Deliberate Dumbing Down of America - Charlotte Iserbyt.pdf

"If you think there's nothing much wrong with America's educational system, you will probably dismiss Charlotte Iserbyt's 660-page tome as the rantings of a right-wing conspiracy theorist who sees danger at every turn...If you're a back-to basics reformer, you won't like it either because Iserbyt finds fault with virtually every program being used in America's schools. That includes character education, core curriculum and Direct Instruction, all supported by conservatives as ways to bring morality and rigor back into the classroom...And that's probably the highest compliment The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America can receive. As journalists like to say, being panned by folks on both sides of an issue means the writer has done something right...Iserbyt has done plenty right, uncovering and quoting directly from educational papers and political writings that document an intentional shift in the purpose of American education: from providing students with a body of knowledge to turning them into members of a global work force with prescribed attitudes about social change...If any ideology emerges from her writing, it is one of local control.....The goal of this "dumbing down," Iserbyt contends, is to create a system of matching docile students with jobs, much like the controlled economies of Nazi Germany or China....As for solutions, don't look to school choice or vouchers, the author says, because any private school that has accepted a penny from the government is subject to the conditions and social engineering mandates of the government....A massive national effort to restore local control of our public schools seems to be the only real long-term solution which will guarantee freedom and upward mobility for all our children." -- Andrea Neal, chief editorial writer for The Indianapolis Star, March 18, 2000. (Andrea Neal is the recipient of the Award for commentary from the Education Writers' Association in 1998.)