Education as a Form of Brain Surgery Means We Better All Appreciate the Function of an LMS

Gone for a while and here I show back up with a new acronym. An LMS is a Learning Management System. It provides the learning experiences, prescribes the activities, and collects tremendous amounts of data generated by online experiences about the student so that who the student is at a fundamental level–‘desired character traits’ was the term one LMS used–can be restructured at a neurobiological level. Hope that explicit explanation does not make anyone wish I had stayed gone. In fact, between personal issues this summer I have spent a great deal of time on webinars laying out precisely how LMS’s work. The so-called global pandemic has essentially made them mandatory in districts not already using them since, even in districts with in-school classes, the risk of sudden flareups has forced almost everyone into at least a hybrid model if not purely distance learning.

How’s this for a relevant quote for these times? The discussion was about the ability of the constructed virtual reality experiences an LMS can provide to illustrate how ‘models’ work. The example given in a book published back in 2017 by MIT Press went like this:

models are often used to develop predictions, test predictions, and explore relationships among variables. We use the content area of global pandemics to address different ways that models can facilitate decision making. For example, students work with a simulation model to test predictions about whether disease containment (e.g., quarantine, minimizing potential disease transmission on public transit) or prevention (e.g., vaccination) would more effectively stem a global pandemic.

That particular book was about an LMS being used by a university, but it has since expanded into K-12 https://www.gettingsmart.com/2020/07/new-standards-of-quality-minerva-baccalaureate-and-debt-free-college/ and the location of its use does not alter the planned physical and emotional alteration of students. So feel free to substitute any school using an LMS in the following quote instead of the referenced ‘universities’. Function matters, not the location of the manipulation.

…in order to develop the mind, universities must provide a structured approach. One could think of education as a form of brain surgery: education effectively changes the structure and function of the brain. And, as with other forms of surgery, there must be a clear plan of action before the education operation begins. [See why the prescribed Portrait of a Graduate or Learner Profile matters?] It is not acceptable to start an operation and only then start thinking about what the next step should be. When universities perform this ‘brain surgery’ and try to grow the capability and capacity of the mind, they should not do so in a haphazard way. They should have a plan of action [maybe a Common Core of Learning tied to standardized goals each student is to demonstrate?]. And therefore the structure of the educational path, commonly known as the curriculum, is important.

The LMS is what is providing that curriculum in either Hybrid or Distance Learning. Even physical experiences get uploaded via a rubric to the LMS so it begins to have a picture of each student that functions like ‘Google Maps,’ as one summer webinar laid it out, for the desired Knowledge, Skills, and Personal Characteristics (Attributes or Dispositions are the usual terms used). Let’s abbreviate that as a useful KSA and the LMS acts like many people’s phone prescribing what a student needs to change and how given where they are now in their KSA vs. the desired destination. Skills is self-explanatory since it involves actions and behavior but our ‘K’ is something too few appreciate since it has quietly shifted to something known as ‘practical knowledge’.

We believe the basic task of a liberal arts education [feel free to substitute Classical Education such as the Barney Initiative in K-12] is to provide citizens with a set of intellectual tools that is applicable across a wide range of situations–and that therefore serves as practical knowledge. Practical knowledge, as we use the term, is knowledge that one can use to adapt to a changing world, helping one to achieve one’s goals…[Knowledge] becomes a set of habits of mind and foundational concepts… [that] everyone ought to use–something akin to a basic cognitive operating system.

Two of the terms being used to deal with a new vision of education being pushed in either the name of Covid     https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/restarting-reinventing-school-covid-report or systemic racism, or both  https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/brooklyn-laboratory-charter-schools-partners-release-guidebook-on-cultivating-learner-identity-and-agency-to-better-equip-students-to-deal-with-covid-19-this-fall-301117433.html has been Identity and Agency. It also fits with what is called Culturally Relevant Teaching in other summer webinars. It’s omnipresent as the remedy in other words with a variety of justifications. LMS’s are good at cultivating both of these as well since they can use the insights from “new technologies that afforded insight into how the mind functions and the brain reacts to the signals it receives from different modes of communication and different media.”

In fact, “because of their immersive narratives, video games have the potential to play an important role in communication and persuasion for socially beneficial purposes.” The LMS facilitates the creation of a shared understanding because it can be set so that it “requires developing a dialogue with previously unexamined layers of the self and one’s relationship to the world. This [manipulated] interior dialogue and self-examination are [supposedly] the first step to good communication.” Students can learn to use the models and simulations available in the LMS to study “how to change the behavior of groups and individuals” and move on to “some of the most pressing social and political challenges facing the world today.” These activities and experiences create an embedded reality “where students come to see themselves not as mere cogs in the complex systems in which they exist but rather as agents whose behavior and initiative have the power to change these systems, potentially in far-reaching and beneficial ways.”

Let’s pivot just a second away from what the LMS is facilitating to just how very useful it is. Last week, “The Anti-Racist Discussion Guide” came out for higher ed. Now just imagine the use of a higher ed LMS if this is the ultimate goal of the change in the nature of what will now constitute an education.

What we are exposed to shapes our worldviews. And in very real ways, our worldviews shape the world, through our perspectives, our words, and our actions. Because of this educators, have a unique responsibility to play an active role in helping students become aware of their role within larger societal and global systems, and to help students build the critical questioning skills and confidence necessary to create change in these systems.

What underpins an ‘anti-racist’ teaching method–or critical pedagogy–is the desire to help students question and understand the systems and structures of power which exist in our society, both implicit and explicit, and actively critique and dismantle them to create a society that maximizes the happiness, success, and freedom of all of its citizens.

Long time readers will recognize that last line as Uncle Karl’s Human Development Society, which again fits with numerous webinars from this summer, especially some quotes from both PolicyLink’s Angela Glover Blackwell, as well as Beloved Community. It also fits with the Happiness Curriculum being pushed globally. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Development-of-student-and-teacher-measures-of-HC-factors-FINAL-081920.pdf is from a Center that ties to UNESCO for anyone not familiar with their work.

In the Bibliography of that last paper was one published in frontiers in Human Neuroscience that also takes us back to the title of this post. “Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness” will be fascinating to anyone concerned about mindfulness mandates imposed on their local schools. The practices that go hand in hand with what constitutes education to promote Agency and Identity though also trigger those same neurobiological mechanisms if you actually read the paper along with what is laid out in the papers I have linked to (which are only the tip of the iceberg of what is out there from just this summer).

That’s right. These shifts laid out as remedies to COVID and Systemic Racism literally are designed to both alter the human nervous system, including the brain, as well as finally embody, in the most literal way, the qualities John Dewey laid out as necessary for a citizen in the reimagined democracy of the future. He does get mentioned a lot again in case anyone wants to go back and reread Chapter One of my book Credentialed to Destroy. He would be so excited about the potential of an LMS, as would the Communists who used their then precious resources just after the Russian Revolution to translate Dewey’s work.

It’s all coming together now in earnest. Best to understand now or we will all be targeted by the Revolution at the Level of our Minds–the ultimate microsystem.

94 thoughts on “Education as a Form of Brain Surgery Means We Better All Appreciate the Function of an LMS

  1. Random comments to kick this off.

    I think “LMS” is a winner…always go with 3-letters when one can, its trinitarian.

    “models are often used to develop predictions, test predictions, and explore relationships among variables. We use the content area of global pandemics to address different ways that models can facilitate decision making. For example, students work with a simulation model to test predictions about whether disease containment (e.g., quarantine, minimizing potential disease transmission on public transit) or prevention (e.g., vaccination) would more effectively stem a global pandemic.”

    Well, if any student with a double-digit IQ takes a look at how a computer model was used to shut down the global economy, and the long-term sequelae of this action…it might contribute to an understanding of scientism run amock.

    I keep going back to my way too up close and personal experience of the so-called HIV-AIDS epidemic in S.F. and related vectors.

    I keep thinking about WHAT Anthony Fauci and his cohort did not ‘see’…

    Amidst this unbelievable carnage, and when it was at its full apex, Fauci announced to the world from his global platform that, “perfectly healthy young men” were dying of a virus.

    He claimed that he had treated or interviewed thousands of these “perfectly healthy young men”.

    OK, I had eyes in my head and was not, at the time, completely insane — was sharing a flat with one of these “perfectly healthy young men”, and had significant contact with other “perfectly healthy young men” as the only FEMALE member of the S.F. Design Network.

    A Day in the Life of a “Perfectly Healthy Young Man” (any competent medical practitioner could have recorded these details)

    4:00 PM…wake up…shower, and anoint oneself for an evening of fun. Be sure to not forget the poppers one has stored in the fridge — dozens of vials being required for a single evening out…

    Be sure to pop prophylactic antibiotics because that last bout of gonorrhea was nasty.

    6:00 PM — dawn — troll maybe half a dozen bathhouses to engage in multiple hook-ups, whilst huffing poppers for, maybe, six hours straight, and keeping it all copacetic with cocaine and meth.

    Repeat this cycle six days a week.

    “Perfectly healthy young men” of 25, looked to be 40 after a year of this.

    Any caring health care practitioner — or common citizen — with eyes in his/her head could SEE this..no computer modeling was required to understand the etiology of this ‘virus’.

    No moral judgment intended, here…just stating the FACTS that were patently obvious to normals with Axemaker Minds. Very tragic, all of this…

    The ‘real’ disease, as with the virus du jour, was the absolute LACK of caring for the people involved. God knows how many lives could have been saved by the exercise of common sense!

    Yesterday, I spoke with a citizen of Rome, who told me all about that city’s Covid-19 lockdown experience, which sounded just like my city’s Covid-19 lockdown experience.

    Commonalities — “well, we weren’t hit very hard, there were very few cases”…and/but, “fortunately, because we locked-down…we flattened the curve”…but, “when the lockdown was lifted, people congregated together, and there were many more cases”…and/but “we will deal with this, TOGETHER”…

    I have a friend who is a virologist…and this person tells me that these ‘thingy’s’ have predictable patterns that are very much subject to climate/temperature. These thingy’s do not flourish in the summer heat…really cannot survive it, are not transmittable in the summer. So why, are there spikes of this thingy occurring in sweltering Rome and Tokyo?

    We talk about the Axmaker Mind, well, maybe there is the Fauci Brain, as well? Robin, I am calling this “FB”, or, better yet, “FBS”, Fauci Brain Syndrome.

    This would be a brain that can ignore the fact that Kaposi’s Sarcoma occurs in gay male victims of HIV/AIDS but not in female victims — kinda weird, doncha think?

    What is the cure? Just say “no”, or “JSN”.

    • I was in SF on business a lot in the mid 90s between my 2nd child and 3rd. Loved to go to Tadich Grill for their cioppino. Learned to make it back home in ATL without the seafood being quite so fresh.

      Here’s another link on the same vein. https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/08/changing-curricula-around-race-schools.html

      Also adding this. https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-why-policymakers-and-school-leaders-cant-ignore-how-the-pandemic-hurts-childhood-brain-development/

      Yes, that’s Goldie Hawn the actress. She has been in Qatar at some of the programs on positive psychology I have written about where Csik and Martin Seligman also spoke.

      • On: https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-why-policymakers-and-school-leaders-cant-ignore-how-the-pandemic-hurts-childhood-brain-development/

        Well, I slogged through this monster, and would say this report certainly provides the rationale and framework for SEL. GAWD, I love 3-letter anything!!!

        I had a thought, and probably of the daft, Axmaker variety, BUT, it seems to me that much of this work, and the remedies entailed were designed for inner-city kids living, in extremis. The so-called pandemic provides a rationale for extending this programming to ALL kids….right?

        So, this reminds me of that deluded bastard, Carl Ramsom Rogers, who thought what was good for goose (VETS undergoing treatment for PTSD in V.A. hospitals) was good for the gander (that would be EVERYONE). In truth, Mr. Roger’s neighborhood was good for no one.

        But, what I see is this tendency to construe one group’s alleged experience and needs as being common to all. And, why would that be so in STUDENT-centered education?

        I am pretty sure that nobody asked the traumatized VETS what they needed, and I don’t hear any one of these purported educators listening to the needs of their young victims or those of their parents.

        It is just, OY VEY, we have all of this junky brain science and we need to connect it to SOMETHING.

        Which, if you think about it, kinda resembles the etiology of the construct HIV/AIDS, as in the HIGH HOPES, WE GOT HIGH HOPES, HIGH IN THE SKY APPLE PIE HOPES, for a DNA-premised treatment for cancer angle, proved a bust — well, they had to redirect their shit-show.

        A lot of this junk, e.g. the construct, Executive Function, comes from military-funded research, just as did constructs related to ‘Resilience’.

        It seems like we have a solution looking for a problem, and, maybe it is not more complicated than that.

        ????

        • This article https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/economy/covid-19/behavioral-science-in-government-transformation.html really combines both your area of expertise–organization transformation–and mine–the alteration of what motivates a person and what they perceive from the inside out.

          Fortunately, thanks to the work of behavioral psychologists and economists, as well as neuroscientists, we understand much more than we used to about human behavior and its drivers. This work has demonstrated, for example:

          What typically motivates people—a sense of purpose, a sense of autonomy, and the ability to grow in one’s job1
          Why people engage in “predictably irrational” behavior, and how we can harness this understanding to shape and nudge behavior2
          How to use customer analytics and customer experience techniques such as human-centered design to drive workforce experience3

          We also know that transparency can help a transformation initiative succeed. By keeping stakeholders informed about all aspects of the effort and inviting feedback, project leaders can gain insights into human motivation and behavior, and how their employees are experiencing the change, as those factors pertain to their particular project. This can help leaders understand which aspects of the transformation are working and which are not, and it helps to build trust among everyone involved.

          The graphics apply to both organizational change as well as what student-centered learning is really about.

          • “…the alteration of what motivates a person and what they perceive from the inside out.”

            I was just writing an article on Erhard/est and describing my first experience to motivation modification. This came in the context of a consulting firm that, though I did not know it at the time, was operating like an ‘est’ community.

            The promise to each of us, when we joined the firm, was that this was a place we could achieve our full potential and operationalize OUR visions and dreams. I wasn’t exactly buying this at the time, but, also did not anticipate that this sales pitch was a complete inversion of reality.

            Having talked to quite a few est/Landmark Education survivors, I can say they echo this scenario. The bait is personal/professional development and fulfillment, the switch is, NOT YOUR’S.

            The key, as you have often observed, is to literally alter thought processes, such that people perceive and believe external drivers to be coming from the inside-out.

            I saw same in my graduate program and as a result of Delphi Technique-type facilitation.

            I see same in a parish group…that is aligning thought and behavior through rosary incantations.

            Don’t you love the use of the word, “transparency”.

            As they say in est/Landmark, “Nothing succeeds like the appearance of authenticity.”

        • Take a look at this superb article. https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/09/04/covid-why-terminology-really-matters/ It fits with your opinion of fauci from his aids pronouncements.

          The mortality rate Dr Fauci? Could it possibly be that he failed to understand that there is no such thing as a mortality rate? Did he mean the case fatality rate, or the infection fatality rate? If he meant the Infection mortality rate of influenza, he was pretty much bang on. If he meant the case fatality rate, he was wrong by a factor of ten.

          The reality is that, no matter what Fauci went on to say, severe influenza has a case fatality rate of 1%, and so does COVID. They also have approximately the same infection fatality fate of 0.1%.

          It seems that Dr Fauci just got mixed up with the terminology. Because in his Journal article eleven days earlier, he did state… ‘This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza… [and here is the kicker at the end] (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%).’

          You see, he did say the case fatality rate of influenza was approximately 0.1%. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong… wrong.

          Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. With influenza, Dr Fauci, the CDC, his co-authors, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health and the New England Journal of Medicine got case fatality rate and infection fatality rate mixed up with influenza. Easy mistake to make. Could have done it myself. But didn’t.

          You want to know where Imperial College London really got their 1% infection fatality rate figure from? It seems clear that they got it from Anthony S Fauci and the New England Journal of Medicine. The highest impact journal in the world – which should have the highest impact proof-readers in the world. But clearly does not.

          Imperial College then used this wrong NEJM influenza case fatality rate 0.1%. It seems that they then compared this 0.1% figure to the reported COVID case fatality rate, estimated to be 1% and multiplied the impact of COVID by ten – as you would. As you probably should.

          So, we got Lockdown. The US used the Fauci figure and got locked down. The world used that figure and got locked down.

          That figure just happens to be ten times too high.

          I know it is going to be virtually impossible to walk the world back from having made such a ridiculous, stupid, mistake. There are so many reputations at stake. The entire egg production of the world will be required to supply enough yolk to cover appropriate faces.

          Like systemic racism, covid is a meme that forced desired transformations at the level of virtually every human system, including the mind. What was the incentive to be right if it fit with whatever philanthropy and governments seeking power wanted? Poor melbourne australia, essentially imprisoned by its prime minister.

          • I spoke with a Boston-based educator last night who described an “intolerable” situation in that community. This entailed parents who are wise to the what is stated above, not wishing to send their children back to Covid-19-protocoled classrooms, and curricula — school administrators not wishing to appear to be non-compliant — and a resulting dead-lock. Phew!

            Did you hear that a group of Melbourne physicians and attorneys are challenging the government to produce research that links a Covid-19 virus to ANY infection; and also proves that the tests can identify the presence of this virus?

    • Am about to listen to another webinar that includes Fullan who used to work with Levin before he was fired. I know that has always been an area of interest for you.

      Also take a look at this

      DeLeon began by grounding the conversation in historical context. “As we focus on belonging in schooling,” he said, “we have to center race in the conversation, because in every way, the strivings of historically marginalized populations in this country have been about belonging in society. Schools have the opportunity to replicate societal injustices or to change the world from the inside out.”

      While belonging is a universal human need, it can only be achieved with attention to this historical context and the positioning of different people and groups in relation to structural barriers and opportunities. DeLeon went on to describe research on how school leaders can build an infrastructure for interpersonal, instructional, and institutional opportunities to belong. Sasha Rabkin, Chief Strategy Officer of Equal Opportunity Schools (EOS), discussed how this research has informed his organization’s process for assessing the cues, experiences, and conditions related to student belonging in a learning environment.

      “This is a time to hold up a mirror to our systems and not a microscope to our young people,” Sasha said. Based on student survey and focus group data, EOS identified five elements that are present in environments worth belonging to, and that correlate with students’ sense of belonging, which is associated with their academic outcomes. These five elements are culturally relevant curriculum; culturally relevant teaching; classroom community; high expectations, feedback, and growth-oriented assessment; and conversations about race.

      From here https://mindsetscholarsnetwork.org/belonging-now-what-it-takes-to-create-the-conditions-for-belonging/ and appreciate that both the Growth Mindset Network and one of the creators of the LMS described in this post are from CASBS.

      Notice the deploring of what is categorized as WEIRD. Yet another way of absconding with the Axemaker Mind.

      Gisele Shorter identified “an open question with significant potential implications for research. […] Will we continue to center on WEIRD [Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic] populations, perspectives, and meaning-making as the base map on which we advance the work?” She and other speakers noted that WEIRD and Eurocentric norms across sectors can skew our measurement, analysis of root causes, and proposed solutions related to belonging.

      • ” “This is a time to hold up a mirror to our systems and not a microscope to our young people,” Sasha said. Based on student survey and focus group data, EOS identified five elements that are present in environments worth belonging to, and that correlate with students’ sense of belonging, which is associated with their academic outcomes. These five elements are culturally relevant curriculum; culturally relevant teaching; classroom community; high expectations, feedback, and growth-oriented assessment; and conversations about race. ”

        That really is weird, that “conversations about race” are one of the five elements. Which students are those that desperately want conversations about race, when we keep hearing that we have to protect “minoritized” students who will be uncomfortable during them?

        The web page doesn’t explain, but maybe the one-hour video contains something about it. I am starting to listen to it.

        • Let me say I strongly believe that a feeling of belonging is important. Often enough in life I haven’t had that myself and I wished I had. So being a white male doesn’t guarantee a sense of “belongingness”.

          At 44:00 of the video the guy admits that “conversations about race” are the one of the five factors that does not correlate positively to higher AP exam scores. (Maybe it correlates negatively; he wouldn’t say if it did.)

          And in the chart at 45:00 we see that “conversations about race” is the weakest of 8 factors listed in terms of correspondence with belonging in a classroom.

          So “conversations about race” is not really for the purpose of increasing belonging, comfort and achievement at school for the students. It’s for increasing social strife and inserting agendas.

    • Quite a few docs breaking ranks. The first I saw of this came in the form of a Japanese epidemiologist who had been sent with a team to contain the Princess Cruise ship outbreak. This guy had done this kind of work all over the world. He reported in a blog that he observed none of the usual protocols for the containment of an infectious disease. He said that when passengers were released to ‘go home’, the infected/recovered and the un-infected with loaded TOGETHER on private planes and sent to drop off points on their respective continents, NYC, Seattle, Sydney.

      Just read that the alleged “Patient One” in the U.S. was identified and tested in Seattle. It was theorized that he had picked the virus up in Wuhan. The first major ‘outbreak’ in the U.S. occurred in a Seattle nursing home facility. It was hypothesized that the alleged “Patient One” had communicated the disease to residents of towns 25 miles from any place he had visited. The address of the nursing home facility first impacted is across the street from a Gates-owned research facility.

      “Patient One” in the HIV/AIDS epidemic (U.S.) was thought to have been a Canadien flight attendant. This narrative was later quietly dismantled.

  2. Gak it sounds so predator-like!
    They want to make children feel like they belong in THEIR system. The system that hates their parents and wants to suck their blood. The destructochaoticon. Fullan barber darling hammond tucker levin…. a real cast of creepers. They set this stage. Hidden in their high towers designing it to feed their fetish.

    The conveniency of covid finishing their job
    If we circle back to your first year and Arne Duncan. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DuO_nB7WY9w

    https://www.amazon.com/Change-Wars-Leading-Michael-Barber/dp/1934009318

    • I am back and just located this paper created by Fullan with MS in May 2020 which I had not seen before. https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/06/reimagining-education-from-remote-to-hybrid-learning/
      It verifies precisely what I am warning about in this post. In the webinar Fullan talked about his current transformational work in Newfoundland that will allow the integration of learning and well-being with well-being as the primary focus to cure the plague of ‘disconnectedness’ that had prevailed in education historically. They are using the motto “Getting good at learning. Getting good at life”, which is deemed much more important than “getting good at tests”.

      The role of education now is to show students that they are each “someone in the world” and are capable of “making a difference.” They envision a shift from the historic vision of “education being on the receiving end of a bad society to it being a driver to create a new society.” Honestly, I am listening and shaking my head at how prescient this post is turning out to be.

      Glad I already understood the template well enough to divine where it was headed before the actual declarations from everywhere now. Except maybe what parents are being told.

    • Predator-like and narcissistic — they cannot recognize interpersonal boundaries — your children’s minds are an extension of their ego space.

      Huge need to control others, too.

      • Oh yes. These spiritual Dr. Mengeles feel perfectly entitled to “paw and dabble” in students’ souls, to use C.S. Lewis’ illuminating expression. The Catholic Curriculum Standards were issued a few years ago, ostensibly as a challenge and a rebuke to the Common Core. In reality, they are even more nakedly invasive than the Common Core, which at least had the prudence to “draw the blinds” (Lenin) and shroud their intentions to a degree . Again, I apologize for quoting (extensively) from myself:

        An appendix titled “Assessing Non-Cognitive Attributes,” – precisely the term employed in the Common Core world – reiterates that these qualities “are not easily measurable.” This section acknowledges that “personal affective behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs” are more often “caught than taught,” but then goes on to suggest some ways that they can be assessed, nevertheless. It states,

        While caution needs to be used when seeking to align assessment to non-cognitive dispositions, it is still possible to design assessments for some of the non-cognitive standards using three primary methods: teacher observations, student-teacher interviews, and student self-reports. Because of the nature of assessing a disposition, it is advisable to use multiple measures to gain a fuller insight into a student’s behaviors and beliefs rather than through the use of only one assessment. Gathering information through the use of multiple types of assessments will result in a better understanding of what the student actually believes and, perhaps, why he or she believes it. [End quotation from Appendix]

        In addition to informal and more structured (“student displays wonder” – frequently, occasionally, seldom, never) observations of student behavior and utterances, teachers might also employ a survey or questionnaire probing these beliefs, values and attitudes; “unfortunately,” however, “students might not feel comfortable completing these assessments as accurately and honestly as they could if anonymity is not available [sic].”

        I ask myself whether anyone involved in the creation of this document stopped to ask himself exactly why a student might not feel comfortable responding to such a survey. The writers themselves put their finger on the answer in the first paragraph: “While assessing cognition seems slightly removed from the center of the person, assessing beliefs and values cuts to the heart.” But rather than recognizing that such probing is highly invasive, treading as it does on the sacred ground of the inviolable right to privacy, it concludes, “Again, this is where multiple measures of assessment are necessary to confirm a developing disposition.” If the student will not bare his soul by direct assault, indirect means must be employed. [End quotation from myself].

        Well, you can’t teach “the whole child” without dissecting him to figure out how he ticks. (Dissection of children appears to be a popular and lucrative occupation these days — see David Daleiden — but I digress.)

        • They want to get at the Whole Child for the same reason this paper https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/115/45/11406.full.pdf that was cited by that Belonging blog post from the Growth Mindset Network wants to get at Interpretive Power into each students’ perspectives, experiences, and behaviors. It’s the CHANGE that is desired. Same point as Tranzi OBE, which was also at the heart of that Catholic Curriculum Framework, which anyone who has read CtD recognizes when the function is encountered anywhere.

          This piece from yesterday https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakringelstein/2020/09/01/asynchronous-remote-learning-is-the-most-humane-way-to-teach-this-school-year/#75a92b6af984 further validates what I warned about in this post right down to the mention of John Dewey’s vision.

          • Adding this that showed up in this morning’s newsletters. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/houghton-mifflin-harcourt-announces-integrated-social-emotional-learning-curriculum-based-on-best-selling-memoir-301121883.html

            Inspired by the creative work of teachers who used A Chance in the World within their schools and communities, this program allows students to address difficult topics in a safe way while providing educators with tools for navigating those discussions, whether in an English Language Arts (ELA) classroom, as an all-school read, or as part of an SEL-focused advisory period. The curriculum centers on and builds resilience and growth mindset, teaching students that the potential to change exists even in the face of difficulty and failure and inspiring them to spread the word about the power of kindness and community action.

            “When I first read A Chance in the World and met Steve, I knew there was amazing potential for an in-school program that could address the SEL needs in today’s classroom,” says Jim O’Neill, General Manager of Core Solutions at HMH. “We have been honored to work with Steve to create an engaging curriculum that students can relate to, provides flexibility for educators, and has the potential to bring school communities together. During this back-to-school season when social and emotional learning is on the forefront of educators’ minds, HMH is proud to partner with Steve to help all students overcome challenges in their lives and realize that they too have a chance to realize their fullest potential.”

            Teachers attest to the power of Steve’s story to engage students who may normally avoid tackling full-length books as well as its success in helping to break down barriers among students, teachers, and staff. As part of this unique curriculum, students will use charts, graphic organizers, and surveys to examine their own cognitive and behavioral patterns and explore issues and concerns that matter to teenagers.

            “Steve Pemberton’s honest and authentic story builds bridges for students whose experiences are rarely seen. Students who have experienced trauma and believe themselves isolated become visible, without embarrassment, to those with a stable and supportive family life. Lessons are learned on both sides,” said Nancy Libbee, English Instructor, Great Oaks Schools. “Students discover their own self-identity and realize how connected we are. They find they have a significant voice in this world.”

        • I have seen a similar mindset asserting itself in the creation of ‘360’ cultures in corporations. I was the person who had the unpleasant task of explaining that many Japanese folks do not feel comfortable baring their souls via these instruments and this went beyond concerns about confidentiality.

          It turned out the reputable practitioners in other locations had begun to question the wisdom of 360 and its psychological impact on workgroups. In a way, this culture was/is a precursor to “confession” culture.

          I then learned that there had never been a longitudinal study of 360 in organizations — that its use is “popular because it is popular”. There is a professor at the University of S.F., John Sullivan, who has been campaigning against 360 for years — but he is a lone voice.

        • Went to Nat Catholic Ed assoc Conf in 2014 or 15. Bob Marzano was keynote speaker. It was in pittsburgh and i was with Catholics Against Common Core. Word got out they were there and he totally changed his presentation that was advertised to a banal family story of his Naval Officer son. Equally terrifying his son commands an aircraft carrier.
          Just reading my local school district budget and Marzano name all over it. Only personell additions are a fleet of psychologists, councilors and nurses.

          Anita Hoge has been shouting about the medicalization of schools and it is part and parcel to the “change” necessary for the installation of “habits of mind” shifting child loyalty away from parents family religion clan nation, to school personell “ caring adults” as extention of the State. See Arne Duncan vid. Margaret Spelling Bush ed sec helped all this along, it is nonpartisan.

  3. Googling for “Anti-Racist Discussion Guide” I came up with this:

    https://vpdiversity.virginia.edu/sites/vpdiversity.virginia.edu/files/Anti_Racist_Discussion_Pedagogy__1_.pdf

    and noticed the following quote, about guidelines for assigning “reflective writing” about race:

    “I always try to bring them back to the text, and ask them to use the language
    from the text,” says Dr. Chew. She tells her students, “We have historians,
    anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers who have studied this. Refer back
    to their work. Analyze their arguments, their sources, the way they build this
    text and this research that has already been approved and reviewed by a board
    of experts.”

    So despite the public rhetoric and our disdain for the nonsense they call academic research, it is not going to be touchy-feely at all. Students will be required to quote and essentially accept the “research” in the fields they’ve invented and reviewed for each other.

    Related is an observation I made about the reparations movement. Publicly we see demonstrations and all sorts of craziness, trying to evoke discussion of reparations. Under the covers, there are academics building essentially a legal case, and they want unguarded comments. They want you to destroy their weak arguments so that when they come with the court case, it’s stress-tested and uses their strongest arguments, whatever they may be.

    On one hand they’re acting out in ways that go beyond what used to be our social norms, which loosens inhibitions and gets everyone out of their comfort zones. (Well maybe not Kamala Harris who lights up and glows when she talks about the loving feeling of riots.) On the other, they’re going to apply aggressive logic when it pleases them at the moment they choose.

    When they say that you can’t say “all lives matter” it’s because it’s a simple argument they cannot defeat. You can’t say “I am colorblind” because they really cannot fight against that, so they act out to scare you away from saying it. If they prevent enough logical statements, by calling them “racist”, “anachronistic”, “colonial”, they might be able to win. But it would not be a fair victory.

    • Sandia Lab case study — the guest discusses training for ‘white’ men, and the impact of intersectional values on management of critical R&D projects — national security stuff.

      • On the above video…there is a reference to the host’s observation that WOKE HR personnel have been activated en masse as corps of Manchurian Candidates.

        I was being programmed as one of these.

        I could not understand in the course of my M.A. program, Organization Development, WHAT members of my cohort were being trained to do. It did not look ‘business’-related to me. They were being programmed like Laurence Harvey.

        • Wasn’t McRel a national lab of shirley McCune fame? Were they not testing ed stuff at Columbine? Wasnt that national lab on long island of Stranger Things fame a known mind op lab?

          • The big daddy of them all is NTL, which announced awhile back that it was filing for bankruptcy…huh?, but then never did.

    • In re: that ‘priest’, I would like to introduce two new ‘3’-letter acronyms to our lexicon.

      First is, TDC — The Deep Church

      See Vigano’s latest statement.

      Second is, DHR — Deep HR

      Robin has talked very meaningfully, though I didn’t fully get it at the time about ‘convergence’.

      We have convergence: WHC

      • HR hires the kind of people who wokify a company:

        https://news.delta.com/deltas-vp-shawn-cole-raises-black-lives-matter-flag-delta-hq

        Two terms have been obsessively present to me in recent weeks and months: convergence and feudalism/serfdom. Suddenly more and more people are characterizing what they see around them as the latter, while alliances are being formed that transcend the traditional right/left alignment. The new alignments are human freedom and dignity vs. the jackboot on the face.

        I salute Robin for being in the vanguard who discerned these two epoch-defining shifts.

        • It also screens out the people who will not accept serfdom. I worked for the consulting firm that designed “leadership” assessment tools for Walmart. These assessments were used by internal recruiters to screen out people who would be able influence/lead other’s to, say, form a union.

    • Thanks for your condolences. Yes, I was the initial contact through this, which was not exactly conducive to going into my head and writing so I just kept up with the webinars and research. Walked a lot too.

      Yes, Mayor Wheeler seems like a nitwit and the coverage of that murder has been grotesque. I wanted to bring this illustration of what immersive and experiential really means here. https://education-reimagined.org/operation-outbreak-learning-built-for-real-life/

      Pandemics are unsettling, scary, and hard to understand, especially when there’s a persistent gap in the most basic public knowledge and preparation. Operation Outbreak is designed to intercede and cultivate a nuanced grasp of real challenges for an entire learning community.

      “We actually treat epidemics or pandemics as a low-probability, high-impact event…So when you [have] that mindset, you tend to be reactive, instead of proactive,” says Dr. Brown.

      By grounding young people’s knowledge in real life events and real life possibilities, they gain a greater awareness of their surroundings and much more. It would be simple enough to throw scientific jargon, statistics, and jarring images at learners. But, to immerse them in the stresses, real-time decisions, and politics of the moment is entirely different. Learning becomes more vivid and more exciting.

      “It was an amazing experience,” says former Operation Outbreak participant and recent graduate of SMA, Dana Jinete. “I learned a lot about how every single part of a country—the media, the government, and the scientists—had to work together to take care of the public, and how interconnected everything is in a complicated situation.”

      Unlike conventional learning, there is an unnerving (but useful) chaos underpinning the immersive experience of Operation Outbreak.

      “It was a really wild experience,” says another former Operation Outbreak participant and recent SMA graduate, Bradford Walker. “I was freaking out the entire time, which is really important for kids to do because they’re [usually] just sitting down in a classroom for seven hours a day. And, once they go out in real life, they realize you’re interacting with people. You’re under pressure.”

      For young learners, Operation Outbreak’s manufactured stress provokes real emotions. But, it also equips them with skills to “do” life.

      Every day presents us with a fluctuating level of stress, and learning how to manage that stress is an enormously important life skill. When young people are provided learning experiences that allow them to test their resilience and learn how they handle unforeseen challenges within a low-risk environment, they will be far more prepared to handle the unexpected challenges of adulthood.

      Immersing students in the stress as an important life skill. A completely new definition of student achievement, isn’t it?

      • Yes, when in this case, knowledge of the facts and figures would have eliminated the stress.

        Trauma-based mind control, anyone?

        • Did you see further up the teacher had previously created a simulation for students of getting off the lusitania after it was hit by torpedoes? A ship that sank infamously quickly is not an exercise in science or ‘real world challenges’. It is role playing terror. There are lovely monuments all over New England to the wealthy who did not make it off the Lusitania in the prime of their lives.

          • Probably be good to look at many of the simulations. This reminds me of some of the stuff Rogers, et al. got up to when they were embedding principles of Humanistic Education in California classroom. One ‘exercise’ was a sort of suicide game, and, go figure, 11 year-old’s went home and killed themselves.

            This same suicide game is used in some LGAT’S, still.

          • Speaking if which… I learned recently that year Six’s in the UK ( 11-12 year olds) have as a standard part of their curriculum a portion of their ‘social studies’ devoted to WWII wherein the children get to re-enact the Blitz. They and their teachers pretend to be evacuees leaving London for parts unknown w/o their parents. No trauma programming there huh?

            We here in the US provide our children with meaningful , real world experiences and re-enactments of the Titanic and Luisitania or perhaps in a pinch the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.

            Robin, I’m sorry to hear about your Dad as well.

      • Years ago we talked of the masses being ready to act based on emotions and triggers over logical reasoning and facts. The strings have been pulled and they are dancing like puppets. I still keep CTD with all it’s notes and references handy. With the start up of online “education” nearly everywhere I was drawn back to all that data that will be gained from every online choice monitoring just how successful they are. Sickening.

      • when soldiers are tortured they are made to fear lots of things by threats and intimidation and pretending , threats of rape, attack, fear of shame, being broken, good cop bad cop, stockholm syndrome, TV shows this everyday. Religious cults threats of a rapture, a boogie man, the destruction of the world, insidious conditioning over time to focus fear on another to gain loyalty.
        Stress>emotion> physiological changes> weakening> Permanent change.
        Dialectics. Same here.

        • The more I look into the origins of Humanistic Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, Positive Psychology, constructs like ‘resilience’, and ‘mindfulness’, the more graphic becomes their connection to miliary and other research regarding psychological trauma.

          I recall having a conversation with a local professor (MIT, Sloan) about Martin Seligman’s work related to ‘Resilience’ and how: 1) research related to the experience of combat soldiers had been strangely extrapolated to encompass corporate soldiers, as well, and 2) Seligman seemed to have major conflicts of interest related to his support role in design of torture protocols, and his receipt of large grants to study ‘resilience’….and, to create the track of “Positive Psychology”.

          The person ‘heard’ exactly ONE word that I said, and tearfully replied that we must do ALL we can do to reduce PTSD among combat veterans.

          This logic made my head spin in that I had grown up with a combat veteran father who suffered from PTSD and am acutely aware of the relative lack of interest in the suffering of these people or their families.

          I feel the same lack of real concern in all of the discussions Robin has posted regarding the plight of children traumatized by Covid-19.

          So, I think the trauma is an excuse for the programming, and, if the trauma needs to be artificially engineered, so be it.

          • 100% agreed. Sars Cov 2 is a gigantic behavioral engineering experiment to see if what has been created in people’s minds to date has been effective . It’s working and the data gleaned is a windfall additionally.
            Trauma always has been and continues to be the point .

            I’m reading two books right now which are part of a larger series. ( Robin you may have them already ) they are: The Daily Power Game and Futures We Are In – Fred Emery.

            It’s frankly devastating reading because it’s glaringly clear how the behavioral engineers have studied humans for 60 plus years saying they were doing so to help us when the data collected was planned to steer and destabilize us completely.

  4. On THAT theme, mc, I can tell you that I have seen WWII battle site tours build into ‘elite’ global executive LEADERSHIP development programs. This gets a little awkward for the German, Japanese, or Italian execs, but NO MATTER.

    Rational me thinks that if LEADERSHIP skills are the learning goal…one could learn from all sorts of military campaign venues/scenarios…but, clearly, another kind of learning is involved, here.

    In my humble opinion, the Titanic simulation had some merit. Passengers/crew had more time to disembark, and there were many opportunities to survive that went undiscovered, HAD THEY KNOWN THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE SHIP. For instance, it was speculated that had the 3rd class passengers –people with actual skills — primitive floating crafts could have been made out of many materials available on the ship. Also, they ignored an obvious solution, which was to ferry people to an iceberg and deposit them there, until help arrived. The ship was “unsinkable”, though.

  5. Pennsylvania required titanic 15 years ago my 3 kids all did diaramas in shoe boxes, down to the drowning figures. I was furious each year. teachers get followship awards. This was private Catholic school, one later i would learn as they were transforming the school ( to accreditor standards) was run by what i akin to witches, these were occult new age lesbians close enough. I think i ranted about this 10 years ago here! Lol

    • Glad this got done, thanks to the work of independent journalists who managed to get the president’s attention. Now POTUS needs to do something about this (the following copied and pasted from https://www.zerohedge.com/political/whitney-blm-mask-behind-which-oligarchs-operate :

      On September 4, the Department of Homeland Security issued a draft report stating that “White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States”. According to an article in Politico:

      “…all three draft (versions of the document) describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups…. John Cohen, who oversaw DHS’s counterterrorism portfolio from 2011 to 2014, said the drafts’ conclusion isn’t surprising.

      “This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white supremacy and other far-right ideological causes,” he said….

      “Lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social, ideological, and personal factors will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United States,” the draft reads. “Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists …will pose the most persistent and lethal threat.”..(“DHS draft document: White supremacists are greatest terror threat” Politico)

      • As this link puts it–get at people’s mental models and the desired mental model is that the KKK is alive and well and fomenting violence in the 21st century. This quote is what I came here to put up when I saw your reply.

        RB: You’re a person who brings change. What are the necessary ingredients to get new ideas implemented?

        TS: Change is hard work. I think a lot of people start and say, “Trust me,” without ever earning the trust. I kind of come at it from the other end, which is, just behave in trustworthy ways every single day, and eventually, you’ll find your way to a better path. Because there have been a lot of really amazing ideas. Leonard Covello started Benjamin Franklin High School in the ’30s in Harlem. Charles Stewart Mott has been funding this work since the ’30s. People have been at this. The Kerner Report in 1968 talks about computer learning, personalized learning. They’re talking about community schools. They’re talking about interrupting poverty.

        Well, it’s one thing to bring an idea, it’s another thing to see it actually implemented. Probably the root of the whole thing for me is that any systems change is first and foremost about personal change. And the degree to which you can expect the system to change is really measured by the depth of personal change of people who are both interfacing with and in the system. So the way of approaching that to me is really understanding what the mental models are that undergird people’s approaches, what their deep belief systems are, and finding ways to talk about what people really value and care about, and then stay in that with people.

        You have to listen. People’s stories are really, really powerful and that takes time. But if I don’t listen to you and fully understand both your hopes, aspirations and your fears, the things that have harmed or hurt you before, I’ll be unlikely to be able to move through the next piece. I have to engage you. I have to say, “Hey, this is what I heard. Does that work for you?” align the different tools that we have, and then deliver to that point that you’re making change happen.

        The ideas are not that new, the way we approach them is different; that we have to interrupt deep inequity. We have to actually say that together, that’s really the work. There are hard challenges, but I am imbued with all kinds of privilege. So my choice is how do I use that privilege to create the conditions everybody deserves? So this notion of deservingness in a system has people competing against one another, all the time, for everything, has some people feel like they deserve this and you don’t. The reality is that every single kid deserves our very best. So why wouldn’t we do that? And that’s the work.

        From here https://www.reimagineschools.us/reimagine-1/a-conversation-with-tony-smith-ceo-and-founder-of-whyspeople-llc

        I was on a webinar of theirs last week. Just got off of an AEI one with Robert George. Did not realize he regards himself as one of the great Aristotelians and he mentioned his great mentor–John Finnis. Looked him up and see Finnis was also Neil Gorsuch’s thesis advisor. Maybe that explains that transgender ruling that came out of left field as a matter of Con Law.

  6. This is off-point, but maybe not. I just finished a re-read of Steve Pressman’s expose of Werner Erhard, “Outrageous Betrayal…”. Pressman makes a really interesting observation in a chapter detailing what influenced Erhard in the creation of ‘est’. There is such a stew of things build into the est training, it is sometimes, always difficult to sort the mechanics of it, BUT…Pressman says that the primary DNA comes from a misinterpretation of Napolean Hill’s thinking on self-determination — the if you believe it, you can achieve it stuff — which Erhard construed to mean, “there are no victims”…the individual is responsible for every experience/outcome in their lives dating back to birth. This could include concentration camps, physical/sexual abuse, trauma associated with having grown up in a war zone. The second piece of the DNA comes out of Maxwell Maltz’s “Psycho-Cybernetics”…this is the brain-fix stuff, that says humans can rewire their own thought processes and after computer models. est trainers facilitate this rewiring by attacking “I think”/”I feel” statements made by participants and focusing their consciousness on pure experience — un-interpreted. I would suggest that the latter evolved into “mindfulness”, which really is the opposite of what the word connotes to most people who hear it. So, maybe, the thoughtscape of the “Transformational Learning” crowd is absolutely focused on something perceived as the present moment and is completely devoid of morality. This state would constitute an excellent canvass for programming just about anything. Juice that up with global pandemic trauma, and, you are good to go.

    • Interesting observation. I just finished Education and Equality by Danielle Allen as the new vision of citizenship as “participatory readiness” to be programmed neurologically via education is laid out elsewhere, but footnoting back to her. She in turn mentions the so-called Value Rubrics for higher ed that appear to me to fit with Tranzi OBE and the mindset needed for the MH society. When I located the page https://www.aacu.org/value-rubrics it pointed out at the bottom that all these rubrics have also been translated into Japanese.

      • On a related note, I have been trying to figure out how/why ‘est’ embedded itself in Japanese culture. I used to think that this related to the notes of FAKE Zen Erhard & Co., had incorporated into it, but, am reappraising.

        I do note that pretty much every young Japanese I know tells me, “I want to be myself”…”I want to be authentic.” est technology would offer them the ability to be FAKE authentic.

        It also is a ‘system’ or a ‘kata’…a process. Very appealing.

  7. Forgive me for being “reductionistic”, BUT, in wrapping up my Erhard, est, Esalen, et al. corporate coaching shit-show research, I was struck by the realization that just about every pronouncement emblazoned on edu Think Tank circulars, really any of the documents you have shared…could have come out of the mouth of Werner Erhard, circa 1975. The mandate is, “to create the context for a world that works for everyone(TM)” — and don’t forget it! What could be more ‘context’y’ than a global education system? Now, golly, we are always going to have inequities in human intelligence and ability — so you gotta “cancel’ the criteria for success. (FYI, I have been in dialogue with an Asian, Asian Studies geek out of the U.C. system, and by that I mean, now, OUT of the system) and he has a total hard-on about how Asians were discriminated against for over-achieving — that, or cynically used in a variety of ways by system overlords.

    In any case, it would seem that the world of education cannot work for everyone unless it works for no one, and I think THAT is the actual goal.

    My conclusion on ‘est’, what is it, is this. You can toss out virtually ALL of the so-called course/program ‘content’ — the little homilies from Napoleon Hill, or Dale Carnegie (the motivational junk-science). What is important is the disruption by various means of the participant’s ability to think he knows ‘anything’ about the world around him, that he can accrue knowledge and use this knowledge to solve problems extant in the world around him. This is replaced with an ‘in the moment’ mindfulness, which, of course, is unattainable. Bodies of knowledge gone, the faculty of reasoning gone, the sky is the limit in terms of the values, virtues, and forms of pseudo-reality that can be programmed. See, 2020.

    • Think, too, about how RETRO is the whole BLM everything in the U.S….the dredging up of Angela and Fania…the ancient, neurally-compromised DNC presidential candidate…all of this seems to represent a DEEP wish and fantasy apparatus among a group of people who are, ironically, acting as the antithesis of MINDFULNESS…who are not present in the NOW, who are not data pointing, GETTING FEEDBACK FROM anyone but themselves…end-stage of a socio-religious cult? Could be.

      Another thought about all this relates to psychopathy — and let’s go abject, “reductionistic” and talk serial killers. And, here, I am talking Anthony Fauci. This guy’s numbers are so far off, and his remedies so massively destructive, that what else can we call him, retro-relic from that same world/club.

      I understand that little messages from DOCTOR Anthony Fauci are being piped into K-12 classrooms…virtual and real. Dr. Fauci tells kids that he is sorry that some people do not trust SCIENCE anymore and are not COMPLYING with Covid-19 protocols and/or are raising a stink about vaccinations — their safety…and, SHAME ON THEM. Anthony Fauci has now added the manipulation of children to his long laundry list of “Why I am going to Hell” items.

      WHAT IS THE FACE OF THIS CREEPY MAN doing in K-12 classrooms? I mean if TPTB were serious about their mission and their optics, wouldn’t Miley Cirus, or her current incarnation be delivering this message?

      Back to Erhard and his crew…I can tell you that in the world of consulting, law firms, Big Five, HRM firms, real businesses, people move around all of the time.

      Not with this bunch…Erhard has by his side, today, people who sold encyclopedias for him in the 60’s, or whom he shtupped in the back seat of a car on HWY 101 in the 70’s.

      The DNC looks a lot like this, too.

      I guess for those of us who we sentient in the 70’s…and, did not GET IT then…will not GET IT now, right?

      What I do know is that in my own life, I have moved forward and that scientific disciplines, the real one’s move forward…but, that there seems to be this necrotic element in the social sciences
      that goes way back..and I mean way back, that cannot process change — though they talk about ‘it’ incessantly.

      I mean healthy ANYTHING promotes new practitioners of healthy ANYTHING….not this club…

    • I think that is a very good synopsis and I was reminded of our discussions on est and the emotional breakdowns you have related when I was listening yesterday to a program on Emotional Intelligence and a program created for students where its primary creator felt the need to convey “his abuse as a child by a neighbor,” “how poorly he had done in school”, “his mother’s nervous breakdowns”, and his father’s ‘anger’ issues. Traumatic childhood experiences become the reason for hyping EI for all students? Hyping a principal who broke down by the end of the 2nd day as a good thing as the practices were to be used in the schools?

      In order to get new ways of processing meaning necessary for the envisioned anti-individual ‘resilient society where everyone can thrive’, we are using schools and other social institutions to manipulate the psyche itself. All while touting it as consistent with the ‘learning sciences,’ which probably should be renamed more accurately as the sciences of human consciousness alteration. Did you notice the references in that Brookings Digital Playbook to using the LMS precisely as I warned about in this post? Another webinar I was on about a week ago made it explicit that the vision is that all content and assessments are to be digital with in-person providing other types of experiences tied to SEL, just like the program whose creator I described above.

      • Well, I am sure I have mentioned in past posts that Daniel Goleman’s EI constructv has never been validated. Same story with other ‘intelligence’ frameworks that have emanated from Harvard, e.g. “Multiple Intelligences” Funny that IQ is considered to be a fixed state, i.e. can decline with age but cannot be increased, whereas, EI, can be developed/increased. That is a bit of a ‘give-away’.

        Yes, if even one child on earth has done poorly in school owing to some form of emotional or physical abuse, ALL children must practice EI.

        This reminds me of the early experiments in “sensitivity training” in religious orders, which by extention made their way into parochial schools. The nuns worked on being perceived by students as real and vulnerable people. They would share daily share with students their moods, personal struggles, emotional setbacks. They turned their students, to whom they were supposed to be modelling emotional restraint and discipline, into their therapists. It didn’t work out very well.

  8. Couple of thoughts from abroad. Japan is often taken to task for lagging behind other industrialized nations in people development methods and practices. Based on Robins’s recent posts related to SEL, and the new LMS construct, I would say WE are far ahead.

    Imagine being a small island nation with few natural resources other than PEOPLE, lots of them. Imagine that these people are blessed with the highest mean IQ, globally — really gifted they are.

    Imagine proudly describing your education system and entire culture as being based on “mediocrity”. THEY DO. Nobody is “too bad”, and nobody is “too good” — “We are a mediocrity culture.”

    Work in Japanese corporations and you hear the word “fairness” popping up in every other conversation. Although Mr. Sato has done an excellent job, we cannot promote him because that would not be “fair” to Mr. Takashi. We cannot provide training to high-performers who wish to work in global roles because it wouldn’t be “fair” to other employees.

    MNC’s such as Microsoft spent ten years trying to train HR personnel in Strategic HR Practice — linking people development to business needs — and GAVE UP. People systematically UNDER-perform to support the culture of “fairness”.

    Now, I do know that Marxist DNA was well-established in Japanese universities in the post-war period. There is a Communist Party Headquarters in my neighborhood that is ten stories tall and flies the Hammer & Sickle.

    I first traveled to Japan as a student (teenager) in the late 70’s. At that time, the culture was REALLY VIBRANT, open to new ideas, passionate, creative…and rapidly internationalizing — in a good, and healthy way. I think the commie thing takes two or more generations to install, so all of those LEFTY professors have been doing their handiwork.

    I certainly do ‘get’ why young Japanese do not want to work in the way their grandfathers and fathers did, but what I am seeing (attitudinally/behaviorally) in these folks is similar to the intersectionalist/BLM’er attempt to define things like punctuality and hard work as WHITE TRAITS. In the case of young Japanese, their fathers were WHITE GUYS.

    I have to report that on Sport’s Day…a parent/child ritual in Japanese K-12, every little person does win a prize. I can report, too, that Japanese baseball rivalries…which used to be passionate and didactic affairs — even I became obsessed with the Hanshin Tigers and their WILL to win — are now perfunctory. We really only have ONE team, the Tokyo Giants, and we know they are going to WIN…season after season, and who cares.

    Nobody, really, believes the COVID crap, but everybody wants to show social solidarity…and, they will rally up the flag for BLM…in a show of solidarity, too.

    Men try really hard to look like women — are disgustingly ‘sensitive’, wear cosmetics, carry handbags, while women silently rule.

    OMG, HR managers are casting about the land trying to find ‘people of color’ to hire and promote.

    A totally cucked society…

    So, I would say we are ahead of your curve.

    • Funny that we were posting at the same time. Your descriptions of these changes fits with my consciousness alteration and it is deliberate perfectly.

      Hopefully I will keep Internet during the expected deluge of rain from Sally, but past comparable rainfalls sometimes take it down for a day or so. Funny as I am at the top of a hill. All downhill from here.

      • Yeh, this makes sense…but, I think this is organizational chatter between elites in the PRC, and counterparts and their minions in the USA.

        In all of my travels in mainland China, I encountered NO actual people who supported the party line. To use a crude metaphor, they considered it akin to a case of herpes, annoying, unpleasant, but transient.

        You will find, I figure, more zealots to this cause in Portland, than in Shanghai.

        They are really amping up the Climate Change narrative. Contacts in CA are blaming Donald J. Trump for the fires, yeh right…

        See NORMAL people cannot connect the dots between a virus, systemic racism, and climate change — only people who have been compromised in hot tubs can.

        • One of the SEL webinars I was on in the last week made a big deal about x being necessary because it was just before the opening of the UN General Assembly so both ed and climate change hype are the tools to create the desired transformation.

          Think of the potential of this language because it also has come up in numerous webinars using ACEs as the reason the paradigm of what constitutes education and student learning must be transformed.

          Sitting in her examination rooms back then, in one of San Francisco’s poorest neighborhoods, Burke Harris knew almost immediately that something was amiss. Her young patients arrived with tentative diagnoses of oppositional defiant disorder or learning deficits, but routine exams uncovered a host of more serious physical ailments: asthma, autoimmune hepatitis, and even growth failure. Almost inevitably, the children’s caretakers—also sick with advanced diabetes, heart disease, or cancer—relayed harrowing stories of family incarceration, sexual abuse, and even murder.

          “I’d have this snapshot of multigenerational adversity in one room,” Burke Harris said, still looking worried decades later. How did the pieces fit together? What did a learning problem have to do with asthma, or with exposure to trauma? Could any of it be connected to terminal conditions like cancer?

          An answer arrived “like a bolt of lightning” in 2008, when Burke Harris read a seminal study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) linking childhood trauma—which the researchers called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)—to dramatically higher rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes in middle-aged patients. Burke Harris’s own groundbreaking research in 2011 completed the picture, revealing an astonishing relationship between childhood trauma and the onset of learning and behavioral issues.

          Today, the implications of those insights still feel revolutionary, blowing a hole in pious American myths about equity, social mobility, and financial success. Our good fortune, or rotten luck, is “written into our biology,” Burke Harris asserts in her 2018 book, The Deepest Well—wired into synapses and coiled within strands of DNA—where it exerts a stealthy and persistent influence on our bodies and minds, for better or worse.

          For children with ACEs, the damage is reversible, and teachers can help, Burke Harris says—but she’s adamant that they can’t do it alone. “We all have to play our positions,” she insists, emphasizing the need for broader coordination between medical, educational, and emergency systems. “It’s unfair to ask teachers to be therapists or doctors. The role of educators is in delivering that daily dose of buffering care that’s so important for healing.”

          I sat down with Burke Harris recently to talk about how she came to her vocation, whether our traditional school disciplinary policies are supported by science, and how she overcame her skepticism about meditation.

          https://www.edutopia.org/article/trauma-written-our-bodies-educators-can-help

          Notice that this ‘science’ is from the same CDC that blew so much surrounding covid and wanted to keep forcing Critical Race Theory training despite the President’s clear instructions on the point. This is all social science grounded in transformation theory of what could be with new mandated social practices PRETENDING to be ‘hard’ science like gravity or force.

          • I am adding this https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/future-of-education-system-covid-19/ from yesterday because the Lego Foundation was one of the financial sponsors of that Brookings Digital Playbook I posted.

            Forced to rethink how education works in the wake of COVID-19, education systems have an opportunity to reimagine learning and equip students with the cognitive, creative, social, emotional and physical skills required to navigate the future.

            Across the world, education systems’ responses to COVID-19 mean students are not re-entering the same classrooms they left earlier this year. It’s a daunting prospect, but also an opportunity to reimagine learning and modernize our education systems for the 21st century…

            While traditional academic skills are important, we’ve also seen the role that playful, creative, and engaging experiences have in helping children cope in unpredictable and rapidly changing situations. Creativity and a child’s ability to be resilient despite life’s unpredictable challenges will be among the most in-demand skills that today’s learners need in a rapidly changing world. Research tells us that cognitive, creative, social, emotional and physical skills, when integrated with traditional academic skills, help develop students who can better navigate this complex world.

            Education systems around the world are urgently recalibrating, realizing that they are dangerously outdated. Many are seizing the opportunity to modernize their systems for the 21st century – reimagining learning to equip children with the skills they need to be productive, life-long learners. Even before the pandemic, there was an increasing appetite to move beyond intention to action, beyond pilots to scaling and beyond isolated examples to systemic reform.

            That blog post links to this paper https://www.legofoundation.com/en/why-play/skills-for-holistic-development/creativity-matters/creativity-matters-report-series/creating-systems/ from earlier this year that has Japan as one of the 5 countries being touted.

            Now I am adding this. Did you know SAP had a Chief Mindfulness Officer? And he’s also the Global Head.

            Lastly, I like to invite you to join me in conversations with leaders and experts from around the globe in our new free webinar series, Change-Maker Forum. Our first featured guest will be Peter Bostelmann, Chief Mindfulness Officer and Head of the Global Mindfulness Practice at SAP. Peter will share his experience as an agent of change within a large global company and best practices when delivering and measuring the impact of mindfulness programs within organizations.

          • I note that the University of St. Thomas, MNPLS, the former home of my Sorosian professors has turned its campus into one big anti-racist learning laboratory and shrine to George Floyd — “Say his name…” slogans festooned everywhere. How is it that none of the explorations/investigations into this event touch upon forensic evidence, who knew who and how…precipitating events? This really supports your idea about students being led to ‘discover’ information that supports an agenda.

            https://hyperallergic.com/581979/virtual-protest-art-museum-black-lives-matter/

            BLM seems to be a LOT like the Democratic Party. By this, I mean that just as there have to be some very compelling victims of police brutality and urban violence who could serve as legitimate icons for change, there have got to be credible, competent, un-compromised and mentally sound individuals who could be advanced for the highest office in the land…right?

            Just shows one how cynical the whole thing is, always has been.

    • Take a look at this and note the involvement of Hiro Mizuno

      The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the vulnerability of the global economy to exogenous shocks. The socio-economic implications of this ongoing health crisis are impossible to ignore—and growing. Looming over all of this is the climate crisis we are facing and will continue to face for decades to come.

      We’ve reached a convergence of crises and none can be addressed or resolved in isolation. While their causes are manifold, they share a common feature: they are all underpinned and exacerbated by structural inequalities along the lines of race, gender, migration status and more.

      Comprehensive solutions are needed now to tackle all these crises simultaneously—and in ways that account for the needs of all individuals. How can we advance inclusive approaches to tackle these intersecting crises, increase resilience to future shocks and ultimately ‘build back better’? What is the role of the corporation in this pursuit?

      Join us as we explore these questions, and more, in an interactive, virtual session hosted as part of the upcoming SDG Business Forum. Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions following a discussion between leaders from business and civil society.

      https://hopin.to/events/un-global-compact-uniting-business-live?code=b2f7cfef-73ed-4738-996b-1a2076b9f54d

      Here are the listed speakers.

      Silvia Dias Lagnado
      Sustainable Growth Officer, Natura &Co

      Hiro Mizuno
      B Team Leader
      Former CIO, Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund
      Independent Director, Board of Directors and Audit Committee, Tesla

      Leena Nair
      Chief Human Resources Officer, Unilever

      Peter Ndegwa
      CEO, Safaricom

      Danny Sriskandarajah
      CEO, Oxfam GB

      Halla Tómasdóttir
      CEO and Chief Change Catalyst, The B Team (moderator)

      • If he is a pension manager, one could bet many skeletons in his closet…easy to manipulate. Probably was sent for a hot-tub session at the Esalen Institute of sexual compromise.

      • Just to report, it appears that Japanese public schools have re-opened. Kids are NOT wearing masks, and are not social distancing.

        Private schools, e.g. the American School in Japan have mixed schedules with children attending classes on-site every other day — and mask wearing and social distancing.

        Probably could do a comparative study of these populations, and infection rates but why bother.

        • And here is a transcript of one of the webinars I was on last week. https://education-reimagined.org/how-to-leverage-community-assets-for-powerful-learning/

          For anyone who has forgotten Kelly Young first came up as a speaker at a George Soros sponsored Bipartisan Summit on Capitol Hill in 2015. When I looked into the vision I came across the teachers’ unions NEA and AFT involved, Michael Hinojosa who was then the Cobb County, Georgia School Super before he returned to Dallas, Texas ISD where he remains, and Stuart Butler who was at the Heritage think tank at the time, but who has since moved to brookings (the point is to be at a pincer think tank apparently, not which side it is on). Very connected in other words at every level.

          • The purpose of education is to discover who you are (around 2:00, also 22:00) …

            IDENTITY!

            “not exactly what people think of when they think of learner-centered education, but it’s at the heart of all this …”

            If they can get rid of the SAT and ACT, there is no barrier to every racial group passing on its own culture as being equal to success in reading, writing and arithmetic i.e. “dominant culture”, “white supremacy”.

            35:00 school no longer as a way up in society, but for “liberation”.

            So at least maybe we could downscale the costs. It would be much easier if we aren’t expecting all kids to achieve the standards imposed by so-called “white supremacy”. And then we could use the money we save, on procuring good education for our own kids. Some of us are likely to choose that which others call “white supremacy”, others will choose something else, and I guess that makes everyone happy.

            Much easier than throwing hard earned money at the problems and then afterward being blamed for not performing a miracle. Fine, step back and let them worry about working the miracles, what a relief.

            The mannerism of Josh Schachter in that video reminds me a lot of our former high school principal, now district superintendent after a meteoric rise through administration.

          • You will appreciate this. https://mindsetscholarsnetwork.org/five-guiding-principles-for-creating-inclusive-mathematics-environments/

            Together, the fellows’ syntheses highlight key features of the environment that support student learning and well-being in mathematics, particularly for students from groups that have been minoritized and marginalized in mathematics. As outlined in the guiding principles, these features include: critical consciousness among educators, a more expansive understanding of the discipline of mathematics, adaptable curriculum and instruction that allows for relevance for the specific students in a class, meaningful opportunities to engage in collaborative work, and assessment that prioritizes deep mathematical thinking and exploration.

            Now they have released some of the underlying papers. A sampling–

            https://mindsetscholarsnetwork.org/research_library/expanding-visions-of-success-in-mathematics-for-marginalized-students-building-more-equitable-and-inclusive-mathematics-environments/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=95746101&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8DGFxrZkJyQdxvKbY2rPWZJQmr1i7ZJbwuExMD6YYFlpYRYsQGqETCyEAFJuVpp1i0p0_Nu0H9jqHBFLvCEKGKOFwZNq7jtW1lLQVHt14qrtZhohI&utm_content=95746101&utm_source=hs_email

            https://osf.io/wsx9d/ “Fostering an Inclusively Relevant Mathematics Environment: The Case for combining social-justice and utility-value approaches”

          • NSF rolling out new program that ties into what an LMS is capable of–

            Program Title:

            Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL)

            Synopsis of Program:

            The purpose of the Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning (RETTL) program is to fund exploratory and synergistic research in emerging technologies (to include, but not limited to, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and immersive or augmenting technologies) for teaching and learning in the future. The program accepts proposals that focus on learning, teaching, or a combination of both. The scope of the program is broad, with special interest in diverse learner/educator populations, contexts, and content, including teaching and learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and in foundational areas that enable STEM (e.g., self-regulation, literacy, communication, collaboration, creativity, and socio-emotional skills). Research in this program should be informed by the convergence (synthesis) of multiple disciplines: e.g., learning sciences; discipline-based education research; computer and information science and engineering; design; and cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences. Within this broad scope, the program also encourages projects that investigate teaching and learning related to futuristic and highly technological work environments.

            This also showed up in this month’s Learning and the Brain newsletter. Everyone wants to strengthen those collectivist tendencies apparently.

            How do we balance our social, collectivist nature with our individualistic drives? How do technologies, such as smartphones and social media, affect the tension between collectivist and individualist drives? Given that we have become highly individualistic at the expensive of collectivistic tendencies that promote happiness and health, how can we move towards more collectivistic tendencies, while avoiding the drawbacks of group operation? How might technology facilitate this process? Through a series of interviews with a diverse group of experts (e.g., a bee keeper, social neuroscientist, young avid tech user, etc.) and a synthesis of psychological and neuroscientific evidence, Sarah Rose Cavanagh offers keen insight into these questions in her latest book, Hivemind: The New Science of Tribalism in our Divided World. Cavanagh is a professor and director of the D’Armour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College with expertise in the psychology of emotion regulation.

            https://www.learningandthebrain.com/blog/hivemind-the-new-science-of-tribalism-in-our-divided-world-by-sarah-rose-cavanagh-phd/

          • In response to David’s post. I had this experience over and over in my engagement with institutions of higher education in California.

            Thought it didn’t start with U.C. Hastings College of the Law, I will start there, since that institution produced Kamala Harris. Ok, I entered law school after having worked in that industry for a few years and for some very accomplished practitioners. I scored in the 95% on the LSAT, and was accepted by Columbia and wait-listed at Harvard. I should have flown through that program, but, I, almost from Day I, had ‘no idea’ what professors were teaching or talking about, meaning that it bore no resemblance to real-world practice of the law. And, I am not saying that is is because it was academic or theoretical…NOT at all, but because it was about social justice as opposed to justice, justice. I sat through classes like a gobsmacked person with a ‘neural diversity’ gift, but what part of my brain was trying to figure out was how did X, Y and Z get into this program? As I recall, this institution was rated either #9, or #14 in law school rankings when I started, and was rated #69 by the time I left, w/o a degree, but no matter.

            I had a similar experience in my M.A. program, partial distance learning thing, Organization Development, and can say that during my 28 months of engagement in this program, I saw all competent to teach ANYTHING faculty eliminated and replaced by individuals (home grown) of various melanin disabilities, gender identity disabilities, and actual cognitive disabilities…the more the merrier.

            So, I would say this has been going on for a long, long time…

            I have to report that the ‘actually’ DIVERSE, and international people who attended this program, we who still have to function according to real-world standards, did not appreciate being cheated out of an education.

            So, I say DE-FUND that system…it is killing your competiveness in the global workplace.

    • Is Japan literally pushing BLM? They have hardly any black people and no particular history with them.

      The Marxist method as I understand it involves finding a difference and using it to drive a wedge to break the society. For Karl it was social class, for the USA race. Japan is quite homogeneous for 90 or so percent of the people, I understand there’s an old aristocracy class but they aren’t especially influential at least in ordinary society. So how do they promote it without a wedge issue?

      • In 2015, I was doing some weekend work at a Japan branch of a global business communication skills training provider. I had worked on and off in this role for several years. In that time, I observed ‘2’ Black trainers who were working for the VERY large entity. Still, all of my colleagues, mostly American were talking BLM. When I asked, “Don’t all lives matter?” I became THE ENEMY. FYI, I had been helping out with union matters (gratis) and had been dealing with very ‘real’ discrimation by the firm against non-Japanese employees.

        What wedge are they driving? Anti-American, anti-Trump sentiment.

        See:
        Black Lives Matter Tokyo (Facebook)
        Black Lives Matter Osaka (Linktree)
        Protesters hit Tokyo and Osaka streets with rallies against racism and police brutality (Ryusei Takahashi & Eric Johnston, The Japan Times)
        Why we’re marching for black lives in Japan (Ayana Wyse, The Japan Times)
        Once upon a time … in Azabu Juban (Austin Freeman, The Japan Times)
        ‘No justice, no peace’: The sentiment that resonates in America, Japan and all over the world (Baye McNeil, The Japan Times)
        Naomi Osaka in no mood to back down on support for Black Lives Matter (Reuters, The Japan Times)
        Kurdish case becomes rallying cry for Japan protest against police (Mari Saito, Reuters)
        Video footage of the Kurdish man’s encounter with the police (Twitter)
        Kurly in Kansai on Twitte

        A protester holds up a sign in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward on Saturday as part of rallies to speak out against police brutality and the treatment of foreign residents in Japan. | RYUSEI TAKAHASHI
        A protester holds up a sign in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward on Saturday as part of rallies to speak out against police brutality and the treatment of foreign residents in Japan. | RYUSEI TAKAHASHI

  9. Don’t know if you’ve been following, but Karlyn Borysenko has been going through a slow conversion on YouTube this year. Her most recent post regards a review of a mandatory High School class covering “Active Citizenship”. She’s just tripped over some of the topics you’ve been covering for years. Pretty interesting to watch:

    • Thanks Mike. This is the write-up of one of this month’s webinars. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e5831b8ae394523d24bb08b/t/5f6ba00f8479d36eace6e6ec/1600888847661/ReimagineAmericasSchools-Forum-TechnologyandEducation.pdf

      The one I listened to yesterday, tied to the UN, said point blank that the whole point is to change people’s values, attitudes, and behaviors, from the inside-out in order to change how they will act in and on the world in the future. Just like I laid out in CtD as the purpose of Tranzi OBE 7 years ago. The Portrait of a Graduate is merely an update euphemism for the purpose of Tranzi OBE.

      Amother webinar this week put on by WestEd and Knowledge Works involving the State of North Dakota and what is called Personalized Competency-Based Learning Initiative had the Oakes Public Schools Graphic for their Portrait of a Graduate which made the links to Tranzi OBE crystal clear. The Oakes Super was one of the speakers on that webinar.

  10. @realchrisrufo is my newest hero. He made a goal to get President Trump to ban critical race theory in government training (of the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion type). When EPA, State, and Veterans Affairs failed to comply and cancel trainings, Trump doubled down with a second order yesterday. https://christopherrufo.com/president-signs-executive-order-abolishing-critical-race-theory/

    Chris Rufo plans to expose more CRT documentation in education. The chicanery is being outed through many avenues!

    • CRT fits with the desire to instill “new mental models” globally to support the planned transformations as supposedly necessary.

      Hope to get out details soon. Thanks for everyone’s patience as I deal with some mundane affairs apart from writing these days.

    • What will become of all of those HR “Diversity Officers”? FYI, the PRC installs such people in every firm of reasonable size. They monitor employee populations for “right think”.

      • So much came popping out when I saw a footnote this morning linking to UCLA now having a UNESCO Chair on Global Learning and Global Citizenship Education. https://www.unescouclachair.gseis.ucla.edu/about/

        How did I miss that they had a Paulo Freire Center? Hard to imagine this group would ever abandon CRT. Plus the omnipresence of Tranzi OBE with its variety of names makes perfect sense once ed is to provide “the next level of attitudes and behaviors”.

        Am adding this as the announcement involved our old friend and admitted Marxist Irina Bokova– https://ampersand.gseis.ucla.edu/news-advisory-ucla-to-establish-new-unesco-chair-in-global-learning-and-global-citizenship-education/ from 2016.

        Wow. The UNESCO Chair site, in addition to SDG materials, global citizenship, and UNESCO learning objectives also links to https://civiced.org/. Probably should not be using UNESCO approved materials to get the desired shift to ‘patriotic education” . Fascinating.

        • Had a SKYPE with my KIWI student intern today. Let’s see, although that nation suffered but a hand-full of Covid-19 ‘associated’ deaths, citizens have joined in solidarity to see that there is not even one more such death, education system and economy be damned. Logically-speaking — oh forget that — I guess a nation could join in ‘solidarity’ to prevent even one more automobile-related fatality from occurring — ban driving, and what about all of those fatal slips and falls in bathtubs — stop bathing. Also heard that there are emerging severe social and legal consequences for NOT joining in ‘solidarity’ activities, e.g. mask wearing.

          So ‘solidarity’ is really the objective, rather than containment of a virus, or stated otherwise, solidarity is the virus.

          • Notice the reference here to “every person on earth” to be instilled with the desired mindset and attributes and also all the references to what amounts to an obligation of solidarity.

            “The arc of human history will be bent by learning–specifically, the proportion of the seven billion people on the planet who have the knowledge and skills to support their family, make thoughtful choices and participate in self-governance.” I made that claim, noting that “learning is the most important subject in the world,” a decade ago in Getting Smart.

            While access to quality education remains vital, this year–with the collision of a pandemic, racial injustice, and climate crisis–made clear that we don’t just need to upskill, we need a new set of agreements about how we get along and how we share the challenges and opportunities of our time.

            Sharing the benefits of the innovation economy requires that we take apart and reconstruct old agreements, policies, and institutions that were inherently racist and inequitable. For learning institutions, a few of these outdated agreements include school funding based on local property, grading and sorting based on compliance, curriculum based on WASP history, college entrance requirements based on skills that no one actually uses, and hiring based on degrees that didn’t certify job skills…

            Let’s invent for equity. We have a new, compelling opportunity to offer every person on earth access to high-quality learning. With new tools and new agreements, we can empower all learners and their communities with the tools and skills needed for a future that is already here.

            https://www.gettingsmart.com/2020/09/15-invention-opportunities-in-learning/ Out yesterday.

          • Look what else is being rolled out–

            https://medium.com/@Eduflack/declaring-our-independence-from-irrelevant-whitewashed-history-instruction-9200336f758d

            Of course, learning American history isn’t about passing a multiple-choice test or doing well during a trivia night. Recent events have demonstrated how important it is for all of us to know our history — no matter how complex, confusing, or ugly it may be — and to think like historians. It is about asking tough questions and analyzing even tougher responses. It’s about beginning to understand what figures and moments and movements in American history we aren’t learning in class and asking why not and exploring what else hasn’t been taught. It’s about learning to think critically and focus less on just what happened and more on why things happened and the impact it had.

            It’s about teaching a different type of history in a different way.

            That’s why I am proud to officially announce the launch of the Driving Force Institute, a startup non-profit organization committed to transforming the teaching and learning of American history. This important work is based on a few key principles. First, video is the most powerful medium for teaching history to young people today, particularly video that is modeled after the YouTube videos learners are watching in their leisure time. Second, it is about making history more interesting and provocative for today’s learners. And finally, it is focused on telling our full history, with a particular emphasis on those important historical figures and moments that have been neglected for too long in our public school classrooms.

            To launch this important work, DFI has collaborated with XQ Schools and its Rethink Together Forum to explore some of these important historical questions. We begin the month looking at the significance of the year 1619. Each week in July, XQ will share new DFI videos on the forum, exploring a range of issues important to today’s discussions of civic engagement.

            I’m also proud to formally unveil “Untold,” a project of DFI produced and distributed by Makematic in collaboration with the USC Center for Engagement-Driven Global Education. We will provide an open-source collection of short, compelling history videos and animations designed to start new conversations shining a light on the stories that don’t always make it into the classroom and questioning what we think we know about those that do.

            My bolding. So UNESCO has a chair at ucla now and usc is pushing “engagement-driven GLOBAL education” that is going to reimagine how history is taught. Good way to get to new mental models, isn’t it?

            Out the same day. https://xqsuperschool.org/blog/decolonizing-american-history-textbooks/ Probably relevant to what Lauren Powell Jobs is also pushing at the Atlantic, which I believe she owns part of. Those easily disproved Trump and the military allegations. And she wants to remake the nature of American history and how it is taught with an emphasis on the visuals. I believe Obama’s Ed Sec, Arne Duncan, is involved with Project XQ as well.

  11. Two days ago a Japanese female client (FINANCE MANAGER) presented to me a survey she had been asked to conduct by her American-owned global organization. The survey sought to determine how many employees of the firm ‘self’-identified as ‘racially’ or ‘ethnically’ Black. At the next level, these individuals were asked to assess to what extent the organization supported their retention and development.

    My client noted that the findings were skewed from the start because many nations, including Japan do not permit employees to be categorized according to ethnicity — so employees of branches in these countries were not even contacted. Additionally, a number of employees responded that they did not wish to identify as a “color”, or that they were multi-racial and couldn’t understand how to answer the question. So, the survey sample ended up being comprised of ’20’ people — which is most surely not the number of ethnically/racially Black people in the company. That group indicated deep dissatisfaction with the resources and opportunities the organization was providing. My client noted that, that group is almost exclusively employed in ‘one’ office located in ‘one’ country, the U.S.A. From this survey sample will be developed policies that are implemented globally. My client informed that the message has been that this is a ‘pilot’ program that will be rolled out to other disadvantaged “colors” in the course of time. This will mean that members of the 99% Japanese employee population in Japan will be categorized as ‘disadvantaged’ owing to their “color”. I would assume that this is model that all/most American MNC’s are implementing.

  12. It occurs to me that in terms of the “every person on earth”…and solidarity thing, we could look back to Martin Nowak’s research at Harvard, the Project for Evolutionary Dynamics, and we KNOW who funded that. Novak researched and modeled how viruses spread in populations groups. He also researched phenomena such as “altruism”, “collaboration”…and, I believe, but don’t quote me, that he conjoined these interests in various projects, papers and a recent book. This stuff is coming from a very high level, is being researched and modeled at the highest levels, IMHO.

  13. Alison McDowell has done a lot of work investigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution, cybernetics, and hedge funds betting on social impact. She discusses how the markets will commoditize human development (think growth and flourishing) and social credit as measured in the blockchain . Seems to line up with so much I’ve read on ISC: Gamification of learning, WIOA, lifelong learning, UNSDG, and serfdom. It’s a very grim picture and I hope it isn’t too late to stop this global plan.

    https://wrenchinthegears.com/2020/08/25/the-webinar-youve-been-waiting-for-alison-mcdowell-joseph-gonzalez-and-incite-seminars-present-level-up/

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