Education: objectivist versus subjectivist learning

The Training World: "Instructional Design Approaches"

Dec. 25, 2010
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'Global' indoctrination -

Read also, "Brave New Schools". From Chapter 1: "(...) this book will show some of the calculated steps toward total social transformation:

- Rewrite history to discredit nationalism and promote globalism.
- Teach thinking "skills" based on feelings and experience, not facts and reason.
- Encourage loyalty to peers and teachers, not family and churches.
- Immerse students in global beliefs and values.
- Condition students to serve a "greater whole".
- Block opposition to the new global paradigm (...)

Kjos: "The Nazi Model for Outcome-Based Education", by Berit Kjos

History keeps repeating itself, but few heed its warnings. If our leaders did, they would know that today's massive attempt to transform our culture by nationalizing education will bring repression, not freedom. They would see that the manipulative strategies of Mastery Learning will create human puppets, not independent thinkers.

In spite of the information explosion, America hasn't heard the message. Perhaps our leading change agents don't know what their deceptive strategies and dumbed-down curricula will do to our children. Maybe they haven't noticed the similarities between their educational strategies and former Nazi tactics for molding young minds and teaching group conformity.  (...) >>>

Sept. 18, 2010
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State education -

Brad Harrington’s Blog: "Getting Off Education's Assembly Line"

“Free education for all children in public schools.” - Karl Marx, Plank Ten, “The Communist Manifesto,” 1848 -

Imagine, if you will, that someone were to advocate the nationalization of the restaurant industry, on the basis of our need for food, and that state food dispensaries be placed into the business of producing the same meals for all, regardless of taste preferences or dietary requirements.

We would laugh, seeing the errors inherent in such a proposal and of its implications for the individualities of our digestion. Such a move would be the epitome of state collectivization and would negate the factor of choice that spawns the diverse array of culinary selections we take for granted. Here in America, the “land of the free”? Absurd. (...) >>>

Sept. 15, 2010
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Ccurioser and curiouser -

Dr Sanity: "SCHOOL DAZE"

Victor Davis Hanson , who has spent some time in academia, says that we are being "ruled by professors". He goes on to describe lessons he has learned from his association with the ivory tower (...) Like Hanson, I have spent much of my adult life in the bizarro world of academia. And, like Alice in Wonderland, I have noted over my years at various institutions that things have only gotten "curioser and curiouser" as the intellectuals in these citadels of supposed learning grew ever more out of touch with the real world. Yet I have chosen to remain in this environment because I love to teach. Perhaps I am a bit mad. (...) >>>

Sept. 9, 2010
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Subverting individualism since 1905 - It wasn't just the Frankfurt School subverting Western society since the post WWII era, but an entire subculture of collectivist intelligentsia since 1905.

The problem with the Infowars crowd is, they occasionally dig up gold and then continue to fly off into thin air as their imagination is getting the better of them. A pity, because the cold facts are often bad enough in themselves and the subject itself is left open for easy dismissal as "conspiracy theory".

A good example is this piece pertaining to education, Dewey and progressivism. By all means also click through to psychiatry (which has never cured anyone) and other worthy topics. We've seen the Tavistock and Rockefeller connections while on the subject of Common Purpose, an collectivist organization which is permeating British society on all levels. They've since wondered onto the continent and the US.

We've given two of our favorite correpondents - both active, or formerly active in the field of education - the SNTP item and this is what they came up with -

• Nourishing obscurity: "The hardwiring of unsound principles"

Hat Tip commenter James Wilson, who has this to add:

Philosophic systems that destroy human individuality will have secret attractions for men who live in a democracy. What concerns me in our democratic republics is not that mediocrity will become commonplace, but that it may be enforced.--Alexis De Tocqueville

• Dr Sam Holliday: "Postmodern Education in the United States", on postmodern education (socialization, rather than the transfer of knowledge).

Sept. 5, 2010
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Teaching climate heresy? -

The Dartboard: "Global Warming: This is Denialism?"

In March 2009, the Texas State Board of Education finalized its new standards for science education. Soon thereafter, in the Summer 2009 issue of the The Earth Scientist , the quarterly journal of the National Earth Science Teachers Association (NESTA), Steven Newton, Public Information Project Director for the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), took issue with the new standards.

Specifically, Newton singled out a handful of amendments which he said “weakened the standards” and “opened to door … to bring non-scientific ideas into the science classroom.” He took issue with minor changes to wording concerning teaching of, among other subjects, the age of the universe, changes in the earth’s atmosphere, and fossils. Referring to these amendments, Newton summed up his comments this way (...) >>>

Dec. 28, 2009
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Cover via Amazon

Dr Sanity: "EDUCATION IS A WEAPON"

“Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” - Joseph Stalin

If you thought I was joking or too extreme in my discussions of the ongoing corruption of k-12 education; and how all the leftist "educational experts" like Bill Ayers intend to destroy the minds of your children in the era of hopenchange, then you need to read this. All of it. What is happening in Minnesota is the evolution of education into leftist political indoctrination.

The health of our educational system--from K-12 through college-- is absolutely essential to the long-term welfare and competitiveness of the United States. American education used to be the strongest on the globe, and to the extent that remains true, it is because the hard sciences in this country (e.g., math, engineering, computers etc.) have been largely resistant to the political taint that runs rampant in the humanities.

The latter subject areas, which include literature, philosophy, and history, have become unabashedly ideological over the last two decades; and the "social justice" advocates of today's collectivists have taken over our K-12 education system and are determinedly undermining American values with their politically correct, multicultural and anti-capitalist curriculum.

Make no mistake about it, what many teachers today are doing is indoctrinating their students minds into an unquestioning obedience to the collective. This they cannot do unless they also can manage to corrupt even the hard sciences with their dogma. (...) >>>

Nov. 28, 2009
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Fox/Glenn Beck Program 09-22-09 Seg 3 "Annie Leonard School Film: Government to Take Care of You"

Continued on Segment 4

Sept. 23, 2009
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Liberty Pen: "US Textbooks - Fractured History" (video)

Sept. 16, 2009
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Front Page: "One-Party Classroom", by John Ellis

One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indocrinate Students and Undermine our Democracy is the third recent book in which David Horowitz has documented and commented on the politicization of higher education. The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (2006) was a series of profiles of “political activists masquerading as scholars.” Indoctrination U. The Left’s War Against Academic Freedom (2007) made the case for the Academic Bill of Rights, Horowitz’s sample legislation designed to protect students from political indoctrination, and to recall the academy to the principles set out in 1915 by the American Association of University Professors—principles which the AAUP seems now to have abandoned. One-Party Classroom, written with Jacob Laksin, documents what happens in the college classroom. It takes twelve representative American campuses—large and small, public and private, but all prominent—and looks at course descriptions, departmental statements of purpose, course reading lists, and statements by instructors, to document the extent to which classroom instruction is corrupted by political agendas and dumbed down by the obsessions of radical instructors. Horowitz and Laksin look carefully at about a dozen courses in each institution. Many are from recently created departments such as Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies, but as many are from traditional departments: English, History, Politics, Sociology, and Anthropology. (...) >>>

Apr 24, 2009
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"Enlightened social engineering is required to face situations that demand global action now... Parents and the general public must be reached also, otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home. And then the educational institution frequently comes under scrutiny and must pull back."
--Professor John Goodlad, Foreword in Schooling for A Global Age - Hat Tip: Kjos, "Brave New Schools", chapter 1