The Deliberate dumbing down of America, it is intrinsically evil

The Deliberate dumbing down of America Download book free
by Charlotte Thomson Iserbt
INTRODUCTION
In the fall of l972 a small group of students in an introduction to educational psychology
class at a midwestern university saved every single soul in the lifeboat.
The professor became agitated. “No! Go back and do the exercise again. Follow
the instructions.”
The students, products of the radical 1960s culture, expected this to be a small group
assignment in creativity and ingenuity. They had worked out an intricate plan whereby
everyone in the lifeboat could survive. When the professor persisted, the students resisted—and
ultimately refused to do the exercise. Chalk up a victory to the human spirit.

However, it was a short-lived victory. This overloaded “lifeboat in crisis” represented
a dramatic shift in education. The exercise—in which students were compelled to choose
which humans were expendable and, therefore, should be cast off into the water—became
a mainstay in classrooms across the country.
Creative solutions? Not allowed. Instructions?

Strictly adhered to. In truth, there is to be only one correct answer to the lifeboat
drama: death.
The narrowing (dumbing down) of intellectual freedom had begun. Lifeboat exercises
epitomize the shift in education from academic education (1880–1960) to values education
(1960–1980). In the deliberate dumbing down of america writer Charlotte Iserbyt chronicles
this shift and the later shift to workforce training “education” (1980–2000).

The case is made that the values education period was critical to the transformation of education. It succeeded
in persuading (brainwashing? duping?) Americans into accepting the belief that values were
transient, flexible and situational—subject to the evolution of human society.

Brave new values were integrated into curricula and instruction. The mind of the average American
became “trained” (conditioned) to accept the idea that education exists solely for the purpose
of getting a good paying job in the global workforce economy.
[link to deliberatedumbingdown.com]

Last Edited by nzreva on 12/27/2010 05:14 PM