A WARNING FOR ALL PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
Check carefully track record of your education policy advisors.
This article is written for two reasons:
(1) To provide evidence that President Reagan evidently was interested enough in the content of my 1982 letter to him to want to have a meeting with me regarding the need to abolish the U.S. Dept. of Education. This hard copy evidence, provided by the Ronald Reagan Library, was received by me March 22, 2016 in response to my Freedom of Information Request dated November 6, 2015.
“Dear Ed,
I can’t check this with Dept. of Ed. for reasons that will be clear when you read it. I feel though that maybe I should see this lady regarding the things she has brought up. Let’s talk about this when I get back from this junket.
Ron”
Reagan requests meeting with Iserbyt
(2) To make available to all candidates for President of the United States of America information not only regarding the role of the U.S. Dept. of Education in the destruction of American academic education, but also to warn them not to surround themselves with advisors whose agenda may not have anything to do with traditional education designed to create upward mobility for the children of our nation (our children!)
BACKGROUND
On November 6, 2015, I, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, after 33 years of wondering why I never received a response from President Reagan related to my July 7, 1982 letter to him, decided to submit a Freedom of Information Request to the Ronald Reagan Library.
That FOI requested any and all information related to a lengthy letter I had written to President Reagan after I was relieved of my duties working as Sr. Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Dept., of Education. My “firing” was due to leaking a federal grant Better Education Skills through Technology to Human Events, a Washington, D.C. weekly journal. Human Events subsequently published a lengthy article (cover story) entitled “Secretary’s Technology Initiative: Bell’s Education Department Betrays Reagan Policies” in its May 22, 1982 issue.
Human Events Article – Page 1 – Page 2 – Page 3
34 years have passed, years which, had the U.S. Dept. of Education been abolished, might have seen education remain traditionally academic, albeit considerably dumbed down:
(1) Now transformed to Skinnerian/Pavlovian/TQM Outcomes/Performance-based lifelong global school-to-work agenda necessary to spin off profits for the global elite.
(2) Education focused on academic competition, excellence, and upward mobility for our children.
(3) Education focused on academic facts and knowledge, not destructive dumbed down, anti-American/U.S. Constitution, pro-globalist value change necessary for U.S. participation in a New Age/communist/fascist world government, aka UN Agenda 2030.
Now, as Paul Harvey would say:
Here’s the “rest of the story”.
What story? The story relates to the role of Edwin Meese III, White House Chief of Staff, closely associated with the late/ former U.S. Commissioner and U.S. Secretary of Education T. H. Bell (who in 1975 wrote the very controversial bible (handbook) for administrators entitled “A Performance (OBE/outcomes based, ed) Accountability System for School Administrators” (available at Amazon.com); and the Heritage Foundation, which, apparently, with the assistance of Mr. Meese, kept President Reagan from meeting with Charlotte Iserbyt regarding her 1982 letter to Reagan requesting him to fulfill his promise to the American people to abolish the U.S. Dept. of Education.
My 1982 letter explained to the President what was going on in the U.S. Department of Education; basically that it was a Marxist research and curriculum development/dissemination factory, and that it had to be abolished.
The story you are about to read, the documentation from the Reagan Library, and the Don Lambro article should be passed on to any one of your favorite presidential candidates, as they go about selecting policy advisors and Cabinet secretaries, especially in regard to so-called “education”, the No.1 elephant in the room. Media coverage and discussion of the history of the successful dumbing down has been a “no no” over a period of 90 years. It’s OK to give local front-page coverage to the firing of the basketball coach, but don’t cover the new “Skinnerian animal training direct instruction reading method necessary for future workforce training” or “globalist anti-American critical thinking” program. That is, if you want to hold onto your job.
Our formerly excellent pre-1965 academic education system has been restructured to replicate the outcome/performance-based Pavlovian communist Soviet, Cuban, Chinese, Finnish, Danish, German, et al polytechnical (workforce training) system.
This has happened due to the U.S. Office of Education and U.S. Dept. of Education taking orders from the following organizations: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), UN-associated non-governmental organizations, multinational corporations (public/private partnerships) and other alphabet soup tax-funded and tax-exempt foundations and American educational associations. The transformation of education from academics to workforce training was facilitated by the infamous 1985 U.S.-U.S.S.R. Education agreement, negotiated by President Reagan and Gorbachev, and the Carnegie-Soviet Academy of Science Agreement, 1985. Both of these agreements were supported by the Heritage Foundation, and were the first very tangible real shots across the bow of our nation’s traditional academic education.
I never received a response to that 1982 letter to President Reagan, although John Lofton, a Washington, D.C. journalist and friend of mine, called Reagan’s office and was informed by one of his aides that the President had the letter on his desk, had marked it up, and was forwarding it to White House Chief of Staff Edwin Meese III.
Iserbyt/Meese Letter – Page 1 – Page 2 – Page 3 – Page 4
After returning to Maine in July, 1982, I contacted Mr. Meese’s office and an appointment was made for me to meet with him or his assistant, Ken Cribb, to discuss what had happened to my letter and why I never received a response from the President. My meeting with Mr. Cribb resulted in his patting me on the back and saying” “Charlotte, aren’t you pleased to know President Reagan received your letter?” to which I replied “That is not the point. I simply want a response from President Reagan, indicating he received my letter…nothing more, so that I can tell the American people the President received my letter which told him all he had to know about the goings-on in the Department of Education and especially at the National Institute of Education, the office Ed Curran headed up and wanted to abolish!”
Background Paper on President Reagan and the U.S. Department of Education [PDF]
By the way, it’s too late to abolish the Department now. It has done what it was created to do, which was what the Carnegie Corporation (deeply involved in restructuring of education from 1934-2016) called for in 1934, words to the effect: “to use the schools to change America’s capitalist economic system to a planned economy, and in some cases, to take our land”.
“Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies” for Carnegie’s little blue book, 1934.
Don’t fall for the recent Presidential candidates’ and neoconservative organizations’ recommendations to “abolish the U.S. Dept. of Education”. This recommendation is a diversion designed to fill their coffers and divert good, patriotic Americans from fighting the neoconservative/leftist UN Agenda 2030 at the local level.
The present global workforce training agenda cannot be implemented without the Reagan Administration and Heritage Foundation’s long sought after tax-funded school choice/charter school agenda which calls for the takeover of our traditional public schools by tax-supported school-to-work charter schools run by unelected councils and teachers/corporate types trained in Marxist Pavlovian/TQM pedagogy.
This article is primarily written to make known and to provide actual “paper” evidence (above) that President Reagan, in writing, suggested to Mr. Meese that he, Reagan, meet with me, referred to as “the lady” (I like that!) in order to discuss the content of my letter to him.
Mr. Meese, all the while closely connected with the Heritage Foundation, convinced President Reagan that not only should the President not respond to my letter, but more importantly, that the President should not meet with me.
The only reason my letter got through to the President was that a good friend of mine who handled White House staffing of the U.S. Dept. of Education with people instructed to bring down (abolish) the Department, hand-delivered it to Reagan! So, it could well be the information in my letter did come as somewhat of a shock to Reagan and caused him to want to meet with me.
After all, and of utmost importance, Meese et al had made sure Reagan never saw Edward Curran’s letter to Reagan which recommended his own office, NIE, be abolished. Reagan evidently had been kept in the dark.
The following article by Don Lambro, The Herald Journal, 6/19/1982, explains that Meese was very close to Secretary Bell (recommended T. H. Bell to President Reagan for Secretary of Education position), supported the firing of Edward Curran, and, in my humble opinion, was responsible for keeping Reagan in the dark regarding the Marxist goings-on at the Dept. of Education. This was accomplished when he kept the President from meeting with me, and subsequently deep-sixed my letter to Reagan.
Edward Curran was fired sometime during the period that I leaked to Human Events the federal grant entitled Project BEST (Better Education Skills Through Technology). After being fired for doing so, I wrote my letter to Reagan dated July 2, 1982.
Of significance is fact that Curran’s letter regarding getting rid of his own office (National Institute of Education: the premiere Marxist research and development, and dissemination factory in the world ) was never delivered to President Reagan, unless Craig Fuller, who had been involved in supporting Curran’s firing, finally delivered it to him, after the fact! (See Lambro article below).
Here is text of Lambro’s superb reporting on the firing of Edward Curran. Lambro’s article speaks volumes about the role of Edwin Meese III, closely associated with, over many years, the Heritage Foundation; and other White House staffers whose names will be familiar to anyone born pre-1950.
The Herald Journal, 6/19/1982
Irony in a Firing by Don Lambro
The irony that Ronald Reagan’s administration would fire a staunchly conservative agency head for suggesting that a wasteful bureaucracy be abolished never occurred to the White House last week.
The story behind the firing of Edward A. Curran, Director of the National Institute of Education, a little-known $53 million dollar a year agency in the U.S. Education Department, represents another example of the Reagan Administration’s departure from Reaganism. Curran, former headmaster of the Cathedral School for Girls was picked by Reagan last August to head the tiny agency that funds educational research. But Curran soon discovered that NIE’s research expenditures did little, if anything, to improve education. Indeed, the agency has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in nebulous, esoteric studies on “early American textbook collections”, “sex role attitudes in young women an men”, “women facing mid-career changes”, “a legal study of American universities” and a “Study of sexism in school boards” to name a few.
Reagan Administration’s departure from Reaganism
David Stockman (Director of OMB, ed) tried to defund NIE 1983 budget proposals but 11th hour appeal by T.H. Bell saved NIE from axe. Decision to retain funding made by Meese “a close friend of Bell”.
Lynn Nofziger, former presidential advisor, suggested Edward Curran write to Reagan and gave Curran secret correspondence code available only to White House aides and Cabinet officials to be sure letter routed directly to President Reagan. Nofziger’s “fail safe” code did not work and letter ended up on the desk of Craig Fuller, White House Secretary to the Cabinet and Richard Darman, Reagan’s Special Asst. who controls paper flow to the President.
Curran’s letter, written on NIE letterhead, said NIE’s past research had been ideologically tilted toward the left; that it was based on false premise that education is a science…” (scientific research based=Skinnerian/Pavlovian performnce based OBE operant conditioning, ed)
On June 1 Bell called Curran in and suggested Curran should resign voluntarily. Bell said “How can you head an agency that you think should not exist?” Said one high level govt. official who was shocked at Curran firing: “One would think that Ronald Reagan’s Govt. would be full of people heading agencies they think should not exist.”
However, when Curran sought help of Helen Von Damm, a long time Reagan aide and an Asst. White House Personnel Director, she warned that unless he (Curran) worked out his differences with Bell, the White House would back Secretary Bell.
In a second meeting, which lasted for one hour on June 8, Curran and Bell reviewed the points of Curran’s letter. But Curran made it clear that he had no intention of recanting his views. The next day Bell called Curran and informed him “I want you to stop functioning as Director by the close of business today.”A follow up call from Ms. Von Damm informed Curran that the White House was sticking with Bell.
Said one White House aide who is sympathetic with Curran’s position “It is a sad day when someone in our administration gets fired merely for suggesting that an unnecessary agency of govt. be eliminated.”
Meantime, although Curran’s letter never reached Reagan’s desk, Craig Fuller told this columnist that it is now his intention “to forward it to the president and certainly to apprise him of it.”
How Reagan responds will say much about the future of Reaganism in this administration.”