I did not take you through excruciating details on what has been sought since at least the 60s to fill you with a sense of woe but to ground present known intentions in their proper foundations. This is not just some pursuit hatched by the current occupant of the White House and his friends nor is it limited to the US. It has been a long term scheme for political, economic, and social power. It seeks to shift decision-making away from individuals and vests it in the public sector or with vetted cronies and in international entities like UN agencies and the OECD. But it is such a high priority of this administration that President Obama signed an Executive Order on his very first day in office stipulating that all government information that did not have to be kept secret for security or privacy reasons should be made public. This new policy is called the Open Data Initiative. Its importance to governments globally can be seen by the G-8 Summit in June 2013 adopting an Open Data Charter.
Now people from time to time will ask me if I could please limit my posts or my new book Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon to discussions of education because that’s all that really interests them. My answer has always been no as the documents are quite clear that all these education reforms being pushed in the US as the Common Core or globally under names such as 21st Century Skills, Personalized Learning, and Positive Behavior Systems are simply means to certain ends. I think not discussing the sought ends leaves the reasons on why the actual implementation looks so much like social engineering impossible for us to grasp. We do not have to wonder anymore why anyone would do what we can now prove they [Who is ‘they’ many people ask? foundations, ed professors, district supers, and too many school principals will do for starters] are doing and mandating with every bit of legal authority they can seize.
In October 2013 McKinsey Global Institute issued a report laying out the intentions of our governmental overlords in 7 ‘domains’: education, transportation, consumer products, electricity, oil and gas, healthcare, and consumer finance. Basically learner analytics will be applied in the future to the Open Data and business and individual proprietary data to supposedly “enable better decision-making.” But not by us anymore. Think of this as the idea that the Service State we encountered in the last post or the planned society we encountered in the post before that are now achievable in the 21st century via supercomputers, models, and Big Data. The report is called “Open data: Unlocking innovation and performance with liquid information.” McKinsey uses the terms ‘open data’ and ‘liquid information’ synonymously.
Before we get to the open acknowledgment that the new tech-enabled personalized learning being pushed as an essential aspect of global education reforms is actually intended to “increase motivation [remember our conation discussion and that nerdy phrase triune consciousness?], change mindsets, and adjust learning strategies,” let me go through some of the troubling assumptions from other domains. How about the assumption that “conceivably, credit card companies could raise interest rates on households that waste electricity”? Does that sound like the credit card companies now are independent or an arm of governmental policy for desired future behavior? How about businesses now subject to “open data released by third parties could expose poor environmental or labor practices or show their products or services compare poorly for price and quality”? Isn’t that ‘a run your companies in the manner we desire or you will get bad publicity’ threat?
The report contemplates that “sharing data gathered via ‘smart grid’ technologies can be particularly helpful in spurring energy sufficiency.” How? By publicly revealing relative personal consumption levels. Now I want you to think about the disastrous Obamacare website rollout and all the deceit used by politicians and agency bureaucrats to cover up the true nature of the planned shift in the US healthcare and insurance model:
“As the maker of laws and enforcer of regulations, government can shape the legal and economic environment that maximizes the potential value from the use of open data, while addressing the legitimate privacy and intellectual property concerns of individuals and organizations.”
Right. And how intrusive are the planned releases of data that “intellectual property concerns” even become an issue? Now we know when it is essential to keep data secret and secure as with national security matters [think Edward Snowden] or the personal financial data component on the Obamacare website, governments are terrible at it. Now onto that reality let’s add everything intended as part of this Open Data Initiative. All so that 21st Century society can become not a place of individual decision-makers but a place for “large-scale collaboration among individuals, companies, governments, and other organizations” supposedly seeking each of our subjective well-being as the goal of governments. And also seeking to “help educate the public about the potential benefits to the economy and society.”
The proprietary data will be gone. Governments as usual will be lousy administrators with no real incentives to do a good job. And from looking just at the education component, the benefits appear to me to be illusory but the levers of manipulation over human behavior look boundless. All in all the kind of stupid ideas that would be resisted at every turn if only they were better understood. And without so many advocates with their hand in the cookie jar of intended future governmental spending. All this ed data being gathered is said to improve individual “performance, which can lead to higher graduation rates, greater educational attainment, and increased lifetime earnings.” Not if students do not know much of anything and everyone suddenly has the same credentials.
Now how many of you have heard anyone write about personalized learning as the wave of the future? It is a simply marvelous gatherer of personal info with thousands of data points being collected when adaptive software is used. Which it will be so all those data points can become part of the Open Data Initiative basis for a new type of collective decision-making in the future. Here is the definition of personalized learning from the McKinsey cited and Gates Foundation funded Learning to adapt report from 2013 [my bolding]:
“pedagogical method or process that draws on observation to inform tailored student education interventions designed to increase the likelihood of learner success.”
The personal data being gathered then is extensive and real and just full of non-cognitive information. And the tasks and activities the student is asked to do get adjusted as necessary to gain success. Not exactly the ingredients that would actually foster future economic success.
Getting to public sector-centric decision-making is the whole point. Equity for all and social justice at last are after all the by-words for all these pushes. Economist Ludwig Von Mises in the book Socialism he wrote just after World War I described all these pursuits as Ethical Socialism. It was all the rage in Germany and his native Austria before and after the war just like it is now all the rage in US academia and political institutions and federal agencies in 2013. The fundamental fallacy remains the same as what he noted:
“Most people who demand the greatest possible equality of incomes do not realize that what they desire would only be achieved by sacrificing other aims. They imagine that the sum of incomes will remain unchanged…this idea rests on a grave error. It has been shown that, in whatever way one envisages the equalization of incomes this must always and necessarily lead to a very considerable reduction of the total national income and, thus, of the average income…we have then to decide whether we are in favor of an equal distribution of income at a lower average income, or inequality of incomes at a higher average income.”
Von Mises was simply discussing the overall impact due to the disincentives to be productive in the future. Given the contemplated mind arson I have been documenting, just imagine the actual effects of disincentives to be productive when coupled to the widespread inability to be productive.
And then add on the cost of the public sector to poorly administer this planned society. And all that insecure Open Data. And the wasteful cronyism attached to the planned collaboration.
And the lack of personal freedom. The Open Data Initiative surely will lead to a society incapable of mass prosperity.
Makes you wonder who they think will fund the redemption of all those Social Security IOUs in the near future under these plans. I guess it’s a good thing all the administrators and politicians pushing these plans intend to rely on taxpayer-financed pensions to fund their retirements after careers spent destroying the source of wealth everyone is taking for granted.
Will this really work out well for anyone in the long term?
“Now people from time to time will ask me if I could please limit my posts or my new book Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon to discussions of education because that’s all that really interests them.”
And this, then, is a huge part of the problem. So few truly understand that the big picture is more than what is happening in the schools. Social engineering requires political, ideological and psychological manipulation that begins in education but moves about unnoticed and unchecked in entertainment, news, advertising, print and online media. It’s everywhere and no one can see it because it is hidden in plain sight now.
Understanding the agenda and how far reaching it is requires attention to the details, and connecting dots that seem completely unrelated.
When Martin Turner blew teh whistle on look-sy, Croydon LEA sacked him.
Now , sadly, the (UK) Reading Reform Foundation has decided to support the ghastly “Letters and Soudns” ‘phonics’ programme and I am trying to alert people to its flaws, adn direct them to a better, free programme, the UK RRF has banned me from their Message Board. Connect the dots….
The best phonics is now free at http://www.phonics4free.org. Parents can use it and school-proof their own child, at least in reading. It works for dyslexics, people in prison…
Hi Mona.
Yes when it comes to education reforms the UK is further along. In the previous post I talked about the post 2015 UN agenda David Cameron himself was part of that working group so we have a global problem of the public sector wanting to use people to justify its continued and accelerating power over society and the economy. Basically trying to dismantle the usurpation of authority created by the invention of the printing press I suppose.
I have had to deal with UK import and Mott MacDonald subsidiary Cambridge Education over here. Being well paid to tell teachers they may not teach and basically pushing the Gates Foundation’s toxic vision of the future. You cannot have a just and equitable society with unaccountable bureaucrats insisting we are the governed and they get to be the Governors.
David coleman’s first real job was with mckinsey. He is the son of soviet ed groupie LizColman and a psychologist. Is it any wonder common core is just another
( albeit pivotal ) plank of this cultiral marxist march through our institutions. So they slash and burn and rebuild utopia where we use invisible carbon breath as currency in a post Hitler global
Hot mess. Happy hunger games!
Angela Duckworth also came out of McKinsey as did Michael Barber who led one of their groups between leaving Blair’s administration and joining Pearson.
So have other major players in the actual education reforms. A lot of those leading the tech start-ups or charter companies.
I just finished listening to that Unger RSA lecture and my brain is fried but McKinsey globally is considered one of three prime players in the direction of education. Other two are the OECD and Marc Tucker and his National Center on Education and the Economy. He has been staying in the background more this time to keep the illusion that CCSSI is not just a continuation of the 90s reforms and the New Standards Project of alternative assessments.
It’s Remarkable How Relentlessly Schools Get To Host “Change-the-World” Events
A “need” is identified — maybe because of schoolyard aggression or stress from high-stakes testing — and soon programs emerge. Empathy needs to be taught.
Here is a program called Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child. It’s a program reaching elementary children in Canada, US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.
Here is an article about the latest school district in BC to adopt it. http://www.coastreporter.net/article/20131118/SECHELT0101/311189999/-1/sechelt/roots-of-empathy-expands-to-benefit-students
It takes 27 weeks, 40 minutes a week, and the intent is to raise social/emotional competence from watching and discussing the baby brought into the classroom.
The leaders say that if every classroom adopted the Roots of Empathy, we could change the world.
Could that possibly be an overstatement? What other programs make the same claim? And what happens when there are competing programs vying for time-sharing in the schools? And what school programs get diminished? Do reading competence and math competence take a back seat to social/emotional competence?
Just where does this notion come from that the whole world needs to be changed? And why are the public education systems of the world to be the vehicle and the youngsters are to bear this burden?
The message has been well implanted and the new book Credentialed to Destroy – How and Why Education Became a Weapon — lays out the relentless path now being implemented. It’s a conclusion I will oppose to the best of my ability.
Tunya-
The very word radical means to get at the roots. To transform the structures and institutions and systems.
Roots of empathy would be go after the unconscious responses which we have studied. It is Robert Kegan’s work. Empathy is what takes you beyond Stage 3 of consciousness and is thus relevant to RSA’s current Social Brain Project and the OECD’s global key competences push. Going on in every country you mentioned.
In addition Lawrence Kohlberg was Kegan’s mentor so Roots of Empathy is also Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development that hopefully invokes Universal Love. The same one implicated both in the Common Core implementation here in the US and that was controversially imposed as part of the new Citizenship frameworks on Hong Kong. As China shifts that consciousness away from Anglo_Saxon and common law beliefs and values about the individual.
I listened to that Unger lecture from last week and started looking at his book last night. Democratic experimentalism. He want minds not tied to the past or the hand of the dead ready to try new ways to organize society to see what happens.
Nothing good unless you are in the organizing class. And as I mentioned in this post even then we are blowing up the foundation that is being taken for granted long term.
“Most people who demand the greatest possible equality of incomes do not realize that what they desire would only be achieved by sacrificing other aims. They imagine that the sum of incomes will remain unchanged…this idea rests on a grave error.
I agree that this is true for many people who have merely jumped on the “feel good we are all in this global community together bandwagon.” I am inclined to think though that the initiators of these plans who were and those who are currently enthralled by Uncle Karl know exactly well what will become of the majority of the global community as they are reduced in income, intelligence, creativity and independence.
I read recently an unpublished manuscript entitled The Impossible Dream by K.M. Heaton which while written in 1990 deals with the very programs and initiatives in education we are discussing here. In the foreword the author writes what follows which I thought was really the “core” of everything whether one wants to believe it or not.
“….Another perception which has been encouraged; as a
revolutionary tactic has to do with the GOAL of this revolution .
Hairs have been split over patriotic resistance to
‘socialism’ and/or ‘communism’, both which have been perceived as
an apparent goal of this worldwide revolution . More real than
apparent is the true goal – evidenced in every revolutionary
move, implicit i .n every program promoted, actualized in every
conquered land, and explicitly stated in early documents directly
attributable to the mattoids who dreamed this “impossible
dream” .
That true goal is a return to feudalism, with the
revolutionaries in total control- of all the resources of the
world – including what they have identified as “human resources” .
(See GEB statement, “Document Section”)
Since the communist/socialist smokescreen blurred my own
vision for many years, I have nothing but empathy for those who
haven’t yet broken through the obfuscation .”
Mari
Mari-
In the concluding chapter of my book I cite a 2006 Club of Rome book that acknowledges that feudal attention. It basically goes back to people being and doing what they are told by those with economic and political power. Which is conjoined in a caste society.
Herman Daly also mentions the same in his book for the common good that is listed as supporting research behind the Response to Intervention Positive Behavior mandates imposed on all students via what I regard as a misreading of federal disabilities laws.
That’s a very apt quote and fits with the post I just put up too.
Amen, Sister! I’m one of those interested in education. But you are absolutely right. We must know the ends the enemy stives for in order to fight effectively. Otherwise, we just complain and fail to offer a legitimate defense against this evil. These people (the designers of and subscribers to this social engineering) are evil and truly souless. You are fearless in calling them out. Thank you.
Thanks anon but between what I know from book research and what I have described on blog and what I know that I have not yet put into words, I am more afraid of the dangers of not discussing all this.
This is happening now. My next post will be based on another event from this past week and what is being sought and who is financing it ties back to what set off the Great Recession in the first place. This is already creating great misery. We need all the able minds we can get, not having our Best and Brightest levelled through mind arson or taught to believe in things that are not true in order to change behavior.
Enjoy the other posts and tell your friends there is a blog that is systematically putting everything together. Finally.