newsheadlines

Dumbing The Population

Report: Tom DeWeese, President of the American Policy Center and Editor of The DeWeese Report.

There is a deliberate conspiracy on the part of the Department of Education and the National Education Association (NEA) to dumb-down American education. DeWeese blasts No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as failing to address the core problems.

20 years ago the US ranked FIRST in the world in high school diplomas and college degrees. Now our education system ranks 18th out of 24 industrialized nations in effectiveness. We are already second in the world in money spent per student, yet American students grow more illiterate by the year.

“Twenty years ago the U.S. ranked first in the world in the number of young adults who had high school diplomas and college degrees. Today we rank ninth and seventh, respectively, among industrialized nations. Compared to Europe and Asia, 15-year-olds in the United States are below average in applying math skills to real-life tasks.”

DeWeese points out that the National Education Association is NOT a professional organization of teachers dedicated to improving quality of teaching. Instead, Americans need to remember that it is a Labor Union, with the goal being to “. . . get more money into the educational system. Clearly the NEA is not about education – it’s about money and a political
agenda.”

“Clearly the nation’s education system is not teaching the children. They can’t read or work math problems without a calculator. They can’t spell, find their own country on a map, name the president of the United States or quote a single founding father. America’s children are becoming just plain dumb.

“Yet we have been focusing on a massive national campaign to “fix” the schools for the past decade or more. Now we have ultra high-tech, carpeted, air-conditioned school buildings with computers and television sets. We have education programs full of new ideas, new methods, and new directions. In the 1990’s we set “national standards,” accountability through “national testing” through Goals 2000.

Through that program we declared that every child would come to school “ready to learn,” “no child would be left behind,” and pledged that our kids would be “second to none” in the world. Above all, we’ve spent money, money and more money. The result, American students have fallen further behind, placing 19th out of 21 nations in math, 16th in science, and dead last in physics.

“Most Americans find that statement to be astonishing and, in fact, to be beyond belief. Parents don’t want to let go of their child-like faith that the American education system is the best in the world, designed to give their children the academic strength to make them the smartest in the world.

Politicians continue to offer old solutions of more money and more federal attention, almost stamping their feet, demanding that kids learn something. Programs are being proposed that call for teacher testing to hold them accountable for producing educated children. More programs call for annual tests to find out if children have learned anything. The nation is in panic. But none of these hysterical responses will improve education – because none of them address the very root of the problem.

“As fantastic as it seems, the entire history of the education restructuring effort is carefully and thoroughly documented in a book called The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. The book was written by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, a former official at the Department of Education in the Reagan Administration. While there in 1981 – 1982, Charlotte found the “mother lode” hidden away at the Department. In short, she found all of the education establishment’s plans for restructuring America’s classrooms. Not only did she find the plans for what they intended to do, she discovered how they were going to do it and most importantly why. Since uncovering this monstrous plan, Charlotte Iserbyt has dedicated her life to getting that information into the hands of parents, politicians and the news media.

CONCLUSIONS

“Americans who want to rid the nation of this plague have little choice but to insist that their representatives in Congress begin a complete investigation into the Department of Education and its policies, its waste, and its fraud on the taxpayers, parents and children of this nation.

“Perhaps then, as the facts are exposed under the hot lights of a Congressional hearing, the American people will begin to understand that the problem with education isn’t low paid teachers and crowded classrooms – but rather, is the result of a cynical, deliberate attempt to dumb-down America to promote a radical political agenda. For that is the truth.”

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."
 - William F. Buckley, Jr.