If our 21st Century Lives were just a televised game of Jeopardy, the title would be the answer that would be linked to the championship. The correct question would be: What are the real goals envisioned when Education Reformers, politicians, and Political Radicals use the misleading term ‘standards’ in K-12 education? When that transformative Global Partnership we met in the last post says in bold face type on page 8 that “the pursuit of deep learning goals enabled by new pedagogies and accelerated by technology” is a Moral Imperative that will “guide all of our work,” what goals are really intended? The first part of the title comes from a paper published in the 1999 ASCD Yearbook called “The Role of Standards in Educational Reform for the 21st Century.” We actually do not have to assume that there is a link since one of the co-authors, Peter Hill, is also listed as a participant in the new Global Partnership on page 2 as one of its educational consultants.
http://www.carmelcrevola.com/publications/The_role_of_standards.pdf is the paper that once again makes it clear that the word standards is now being used as an Orwellian synonym. Translating the Common Core State Standards accurately then by its real purpose would be Common Behavioral and Dispositional Goals for All American Students, No Exceptions. Put together by DC-based trade groups hoping to cash in from the attached new vision of a politically-planned economy and society. Perhaps staffers who got to go on one of those trade junkets to China and thought that vision would work better for them. Hill made it clear on page one that the role of standards is to foster “values such as equality, fraternity, and democracy” indicating he may have always wanted to participate in the Storming of the Bastille. Best not to teach why such insistences can lead to a bloody Terror followed by a Napoleon.
Standards also allow for the “flexible, dynamic, and highly-skilled workforce” unlikely to ever create that Change the World innovation that destroys the existing business of a political crony. Ooops! That was my editorializing in a snarky manner on the real purpose, just like in my book. Page 2 mentions standards as a means for countries now to “ensure social cohesion” and page 3 sees standards as a transformative tool for a “society that values equity and a ‘fair go’ for all.”
The latest book tied to the World Order Models Project, the 2008 The Global Commonwealth of Citizens: Toward Cosmopolitan Democracy by Daniele Archibugi, wants to make “prevailing world public opinion” the determinant of what governments ought to be doing on behalf of their people, the governed, in the 21st Century. That aim, of course, puts quite a premium on manipulating that opinion from the Cradle to the Grave, as the current political slogan goes. Or Womb to Tomb in another variation. Archibugi does want a radical transformation where by “virtue of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the subsequent pacts, individuals have been endowed with positive rights that they can claim from their own states,” preferably at the local level via those ever compliant mayors, City Councils, and appointed regional commissions who just love federal grants.
Now you know why that Declaration just keeps coming up now in classroom activities. Archibugi wants this radical transformation in world politics to come about by persuasion, not force, which is of course all the more reason to utilize K-12 education. All the mentions of citizenship and civic competence we keep encountering, make much more sense when we recognize the plan to “demand a role for the citizens of the world” to insist that their “human rights” be provided by their governments. Perhaps as a “moral imperative”? All the mentions of dialogue and creating shared meaning make much more sense when we read again of an intention to bypass elected representatives in favor of:
“creating better and transparent contexts for decision-making. This is why new channels of representation must open up through which the various opinions may be expressed in a dialogical rather than antagonistic fashion. To be effective these channels demand a greater willingness on the part of individuals to participate in the management of global public matters. The making of a global commonwealth of citizens requires that individuals are prepared to act on the ground of key shared values. What principles of political action must the citizen of the world subscribe to?”
That would be the real reason for new pedagogies and forms of assessment to see if the desired principles of political action, needed workforce skills to be an obedient, compliant drone, and desired personality traits are in place. Adding to the quotes from the previous post, this is why New Pedagogies insists the new “goals for education and learning” include “skills that prepare all learners to be life-long creative, connected and collaborative problem solvers and to be healthy, happy individuals who contribute to the common good.”
Now we could make a good case that I contribute to the common good by reading books on all these plans of transformation and then tying them to what is coming to a school and classroom or your business place soon, but I believe Michael Fullan, Pearson, the OECD, and the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations want it to be their idea of appropriate values and the common good. Given all the references to ‘consensus,’ ‘shared purpose,’ and ‘collective will,’ there really does seem to be an organized attempt to erase any concept of individual sovereignty capable of standing supreme against the state. I guess that is what happens when you import your instructional practices from the Soviet Union, nurture the economic vision in a place that worshipped Mao, and look to rich universities full of wanna-be political and social planners for the vision of what “We the People” is supposed to mean in the 21st Century.
The 1995 book The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age, written by a former NPR President and head of the NBC News Division, laid out the planned transition to a participatory democracy using ICT technology. Upfront it asked “What will it take to turn the United States into a nation of qualified citizens who are engaged not as isolated individuals pursuing their own ends but as public-spirited members who are dedicated to the common good?” Why, K-12 education reform centered on the Whole Child and guiding perceptions and a curriculum focused on learning by doing and real world problems of course. Lawrence K. Grossman left NBC News to be a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and work on the democracy project that became that book. It’s where Jal Mehta of the New Pedagogies Project graduated from before moving on to Harvard’s Ed School to use its graduates as tools for the desired public policy changes. http://www.slidefinder.net/t/the_20chastened_20dream_20notes/thechasteneddream–withnotes/13854681
It’s also where the co-authors of the books in the Real Utopias Project, Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, are professors. The Kennedy School is also heavily involved now, by the way, with creating ties between the US and China. CELAP from our last post, in fact, is referred to as China’s answer to the Kennedy School. Real Utopia came out of an actual conference at the University of Wisconsin in January 2000, a good time to commence 21st Century Re-Do Plans I suppose. Now think for a second how a deep knowledge of history and human nature full of facts might get in the way of this purpose:
“The Real Utopias Project embraces this tension between dreams and practice. It is founded on the belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations, but is itself shaped by our visions. Self-fulfilling prophecies are powerful forces in history, and while it may be Pollyanna-ish to say ‘where there is a will there is a way,’ it is certainly true that without ‘will’ many ‘ways’ become impossible. Nurturing clear-sighted understandings of what it would take to create social institutions free of oppression is part of creating a political will for radical social changes to reduce oppression. A vital belief in a utopian destination may be necessary to motivate people to leave on the journey from the status quo in the first place, even though the actual destination may fall far short of the utopian ideal.”
It may also create students like what we are seeing in Denver, Colorado and what we saw during the heyday of the Occupy demonstrations who have no acquaintance with any factual knowledge from the past. Where will they be when OPM-Other People’s Money-inevitably runs out? Can they become self-sufficient as an adult or will change by force, rather than persuasion, feel like the justified response?
Is there any place in history where deposing sovereignty from the individual and placing it in a collective under political control, actually ever diminished oppression? Guaranteed to ignite would be the reality. No wonder perception and student daily experiences are being so manipulated.
Next time we will come back to the new view of politics in a Real Utopia and the Electronic Republic where we each get to be governed.
Hi Robin,
I just looked up commentaries on Envisioning Real Utopias and indeed these authors choose to ignore recorded human history. Maybe they need to go back and read about Stalin and the millions of people he starved and murdered in his quest for a Marxist utopia. Blood Lands, a book about Hitler and Stalin’s quest for radical transformation in Europe, might be a good place for them to start. It’s hard to believe these people are as highly educated as they claim to be.
Vivian-and I have found commentary that regards Archibugi as naive, but until we recognize what theories this is all based on and who is aspiring to do what, we get no chance to yell stop. This is what my school district is pushing and the school board members just gush that the Super wouldn’t lie to them. Meantime the paper ran a story that is base salary now is about $315K and the Super in Gwinnett pushing this is taking down almost $500K.
There’s nothing in either man’s background that would tip them off on just how damaging this all is because as Jal Mehta says in that powerpoint I linked education school has become a policy school for achieving Progressive social change. School board members are told in their mandatory training that they must defer to administrators or face the loss of accreditation. What level of brainwashing in those sessions would cause elected officials to be so conned they would tell me I should learn to defer to the Superintendent on education matters because “he has an education degree.”
His degree and others like it let any Mickey Mouse institution make Big Bucks marketing a credential that lets holders make big money courtesy of taxpayers because they are willing to implement notorious ideas whatever the outcry. http://www.amazon.com/Recasting-Egalitarianism-Communities-Markets-Utopias/dp/185984863X is Book 3 in the project. I have Gintis and Bowles 1976 book where they admit this education vision is to achieve the Marxist vision in the US and that hopefully it will not have to be violent.
There’s a reason there is a push to Defer to the Professionals here when the so-called professionals are just credentialed in renamed Marxist theory, Soviet Psychology, and aspirations to use social science for social engineering. The average teacher is being pushed to submit to principals and administrators now who are increasingly just Competent to be a Change Agent. There are solid people who come out of these programs by holding their nose, but mostly now seem to be looking for people with a chip on their shoulder. Willing to push anything without question because the money outstrips anything anyone would voluntarily pay them for.
This is all so open in the history involved once we cut through. Many times I do not give a link it’s because I want readers to search out just how blatant all the sources are. Neither we or our children should be sold into collectivism by universities pushing theory to “see what will happen now.” The reason Communism did not work went far beyond its lack of supercomputers for better planning and the Russian and Chinese attempt to construct on an agricultural base.
Are we really going to spend the 21st Century learning this will not work? The Real World Project documents love to use that word ‘flourish’ just like the New Pedagogies document. This vision is the antithesis of flourishing, but it does cause the great US to voluntarily relinquish its magic to innovate and its Constitutional protection of the individual. After all if the Kennedy School says “We the People” refers to Demos in the collective sense how dare anyone without a degree from there or a job there dispute that.
That’s why facts and logic have to go. With them we can defy the herd because we do get that no amount of political power can refute that 2+2=4. Political power just hates that.
Our Super in Westchester County NY goes by Dr. He must have some sort of doctorate from somewhere, but his facebook page doesn’t say where. Probably a diploma mill.
I was neither happy nor surprised at middle school parent’s night to hear from the social studies teacher that the focus of the class was on how government can increase people’s rights. I’m pretty sure that would not include rights of property owners or taxpayers nearly as much as the “downtrodden” or other traditional victim groups.
Someday I’ll explain that to him. For now I’ll see how the koolaid is served; he’s not as opposed to drinking it as I wish he were.
Thanks David. The next post will lay out more of the truly astonishing things now being asserted on where we are going as the Governed and how these K-12 ‘reforms’ are a means.
My college kid came in for fall break and it was a blur of appointments along with her picking out what I was to cook next. Messed with my schedule but I am back to normal as of about an hour ago.
Vivian-here is why I worry so much. In September Ban Ki-Moon established a Data revolution Task Force to accomplish the sustainable development transformation using Big Data. http://www.undatarevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/PR-Announcement_Secretary-Generals-Independent-Expert-Advisory-Group-on-Data-Revolution.pdf is the members of the Task Force that includes the MIT prof Alex Sandy Pentland that first told us about the FuturICT plans we met here. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/redesigning-education-globally-to-humanize-personalities-and-make0each0one-of-us-more-susceptible-to-peer-pressure/
And the first US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, whose troubling E-Governance vision shackling all of us, we met here recently http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/journey-to-the-center-of-the-core-yields-the-yoke-of-citizen-centric-governance-to-force-a-shared-vision/ was full of references to the man he viewed as his mentor O’Reilly who was also named.
Now I have the 2005 UN Social and Economic Council reports that redefined sustainability to include economic, political, and social transformations that make it a undisputed code for the Marxian Human Development Society and I have written about that in my book, but this transformation really is intended to all go on out of sight. That I can see it is a component of watching now what I know fits to see what’s being announced next. Fits in perfectly with this post once we start tracing connections. Mercy me, I wish I was not correct about all this.
Well they did a test on nbc last week end or 2 with the ” global citizen festival”. On NBC.
Terrifying. Seducing kids with sports and concert tickets to do as they wish. Same technique as a pedophile.
http://www.globalcitizen.org/tickets
Search the videos watch the famous NBC newsreaders shill for big brother in the techno mass delphi session, its a test combining everything you say in this post including appearance by Ban Ki Moon and Jayz and Bey
Madmoomy-broadband as a human right to be provided globally by taxpayers in the rich countries is pushed by the UN. Comcast owns NBC. Any incentive there to push this transformational vision beyond what anyone learned at university? yup.
Look what is based where Fullan works when he is not globetrotting. http://tlc.oise.utoronto.ca/ The second I saw this was at U of Toronto I knew there was a link.
Madmommy-doesn’t this article on Teaching Perspectives K-12 on Tolerance from the Southern Poverty Law Center put the proper spin on that student walkout in JeffCo and why the NEA and the College Board are backing the students. http://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/general/Perpectives_for_a_Diverse_America.pdf
The article says that the David Coleman founded Student Achievement Partners views this curriculum as embodying the planned Common Core shifts.
Look at this about the Central Texts and how they are selected to fit with Anti-Bias Framework. http://perspectives.tolerance.org/ Viva la Revolution with parents and taxpayers largely unaware. No wonder the JeffCo students cannot imagine how nurturing patriotism via American History is not prejudicial.
Here’s the short video hyping it as meeting the criteria of rigor and relevance and creates a compulsion for community action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsw39SCzLtE
Rolled out for this 2014-15 school year.
“the pursuit of deep learning goals enabled by new pedagogies and accelerated by technology”
That sounds like the Rich Seam paper we have discussed multiple times. Where it is says:
“The goals of deep learning are that students will gain the competencies and dispositions that will prepare them to be creative, connected, and collaborative life-long problem solvers and to be healthy, holistic human beings who not only contribute to but also create the common good in today’s knowledge-based, creative, interdependent world.
The explicit aim is deep learning that goes beyond the mastery of existing content knowledge. Here, deep learning is defined as ‘creating and using new knowledge in the world.’ Technology has unleashed learning, and the potential for students to apply knowledge in the world outside of school; new pedagogies leverage all of this in the formal learning process.”
All of the deep learning seems to come through technology, the internet and the computer. We know that the computer is a tool. Yet they push it as a way of life, that nothing can be learned or changed without the use of technology. We end up with things like transformative learning. See slide 10 and note William Ayers just before that.
https://apps.lis.illinois.edu/wiki/download/attachments/8421886/Concepts.pdf
It sure does seem that deep learning and mindfulness go hand in hand. We need to invoke meditation and open our minds to accept this nonsense.
http://www.mindingyourlife.net/articles/reflections.pdf
He “wilted my inner flower” as I read it.
anon-I think the people planning all this are unaware of just how tightly I can tie all this deep learning to New Age pushers like Ken Wilber and his Integral Learning or Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers and the other Humanist Psychologists. I am deep enough into this and have accurately understood it for long enough that the confessions just keep rolling it. There is no need to speculate on the ties between Deep Learning and mindfulness. As something I read this morning put it usefully, subjective reality and how a person interprets their experience is the keystone.
It’s the keystone because there are to be no barriers to a willingness to remake the world.
Sorry you got hung up. It’s Fall Break so the college kid and I met grandparents for brunch.
Eldest is coming in so it’s time for me to start my long-cooked Pasta Bolognese everyone wants for dinner. Yes, I do it with milk that cooks out and then white wine that cooks out and then the tomatoes crushed.
The technology substitutes visual images that tie into the presupplied interpretive concepts or ‘lenses’ coupled to the existing associations. A print orientation instead of the visual would create the risk that student would create their own understanding from facts, not instinct. As this morning’s reading put it, people needs to have a consistent shared internal understanding so there can be less conflict.
Contradictory facts in the world just stay off the radar because lenses not only guide what gets noticed. They also guide what is likely to be ignored. I wish I was speculating on that but I have read that point too many times.
This is a great post this morning from Daniel Greenfield. I think he and I both probably need to wear sunglasses as we appreciate where this is all going. http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-empire-of-progressive-poverty.html
What he points out is entirely consistent with the Mind Arson and Perception Manipulation by Censorship Before the fact we have been examining.
It is the Oregon way.
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/10/oregon_to_revise_definition_of.html
Did you catch this one?
http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/07/obama-administrations-new-teacher-equity-plan-will-improve-access-good-teachers/
L.L.
This second article sounds like the Obama administration is amping up its play for getting all kids eligible for Title I Federal Choice funds. I doubt its really about the teachers. Its about labeling all students as disadvantaged so that Fed money follows the kid into any school of their choice ensuring the CCSS are taught wherever the kids go. Defacto infiltration of every teaching environment anywhere.
(But I could be way off! And I’m open to learning what I’m not getting.)
Its a shame to me anyway that the heritage foundation is still hustling the charter school red herring. But there is money to be made as a charter school “owner” I suppose.
Profit and/or ideological motivations from either “side” are irrelevant too I guess as long as these plans are rolling down the line. Just that they are happening is sickening.
Mari-I read that letter the day it came out and my take is that it is trying to get the effect of a Supreme Court reversal of the 1973 Rodriguez case that held that education was not a basic right under the Constitution. It is an extraordinary power grab, but interestingly it updates a letter that Richard Riley himself wrote as he was on his way out in 2001. That likely guided districts at an invisible level all through the Bush years as this same agenda waited to be fully resurrected.
I cannot speak to the motive of Heritage, but they censored a comment of mine on their blog about a year ago when I warned that the language of the charters needed to be read carefully as frequently it was intended to prevent any actual choice at all if properly understood. Whatever the agenda, they do not want a factual discussion of charters. I had a similar experience at a state-level affiliated entity breakfast on school choice. They kept insisting choice would prevent standardization and I said not if the accreditors are the enforcers as they are under this vision. The answer I got back was that anyone could be an accreditor. I am the wrong person to lie to because that really piques my interest.
Lots of people now want the money from the funds following the child. The problem is that this template is not just about school choice, and the theorists tout “regulate the ends, not the means.” So there is no actual choice because government standardizes the end as I am about to explain. Private providers though do well as the public fails to appreciate what terms like Learning, assessment, student achievement, or Growth now mean. Plus choice is not just about education. It’s about all the so-called needs that governments have determined all citizens have a legal right to in the needs-based society of Marx’s Human Development Model.
Ironic, huh? All these so-called conservative think tanks advocating for a vision that ultimately traces back to Uncle Karl’s vision that once a certain stage of technology and social wealth is achieved redistribution is possible “from each according to their abilities, to each according to his needs.”
I think it’s why so many who work at these think tanks now are actually poli sci pr public policy doctorates simply wanting to control the parameters of the public debate and knowledge about what is possible in the future.
Remember it’s all about the synthesis. My book saw where this was all going and lays it out factually, which is troubling to those who planned all along to make Competency the synthesis after the turmoil of the Common Core. Meanwhile CC gets the digital initiatives in place, new kinds of ‘authentic assessments’ few lay people understand, and the shift to behavioral standards occurs instead of knowledge-oriented criteria. Annoying moi, following up on reports, chance comments, and the lurking legal mandates.
Robin-
Have you ( Would You? ) considered creating some kind of Definition-Vocabulary Cheat Sheet?
Obviously most of these Orwellian Ed and Utopian Governance terms can take pages to explain in detail. Detail which you provide in your posts and book! But I’m thinking that making a list of the terms that we hear ad nauseum and which most people understand to mean one thing while it means something else to the planners would be really useful.
An explanatory definition page might even be something that could help cut through the BS when trying to explain this stuff to people who think it can’t be so.
I know these terms can be unwieldy to explain.( She said understatedly) They are purposefully oblique to make them difficult to understand. I’m just trying to think of ways to bring this home to people who don’t have the patience to muck through it all. It ain’t for the faint of heart.
Ex; Standards ( as in the Common Core State Standards )
Are not academic criteria of what should be understood in any given academic subject by high school graduation.
Standards now refer to criteria that teaches and rewards with passing grades predictable behaviors and ingrained values which serve a ideological social justice, economic redistribution, governance agenda.
So obviously its not easy. Cliff Notes are not possible for this wormhole but I’m trying to make this accessible to people who are not as geeky as I am or as hell bent on understanding every last bit of what is going on. 🙂
P.S. Im not trying to make more work for you!
Just wanted your reading public to know that this is already being implemented at Catholic schools in Miami. I do believe that accreditation will be the means by which they force common core on everyone regardless of which type of school one chooses. In my daughter’s religion class they’ve already spent a couple of weeks studying and discussing social equity and racial equality. What happened to Church history and bible study? Even some of the local Catholic schools who have not formally adopted common core are using “common core aligned” textbooks. So even if we manage to remove common core standards the books will still be used is my guess. The globalist’s will see to it that they get their way.
I get that comment a lot Mari. I have looked into it as it would need to be a separate document and would require me to stop what I am researching and just work on that. It is somehting on my To Do list, but I keep having other things cut in.
I had that explanation of Standards in the post and took it out since I was running long and we have had this point made repeatedly in recent posts. It was why I capitalized Aims and Goals though. This end game is also why we have Backward Mapping.