Several of the nation's finest education researchers/activists, amongst whom were Anita Hoge and Jeannie Georges, and "yours truly," paid $5000 to make presentations at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to expose the goings-on in the U.S. Dept. of Education and President Reagan's signing of education agreements with Soviet President Michael Gorbachev. Although the major media was not in attendance we got good coverage in education journals.
THE AUGUST 11, 1988 EDITION OF EDUCATION DAILY COVERED THE NATIONAL CITIZENS Alliance Press Conference held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Excerpts follow:
GROUP ASKS EDUCATION DEPARTMENT TO STOP FUNDING “MIND-CONTROL” CURRICULA,
END SOVIET EXCHANGES
A citizens group headed by a former Education Department official asked ED to stop promoting
curriculum the group says controls students’ minds.
The National Citizens Alliance (NCA), a group of parents and teachers, alleged at a Washington, D.C. news conference yesterday that ED is promoting “mind-control” curricula that use hypnosis-like techniques to foster concentration.
NCA wants to “get the federal government to stop pouring millions of dollars” into the “development of mind-control programs currently sweeping through American schools,” said Charlotte Iserbyt, who served as senior policy advisor in ED’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement from 1981 to 1982 and is NCA’s East Coast coordinator. Iserbyt called on Education Secretary William Bennett and other federal officials to:
End federal funding and promotion of programs such as Tactics for Thinking, which is used in Indiana schools.20 NCA says the curriculum “employs hypnotic-like processes and altered states of consciousness techniques on children”;
Cancel the education portion of the 1985 exchange agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, which NCA says allows dissemination of “communist propaganda” through global teaching methods and the joint development of textbooks and computer software; and
Force Pennsylvania to ask parental consent before using its Educational Quality Assessment test, which NCA says uses “psychological and psychiatric testing” in violation of the federal Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment [Anita Hoge case against the Pennsylvania Department of Education].
NCA also criticized ED’s National Assessment of Educational Progress for tracking student attitudes and behavior, saying that obtaining such information violates privacy rights and could lead to behavior modification nationwide.
Secretary Bennett’s spokesman Loye Miller said he is not aware of the complaints to which NCA refers. An OERI spokesman declined to comment.—Christopher Grasso
Excerpted from pages 248-249 of my book the deliberate dumbing down of america. Note that all these gals are still activists. See their video presentations HERE.
