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| PREPARING CHILDREN FOR VIRTUAL/WORLD CLASSROOMS PART 2 OF 2 By Charlotte Iserbyt August 29, 2005 Stimulus/Response, Rewarding & Punishing The following quotes from overseas are included as proof that the "restructured" American education system is part of the international (lifelong) computerized work force training system. These quotes were taken from an important Australian research paper, published on the Internet in March of 2000. They document the fact that the computerization of the classroom is the model for the international system to which all the world's children and adults will be subjected...and brainwashed. (As you read them, please remember that the Bush Administration strongly supports the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) plans for world education (brainwashing and training). Mrs. Laura Bush and Secretary of Education Spellings addressed UNESCO’s Education for All Conference in February 2005. Secretary Spellings said: “The No Child Left Behind Act and UNESCO’s Education for All Campaign complement each other…”) "Preparing for Virtual /World Classrooms: Globalization of Education and Training---a Learning Web Approach along the Information Superhighway" by Dell Campbell, 1997, Department of Further Education and Training, Australia. Excerpts: Computers and the World Wide Web as Skinner’s Teaching Machine "Probably the most influential theorists in the development of web-based teaching are the behaviourists, especially B. F. Skinner, Robert Gagne and Benjamin Bloom and his associates. Over a long lifetime and through half a century of experimentation and writing, Skinner developed behaviourist theories into a conceptual structure for teaching machines. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning - that anyone could be taught as long as instruction is broken down into short sequenced steps and appropriately reinforced - Gagne's task analysis, and the later work by Bloom and his associates on taxonomies of educational objectives, provided conceptual frameworks for developing positively-reinforced computer-based education (programmes such as typing tutors provide good examples), frame-sequenced, web-based information presentation (Andy White, 1996) and broad principles of self-paced learning (Penn State University). Gagne's task analysis (Penn State University) developed concepts of hierarchies of learning tasks which Bloom and his associates elaborated into the well-known Taxonomies of Educational Objectives. "Unlike Romantic theory which was derived from theory of learning through sensory perception (Berkeley) and discovery (Rousseau), behaviorist theory is based on scientific investigation and measurement. Early theory in behavioural psychology has been reinforced and modified by discoveries in cognitive psychology, especially discoveries related to the understanding of cognition needed to develop Artificial Intelligence. Developments in cyber technology, therefore, are likely to reinforce the scientific approach to computer-and Internet-based education. It is worth noting that web-based resources for computer-based Distance Education (e.g. Penn State University) and Instructional Design are primarily behaviourist. "Perusal of national qualifications frameworks, standards-based vocational (e.g. U.S. Department of Labor, NCRVE) and school curricula (e.g. Putnam Valley Schools, UK DFEE), and national qualifications frameworks (AOAB, DFEE) indicates the influence of behaviourist theory on current education and training curricula. Statements of standards and benchmarks such as the UK national curriculum in science, a combination of science and life skills standards and benchmarks from the USA and the West Australian Year 11 Chemistry Syllabus) (SEA) show not only remarkable similarity, but a consistency of structure reflecting general behaviourist principles and more specific cognitive and other objectives from Bloom et al's taxonomies. Behaviourist educational structures as compatible with international ideologies and industry trends. "The U.S. Compendium of Standards and Benchmarks, highlights another trend reinforcing the use of behaviourist structures in educational/curricular frameworks and syllabi - the extent to which a behaviourist approach can be manipulated to match economic rationalist demands for demonstrably quality teaching and learning outcomes. Behavioural emphases on general objectives stated in terms of learning and performance outcomes, and of short sequenced steps can readily be identified as general and specific benchmarks and specifications demanded by industry; as student performance on internationally standardised testing can be used to demonstrate continuous improvement. Behaviourist educational structures, therefore, being compatible with current management procedures and quality systems, are likely to remain international systems in states where economic rationalism is a dominant ideology of government. "Behaviourist structures, therefore, facilitate the internationalisation of education by providing comparable international benchmarking; and enhance the possibility of such system's being entrenched by the congruence between behaviourist structures and the techniques of Total Quality Management. Behaviourism speaks the language businesses committed to TQM understand." Curricula for the Global Classroom - The emergence of generic national curricular frameworks. In Australia and the United States, existing federally funded programs provided a bridge to the development of national curricular systems. The Australian Commonwealth Schools Commission's Reports, provided a vehicle for the advocacy of unified national approaches to secondary schooling, and its final report In the National Interest (CSC 1987) the shell about which the new Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) was able to launch its new policy (Pusey 1990). In the United States, the National Commission on Excellence in Education launched the national educational debate with A Nation at Risk (1983). These reports, and similar reports in other English-speaking and European countries fostered a sense of crisis and urgency which allowed national governments to dominate educational policy making (Odden and Marsh in Hanaway and Crowson 1989), even in nations in which educational policy was constitutionally a state not national responsibility." Show me one parent or teacher in this country who wants his child to be trained like a rat for the global workforce, rather than educated like a human being for his own individual upward mobility. Show me one parent or teacher who wants his child to be subjected to operant conditioning which bypasses the brain with all the important functions which distinguish man from an animal: memory, conscience, imagination, insight, and intuition, functions by which human beings know absolutes and truths and are able to know God. Now is the time for parents and public and private school teachers, to DEMAND that our schools be restored to their original intent: to provide a strong traditional academic education, focusing on reading (good literature, not the depressing, politically correct, values-changing literature promoted by the American Library Association), writing, with a strong emphasis on spelling and grammar, mathematics, traditional United States and world history, geography, science, foreign languages, including Latin, art, music, and an understanding of the need for sound morals and values, the invaluable support structure for all major (successful) civilizations. (Note: Some Christian schools and home schoolers have unfortunately adopted this Skinnerian, individualized, proceed at your own pace, continuous progress, computer curriculum, which is dangerous no matter what it teaches. I wouldn't want my children taught The Ten Commandments using dog training methods! There is no free will involved in this type of education!) If parents and teachers allow our schools and universities to become computerized operant conditioning, attitude-changing/workforce training centers for lifelong learning, we can look forward to the realization of the following disastrous prediction advocated by Professor Skinner in his 1968 book Technology of Teaching: "Absolute power in education is not a serious issue today because it seems out of reach. However, a technology of teaching will need to be much more powerful if the race with catastrophe is to be won, and it may then, like any powerful technology, need to be contained. An appropriate counter control will not be generated as a revolt against aversive measures but by a policy designed to maximize the contribution which education can make to the strength of the culture. The issue is important because the government of the future will probably operate mainly through educational (Skinnerian/Pavlovian, ed) techniques." (page 260) IMPORTANT NOTE: For those who do not understand the technology of teaching to which Skinner refers (especially positive reinforcement), let me explain how "the government of the future will probably be operated through educational techniques". An article entitled "People Control Blueprint" by Carol Denton was published in the May, 1972 issue of The National Educator. It states in part: "A Top Secret paper from the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, now in the hands of The National Educator, reveals a plan for total control of the people of the United States through behavioral modification techniques of B.F. Skinner, the controversial behaviorist author of Beyond Freedom and Dignity...According to the 'Dialogue Discussion Paper', a conference was held at the Center on January 17 through 19, 1972, at which time a discussion on 'The Social and Philosophical Implications of Behavior Modification' was held. Twenty-two years later an article entitled "Extraordinary Acts of Kindness" published in the January 27, 2003 issue of The Times Record, Brunswick, Maine illustrates exactly what Project BEST called for above: the use of the Skinnerian operant conditioning method in government programs, not exclusively in education: |
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