The questions about today's education answered here.

What is happening in our schools that will affect every worker in America?
What happened to local control of our schools?
Why are kids spending class time training for entry level jobs?
Why is time spent on projects and group learning instead of the basics?
Why are businesses training teachers in job skills?
Why are reading, writing and math skills going down?
The answer to these and many other questions are found on this website. The federal government has set in motion a restructuring of our schools, our workforce and our economy to create a new system called School-to-work or STW. Minnesota and all other states are incorporating a central planning system to implement STW. STW places the needs of business above the needs or wants of the child.

How New U.S. Policy Embraces a State-Planned Economy

Federal law forms a new governance structure that opposes both free enterprise and representative government. Instead, government centrally plans and manages the economy. The scaffolding for a centrally-planned economy was passed piecemeal under President Clinton and is currently being reassembled at the state level by combining federal laws into the following three-way "public/private partnership:"

This public/private partnership was created by the following federal laws:

Goals 2000 (G2000) created the partnership between government and education by mandating dumbed-down national education standards, a national curriculum, national test, and national teacher licensure. Local and state control of education is ended.
School-to-Work (STW) creates the education/business partnership, changing the purpose of education from acquiring knowledge, to supplying workers for business. Schools become job-training centers offering narrowly defined career choices, approved by government economic forecasters, which match students and adults with government-preferred industries.
Workforce Investment Act (WIA) finishes the partnership triangle by creating a nationwide network of workforce boards, made up of "government-appointed representatives" from business, education, and government, who work to implement and manage the system through local "one-stop" centers.
Together, these laws align and consolidate all local, state, and federal policies, programs, and funding into a single state-managed economic system.

How the New System Works

Public/private non-profits provide design, policy, and seed money as a catalyst for systemic change.
The Federal Department of Labor chooses which private industry sectors are promoted in each state.
K-12 and state colleges dump academics for job training in local "targeted" industries.
A new national curriculum is used that embraces a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America.
"Teaching" is redefined through new training and national licensure rules.
Students choose a career cluster at end of 8th grade, limiting curriculum to a narrow choice.
Class time is spent at job sites for labor training, not in the classroom.
"Appointed" local workforce boards match "learners" with local businesses who have requested them.
Skill certificates awarded for specific job-readiness. Certificates will become mandatory for future hiring decisions.
Required "Lifework Plan" follows individual from "cradle-to-grave."
ALL students, all schools (public, private & home-based), all businesses expected to participate.
Federal government forces compliance of all "partners" through rewards and sanctions.
Government dominates and controls all partnerships.
State defines new "covenant" with parents for raising children.
Students, workers, employers, educators and parents held accountable to government-defined "performance" outcomes.
All 50 states are currently implementing this system.
The current reauthorization of the federally mandated elementary and secondary education act (HR1/S1) cements the entire system in place.
The Bottom Line

Government is implementing policies that will lead to poverty, not prosperity, by adopting the failed ideas of a state-planned and managed economy similar to that of the former Soviet Union. In economics, career, and education, government narrows individual choice. This system is based upon a utilitarian worldview that measures human value only in terms of productive capability for the "best interests of the state". Individual freedom is subservient to a collective society.

For more information about the book 'FedEd' by Allen Quist, see the book review below. Click on the link below or on the book to purchase at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967519616/ichthusfasttrack

Maple River Education Coalition (MREdCo) 1402 Concordia Avenue St. Paul, MN 55104 http://www.EdWatch.org 651-646-0646

November 22, 2002 "'FedEd' is the most concise and easy-to-understand explanation to date of the movement that is using public education to transform the basis of American society from freedom to central control." Newly released book available now on the new MREdCo shopping cart, http://www.edwatch.org/shopping_cart.htm

The Abe Report "The State of American Politics" book review: "FedEd": a book that you absolutely, positively must read by Matt Abe http://www.edwatch.org/pdfs/Abe Fed Ed.pdf "

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order." -Franklin D. Roosevelt Allen Quist has delivered a concise, uncompromising exposé of the federal takeover of public education in "FedEd: The New Federal Curriculum and How It's Enforced." Quist asserts that this takeover is dumbing down or eliminating academics, and threatens our country's fundamental freedoms. "This takeover amounts to a bloodless coup," says Quist.

He supports his case by citing speeches, documents, and Internet web sites published by liberal think tanks, the federal government, and federal contractors. This is not a conspiracy, it's a takeover hidden in plain sight. In the logical, step-by-step presentation of a college professor (Quist teaches political science at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota), Quist first explains the origins of the federal curriculum. The reader may wonder how the federal government can mandate curriculum, when public education has for most of this country's history been left to the states.

The answer is found in the federal education-funding bill, HR 6, which gives the Center for Civic Education the power to write the mandated federal education standards for civics and government -- with no oversight whatsoever, not by Congress, not by school boards, not by parents. Civics plays a pivotal role because the federal curriculum "has been developed to dramatically change all of American society, especially American government...

The agenda is not primarily educational, it is primarily ideological and political." The genesis of this radical and fundamental change in the mission of public education came from such figures as Marc Tucker, Director of the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE); former President Bill Clinton and former First Lady and current Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY); and Shirley McCune, well-known advocate of the federal curriculum. Quist explains how the mass media is used to help implement the federal curriculum, and how even private and home schools are "encouraged" to teach the federal curriculum, because college entrance exams are being aligned to the curriculum. Next, Quist discusses the federal curriculum's seven principal "themes," which permeate all of its subject areas (not just civics):

1. Undermining national sovereignty.

2. Redefining natural rights.

3. Minimizing natural law.

4. Promoting environmentalism.

5. Requiring multiculturalism.

6. Restructuring government.

7. Redefining education as job skills.

 

Some of these themes, such as undermining national sovereignty, are objectionable on their face. Others, such as promoting environmentalism and multiculturalism, are good ideas that are distorted to radical extremes in the federal curriculum. And redefining or eliminating natural rights and natural law tinkers with the very foundations of our republic.

 

All are designed to do no less than restructure American society, and this is not being disclosed to parents, legislators, or citizens, let alone allowing schools or students to "opt-out." What ever happened to the teaching of knowledge in school? Then Quist explains how the federal curriculum is being enforced today, through the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the 1000+ page federal No Child Left Behind Act, and its expansion into the cradle through early childhood education or "baby ed." History buffs and fans of George Orwell's "1984" will take special interest in the chapter called "Reconstructing History," which explains how a concept called constructivism is literally rewriting history to fit the federal curriculum.

 

Quist concludes with a call to spread the word. "Tell your friends," he says. "Give or loan them copies of this book... If the new Federal Curriculum is not thrown out, our generation will be the last generation to understand what genuine freedom means." "FedEd" is the most concise and easy-to-understand explanation to date of the movement that is using public education to transform the basis of American society from freedom to central control.

 

With this book, Allen Quist has enabled our generation to understand what is happening, and then to make a choice that will affect generations to come. "FedEd: The New Federal Curriculum and How It's Enforced" by Allen Quist Foreword by Phyllis Schlafly Paperback, 154 pages ISBN 0-9675196-1-6 Published by The Maple River Education Coalition 1402 Concordia Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55104 Phone: (651) 646-0646

 

Web: http://www.edwatch.org copyright 2002 "The Abe Report." Permission is hereby granted to reprint this material in its entirely without alteration, including this copyright notice. Price: $12. Bulk rates: $8 each for 12 or more $6 each for 60 or more $5 each for 100 or more About the author: http://www.edwatch.org/aquistbio.htm These and other MREdCo resources now available online. Do your family and friends a favor; do your shopping at http://www.edwatch.org/shopping_cart.htm

 

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