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Children's Training and Manipulation Act of 2001

Diane Alden
Dec. 12, 2001


In 1991, our 41st president, George H.W. Bush, signed the World Conference of Education for All treaty. What that particular bit of international do-goodism did was to subject education in the U.S. to monitoring by an international body.

This treaty fits in well with international central planning, which seeks to equalize all societies and systems, from education to work. It is a prime example of central planning through data collection and manipulation. It is also an egalitarian or communitarian attempt at secularizing social justice, or making everyone equal through central planning.

Year after year, but more particularly from the late '60s, America got stuck with dumb and dumber ideas about education and how educating children should be done.

As international test scores indicate, America's children are the recipients of an increasingly rotten education. Meanwhile, the focus of their education becomes a football between elite establishment groups.

America's families and children are becoming pawns and worker bees to be manipulated through social engineering. The goal is to manufacture peaceful, docile citizens of a world corporate state. The individual is to be subsumed into the collective.

In other words, sooner or later, American sovereignty and economic and cultural superiority will be a dead duck. Before 9/11 President George W. Bush was talking about harmonizing the entire Western Hemisphere into some kind of cohesive regionalized economy and culture. Do you think this "plan" came out of nowhere? Think again!.

International planning to coordinate or "harmonize" the world's economies and political systems has been going on for decades. But the downfall of the Soviet Union has hurried it along.

The attempt to create the perfect corporate citizen of the Western Hemisphere and most of the civilized world is a work in progress. But at the moment the current education bill before Congress will establish the system to make that centrally planned docile and virtuous corporate citizen a reality.

The education bill known as "No Child Left Behind" (HR1/S1) is a federal education bill (the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act). It is to be voted out of its conference committee today, Dec. 11. It may come up on the House floor within the next few days.

The House and Senate are in the process of resolving differences between the two versions of 1,000 pages of rules and regulations that are supposed to enhance local control of education.

Grassroots education activists are being told that local control of education is to be improved by the bill, that the hated Goals 2000 has been repealed in this piece of legislation. The summary of the bill states: "The proposal would remove all references to Goals 2000, outcome-based education, School-to-Work, Workforce Investment Act, and higher order thinking skills."

What is Goals 2000, you ask? It is an education dumbing-down package passed in 1994 during the Clinton administration after it failed to pass under former President Bush in 1991.

It was supposed to "harmonize" the relationship between government and education by mandating watered-down, dumbed-down education standards that included a national curriculum, national test and national teacher's license.

Passed at the same time as Goals 2000 was HR 6. That bill stated that "voluntary" stipulations of Goals 2000 were mandatory if states wanted federal money. Thus, in essence, the feds would control education in all states.

While current politicians talk a good game, the fact is every Goals 2000 mandate is reauthorized in "No Child Left Behind."

One of the most clear-headed education activist groups is from my home state of Minnesota. Maple River Education Coalition has been trying to define and warn Americans about what is really going on with the education establishment and, more particularly, with the education bills Congress passes.

The only things these bills improve are the power of the establishment and the disempowering of the states and individuals and the dumbing-down of American children.

Education grassroots activist, mother of three and physician Dr. Karen Effrem of MREC stated recently that "Goals 2000 has nothing to do with academics." She believes that eventually the federal leviathan will control the entire education system, which will include private and home schooling.

Furthermore, the eventual outcome will be that employers will be forced to comply in hiring practices with federal mandates connected to the "process" of education. Regulations will demand that employers be plugged into the certification system in some fashion. Thus, School-to-Work won't be merely a euphemism about children getting jobs after they graduate; it will be an entire system of School-to-Work under the control of the federal government.

If private-schooled children or home schoolers want to go to college, they also will have to take the national standard tests and be certified, or no job. That is where MREC believes this is headed. It is part and parcel of larger international agreements that Bush Sr. made in 1991 that had been in the planning stages for decades.

There is no indication that President George W. Bush has any different ideas, since "No Child Left Behind" is one of his dreams. His support of "No Child Left Behind" as well as hemispheric "harmonization" and open borders is all of the same game plan.

If you DON'T think this is all connected, I have swampland in Arizona I will sell you cheap.

Dr. Effrem stated that each state has spent millions of dollars establishing standards and assessments to comply with the federal mandates in order to receive the grant money from Goals 2000 and the Title I funds from the ESEA (HR6 and HR1).

As an example, Minnesota received about $24 million from Goals 2000 and Title I funds, which comprise only 6 percent of the state education budget. Yet the state has spent at least $500 million of state money to comply with these federal laws.

In other words, that 6 percent of the state education budget that is from Washington results in 80 percent to 90 percent of the regulations that states must follow.

HR6 mandated a set of standards in each state that correlated to Goals 2000. The goals and standards were billed as academic in nature. In fact, they are indoctrination and entry level job skills training, tracking students into careers based on the needs of business – all managed by federal bureaucrats.

According to the analysis of the coalition, HR6 and its required assessments are more about attitude and behavior testing and data collecting than testing academic knowledge.

Part of this mess is the NAEP, or National Assessment of Education Progress. Its author was an educrat named Ralph Tyler. Tyler, like John Dewey, believed that education was not primarily about academics but about socialization. Dr. Effrem tells us, "Tyler said in the 1940s, 'The real purpose of education is not to have the instructor perform certain activities, but to bring about significant changes in the students' patterns of behavior.' "

The NAEP will now be (thanks to the "No Child Left Behind" bill) the national assessment used to "validate" the state assessments.

Each state has totally rearranged hundreds of laws and standards in order to comply with Goals 2000. But in Minnesota the legislature attempted to give local districts wiggle room on when and how standards would be implemented. The feds threatened to withhold funds if they did that.

Which proves the point I attempt to make on many issues regarding promises made by officials of the federal government – they never keep their promises unless they are threatened with loss of their offices by the electorate OR rioting in the streets. The latter usually does not work.

Dr. Effrem says the feds have indicated that the government will pay for assessments, but Effrem believes it is doublespeak. The law requires these assessments to be aligned with standards and the feds will not be paying for new standards. So it is a catch-22 situation, a worthless promise.

The good doctor put it to the House Education Committee on whether or not Goals 2000 had been repealed in HR1. The response would ONLY be found in the federal follies manual of flim-flamming the public:

"The past framework of Goals and Schools to Work will exist if states don't choose to change it using the flexibility provided by the Schaffer language, i.e., ability to change standards without Department approval. States have to comply with the 1994 effort by having standards in place and assessments in place – but Goals 2000 does not have to be part of this if the states don't want it."

The members of the board on the MREC, as well as other educators and experts and parents I have spoken to, believe that the states are not going to spend more millions in order to develop new standards. Nor will they go back to old laws they have already repealed.

So the states get caught in the federal trap. They will still be forced to abide by Goals 2000 and School-to-Work.

Beneath all the educratese is a fear by those who see the agenda of all the education bills that have come up in the last 20 years, but more particularly in the last 12 years.

When President Bush Sr. talked about a "new world order" he was not whistling Dixie on the 5th of July.

The policy wonks, the various councils of "those who know better and must be obeyed," the universities, the schools of education, the brain-dead teachers unions, the multinational corporations, the one-world-fits-all globaloney crowd feel the need to plan our lives.

They don't have the Cold War any longer to focus people, so now they focus on arranging the lives of everyone on the planet. They are starting with cohesive societies first, the U.S. and Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

From education to immigration, from environmentalism to multiculturalism and communitarianism, the hive masters are on a roll. "No Child Left Behind" is not about improving education by raising academic standards. That does not need another federal bill.

HR1/S1 is like everything else going on in government today: It amasses power for the elite establishment and directs the United States toward internationalization and globalization.

In the process, your children and your grandchildren will lose their freedom. They will become creatures of the masters of the hive, pawns to be manipulated by an international corporate and statist elite.

Your children will learn about "civic virtue" from a government-sponsored NGO – enter the Council on Civics Education (CCE). That NGO will define virtue and will use the data collected about your child to categorize him or her.

Thus, government will define and direct every child's activities, attitudes and responsibilities. Voluntary for children's activities will become as "voluntary" as the "voluntary:" income tax. Schools everywhere are requiring community service in order to graduate. That is Goal 3 of Goals 2000.

In addition, if the NAEP primarily asked true academic questions instead of probing personal data and beliefs, students would not have to be ensured that they "do not have to ... answer questions they are uncomfortable answering."

Dr. Effrem is convinced that "The only way to make the NAEP more responsive to parental concerns is not to make it the national test by requiring it as the 'validation' of the assessments, based on federally required non-academic standards, such as the civics and government standards of the Center for Civic Education and Goals 2000. It will be responsive when it does not assess attitudes an beliefs and demand personal and family data."

The beast numbers us. For the "common good" or the advancement and well-being of the collective and corporate state it will give us a national ID, dumb us down, tax us to death, take private property one way or another, stifle us through political correctness, destroy states' rights, manipulate us into jobs and prepackaged lives.

For all the best intentions in the world and through an unguarded back door, that dumb beast will end American sovereignty.

Our lives and our children's lives are at stake. "No Child Left Behind" is merely a small part of the bigger picture of manipulation and control by the central planners of our era.

Call and write your senator and congressman and tell them this is a bad bill that only institutionalizes federal control and finally international control and direction of our lives.

You can reach members of the Coalition:
Maple River Education Coalition PAC
1402 Concordia Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55104
651-646-0646
http://MrEdCoPAC.org


Check out my DAILY free-wheeling take on events at www.aldenchronicles.com in News and Views. Write to me at wulfric8@excite.com or alden@newsmax.com.
Diane Alden is a research analyst with a background in political science and economics. Her work has appeared in the Washington Times as well as NewsMax.com, Enterstageright, American Partisan and many other online publications. She also does radio commentaries for Steve Myers' show on Liberty Works Monday and Friday mornings, and can be heard regularly on Mike Fleming, WREC in Memphis.

Reproduced with the permission of NewsMax.com. All rights reserved.

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14 dec 2001