do. This government is controlled by people. See also “governing.” “Govern” is a verb which is clearer and therefore not used as much.
“Democracy” is a form of govt. “Economic Democracy” adds govt control to control a previously a free exchange; non-govt process.
“Justice” is a term to describe a legal process which is to be fair. “Social justice” is a phrase to describe an end result which is “fair”; the “fair” result to be determined later, by people not bound by predetermined rules.
I re-read your book, this time on paper, a better read for me. Here is a question, not on topic, that I have. It is very focused. For the purposes of this question I will pare down the answer wanted. I don’t intend to be rude.
Say, CC 3rd grade math says to teach two place addition or whatever, in the CC master document which in on the web. These are words on paper, regardless of where they came from.
Q. Where does it say that this must be taught using group experiences (for just one example of non-content rules)? To pare down the answer: I don’t care that it came from Marx or Dewy and is suggested by the UN and ed schools even though it is. There are CC practices other than group experiences. Are they all brought into the classroom the same way?
possibilities:
1. There are “code words” in the CC document which have a meaning as given in non CC documents. If true, what documents are these? If there was a contractual dispute where someone tried to get away with using “competencies” according to their plain English meaning, the CC people would counter by using WHAT documents? OR someone said they were implementing CC methods but interpreted “performance assessment” to mean assessing performance on a content based test e.g. What is 34 + 23?
2. Or are these CC methods just fellow travelers which come down through ed schools and are not mandated?
3. Or are these CC methods enforced through people in the fed govt who interpret the CC Holy Writ without relying on documents?
I am looking for words on paper which the effect of law or a legal contract IF these words exist in that form somewhere.
Collaboration and communication are two of the 4Cs of 21st Century Learning. Communication basically has the meaning we encountered in that Rockefeller Communication for Social Change post or in Courtney Cazden’s Discourse Classroom. It has to do with reaching a consensus and agreeing to a common understanding that the group accepts.
I will have to doublecheck but I believe the INTASC teacher guidelines also have references to the group process. I know the assessments state that they are a group assessment in many cases. I even raised that point with the Ga DoED deputy super who was part of the CCSSO/Asia Society Global Competency task force discussed in the book. She glared at me but agreed I was right. She also said that once “we get School Climate right, student achievement just falls into place.” That makes sense only in a sociocultural template.
On page 144 of that eruditio link is the new concept of individuality I keep encountering.
“The individual is the catalyst and leader of the evolution of society, the representative of society and not merely a lone, isolated person. It is not by subordination of the individual but by an evolution of culture from egoistic individualism to true individuality, from selfish egoism to identification of the individual with the common good of the social collective and of humanity as a whole that the dichotomy can be reconciled. The true individual, described by Jung, Maslow, and others as one who is self-actualized or self-realized, is conscious of him or herself as part of a community, one with humanity, and aspires for the good of all, not merely their own personal benefit and salvation.”
Yes, that is just what is driving the Gypsy Supers and Principals imposing this.
Chapter 7 in the book is darned detailed on what is out there to make this vision mandatory on the classroom. This post and the last one simply add to the now overwhelming evidence this is a political and economic coup going on.
Plus this is a May 2014 link from two law profs at the Florida Institute for Human Rights, Peace and Development called “Towards a Global Comprehensive Context-Driven and Decision-focused Theory and Method for a New Political Economy. http://cadmusjournal.org/files/pdfreprints/vol2issue2/reprint-cj-v2-i2-towards-a-new-paradigm-in-political-economy-wnagan.pdf
Nagan is the Chair of the Board of the World Academy of Art and Science in addition to being a law prof. I first encountered WAAS when I came across the Harlan Cleveland work in the mid-80s described in the book transitioning both the US and the Soviet Union to a new economic system other than capitalism and communism. This is not state communism but it sure fits well with what Marx described as little c, meeting the needs of all, communism with a little c. You will notice references to meeting the needs of all throughout all these cited documents. That also fits with the Tucker concept of Marxist Humanism I mentioned in the book that commenced about 1962.
Here is another link to Governance and ICT and how a local focus can actually be the global UN push. http://www.amazon.com/Responsive-City-Communities-Data-Smart-Governance/dp/1118910907/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421065392&sr=1-1&keywords=responsive+city
Notice Bloomberg’s role.
I had already heard of the book, but pushing it is tied to this entity that also sponsors the Center for Digital Education. http://www.governing.com/gov-institute/funkhouser/gov-loneliness-governments-technology.html
From the beginning of the Nagan link:
“Conventional economics has rarely shed itself of the label that it is a dismal science. It has earned this label because its central weakness seems to be the continuing diminished expectation that it may provide perspectives and methods that produce reliable predictions. …”
Um, nope. Sorry nobody believes that. It’s called the “dismal science” because it deals explicitly with scarcity and constraint, with human fear and greed, all that non-PC stuff. But he knew this.
He probably starts this way because the fluff he’s about to present is at total odds with those realities and is a great example of happy talk and wrong predictions.
(Not to say that more standard economics is so great either, but it does allow you to say things considered too nasty for public discussion elsewhere.)
That’s what is so frustrating about all these plans. The premises are not true, but the transformation intentions are quite real.
I am having a similar reaction this morning to Blair Levin’s keynote at the Gigabit City conference where he asserts that cities did not arise from private property interests, but from building a commons. Excuse me? What did he study at Yale? http://www.brookings.edu/research/speeches/2015/01/15-information-rich-commons-levin
Everything is about a public sector dominant society now and many lawyers are perfectly willing to write the regs or charters binding all of us pesky individuals.
With your science background, you’ll appreciate this. http://www.stockholmresilience.org/download/18.3e9bddec1373daf16fa43e/1381790210615/Insights-knowledge2.pdf
Will Steffen and others are pushing a new model of Human Development via the Future Earth Alliance and Belmont Challenge I have written about that is supposedly about planetary limitations. The paper came out yesterday and is tied to this. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.1259855
I just happen to know that the Stockholm Resilience Institute is where both initiatives are based away from prying US eyes. Almost.
Did you see the recent partnership with Fsg and Senge?http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_dawn_of_system_leadership
I am still reading that amazing document, but I wanted you to see Oregon has a rep on this new national advisory board on economic development the federal Dept of Commerce began in December. http://www.eda.gov/news/blogs/2015/01/01/spotlight.htm?utm_source=EDA+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6681bf1c9b-Innovate_EDA_January_20151_12_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_68e7c83ba4-6681bf1c9b-391753853#spotlight-read-more
Click the link for the names of all 27 members. Venture capitalists, MOOCs, Steve Case, Long Beach Community College, the Massachusetts and Illinois skills programs we have already run into. It’s always workforce development and the Department of Commerce worked closely with CIFAL Atlanta in putting on its summits.
Plus that dreadful CROMNIBUS turns out to have included the cronyistic, Turchenko and public-private partnership oriented Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation Act. http://reed.house.gov/press-release/reeds-revitalize-american-manufacturing-and-innovation-act-becomes-law
Goes well with WIOA as the feds continue to borrow and print dollar bills so that politicians at the local and state level can light them afire as short-term spending. Like borrowing for the annual vacation as a 36 month loan and wondering why the family stays in a financial bind.
I could see Robert Kegan’s influence on what Senge was asserting and then he showed up in FN 16.
There is tremendous excuse for mind arson when facts and logic impede the willingness to act without accurately imagining the likely consequences. How telling was this quote “one of their greatest contributions can come from the strength of their ignorance, which gives them permission to ask obvious questions and to embody an openness and commitment to their ongoing learning and growth that eventually infuse larger change efforts.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Committee reminded me of the global use of Facing History we encountered so troublingly in the Trilogy about what was really going on with the AP History frameworks.
Those looking for the links to the Common Core, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, and Robert Kegan all have tags on this blog that have previously laid all that out, including the Hewlett Foundation hiring Kegan and Senge in 2012 to make sure the new Common Core assessments would be looking for “deeper learning” proof.
This is the Chamber of Commerce’s new video insisting that annual testing is analogous to monitoring a known heart problem in a child. http://www.businessforcore.org/videos/
Such deceit since we highlighted the Chamber Foundation’s true actual agenda in the December 17, 2015 on Doubling Down on Deceit: Managing the Talent Pipeline”.
Fits completely with the broader UN agenda as I am reading the World Economic Forum’s January 2014 report at the moment.
Guess what? It hypes the need to shift values too.
I have not finished reading it myself.
That chamber video. Wow. They are really trying to convince the public that they are monitoring what is needed for success in the 21st century. Assessing deeper learning, good thing we know what that really means. In my opinion they just openly admitted that they are monitoring the ‘lens’ of the child. What an awful piece of propaganda. Trust us… we know what your child ‘needs’ for the 21st century.
There is quite the shift in Russia these days. Do you think we will see the communitarianism from them or go straight to fascism?
They are already operating as a crony kleptocracy so the latter. Communitarianism is just a required feint to condition malleable minds to deferring to the herd and forcing altruism. It’s why I used those Ayn Rand quotes in the Conclusion of the book.
The World Economic Forum and its UN participation just came out on page 89 in favor of school vouchers so that answers the Texas question of what is going on. Georgia is supposedly going to introduce a comparable bill.
The push for a Whole Child focus, the real meaning of rigor, deeper learning around politically useful supplied concepts, and hyping Growth Mindsets sure make complete sense with a stated goal on the “three ‘openings’ needed to transform systems:
*opening the mind (to challenge our assumptions),
*opening the heart (to be vulnerable and to truly hear one another), ans
*opening the will (to let go of pre-set goals and agendas and see what is really needed and possible.”
To be putty in the hands of the politically connected in other words with a straitjacketed mind and an adaptable, amenable personality that will be no barrier to a kleptocracy.
When I read that MPO document yesterday and it hyped the MPOs and the federal obligations to create them and it described the Denver Council of Governments and its roles, it finally clicked why all the blood shed never caused anyone to reject the change the child/extinguish the left hemisphere’s ability to be an Axemaker Mind model. It’s in the way of this Statist vision of the economy and society and that’s what matters.
That really is the bottom line and everything else is the requisite means to get there.
This Gigabit City North America conference is going on this week in Kansas City. Reading through the list of speakers we really can see the nexus of the MPOs in planning, making ICT a human right, the links to education and community organizing, and all the other elements putting a ‘needs’ society thoroughly in place. http://static1.squarespace.com/static/53d53f25e4b058117e6cac46/t/54b4995ae4b0b491c396f445/1421121882819/GCS-2015-Program-SM.pdf
As you will see Oregon is being held out as a model. Love the confession that Tynker for Children Coding is visual and does not rely on abstract symbols and syntax that can be confusing.
In other words, the coding is with the Right Brain, not the analytical Left Hemisphere McLuhan wanted ICT to be used to extinguish. Notice all the degrees from the Kennedy School of Government as well. It truly is all clicking now. When the ed reporter for the locally owned Cox newspaper touts the Change Agent Gypsy Super like she is his propaganda pimp, I am not confused anymore. I remember the Cox Broadband sub that is one of this conference’s sponsors and it all falls into place. Also why Cox would be the lead sponsor of that (co)lab event I have written about.
This is very complex to simpletons like me , but I understand that CC is a devised way to teach all chidlren collective values. I also believe that CC is a small puzzle piece in United Nation’s Agenda 21. Do you feel the same way ?
Hi Julie. Yes, I have regarded CC as a Bait and Switch for years now. I also have the Agenda 21 curriculum created back in 2002 archived as do a number of my readers.
It is especially complex on a blog that has been a chatting place for almost 3 years now that was built upon a book.
I do not feel that way so much as I quote people in positions of leadership declaring that is their intention. At that point we all get to talk about it.
Not serfs yet is the ISC motto. Welcome aboard.
Hi Robin,
I found your blog (and book – which I will be purchasing) via an insightful comment you left on Watts Up With That. I am glad I did. Thank you for the work you are doing.
I have been studying the arc of 20th century radical leftist movements in the US. Were I half the researcher you are I would have written a book. The motivations of the elite in pushing this NWO are easy to understand – power, greed, and the conceit that they are superior to the middle class. The ladder must be pulled up. The “Bill Ayers”/radical type thrive off chaos and power. They are sociopaths, for whom imprisoning, and executing dissidents is fun. They see this world as a game to “win”. As for their foot soldiers…I struggle to completely understand what motivates them. My instincts tell me that it’s a combination of rejecting traditional religious beliefs, and replacing then with dogmatic adherence to a utopian political movement; I also think they tend to be, for lack of a more elegant way of phrasing it, adults who were considered “losers” growing up. I work with several of them. They are beyond educating or redemption. They have a Charlie Brown-like view of the world, which they consider to be inherently unfair. Although all of these communist initiatives are couched in universalist language – indicating that in the future we will be selfless Mother Teresas, in my experience the “foot soldiers” are brittle and selfish. They want what others have, and will delight in seeing the moderately successful and talented (middle class) brought down to wallow in their misery.
If you haven’t read the Weather Underground’s 1974 communist manifesto “Prairie Fire” I recommend you do so. The tactics have changed ( quite successfully) but the underlying motivations have not.
Hi Pete and welcome to ISC. I always underestimate the number of people who actually get the intent behind what they are pushing. I think most have no idea of the consequences or what actually created the innovations they all want to take advantage of. There’s something blind about expressing a hatred for genuine free enterprise while adoring a Starbucks coffee and your I-Phone.
You will see that I try very hard in the book not just to tell what is going on but why we know the likely consequences and why these transformations matter in ways that are not being sufficiently appreciated because of all the conflicts of interest using the taxpayer dollar.
Hi Pete:
One book that goes into the personal aspect of being a leftist is Radical Son, by David Horowitz. It is a long read and there is a great deal about the 1960s, perhaps too much for some people. If I were to recommend one book on why some leftists become conservative this would be it. Liberalism/communism/progressive-ism is a religion. Apostates are shunned. That is very clear from the book. Dennis Prager also often talks about liberalism as being the major religion of the 20th century.
Ayn Rand is the only author I have read who gets at the heart of the anti-individualistic and soul destroying aspect of communism. I imagine that many religious authors do as well. She also nails the anti-industrial nature of the new left. The book Seeing Like a State was good for seeing the desire of the state to make the people orderly, observable, ‘rational’, orderly, etc.
eclectic-I am back from running out and concur that Horowitz’s insights are invaluable, especially about his parents the teachers.
I heard an ad for this yesterday three times as I ran my errands. The ad was touting the ‘transform sociey’ line. I hesitated in looking because a friend on mine is in the teacher program. We have already clashed more than once. He has changed through the program and it is very noticeable. Listening to him I knew what was happening. The school used to be decent.
Equity is such a focus here it is nauseating.
http://www.cu-portland.edu/news/actress-advocate-viola-davis-visits-portland-feb-3-2015
Another conference near you.
http://www.cvent.com/events/2015-model-schools-conference/event-summary-7982b0b7d11e4fbd9d4bd8d06147b303.aspx?ct=59458a8c-b962-48fc-b8b3-eae7e385e2d2
Bill Daggett did much of the training of state ed officials for the Common Core implementation. A lucrative journey for someone who used to head Vocational Ed for the Sate of New York. I have one of the textbooks he wrote.
Model Schools are committed to the idea that nobody gets to know much anymore so that the students no longer can make the ed administrators feel so stupid. Good teachers just want to find another line of work. The former Super of Dallas, Texas who came to Cobb, the EdLeader 21 district where CIFAL Atlanta is now located, also brought in Daggett to train Cobb teachers and sent them to this conference in Florida a few years ago.
This is experiential but it is certainly not about a body of knowledge or using the brain in an analytical, rational form of processing. http://www.edudemic.com/minecraftedu-and-simcityedu-blazing-trails-for-interdisciplinary-learning/
It just came out this morning and relates to where this Trilogy is going now that we know the whys and how. Time to focus on what it looks like at the level of the classroom and the child again.
I can see how this would engage the kids. However, they certainly are not learning much. I wonder how many classrooms will be using that role play idea. I can just imagine a newly graduated student looking for a job. The interviewer says what experience do you have that would allow you to perform at this job. Well Sir, I have constructed virtual worlds in school. Not knowing how it changes reality or works in the real world or knowing any facts that would support the ideas. Very sad.
It is awful when you can tell someone has gone through Change Agent Getting at What They Believe and Value Training while the person is oblivious to the shifts.
Notice though that the acute hunger caused by Michelle’s lunch regulations and our district’s announcements that outside food would be confiscated and thrown away if it came from a vendor doesn’t count. That’s part of K-12’s right to starve minds and bodies because they have magic Ed.D degrees.
As of on cue Equity in food consumption going forward http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/01/good-news-america-our-kids-have-a-new-food-czar/
Remember in that 2013 book Living in a Socialist USA where the futurist Thanksgiving vision mentions that eating meat has become a rarity and people who become ill after 70 just need to die? And that if people had understood what an economy and society founded on meeting ‘needs’ truly envisioned they would have never gone along with these shifts?
And those concessions were in an advocacy book.
I do remember that book. Maybe you and I are the only ones who read it, not likely.
That article is positively ridiculous. We had some at my home claiming “Food Justice” last weekend. Seemed there was not enough fallen chocolate souffle for everyone. 😉 Sarcasm needed for that garbage.
Did you notice the line about kids deserve a meal they are eager to eat. I remember a time or two as a kid I was not eager to eat liver and onions but it was the meal on the table.
Have you seen this from the American Psychological Association? http://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/01/adapting.aspx
It cites an ecopsychologist in Portland. Whatever it takes to gain the political power to transform.
EcoAmerica is something I worked on over the holidays and put up some links to. Yet another connected excuse for insiders to work together against the rest of us.
Sometimes I find the experience of reading these linked articles and confessions a bit surreal.
It struck me when reading, Living In A Socialist USA, that these individuals advocating no meat or death as a natural consequence to contracting strep throat at 70 for example, have exactly zero awareness of their own mortality. Or even that they are carbon based members of the human species at all.
It takes a sociopathic hubris to espouse the views that they do.
And surely I cannot be the only person to raise an eyebrow in the past 25 + years at the high strangeness of having elected or appointed by elected representatives of our constitutional republic christened as Czars/Tzars?
I do believe this practice began back in the mid 80’s. Timing is everything as they say.
Robin:
Shut up and eat your tofu turkey and kale.
just kidding
Who does not like a good Tofurky? 😉
still chuckling….seitan steak anyone? mwhahahaha.
If you like your ISP, you can keep your ISP. Can not help thinking how this fits with all the digital learning.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/obama-backs-government-run-internet-20150113
That Gigabit City North America link I put up above yesterday came up at dinner last night. Hubby said they are talking about overwiring to a point where an entire movie could be transmitted in 10 seconds. Not something most households would pay for or need to have accessible, but terribly lucrative for these ICT companies overselling capacity.
Taxpayer money in private hands shakedown seems to be the real 21st century global vision.
Community broadband and “citizens got together” is simply a euphemism for politicians and their bureaucrats put taxpayers on the hook in a build it and economic development will come approach. Like all those civic centers and office parks and much is built via bonds that underwriters and lawyers earned excellent upfront fees on while taxpayers are told they have little exposure to paying back the bonds if the projects do not generate the projected revenue, which is the norm.
Seriously, it is worth 15 minutes or so to read those bios. Notice Obama’s trip also coincides with the Kansas City convention.
Plus this conference commenced today on making cities and transportation the means of achieving Shared Prosperity. http://thecityfix.com/blog/cities-solution-climate-change-qa-ani-dasgupta-new-climate-economy-ttdc15-ryan-schleeter/
Notice the World Bank sponsorship. The same people who recently proclaimed the need for us ordinary citizens to have the “right mental models” for such a planned society.
Plus another sponsor, World Resources Institute, is where your former Portland mayor has just taken a job. http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/01/sam_adams_former_portland_mayo.html
HAHAHHA ! Exactly, L.L. Don’t nobody hold yer breath on this one.
Sort of off topic but interesting, I watched a video the other day which analyzed President Obama’s truthfulness when speaking. In this older example he was addressing NSA over reach..ahem…concerns.
The blogger analyzing his speech pattern and facial inflections noted several instances of “Duping Delight” which occurs when an individual cannot conceal their pleasure at their deceitfulness. This and smile masking, where a hand obscures the mouth for a moment, suggests an awareness of speaking dishonestly. i.e.; Sociopathic behavior.
There is quite a bit of that going around these days. And it’s showing with all this glorious governance we are being treated to.
Robin,
You may have addressed this already and I missed it. If so point me in the right direction. But can you speak to the longer term trajectory as you understand it to Obama’s “Free” ( snort ) two year community college proposal?
Aside from the fact that two years at cc will not emphasize any tremendous academic content and will more likely just be a form of expensive credentialing for designated state industries, what else is going on?
First the community colleges are expressly partners to all the local WIOA workforce boards with the Chamber. Good old Turchenko plus it’s a federally funded source of jobs in most communities and transformations are more likely when expectations that middle-class jobs are available to those with degrees are not forthcoming.
Community colleges are to be cradles of democracy in the economic justice sense as described here. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/finale-essential-learning-outcomes-to-guide-all-students-through-decreed-global-challenges/
Plus community organizer mentor to Obama was put in charge of the higher ed initiative as explained here to achieve the King Beloved Community vision. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/commencing-the-long-sought-bloodless-coup-via-education-to-make-equality-for-all-a-fact/
Remember Harry Boyte himself describes his MH vision of our future as a cooperative commonwealth.
Now all debt from community college can be laid at the feet of evil republicans. Truthfully most Reps are too much on board for bad ed ideas as that Lamar Alexander NCLB draft shows, but this proposal is too clearly a throw-away.
Plus this is the Resource Guide for Employer Engagement that came out Tuesday http://www.jff.org/sites/default/files/publications/materials/A-Resource-Guide-to-Employer-Engagement-011315.pdf as part of the community college/WIOA initiative.
This that came out in December http://www.jff.org/sites/default/files/publications/materials/A-Resource-Guide-to-Employer-Engagement-011315.pdf
You may also want to sign up for this webinar at Harvard in early February http://www.cvent.com/events/more-than-college-readiness-engaging-students-in-work-and-civic-life/event-summary-effde17ed3954f2a9e9ff06f6e13eee4.aspx
This Gates funded initiative being piloted in 3 states after california–Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio shows again that it is the nature of college being shifted so all can be deemed college-ready and get that credential. http://completionbydesign.org/sites/default/files/site-uploads/main-site/pdf/ncii-inquiry-guides-principles-of-redesign.pdf
Preparing Apocalyptic Awareness Mindsets
It boggles the mind. Seattle apparently already has an initiative “to produce, distribute, access, and eat good food regardless of race, class, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, ability, religion, or community.”
The Internet fills us in on world developments once cued in. I wouldn’t have been prompted to even look for topics like “food justice” except this ISC blog is now talking about it.
This Food Czar appointment is just preparing us ever more tightly to accept government intervention, government machinery and dictates at the drop of a hat.
Is “Sleep Justice” next?
This book “Living in a Socialist USA” is part of the scenario helping to describe an apocalyptic, disastrous future.
What about the book, “The Giver” which is mandated for middle school readers in so many schools? People assigned to their role, jobs, even spouses. Equality and sameness enforced in subtle ways. Everyone takes a daily pill to suppress emotional/sexual feelings. People “released” when reaching a certain age or deemed unfit.
Yes, creeping socialism is happening through mind-shifts — propaganda and conditioning in schools. And, through the proliferation of interventionist jobs paid by the general public.
http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-23820-the_equalizer.html
We know Oregon does not need charters due to policies already in place. The state seems to only focus on this central area, the rest just deal with policies made by the state due to this area. Is there more to than equity? And “privileged white children”. It will be difficult since Oregon has a very high population of millionaires.
Lamar Alexander’s NCLB rewrite calls for closing the achievement gap betwwen economically advantaged and economically disadvantaged kids. When you go through the criteria in the rewrite, the language in WIOA, and the inclusion of the vocational Perkins Act in the academic standards that must apply to all students in a state, there is no longer any way to have a transmission of knowledge emphasis and comply with the terms of the planned federal statute.
Rather than admit that the Equity mandate comes from the feds and is tied to extinguishing the rational, analytical Left Hemisphere Mind, which is true but a likely PR problem even in Portland, you sell the neighborhood school tied to real estate values and thus parental incomes as no longer acceptable. Gary Orfield’s work has been aiming at this for a while.
In Fulton, the charter gets used to achieve the same purpose. The parents simply assume the charter protects them because that is what the School Board itself has been led to believe. Nobody bothers to read it and recognize it jettisons academics in contractual language. The oblivious parents still think their million-dollar homes and high taxes insulate their kids while the district admins chuckle with glee over shafting the children of the ‘privileged’.
Hard to harm those kids once the parents become aware of this template and hire tutors. There is also a new College Board report created by Education Counsel stressing Socioeconomic levels and Geography as in zip code info as perfectly lawful ways to build Diversity.
The linked article was not all one sided. It looks like the school board president got caught.
“The resulting report published last May found that PPS “lacks internal clarity” about the reasons the district wants to redraw school boundaries.
The report also found that PPS’s equity agenda—not just uneven enrollments between schools—was really driving the district’s plans. PSU’s experts recommended that the district come clean with the community. ”
The new ruling class will not sacrifice their children to ‘equity’ if they know what is going on. The reason for differences in results between schools depends on much more than money spent in the schools. This includes self sorting of people with higher IQs. Doctor marries doctor and lawyer marries lawyer and they move to the same area and send their kids to the same school. If you don’t think this matters adopt a couple kids and get back to me, or talk to other parents who have. It also appears the better off schools in the article are wasting their extra money on non-core electives like screen writing, etc.
There is more going on in this area than people realize. Just last year students interrupted a board meeting with bull horns and a mob. Not known to most is that the protest was organized by the PPS union leader. This person took the year of from teaching to do union work.
I am fully aware of the struggles that exist for families that adopt and those with special needs. I frequently provide respite care for them. My closest friend is adopting her third child with special needs from the foster system.
In case I have misunderstood I will ask. Are you saying that those whom are well educated or higher income are disrupting the education others by their choice of home location? Portland is truly a mixed bag. You have old historic homes worth a million next to homes of little value. The young downtown workers have pushed into the area and the area became quickly overcrowded. The district has long been used as a ‘transformational’ focus.
LL:
I am saying that the IQ/other genetic traits of the people settling in a school district account for more of the higher academic results in that district than people would like to believe. Wishing it were not so does not make it not so. Doctor marries doctor more than marries secretary now and they tend to move to an area with ‘their own kind’ as do most people. People incredibly self sort themselves geographically now. If two people meet while attending Harvard and marry each other that is an incredibly selective process.
If a couple with higher IQs raise adopted kids that are on average average they find this out.
I’m saying that differences in money spent do not explain all the differences in results. Marx thought that the music Mozart created was the result of environment, not genetics. That is why Lysenko was so important to the commies as his ‘science’ was compatible with that.
That is why I talked about Lysenko in the book. I also thought of his work when I read that NCLB rewrite draft from Alexander since no one has focused on that crucial language.
The phenomenon you are talking about is precisely something my kids and I have talked about since it crucially affects what ideas get spoken of in the house or at the dinner table in the first place. My husband and I used to joke that unless one of the kids took German or Mandarin, one of us could always help them with their homework.
One variable I noticed when my oldest was in elementary in private and you could tell which kids were really sharp was how much it mattered whether the parents allowed Gameboys as their kids constant companions to occupy time. Even in the Doctor/Doctor households of friends, it matters if neither parent was around to interact with the child or they had a series of nannies from a young age.
One of the reasons I write so compulsively despite my own sadness at the nature of this story is that these intentions are not OK with a broad spectrum of people once they are known. The extent of the penetration in the privates is mostly unknown, but huge for those of us who noticed it. It changes even faster than a public school once a Change Agent Head of School is in place. Those teachers simply start not having their contracts renewed. They count on the powerful parents to notice, but they do not seem to. Then they start reading this blog in frustration.
As I understand the Equity focus, their idea is that by living in a white upper middle class suburb, I am depriving poorer nonwhite kids of their educational entitlement. Oddly enough, I don’t agree with them.
(I also don’t think it was right for Obama to “parachute in” a bunch of illegal immigrant kids into our district recently for us to educate and diversify with.)
From what I know about what happened in Raleigh NC when the integrated their large metro school district about 15 years ago, the black parents in the poor sections of town didn’t want their kids bused an hour and a half to the “better” white school either.
If you want to track the ire over the inability to bus metrowide and the push to deny neighborhood schools in places like Charlotte-Meck when they rejected busing, look into Gary Orfield’s work for the Equity Project. Originally at Harvard, it is now at UCLA.
Florida has had county-wide systems for decades and when Charlotte rejected busing, administrators are suddenly brought up from Florida to make sure this does not amount to a return to academics and schools built around the neighborhoods the parents live in. Many of those admins are now in Fulton where I live having fun with that conversion charter and being touted regularly on the Getting Smart blog. It was no accident that one of the Super’s first acts was to bring in Cambridge Education to stop traditional teaching and to bring in Spence Rogers, co-creator of Transformational Outcomes Based Education back in the early 90s with the better-known Bill Spady. Both force the sociocultural model although the high schools are still somewhat limited by the remaining old-fashioned PSAT, SAT, and remaining end-of-course tests and AP exams that are all disappearing or being reformulated.
I noticed that the Charlotte-Meck Super, Peter Gorman, who had come from Florida but then gone to work for Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify, its digital learning initiative, was part of the panel this week put on by our mental models formation-touting World Bank to highlight Joel Klein’s new book. Klein is his boos at Amplify. The OECD says that NYC began piloting its global vision for K-12 education back in 2002, about the start of Levin’s tenure as NYC schools chancellor.
Klein,as I described, unwisely touted in my presence at a Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce luncheon a few years ago that these reforms were all about creating “new kinds of minds.” Just like this post and the following one lay out. Here’s that original declaration. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/ridiculing-the-1860s-mind-as-unsuitable-for-the-21st-century-cui-bono/
I think Joel would have been more cautious had he not seemed to be playing the “I’m the smartest person in this room” level of arrogance.
Relevant to Charlotte-Meck, it is piloting the IFTF’s Personalized Learning with Gates Foundation funding per this Saturday story being distributed today. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2015/01/17/5453940/cms-offering-students-options.html#.VL0jty4YNVc
Right-brain emphasis is left out of story as is the IFTF’s declaration that this type of learning is necessary for our “new participatory economy.” If we are not shifting to an Uncle Karl-envisioned needs economy, it’s the wrong kind of K-12 education since it is about changing and collecting needs data from the student to foster the desired mindsets.
Funny how the rest of the story gets left out.
David-take a look at this and the implications of the class learning activities being the Organic Goodie Machine or reimagining the Constitutional Convention. http://www.socstrpr.org/files/Vol%204/Issue%202%20-%20Summer,%202010/Research/4.2.2.pdf
Neither is grounded in fact, but the classroom is being used to build a “critical thinking’ consciousness that is ready to seek transformative change. Unfortunately, reality will control the actual consequences. With little accurate facts, what is readily foreseeable by us Old Fogeys with an Axemaker Mind and a Base of knowledge will not be foreseen by the students being trained to be Change Agents.
Re: the social justice classroom:
I didn’t know this was even permitted for teachers. Are they allowed to inculcate a political position like that? Can’t they just be fired for cause when they do that?
I guess all this ridiculous stuff has made my mind go into “tilt” mode and I am no longer as capable of distinguishing the awful from the terrible, I just want to start firing people.
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