This article puts some meat on bones of Maine Heritage’s applause (below) for passage of Rep. Sampson’s LD 1666, so-called repeal of the mandate that school districts give out diplomas according to “proficiency-based” education standards.
Last night we celebrated what true grassroots activism can achieve. The energy was electric.
Folks traveled to Scarborough from across Maine yesterday to celebrate the passage of LD 1666, repealing the mandate that school districts give out diplomas according to “proficiency-based” education standards.”
From Steve Schran to Amy Arata:
Steve Bowen was LePage’s first Commissioner of education. And of course he came out of the Maine Heritage Policy Center. Bowen considered SAD15 as a pilot and example to other districts pushing forward the Maine Learning Results. I met with LePage three times after he first got elected. He was oblivious as to what the state had in terms of education. Before he was to take office he had a scheduled meeting with Charlotte and me, but cancelled three days before he was sworn in. Maine Heritage got to him!
I had a conversation with SAD 15 curriculum person yesterday before going to Heidi’s MHPC celebration. I was told that the system will basically remain the same and adhere to the Learning Results. Every state in our country has the same curriculum! You do know, don’t you?
Do you know who was governor of Maine when this international system went in? Do you know also who was governor that put in the Skinnerian International Curriculum through computer technology?
Who did Heidi go to for her initial information on this system when she first got involved which was a short time ago considering that it started back in the 70’s? Who did Emily Talmage go to first? Who started the Guardians Of Education for Maine? Who got fired from the DOE in Washington because of leaking to Human Events an education grant entitled “Better Education Skills through Technology” (standards-based curriculum on the computer). Whose son, a combat veteran of the Iraq war, recently had two attempts on his life because he’s related to a person who has been exposing the NWO for 50 years or more?
How many times do I have to say: REPEAL MAINE’S LEARNING RESUTS? Don’t listen to me or Charlotte Iserbyt. We are shadows lurking in the corners ready to expose at all times. We are not going to be here forever!
Steve Schran, Teacher
BIG BAD HISTORY OF MAINE’S PROMOTION OF SKINNERIAN OUTCOMES-BASED EDUCATION (OBE) METHOD FOR WORKFORCE TRAINING AND MAINE’S LEARNING RESULTS (AKA PROFICIENCY-BASED STANDARDS DIPLOMA)
Maine Heritage, if it follows the directives of the national Heritage Foundation, should be applauding “proficiency-based” education standards since Stuart Butler, UK, of the national Washington, D.C. Heritage Foundation, which has affiliates (some with different names) in most states, drafted NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement which calls for Mexico, USA, and Canadian teachers to be trained in implementing proficiency-based standards (aka Maine’s and every other state’s Learning Results).
BTW, education researchers in other states with Heritage affiliates should be on guard for this sleight of hand “repeal standards” maneuver, which leads parents to believe schools are going back to basic academics.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO!
From 3D, p.315:
THE IMPACT ON EDUCATION OF THE UNITED STATES SIGNING THE NORTH AMERICAN FREE Trade Agreement was discussed in an article entitled “USIA’s Grants Go to Schools in NAFTA Nations” published in the September 12, 1993 edition of The Washington Times. Some excerpts follow:
United States Information Agency Director Joseph Duffey attending a four-day “implementation” conference at Vancouver, British Columbia, yesterday announced the first North American three-way university affiliation grants to involve exchanges of faculty and staff among Canadian, Mexican and U.S. universities for teaching, lecturing, research and curriculum development.
“We often have university affiliation grants,” Mr. Duffey said in an interview before he left for Vancouver. “This is the first time we’ve decided to start awarding three or four a year that involved three countries in North America.” Each USIA award will carry about $100,000, plus travel and per diem expenses, for exchanges of faculty, administrators and educational materials.
The agreement, part of the broadened dialogue that has come out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, will support an array of projects focused on history, economic development, international trade and the environment.
“What we seek to do is, among other things, nothing less than dismantling barriers to academic mobility,” Mr. Duffey said in a speech at the conference. Mr. Duffey said he expects the North American countries to succeed in achieving a sense of regional community where the quest for a common community of nations in Western
Europe has foundered.
“We’re trying to reverse the tradition of nationalism and people, who in looking to their identity, look backwards to the past,” he said. “Instead, we want them to look to the future.” (p. A–5)
FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO!
See Children to Robots: Values Clarification Education for shocking documentation regarding history of federal/international curriculum development: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (federal lab) initial development of 18,000 Skinnerian Outcomes-Based Curriculum goals and objectives, including cover letter from Oregon State School Superintendent to Mrs. Opal Moore who, in 1981, gave me the original documents. Prior to her doing so I had talked on the phone with an educator in Texas who had ordered the Goals Collections. His comments are taken directly from materials he ordered; my comments are in script.
Federally-funded labs attached to my office in the U.S. Dept. of Education have been involved in implementation of a national curriculum since 1971, and there is no state at this point, no matter what legislation it comes up with, which can change that fact. That is why the battle over Common Core was a very phony but successful diversion from the very serious issue of tax-funded school choice charters with unelected boards, necessary for the very Soviet workforce training discussed below.
TWENTY-THREE YEARS AGO!
From 3D, page 346:
Following exchange activity (in Maine) is one of results of Reagan-Gorbachev “Russian Teacher Reviews Work in SAD [School Attendance District] 53” (Brenda Seekins), IN AN ARTICLE ENTITLED “RUSSIAN TEACHER REVIEWS WORK IN SAD 53” which was published in the January 12, 1995 issue of The Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Brenda Seekins explains all too clearly the extent of cooperation between Russia and the U.S. in school-to-work (planned
economy) activities. According to Seekins’s research these activities were not confined to ivory tower musings, but had penetrated education at the local level. Some excerpts follow:
PITTSFIELD — Russian exchange teacher Tanya Koslova addressed the SAD 53 board of directors Monday night to express her appreciation for the opportunity to work with the district and Maine Central Institute [MCI—deeply involved with workforce training]. She offered an overview of the work she had done in the district over the past four months, spending two months with children in kindergarten through grade eight and the balance of her time at MCI. She particularly enjoyed students who participated in her Russian humanities class who were “highly-motivated and eager students.” [MCI Headmaster] Cummings told the board that MCI will be the recipient of the School-to-Work funding in conjunction with the Maine Youth Apprenticeship Program.
The school could receive up to $8,000 to provide staff training to better integrate academics with the program provided by apprentices’ worksites.
TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO!
From 3D, page 272:
THE STATE OF MAINE TOOK A LEADERSHIP POSITION IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF A SCHOOL-TO-WORK SYSTEM in 1990.
The following excerpts from The School to Work Revolution by Lynn Olson
The Noxious Nineties : (Perseus Books: New York, 1997) relate to the first steps taken to implement this new corporate fascist system of governance. Olson recalled Maine’s activity as follows:
John Fitzsimmons, the President of the Maine Technical College System and former state labor commissioner in Maine during the 1980s, traveled to Germany and Denmark in the early 1990s, along with the then-Governor John R. McKernan, Jr. [husband of U.S. Senator from Maine Olympia Snowe], to get a first-hand view of European apprenticeships. The governor and Fitzsimmons were so impressed by what they saw that they plotted the outlines for a Maine initiative on paper napkins on the transatlantic flight home. In February 1993 the Maine Youth Apprenticeship Program—now called Maine Career Advantage—accepted its first 12 students. By 1996 the initiative had spread to 276 students, 108 high schools, and 197 businesses. An additional 850 students were involved in career-preparation activities such as job shadows, developing portfolios, and summer internships.
“I really believe, in my state, the future lies in the quality of the skilled workforce,” Fitzsimmons told me in 1994, a strong Rhode Island accent still lingering in his voice. “We will not compete with a North Carolina Research Triangle or with Massachusetts’s Harvard and M.I.T. and their ability to be international research areas. We will be the producers of goods. And I take great pride in that because if we’re able to produce high-quality products, it will mean high-wage jobs for our people.”
And Rep. Heidi Sampson is with one sweep of her hand wiping out all the global curriculum treason that has taken place in Maine since 1927?
NINETY-ONE YEARS AGO!
From 3D, page 14:
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR OF AUGUST 8, 1927 QUOTED FROM AN ADDRESS TO THE WORLD
Federation of Education Associations (WFEA) at their Toronto, Canada conference delivered by Dr. Augustus Thomas, commissioner of education for the state of Maine. Excerpts from Dr. Thomas’s revealing address follow:
“If there are those who think we are to jump immediately into a new world order, actuated by complete understanding and brotherly love, they are doomed to disappointment. If we are ever to approach that time, it will be after patient and persistent effort of long duration. The present international situation of mistrust and fear can only be corrected by a formula of equal status, continuously applied, to every phase of international contacts, until the cobwebs of the old order are brushed out of the minds of the people of all lands. This means that the world must await a long process of education and a building up of public conscience and an international morality, or, in other words, until there is a world-wide sentiment which will back up the modern conception of a world community. This brings us to the international mind, which is nothing more or less than the habit of thinking of foreign relations and business affecting the several countries of the civilized world as free co-operating equals.”
Take a look at the following historical entries/activities found in my 3D book that Rep. Sampson’s “houdini” wand claims to be wiping off the face of Maine.
[BTW Skinnerian Mastery Learning is the original label for OBE, PBE, RBE, Standards Based Education, etc. Change agents were forced to give this “performance-based” workforce training method new labels every time student’s academic results plummeted. Noted British novelist, C.S. Lewis said: “When training beats education, civilization dies.”]
Historical entries (official documents/media) related to the deliberate dumbing down/globalization of Maine education included in the 3D book, 1999. 3D is a FREE PDF download on THIS WEBSITE.
Maine Facilitator Report on Current National Diffusion Network
Activities (The), 198–199
Maine Learning Results, 431
Maine Mastery Learning Consortium, 198–199
Maine State Capacity Building Grant, 174–175
Maine State Department of Education, 219–220
Maine Sunday Telegram (The), 103
Maine Technical College System, 272
Maine Times (The), 182
Maine Youth Apprenticeship Program, 272
“Making Academics Count,” 268
Maine, 38, 124, 378, 431–432
Maine’s State Department of Education 1985 Assessment of
Educational Progress (MAEP), 227–228
Maine Aspirations Benchmarking Initiative, 431–432
Maine Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
In-Service Training, 197
Maine Association of Christian Schools, 219–220
Maine Career Advantage, 272
Maine Central Institute, 346
Maine Department of Education, 378, 431
Maine Facilitator Center, 117, 158n, 228, A91