My book is mentioned in a December 2, 2014 article by Charles Battig, titled "Give Gruber a Break." The article begins:
Jonathan Gruber has been roundly reprimanded in the press, blogging sites, and everywhere in between for his candid comments regarding “the stupidity of the American voter” being his assumed premise for the passage of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare). As viewed from Gruber’s academic pedestal, this was a most natural and fair assumption. His own education surely indoctrinated him with the elitist attitude of the privileged. A short review of the history of government education policies and goals ought to give Gruber a measure of sympathetic understanding for his natural assumptions as a government-employed sycophant.It then nicely mentions me and my book:
Gruber’s inherent academic assumption of (ordinary) Americans’ stupidity is elucidated by Charlotte Iserbyt’s 1999 The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. She served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration. Gruber’s matter-of-fact pronouncement of the “stupidity” of Americans reflects his academic assumption of the success of government education, and validation of Iserbyt’s investigations into the education establishment.
From Iserbyt’s book’s preface: “In 1971 when I returned to the United States after living abroad for 18 years, I was shocked to find public education had become a warm, fuzzy, soft, mushy, touchy-feely experience, with its purpose being socialization, not learning. From that time on, from the vantage point of having two young sons in the public schools, I became involved -- as a member of a philosophy committee for a school, as an elected school board member, as co-founder of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM), and finally as a senior policy advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education during President Ronald Reagan’s first term of office. OERI was, and is, the office from which all the controversial national and international educational restructuring has emanated.”
Another excerpt: “I realized that America’s transition from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy would not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through the implementation and installation of the “system” in all areas of government—federal, state and local. The brainwashing for acceptance of the “system’s” control would take place in the school -- through indoctrination and the use of behavior modification, which comes under so many labels: the most recent labels being Outcome-Based Education, Skinnerian Mastery Learning or Direct Instruction.”
THANK YOU, AMERICAN THINKER, FROM CHARLOTTE AND THE CREW! The five of us who put this book together (made it happen): Cindi Weatherly, the Editor; Sarah Leslie, the Publisher; her son, Colin Leslie, who did the formatting; and Charlotte, the author -- consider this a mighty nice surprise after so many years of the book being very successfully boycotted!
And thank you, Sam Iserbyt, my son, whose website http://www.americandeception.com includes important hand-scanned documents related to the deliberate dumbing down of america, as well as those documenting the history of our nation's descent into totalitarianism. Sam also deserves much credit for having created my http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com website and having made the 1999 original version, now out of print, a FREE download at the book's website.
The following links relate to all the research you could possibly need for an understanding of the history of the deliberate dumbing down of america:
- American Deception
- the deliberate dumbing down of america. The updated/abridged version of 3D is extremely important since it covers the years 1999-2011 during which many of the plans for tax-funded school choice/charter schools with unelected boards were implemented. This version also includes updated information related to long-planned lifelong community education under unelected school boards, part of UN Agenda 21, all of which will ultimately result in a closed/totalitarian liifelong system of education. This system, which is going in as I write, provides ALL services, health, abortion, euthanasia(in the future), workforce training, leisure, etc. under the unelected council form of government. Click on: The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, Revised and Abridged
- My abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com carries many of my book's most important quotes as they pertain to what is going on today with Communist Core, tax-funded school choice and charters with unelected boards, UNESCO/Carnegie's role in values modifying mental health programs birth through death, and many other components of the restructuring of our nation's academic/political systems to ones designed to prepare Americans lifelong for the global workforce, using computer technology, which Cindi Weatherly brilliantly describes as: Limited Learning for Lifelong Labor. The National Alliance of Business, in the nineties, called for Workforce Training Kindergarten through Age 80! This blog is a wonderful way to wander through, on a daily basis, the tumultuous, left/right boycotted history related to the role education placed in the loss of the America we know and love. It also goes into extensive detail regarding the role of the tax-exempt foundations, especially the Carnegie Corporation, 1933-2014, in this subversion.
- Exposing the Global Road to Ruin Through Education 8-DVD disc set, 2014, which includes video presentations and written submissions from the nation's most respected education/political researchers and writers, including public school teachers, going back close to 100 years!
- And, last but not least, the very important 39-page booklet, Back to Basics Reform Or... OBE* Skinnerian International Curriculum?, 1985 -- *Necessary for United States' participation in a socialist one-world government scheduled for the early years of the twenty-first century. 4th ed. 2013. Predictions made in this book, written in 1985, have come true. The book--which spells out clearly how OBE, Goals 2000, No Child Left Behind, and School-to-Work would be implemented--was boycotted by major conservative organizations. Read it and ask yourself 'Why?' The book has, however, sold well (50,000 copies) to grassroots organizations.
