“LIMITED LEARNING FOR LIFELONG LABOR” attributed to Cynthia Weatherly, editor, the deliberate dumbing down of america, 1999, is a superb five word/all-encompassing explanation of what is facing American youth TODAY, thanks to President Trump and SecEd Betsy Devos, carrying out Carnegie Corporation (1934); United Nations/ Chamber of Commerce (1945) workforce training agenda of all post-1945 Presidents, ultimately carved in stone by President Reagan’s 1981 White House Private Sector Initiative.

From DDD page 175:

“Early in 1981 the President’s Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives was installed at 734 Jackson Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. Membership listed on The White House letterhead read like a “Who’s Who” of individuals in government agencies, universities, tax-exempt foundations, non-governmental organizations, business, media, labor unions, and religion. The names of some individuals on the task force follow: William Aramony, president, United Way; William J. Baroody, Jr., president, American Enterprise Institute; Helen G. Boosalis, mayor, City of Lincoln, Nebraska; Terence Cardinal Cooke, archbishop of New York; Governor Pierre S. Dupont, Delaware; Senator David Durenberger; Luis A. Ferre, former governor of Puerto Rico; John Gardner, chairman, Independent Sector; Edward Hill, pastor, Mt. Zion Baptist Church; Michael S. Joyce, executive director, John M. Olin Foundation; Edward H. Kiernan, president, International Association of Police; Arthur Levitt, Jr., chairman, American Stock Exchange; Richard W. Lyman, president, Rockefeller Foundation; Elder Thomas S. Monson, The Mormon Church; William C. Norris, chairman and CEO, Control Data Corporation; George Romney, chairman, National Center for Citizen Involvement; C. William Verity, Jr., chairman, Armco Steel, Inc.; Jeri J. Winger, first vice president, General Federation of Women’s Clubs; Thomas H. Wyman, president, CBS, Inc.; and William S. White, president, C.S. Mott Foundation.5

As a U.S. Department of Education liaison with The White House during the early days of this initiative this writer inquired of one of President Reagan’s political appointees whether this initiative, was not corporate fascism; a politically incorrect question that resulted in someone else replacing me as Liaison with The White House.

If anyone doubts “fact” that the nation’s former highly successful traditional academic public education system is being transformed into the failed polytechnical education global workforce training system, he/she should click on following link to read Education Week’s special on reading instruction:

Spotlight Reading Instruction

Here are two most revealing quotes:

(1)

“How to Make reading relevant…Bring Job Specific Texts into class”

“How news articles and technical manuals might help career tech students master complex tasks.”

AND

(2)

“In the 1970s Thomas Sticht’s reading within the context of the work they were preparing for, based on specially produced texts mapped to teach each job’s demands…”

To understand where Sticht was/is coming from, read: DDD page 268.

“At this point it is important to recall the fact that one of the members appointed to the SCANS (Secretary’s Commission for Achieving Necessary Skills) which originated this type of career passport was Thomas Sticht, Ph.D., infamous for the following quote which parents should ponder, especially if they feel that techademics are the answer to their children’s upward mobility. Sticht’s statement paraphrased in the August 1, 1987 issue of The Washington Post bears repeating here:

Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low income families into the middle class…. What may be crucial [companies say] is the dependability of the labor force and how well it can be managed and trained—not its general education level, although a small cadre of highly educated, creative people is essential to innovation and growth.”

And to understand the use of Skinnerian operant conditioning (reward and punishment system) in the workplace, read:

3D, pages 268-269

The Washington Post published “Tying Professional Pay to Productivity” by Elizabeth Spayd in its January 28, 1990 issue in which Ms. Spayd covered the use of behavior modification in the workplace in order to increase productivity.

Some excerpts follow: “One CEO I know says to employees, ‘If you tell me I can’t measure what you’re doing, I’m not sure I need you here,’” recalls Michael Emig, a compensation consultant with Wyatt Co. in Washington. “The fact is, any work that people are paid to do can be measured. The trick is to go in with an open mind.”… To help ensure that productivity goals are met, the paychecks of top managers now reflect their ability to meet department goals, a compensation plan that eventually will spread throughout the hospital. According to Arthur Andersen & Co., which consulted Pekin Memorial on its plan, the keystone to implementing productivity bonuses is putting everything in measurable terms, considering such factors as accuracy, speed, cost, quality—even creativity…. Once the job has been quantified, the next step is to examine the processes by which work is done, dividing them into those that add value and those that don’t. Those that don’t should be eliminated. Studies show white-collar workers on average spend 75 percent of their time doing non-value-added tasks, Skwarek said. But defining the waste and eliminating it are two different things. And for productivity to increase, proper employment of the compensation lever is critical. A bank teller might be rewarded for the number of customers processed in a week, but penalized for every customer who complains about service. In jobs where it’s difficult to measure the output of a single worker [emphasis in original], compensation might be linked to a group’s ability to meet certain goals, an increasingly common approach. Whatever the approach, Wyatt’s Emig encourages companies to think big—meaning bonuses as high as 25 percent of salary. “The basic idea is borrowed from B.F. Skinner, who taught us that behavior which is positively reinforced will be repeated,” says Emig. “But it doesn’t work if people don’t consider the money worth striving for.” [Ed. Note: Is it politically incorrect to ask how the United States became the most productive nation in the world without using the above-outlined ridiculous Total Quality Management system based on Skinner’s operant conditioning?]

The final nail in the coffin of our representative form of government AND education for the enhancement of the intellect was made possible when President Donald Trump was elected and he selected as his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a longtime proponent of tax-funded school choice/charters and vouchers without elected school boards.

Aside from the insidious effects of the failed Soviet, German, Danish workforce training systems, the removal of elected officials is “taxation without representation”. Isn’t that unconstitutional?

I can just hear the Trotskyite neoconservative pro-Trump bandwagon out there saying “Oh, it’s not his fault; he doesn’t understand.”

We should insist that our elected officials do understand, or at least seek the knowledge of those who understand: (have been in the front lines, at the Cabinet level, related to present and past policy making). Having worked in President Reagan’s Dept. of Education, I was immersed in important research related to history of workforce training agenda being implemented across the nation. In trying to get through to Trump Campaign Headquarters regarding the issue of tax-funded school choice/charters, I mistakenly got through to Michael Cohen, Trump’s former (controversial) lawyer, while he was drinking his coffee prior to going to work. I apologized for reaching “him” at home when I simply wanted to get through to a staff member to inquire if Trump had received the massive research on school choice/charters that New Hampshire education researchers had provided to Trump’s N.H. Campaign Chairman Corey Lewandowski. Cohen was very polite and said “No problem; let me assure you that he (Cohen) had immediately (day before) forwarded all the research to then-candidate Trump.”

Of course, the media has reported correctly or incorrectly that Trump admits to never reading anything, so it is possible that he never read that research. That is probably the case with all research provided him, especially related to education and foreign affairs.

Those beating up on Trump never, never, never beat up on him for the right reasons. His tweets, tirades, lies, etc. rarely can be tied to specific vital issues like supporting tax-funded school choice/charters with unelected boards, resulting in a change in the United States capitalist economic system to the notoriously failed/totalitarian corporate fascist/communist planned economy called for in Carnegie Corporation’s “Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies”.

Excerpt:

8. Under the moulding influence of socialized processes of living, drives of technology and science, pressures of changing thought and policy,and disrupting impacts of economic disaster,there is a notable waning of the once widespread popular faith in economic individualism; and leaders in public affairs, supported by a growing mass of the population, are demanding the introduction into economy of ever-wider measures of planning and control. Cumulative evidence supports the conclusion that, in the United States as in other countries,the age of individualism and laissez faire in economy and government is closing and that a new age of collectivism is emerging. As to the specific form which this “collectivism,” this integration and interdependence, is taking and will take in the future, the evidence at hand is by no means clear or unequivocal. It may involve the limiting or supplanting of private property by public property or it may entail the preservation of private property, extended and distributed among the masses. Most likely, it will issue from a process of experimentation… The Frame of Reference represents a composite of historic doctrines and social conceptions yet to appear. Almost certainly it will involve a larger measure of compulsory as well as voluntary cooperation of citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy, a corresponding enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention in fundamental branches of economy previously left to individual discretion and initiative-a state intervention that in some instances may be direct and mandatory and in others indirect and facilitative. In any event the Commission is convinced by its interpretation of available empirical data that the actually integrating economy of the present day is the forerunner of a consciously integrated society,in which individual economic actions and individual property, rights will be altered and abridged.