From: Forrest Bishop (forrestb@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sun Aug 25 2002 - 03:14:28 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: Michael Wiik <mwiik@messagenet.com>
To: extropians <extropians@tick.javien.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 10:53 AM
Subject: Re: American Education
> Jus found this: might help explain some things especially wrt immigrants
> particpation (or lack of) in american culture and society...
>
> <<Anti-Social Studies
> So many ideas for improving the curriculum--all of them bad.
>
> ...
>
> Alan Schulman, a participant in a panel examining "The Impact of
> September 11th on Social Studies Professionals" at a meeting of a
> Greater New York NCSS-affiliate chapter, got to the heart of the matter.
> Responding to a teacher who said her students had been wanting to know
> more about American history since the attacks, he said, "We need to de-
> exceptionalize the United States. We're just another country and another
> group of people."
>
> ...
>
> Many states have embraced the NCSS's idea that you don't need to know
> any American history to be an effective citizen. Hawaii, Wisconsin,
> Arkansas, Maine, Michigan, and Minnesota, among others, use the NCSS
> guidelines as the model for their state social studies standards and
> thus require their students to study no history at all.
> THAT A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION of teachers would do nothing to
> encourage kids to think of themselves as Americans with a common history
> and common ideals will surprise no seasoned observer of the nation's
> schools.>>
Thank you for the Gatto reference, it appears to be fairly accurate. The above is a continuation of this most destructive crime
against civilization. Although it is tough to say which dept. of the US government is the most vile of them all, the US Department
of Education certainly makes the short list. Please realize that many of the products of this system, such as current public-school
teachers, are unable to understand what we are talking about, as critical thinking is no longer a permissible subject in public
school.
I would like to find a reliable copy of J. D. Rockefeller's General Education Board *Occasional Paper No.1*, which Gatto calls
*Occasional Letter Number One*. I'm not sure which is correct. The GEB website doesn't seem to have it.
Another excerpt from the *Occasional Paper No. 1* by Fred Gates, 1904 (according to Griffin):
"In our dreams we have unlimited resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The
present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good upon a grateful and
responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers of mental learning or of
science. We have not to raise from among them authors, editors, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great
artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, peachers, politicians, statesmen of whom we have ample supply. The task we set
before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one: To train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life
just where they are...in the homes, in the shop, and on the farm."
quoted on pp 556,
Griffin, G. Edward, *The Creature From Jeykll Island (A Second Look at the Federal Reserve)*, American Media, 1994,
http://www.realityzone.com/creature.html
*Creature* is a particularly well-researched history of the early 20th Century, a critical subject for any would-be futurist.
We can and we do trace a clear and true chain of causation of the current plight of the sheeple back over a century.
"Those who would not learn from history are condemmed to repeat it." (paraphrased from memory)
--G. Santayana
de-exceptionalize this,
Forrest
-- Forrest Bishop Chairman, Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering www.iase.cc
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