Thursday, March 5, 2015

NCEA ORLANDO 2015

Controversies  & Compromises

A 3D Research Report by Betsy Kraus
The National Catholic Education Association will hold its annual convention in Orlando, Florida on April 7-9, 2015.(Sources, 1.)

The featured speaker will be Ms. Carolyn Woo, C.E.O of Catholic Relief Services (CRS). Ms. Woo has headed up CRS since January of 2012. Controversy has swirled around CRS in the past, and respected institutions, organizations, and individuals have asserted that CRS is responsible for the panhandling of abortifacients as well as other actions not in keeping with Catholic teachings. On March 3, 2015, a 56 page investigative report was released implicating CRS. Lifesite News headlines read: “Government docs show Catholic Relief Services ran abortifacient-pushing sex-ed program in Kenya”. Other Catholic news sites including Catholic Culture and the National Catholic Register have reported on this situation.(Sources, 2.)

To view the NCEA’s history of “friends” and speakers, read the brief report, NCEA and their Friends, by Laura Broussard.(Sources, 3.)

With regards to the overall program of the Conference, it appears there has been no deviation from the NCEA’s Outcome Based Education and Common Core Agenda for this 2015 Conference. In fact, some of the workshops presented this year only reinforce the lab-rat, pigeon training of B. F. Skinner.  We know Catholic educators use these techniques because they have told us so. When they formulated and launched the Common Core Catholic Identity Initiative (CCCII), they told us they would use learning outcomes, backward mapping to design the instruction, and then assess it. The methods would also include “staircasing” and “scaffolding” to enhance “skill” increments in learning. And they told us it would be based on Common Core Standards.(Sources, 4.) 



There is nothing “Catholic” about this kind of operant-conditioning classroom training. Former U. S. Commissioner of Education, Lawrence C. Derthick warned about this “mechanical” training, stating: 
“We must be very careful about adopting any mechanical system of producing children like objects. There are so many complicating factors in each child –emotional, psychological, the home background the sensitivity of teachers – there’s danger in trying to turn out children like nuts and bolts or steel pins.  Human beings are more complex…”(1)
Public school superintendent, Guines, revealed that this kind of public education was operational even back in the 70’s.
“The materials will be standardized, the lessons will be standardized,” Guines said. “We’re taking the play out. We’re taking the guesswork out. We’re putting in a precise predicted treatment that leads to a predicted response.” Guines said that the new curriculum is based on the work in behavioral psychology of Harvard University’s B.F. Skinner, who developed teaching machines and even trained pigeons during World War II to pilot and detonate bombs and torpedoes. The basic idea, Guines said, is to break down complicated learning into a sequence of clear simple skills that virtually everyone can master, although at different rates of speed. “If you can train a pigeon to fly up there and press a button and set off a bomb,” Guines remarked, “why can’t you teach human beings to behave in an effective and rational way? We know that we can modify human behavior. We’re not scared of that. This is the biggest thing that’s happening in education today…” (Excerpt from the deliberate dumbing down of america by Charlotte Iserbyt, p. 146) (2) 



Here is a sampling of the many workshops at this year’s NCEA convention:

  • Applied Behavioral Sciences in Cultivating and Soliciting Volunteer and Philanthropic Resources. (Behavioral techniques applied to donors?)
  • Contemplative Practice: The Distinctive Role of the Catholic Education. Reflect and implement contemplative practice. (Transformational leaning, innovations in Ignatian contemplation, trendy, eastern- mystical “centering” techniques? Former NCEA president, Karen Ristau, informed fellow educators that she believes in transforming Catholic Education leadership to teach the scientific, behavioral, and contemplative shifts expected in Catholic Education.(Source, 3.)  
  • Create a meditation journal. Practice spiritual and personal meditation. (Do parents send their children to school to learn transformational meditation in order to have their attitudes, feelings, and beliefs changed from what they learned at home?)
  • Bringing Catholic Social Teaching to Life Within the Bishops’ Curriculum. (Saul Alinsky Social Justice and Service?)
  • Educating for a Faith that Does Justice: Approaches Toward Reflection on Service. (Students forced to reflect on “servitude”? Forced, involuntary service to graduate. Then to become global servants? This is not the virtue of Charity.)
  • Connect the Dots Between Student Need and Behavior. (More behavioral and psychological treatment of the student?)
  • Paperless Classroom Management. (How will parents know what their student is learning?)
  • Going Paperless and Bookless in the Elementary Classroom. (Will parents know what kind of information is downloaded to the student’s computer or notepad? In the meantime there are colossal global profits to be had by computer, tech, and Curriculum On-Line companies when every child is on a notebook or computer.) 
  • Virtual classroom. (U.N./UNESCO’s plan is to have every child in the entire world hooked to their socialistic, global, on-line computer curriculum - all children learning from the same, Godless, secular, mind-controlled script.)
  • Common Core Comes Alive with Uncommon Teaching Materials. (Continued commitment to Common Core.)
  •  Understanding by Design Model. (Backward mapping. OBE.)
  •  Blended Learning: How Innovation & Technology Reduce Cost, Increase Academic Rigor and Personalize Education for Students. (Cheaper On-line education; facilitators instead of teachers; excellent traditional teachers dismissed; personalized on-line or blended learning education to recycle the child until he meets the outcome.)  
  •  Moving towards a Standards-Based Mindset. (Eliminating letter grades, replacing with “Proficiency” grading to match student mastery of incremental “skills” and success in “Shading”.)
  •  Formative Assessment: Required for Learning. (Constant recycling to assess incremental skills. Very time consuming. This constant assessment creates the need for an extended or year-round schooling. Assists in robbing children of their childhood for work-force purposes.) 
  • Revised Diagnostic Labels and How They Apply to the Educational Environment. (Enormous topic, tied in with “remediation” for ESEA Title I students labeled “disordered”. Such “disorder” aided by Grit. Tenacity, and Perseverance rubrics to overwhelm and traumatize the student. See Source 5 for what constitutes a disorder. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official listing for disorders, includes under DSM-5, the following disorders which translate to: Temper tantrums, normal grief, making a mental disorder of everything we like to do a lot, everyday worries, etc.  Private schools accepting IDEA or Title I funding are susceptible to mandates for “remediation”. IDEA: “Treatment and Interventions: Psychological treatment mandated to change personalities, attitudes, values, beliefs, and dispositions through the use of IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, (Special Education funds), birth through college-aged students, monitored by the national unique ID.”(3) Full-service Community Education provides “counseling and mental health clinics” even on school premises. [See Mo, HB-382, Sources, 6.] Psychological treatment, sensitivity training, and remediation are just a few of the reasons why it is so important to defeat the Reauthorization of the ESEA ACT.)    
  • Full Service Schools: Comprehensive strategies for supporting students and families. (Community Education and “re-education” for life-long learning.)
  •  Growth Mindsets in the Classroom: Explore new research on self-perception and the implications of mindset on classroom instruction. (From teaching knowledge to behaviorism and psychological treatment. Student self-disclosure violating rights of privacy?)
  • Discover what is “Powerful Learning”. (Cooperative, group learning. Will students be trained so that they cannot think without the group and become dependent on “leaders” for future work-force group-performance? Linda Darling-Hammond, of Common Core and SBAC fame, says regarding Powerful Learning, “Each member is responsible not only for learning what is taught but for helping his or her teammates learn, so the group becomes a supportive learning environment.”(4)
  • Discover the benefits of flipped learning and flipped Mastery Learning. (School work at home and home work at school.)
 
Among the numerous workshops listed in the 2015 NCEA Conference program, many are a continuation of existing, debilitating, progressive educational techniques, along with new innovations to assure dumbed-down training for life-long labor.


If your Catholic school tells you they are not using Common Core don’t get “too happy” and don’t be “lulled to sleep.” Until they eliminate Skinnerian, OBE behavior and mind- control in Catholic education, along with classroom innovations such as those above, removing the term “Common Core” means very little to nothing.   

Actually, one has to ask what has really changed regarding the goals of the NCEA since the 1985 NCEA Convention in St. Louis, where U.N. representative Robert Muller was billed as the key note speaker. Muller presented his educational and global concepts to an enthralled, auditorium-packed audience of Catholic educators. His New Age, World Core Curriculum is the plan to train all students for a One World Global Order and a One World Religion for “Cosmic Spiritual Transformation.”(Sources, 7).

“Reflecting on the ethical values of our civilization in 1958, Pope Pius XII commented: ‘There is a large portion of his inner world which the person discloses to a few confidential friends and shields against the intrusion of others. Certain [other] matters are kept secret at any price and in regard to anyone. Finally, there are other matters which the person is unable to consider.... And just as it is illicit to appropriate another’s goods or to make an attempt on his bodily integrity without his consent, so it is not permissible to enter into his inner domain against his will, whatever is the technique or method used.... ‘” (5) 


Entering the inner domain of children and by-passing the will of students is exactly what current education teaching methods entail. Furthermore, there is no difference between Catholic and public school methodologies. Catholics must become informed, understand the grave dangers to the children and become active. Implore the Bishops to put a halt to these ungodly methods of “transforming” our children into little global nuts, bolts, and robots. Call and write letters to the Bishops. Spread the word.  If Catholics remain silent, nothing will change, and the hearts, minds, and souls of the children will simply belong to “Big Brother.” (Sources, 8.)
  
Footnotes: 
1. Iserbyt, Charlotte, the deliberate dumbing down of america, Conscience Press, Ravenna, Ohio, Copyright 1999, page 146. http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf 
2. Iserbyt, Charlotte. “Are we training pigeons or education children?”, March 2, 2015. http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2015/03/are-we-training-pigeons-or-educating.html 
3. “Common Core and the Facts”, March 3, 2015. http://abcsofdumbdown.blogspot.com/2015/03/common-core-and-facts.html 
4. Baron, Brigid, Darling-Hammond, Linda, “Powerful Learning: Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods”, edutopia, what works in education, 10/8/2008. http://www.edutopia.org/inquiry-project-learning-research 
5. Iserbyt, Charlotte, the deliberate dumbing down of america, Conscience Press, Ravenna, Ohio, Copyright 1999,page 138. http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/MomsPDFs/DDDoA.sml.pdf 

Sources: 
1. “Join us in Orlando, NCEA 2015”, NCEA 2015 Convention & Expo, National Catholic Education Association. http://www.ncea.org/sites/default/files/documents/ncea2015_orlandoprelimprogram%20%281%29.pd 
2. Bourne, Lisa, “Government docs show Catholic Relief Services ran abortifacient-pushing sex-ed program in Kenya” Lifesite News, March 3, 2015. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/government-docs-show-crs-ran-abortifacient-pushing-sex-ed-program-in-kenya Catholic World News, “US bishops’ relief agency involved with condom distribution in Kenya, report charges, Catholic Culture, March 2, 2015. http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=24198 Engel, Randy, “Catholic Relief Services –another anti-life laundry for the death peddlers”, Renew America, July 2013. http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/engel/130723 
3. Broussard, Laura, “NCEA and Their Friends”, March 17, 2014. http://www.scribd.com/doc/213920259/NCEA-and-Their-Friends#scribd 
4. Pittsburgh Catholics Against Common Core. http://www.pghcatholicsagainstcommoncore.com/resource-documents 
5. “Parents, teachers, voice concerns regarding standard based grading”, Lawrence Journal-World, 11/30, 2011. http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/nov/30/parents-teachers-voice-concerns-regarding-standard/ “Getting Started with Active Based Grading”, Active Grade.http://activegrade.com/get-started/ 
6. “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders”, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Last modified 2,16,2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders
 “Developmental Guidance and Counseling Programs in Schools”, HB 382, Missouri State House of Representatives, Sponsor: Republican Kathryn Swan, 8/ 28/2015. http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills151/sumpdf/HB0382I.pdf 
7. Kraus, Betsy, “A Report on the National Catholic Education Conference: Gateway to Global Understanding”, April 8-11, 1985. http://www.scribd.com/doc/207950600/Catholic-Gateway-to-Global-Understanding 
8. Sites for information on Catholic and secular education. 

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