Teaching Human Capital Widgets to Behave More Like Humans

What is the most important subject a student studies in school today?  It might surprise you what one school believes is the path to success for a student.

Arne Duncan would have you believe math, science, and technological courses are THE paths for students to succeed.  Patrons of the arts bemoan the cuts taking place in music and visual arts.  English teachers are concerned that fictional readings are being phased out in favor of non-fiction; there's no time to read for pleasure or to tweak creative thinking.

Shop classes are a blast from the past as technical, hands on skills are frowned upon in this era of computerization.  Even though we're told that childhood obesity is a pervasive problem in the United States, physical education classes are being cut because the new assessments are taking too much time for children to play.


Some education gurus insist classes be taught for:

• healthy eating
• bullying
• sex education
• diversity training

It seems as if every group has its own agenda for what's important for human capital.  These small human capital widgets need to perform and be trained for the workforce so they can become productive workers for the Department of Education, Department of Labor, and Department of Health and Human Services.  Happy and productive workers mean a happy and productive country.  Does this sound a bit like China's view of its citizens?


It does to me.  A child's individuality and personality is being wiped away for the efficiency and good of the country and a specific agenda. In the quest to never be judgmental toward anyone (regardless of behavior or actions) and being raised by parents and in a society with this same attitude, students are lacking an important skill.  What is that missing quality in some students that is all important in 'life skills'?  According to a state school in England, these students have not learned...manners.


The school has decided that etiquette must be taught to state students not to necessarily give them a moral center and to treat others as they would like to be treated (I suppose that's too much like the Golden Rule)...it's to make them more employable.


Students will learn such skills as:

• posture
• dressing for success
• how to eat properly
• clear speech and voice training

In fact, there are etiquette lessons for three year olds in Britain to ensure proper behavior as they grow up so they can become useful citizens.  From a commenter on etiquette lessons for the 16 year olds:

 
12/18/2011 05:12 PM

This ties in neatly with the PMs idea about improving family life.  However, it seems to also take it as read that families no longer have the input into their children’s upbringing that they once had.

This situation and the one that Mr Cameron seeks to improve have arisen from several generations of poor parenting.  Whilst he is to be commended for trying to change this situation by using an interlocutor, I believe that he will be disappointed with the outcome.  There needs to be an understanding of how this process of family degradation developed.

The fact that many parents do not now have the time or the inclination to help their children through the ways of natural parenting is not only sad but it is also a dereliction of duty.  Teachers, social workers and the police do not and cannot offer a separate way of teaching children that will allow parents to abrogate their responsibilities.

Will this be another new social program adopted in schools, teaching behavior and good manners traditionally reserved (and expected) for families to impart?  What purpose do families serve (other than paying taxes and supplying the children for the public education system) if students do not even know basic etiquette?  How can parents be held accountable so the schools can return to teaching academic subjects instead of teaching students how to behave so they can land a job and then keep it?  There actually is some accountability in this situation as the parents are being asked to pay toward the classes their children have to take because the parents did not/could not/would not teach them appropriate social behavior.  The parent's lack of initiative and/or laziness is costing them financially and should be a source of embarrassment for the parents and students.

Miss Manners must be aghast at this serious breach of etiquette by parents.  It takes time away from the academic teaching to their children, and instead focuses on how to make them behave responsibly so they can become employable.  Teaching etiquette is reserved for the parents, not the state.  Parents should want what is best for their child so he/she will become a worthwhile and decent person.  The state wants the student to behave well because that is what's best for the state to succeed.   Learning and integrating etiquette in daily life for the purpose of becoming a decent and caring person is much different than learning it to advance the cause for the workforce.  

Here's a question about the data to be gathered on students on the longitudinal data base to be provided to the workforce: how will rating manners and etiquette fit onto a spreadsheet?  The skills learned from the touted 21st century goals in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) may fit well in data collection...human behavior and/or personal skills, not so much.  Maybe human capital widgets really aren't widgets at all.   

Is Marc Tucker More Dangerous than Bill Gates to American Education?

Who is Marc Tucker and why is his article  "Why Innovation Can't fix America's Classrooms" published by The Atlantic important?  It is important for what it contained (Tucker's partial vision) and what it didn't contain (his decades long push for national aka federal standards).  It can be summed up into these two sentences:

Forget charter schools and grade-by-grade testing. It's time to look at the best-performing countries and pragmatically adapt their solutions.  

He argues American exceptionalism is a thing of the past and America needs a national curriculum:


The apostles of exceptionalism say we need more innovation. But our problem is not lack of innovation. Our problem is that we lack what the most successful countries have: coherent, well-designed state systems of education that would allow us to scale up our many pockets of innovation and deliver a high-quality education to all our students.

I am not a fan of the Bill Gates design of crony capitalists dictating American educational policies.  The "innovation" currently offered by the multi-million dollar lobby based school choice crowd only speaks to the delivery of education, not the content.  Tucker's vision also provides the framework of the education via common core standards but he expands it to include tracking children to specific career paths.  To understand how chilling Tucker's vision of a "well-designed state system of education" is, you need to discover his definition of "innovation".  

Tucker has been on the educational front for decades.  His "reform" vision can be found in an 18-page letter to Hilary Clinton in 1992. Mathematically Sound Foundations has linked the letter and provided brief biographies of the players of this reform.  

What is the basic gist of this letter?


The "Dear Hillary" letter, written on Nov. 11, 1992 by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), lays out a plan "to remold the entire American system" into "a seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone," coordinated by "a system of labor market boards at the local, state and federal levels" where curriculum and "job matching" will be handled by counselors "accessing the integrated computer-based program."
 
Tucker's plan would change the mission of the schools from teaching children academic basics and knowledge to training them to serve the global economy in jobs selected by workforce boards. Nothing in this comprehensive plan has anything to do with teaching schoolchildren how to read, write, or calculate. 



It parallels the report  "A Human Resources Plan for the United States" from the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) in 1992.  This plan to "nationalize" (Tucker makes huge pains not to call it "federal") has been in the works for decades.  Tucker collaborated in this report. 

The following is from a reader who has followed Tucker's plans and references the "Human Resources Plan".  The parentheses denote the reader's additional information and thoughts:

The preface is one paragraph by Marc Tucker.  Tucker wrote, “ The advent of the Clinton admin. creates a unique opportunity for the country to develop a truly national system for the development of its human resources, second to none on the globe.  The National Center on Education and the Economy and its predecessor organization; the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, have been elaborating a national agenda in this arena over the last 8 years.  Here we outline a set of recommendations to the incoming Clinton administration in the area of resources development.  It builds directly on the the proposals that the President-elect advanced during the campaign.  This report is mainly the work of a small group of people with close ties to the National Center:  Tim Barnicle, David Barram, Michael Cohen, David Haselkorn, David Hornbeck (who wrote the AL and KY OBE plans of Goals 2000)  Shirley Malcom, Ray Marshall, Susan McGuire, Hilary Pennington, Andy Plattner, Lauren Resnick (she and Betsy Brown Ruzzi are still in NCEE pushing for CCSS and she and Larry Berger of WirelessGeneration are pushing the Excellence for All plan),   David Rockefeller, Jr., Betsy Brown Ruzzi ), Robert Schwartz, John Sculley, Marshall Smith, Bill Spring and  me (Tucker).  While all of these people are in general agreement with what follows, they may not agree on the details.”

Tucker’s document says this is a vision of the kind of national—not federal—human resources development system the nation could have.  It is “interwove with a new approach to governing” , is a “seamless web of opportunities to develop one’s skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone...”  It includes an “apprenticeship system as the keystone of a strategy for putting a whole new postsecondary training system in place” including “reforming postsecondary education finance (like Obama’s administration has done).”  There would be a “national system of education in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations and teacher education and licensure systems are all linked to national standards  (like CCSS) but which provides for substantial variation among states, districts and schools.  This new system ... will abandon the American tracking system, combining high academic standards with the ability to apply what one knows to real world problems and qualifying all students for a lifetime of learning in the postsecondary system and at work.”  (like the CCSS College and Career Standards) .... “All students who meet the new national standards ... are entitled to the equivalent of three more years of free additional education ... So a student who meets the standard at 16 would be entitled to two free years of high school and one of college. (The college year will be at a community college/tech school by the way which they admit is “redefining college”).

The 1993 plan was to be funded in 4 ways:

• dropouts under 21 would get the same amount of funding they would have received had they stayed in high school
• the chronically unemployed and dislocated workers would be funded by the federal government such as state unemployment insurance funds
• employed people could access the system through the requirement that their employers would have to spend an amount equal to 1 1/2% of their salary on training leading to national skill certification
• those in prison could get reductions in their sentences when they participate 

All jobs would be required to be listed and fully computerized There would be a system of labor market boards and means testing would be removed. Much like Race to the Top, the 1993 plan was for groups of states to sign on, a few at a time. A data base is required to combine data at local labor market board offices with employment data so counselors and clients can look at programs offered by colleges and other vendors.


How does Tucker propose to accomplish this massive shift of political power? He would:

1. Eliminate local school boards. (This is also what ACHIEVE’s CEO Emeritus Lou Gerstner wrote Obama at the time of his election).
2. Shift teacher's employment and compensation from local boards to the state.
3. Require that students pass 10th grade tests, based on UN content standards, in order to be free to continue in a school.
4. Make free college preparatory education (based on UN content standards) available for all present workers.
5. Establish universal pre-school for all children (even though scientific research reveals that pre-school has no academic benefit past 3rd grade. Other programs are inserting the UN's curriculum into pre-school education, as well as child care).
6. Create regional development authorities that will plan economic development as well as education in areas larger than states. These authorities will be given the power to tax and will take over what little authority the states have left.
7. Have states take over teacher training which can be expected to require teachers to follow the UN value system. (Private colleges that train teachers will be out of luck. Private colleges will also lose their right to determine who may attend their colleges and who may not, because admission requirements will be dictated by, and measured by, the government.)
8. Establish merit-pay for teachers who best meet the goals of the plan. 

The Atlantic Monthly article doesn't give the reader Tucker's background and his plans for American education.  Tucker can complain all he want about how "innovation" can't fix America's classroom.  HIS plan is a total takeover by the federal government that is truly a cradle to grave agenda and the goal is to supply the workforce with your human capital.  From learn-usa.com:

In the total quality environment of performance-based education, training children to meet the needs of the new customer of education – business – becomes the primary focus of education. America's Choice: high skills or low wages! (Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, National Center on Education and the Economy, 1990) made this statement regarding the level of education sought by business,

But in a broad survey of employment needs across America, we found little evidence of a far-reaching desire for a more educated workforce.

Providing children with a broad but intensive liberal arts education—indeed, educating for intelligence—is out. Using the education system as a means to inculcate in children the behaviors – the attitudes, values and beliefs – supposedly wanted by business, is the new focus of education in the classroom.

While the battle rages on about school choice, it would behoove legislators, parents and taxpayers to understand the real war is the implementation of common core standards Marc Tucker has been wanting for over two decades.  The common core standards are the vehicles needed for the longitudinal data base that will track your child (and your family) throughout his/her life and dictate his/her placement in a career track and employment.

THIS is the "innovation" Tucker has envisioned.  He said it himself:

Our problem is that we lack what the most successful countries have: coherent, well-designed state systems of education that would allow us to scale up our many pockets of innovation and deliver a high-quality education to all our students.

What he doesn't reveal in this article is the "high-quality state systems of education to all our students" consists of:

• data gathered on your child by the state 
• career tracks chosen for your child by the state to be used by a workforce board controlled by the state

I wish the Atlantic would alert its readers to this bit of information Tucker didn't bother to include.  Do you think it might have garnered some concern from parents?






 

Obamacare Refers to People as "Units". Education Reform Refers to Students as "Human Capital". Worried Yet?

Elizabeth Scalia (The Anchoress) has an excellent article about the dehumanization of people under Obamacare. She recounts (and provides a transcript) of a radio interview she heard on the Mark Levin show from a neurosurgeon:

The caller said that he had recently gone to Washington to participate in a conference involving both the American Association of Neurosurgeons (AANS) and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS). I couldn’t take notes while driving, but the gist of the call was this: these surgeons were told, by a member of the Department of Health and Human Services that under the new health insurance legislation (aka Obamacare) government-insured people over the age of 70 who present with brain issues — stroke, hemorrhages, etc — would see no automatic surgical intervention, as they might now. Before any surgery could be begun, an “ethics” panel — made up not of doctors but of administrators and bureaucrats — would convene assess whether the person would be treated. “As a general course, though,” the caller said, “only ‘comfort care’ would be offered if you’re over 70.”

“So, generally speaking, it will be ‘comfort care only’ for patients over 70? That will be the rule, rather than the exception?” Asked a horrified-sounding Levin.

“Yes, but they’re not referred to as patients, or even subjects,” the caller corrected, “they’re called ‘units’. That’s what they called them.”

Appalling? Dehumanization at its ugliest? This has been going on for quite some time in the education reform movement. Students aren't individuals with individual needs. They are "human capital" and their inherent value is to supply the workforce.

You can access information about the workforce model envisioned by the education reform movement here. What is apparent from the Obamacare term of "units" and the education term of "human capital" is that there is a profound and intentional shift away from:

"Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth" (Abraham Lincoln)....to a Totalitarian Democracy: A system of government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of the government" (Israeli historian JL Talmon).

When you are deemed to be no longer useful to the "state", you are not provided services. Plain and simple. The current push toward labeling people as "units" and "human capital" negates their usefulness as human beings and instead, rates them according to their usefulness to the system. Look at the above graph. Human capital is not as important to an organization as it once was, so is it any shock human beings aren't as of much value in the larger society?

The system has supplanted the human beings who have supported it and the system is feeding the system, NOT the people it was designed to serve. The servant (the government) has now become the master of the people. Government panels (bureaucrats and administrators) will decide if and when you receive health care and what educational track is best for students to travel for the good of the workforce.

The connection between Obamacare and education reform is quite simple. Centralization and dehumanization are the primary concepts of these programs. Human beings (possessing souls and individual thoughts and desires) are now labeled and designated as inanimate objects: units and human capital.

This is how your government views its citizens. Scalia entitled her article "Assessing People as "Units" is Evil":

Assessing human beings as “units” is Evil. Period, full stop. It is a diabolical disorientation. The only people who do not understand that are people who also have difficulty with that inconvenient old “conscience thing“.The caller to Levin’s show said he was a neurosurgeon, and of German descent. He mentioned his ancestry at the same time he discussed “units” and admitted he was distressed. The source of his distress was very likely his recognition of a the sort of ruthless efficiency someone in his family once knew first hand, either from one side of the ledger, or the other.

She is correct. I offer an addendum to her excellent title: "Assessing People as "Units" and "Human Capital" is Evil. What is occurring in educational "reform" is an educational version of Obamacare and just as evil.

Big Brother is About to Get Bigger if Arne Duncan Has His Way

Are you worried about your privacy? You should be. We've written stories about your privacy being tracked by private companies and breaches of this information.

The Federal Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is due to be to be changed and accommodations will be made for privacy data to include invasive personal information on your family and your student in the Longitudinal Data System (LDS)if Arne Duncan's plan is adopted.

The LDS will be connected not only to other states for educational information, but also to various federal agencies, such as the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services for information to supply the workforce:

The term workforce is defined as consisting of the workers engaged in a specific activity, business or industry or the number of workers who are available to be assigned to any purpose as in a nation’s workforce.

The public workforce system is a network of federal, state, and local offices that function to support economic expansion and facilitate the development United States workforce. The system is designed to create partnership with employers, educators, and community leaders in order to foster economic development and high-growth opportunities in regional economies so that businesses find qualified workers to meet their present and future workforce needs. (Emphasis added)

The amount of personal information requested for your student can hardly be believed. But Arne Duncan is serious about expanding the information he wants from you and your student. He has insisted the information will be secure, but is that the core concern? You have until May 23, 2011 to make your comments.

I have a question that could possibly be taken as a comment. Does the government have the right to request over 315 data sets on your child to equip the government for its purposes? What does this have to do with education?

The Fordham Institute has similar concerns and here is what Joann Weiss from the Department of Education has stated about using your student data:

"In this new market, it will make sense for teachers in different regions to share curriculum materials and formative assessments. It will make sense for researchers to mine data to learn which materials and teaching strategies are effective for which students - and then feed that information back to students, teachers, and parents."

Here is some information and links from a reader on FERPA, the DOE and the LDS:

• Proposed changes expand the list of who gets access to data, what constitutes an education program in the first place, and eliminates the putative reason why information is released without consent. Another proposed change violates statutory authority by expanding the types of entities subject to enforcement. The Department of Education does not have statutory authority to unilaterally extend jurisdiction. The administration chose not to seek Congressional review of FERPA, preferring to unilaterally change the privacy law through administrative action (to quietly accommodate the distribution of personal information).

• In 2010 the Dept. of Education fired Paul Gammill, “the top federal official charged with protecting student privacy.” Mr. Gammill “maintains that he was dismissed because, on several occasions, he argued in internal meetings and documents that the department's approach to prodding states to expand their longitudinal student data systems violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of students' educational records.” Doug Lederman, Feb. 2010 http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/02/01/ferpa

• Susan Hatton of the National Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities describes that organization's opposition, “Driving the proposal…is the Department's intent to facilitate statewide longitudinal data systems capable of tracking individuals from pre-kindergarten through employment. NAICU has long supported student privacy rights, and strongly opposed earlier efforts by the Department to establish a national student unit record system. The association is concerned that these new proposals represent a substantial and unwarranted erosion of student privacy.”

• “The federal government has already invested over $500 million in state-level data systems, and the President's FY 2012 budget requests another $100 million for this purpose. In addition, the American Relief and Recovery Act (ARRA) requires that states adopt these statewide data systems as a condition of funding, and further specifies the elements to be included.

  Specifically, the new FERPA proposal would substantially increase the number of entities allowed to access personally identifiable student information without the student's or parent's consent.” Education Department Proposes Regs to Reduce FERPA Privacy Protections. NAICU Washington Update April 11, 2011, Susan Hatton

• “Duncan is fully prepared to carry out President Obama's education agenda, limiting the role of parents in schools while giving more power to the federal government to control the education agenda in the classroom.” Chris Field

• "That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes." (West Virginia State Bd. of Edu. v. Barnette (1943) 319 U.S. 624, 637)

It's not just states and schools that are sharing information on your child. It's also other various federal agencies tracking your student from preschool through age 20 through the workforce. If this seems just a tad bit invasive and unconstitutional to you, inform Secretary Duncan on your concerns. And you might just want to copy your state and federal politicians as well. When did we accept it was necessary or legal to be ordered to share personal information with the Federal Government to further its purposes?

Three Hundred and One Down. Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?

We've just passed the 300th mark for postings! I thought it might be a good time to chronicle what we've blogged about over these few months and how the website came into existence.

Missouri Education Watchdog has officially been on the web since June 2010 when a few people became worried about what they were seeing and reading in the public education arena. Our first red flags were the proposals of Race to the Top in terms of federal mandates to Missouri and local districts. We didn't find anyone in the state writing or talking about Race to the Top. We were concerned about this "contest for educational funding" by Arne Duncan, so we started researching and writing about the Department of Education's plan for public education.

As it played out, we did not receive Race to the Top funding but in essence, we received many of the mandates when our State Board of Education signed onto the Common Core standards in June 2010. We were hopeful the current Republican legislature would address the sovereignty issue and unfunded mandates the standards place on the state and districts. Unfortunately, not one piece of legislation currently addresses these issues. Our legislators have bills addressing open enrollment, vouchers, charter schools, the trigger option, and teacher tenure. Charters, open enrollment, the trigger option and vouchers are considered "school choice" for parents and many conservatives on the state and national levels support this type of legislation.

We have stated many times in this venue we support school choice for parents. However, we have also raised questions about the current legislation about these "choices". With the signing of common core standards, charters can no longer set their own standards. Vouchers to private schools will probably have federal mandates tied to them (it IS government money so those ties are expected), so it is reasonable to believe private and parochial schools will have to adopt common core standards as well. Is this a choice if the new school is under the same mandates as the old school?

The trigger option seems to give power to the parents to close a failing school. But what constitutes a failing school? Is it always the principal and bad teachers? Is it a cultural issue? Do parents support the school and do parents demand excellence and discipline from their children? Will it make a difference to close a school and revamp it by becoming a charter school? Do you think the problems for schools are just because of the teachers and administration? If so, then a trigger option and charters will fit the bill. If however, you believe the problems are more multi-layered, that if the culture does not demand discipline, respect and love for learning, then these "choices" will make little difference for failing students. The government cannot mandate that students learn or parents care to instill values in their students.

Open Enrollment will allow students to attend schools that are not failing. This will necessitate the transportation of students from failing districts (usually from the urban setting) into a suburban setting. As one school superintendent stated about this legislation:

"I'd rather see us try and fix the problem in the student's home district."


Moving away from the pending bills, now let's focus on Common Core Standards. Why is it so important to align schools with common core standards? It has less to do with the standards themselves and more to do with what the standards provide. The standards provide the vehicle through which the Longitudinal Data System can be implemented. What is a longitudinal data system? It is a way to share data about students from state to state AND various federal agencies. We've written about the data sets prepared for your students asking for information such as eye and hair color, family income, voting status and non-school activities. What does this have to do with education?

Well, if you look at the purpose of education to provide the nation's workforce, this type of information is quite important. The equation is upside down. It used to be that when a student graduated from school the STUDENT would look for a job. The documentation we've researched makes it clear the WORKFORCE will now look for the student. And how will industries find the student? Easy. Pull up data from the information stored on your human capital in the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. Your human capital is viewed in terms of his/her ability to provide a service to the state.

When did this "computerization" of education begin in earnest? Here's an excerpt from the April 5, 2000 Congressional Record speaking to President Clinton's "National Call to Action":

President Clinton has issued a "National Call to Action" to challenge corporations and non-profit organizations to take concrete steps to meet two critical goals: Provide 21st Century Learning Tools for every child in every school. For children to succeed, they need to master basic skills at an early age. The ability to use technology to learn and succeed in the workplace of the 21st century has become a "new basic" - creating a national imperative to ensure that every child is technologically literate. To reach this goal, America needs a comprehensive approach to connect every classroom, provide all students with access to multi-media computers, train teachers to use and integrate technology into the curriculum, and to provide high quality, online content and educational software. (page 4566)

Here we are 11 years later. Many of these plans are being put in place, not by privately funded organizations, but with stimulus funds and state money. Perhaps some of these goals are not objectionable. Being "connected" through technology is valuable in today's world. However, WHAT student data is connected TO and WHY is troublesome. When did it become permissible to ask personal and intrusive information on students under the guise of education so this information could be fed in a repository that would then feed it to different Federal agencies?

So this is where we find ourselves after our first 300 postings. It's not where we thought we would be in the quest for educational information. We were hoping for educational reform that would reclaim state sovereignty and reduce federal control and spending. Instead, this is where we find ourselves in Missouri and from emails received from around the country, others find themselves as well:

• We are still puzzled why the issue of appointed members of a state board can sign away our state sovereignty doesn't alarm our legislators and spur them to some preemptive action so our science and social studies standards also are not signed away when they are ready for adoption from CCSSO.
  
• We are puzzled why legislators aren't screaming when the talk of a "national curriculum" becomes a possible reality.
  
• We are puzzled why many states feel the need to focus in on school choice instead of reclaiming local control of schools.
  
• We are puzzled why there has been no legislation introduced to stop the incredible loss of privacy for students and their families when these data sets are ready to use in the educational setting.
• We are puzzled why when constituents are clamoring for a diminished role for the DOE, there is no response from legislators.
  

We invite you to learn with us as we discover more of the agendas for public education.

• We will continue to question elected officials on their stance for sovereignty and federal mandates and spending.
• We will continue to report on school district decisions.
• We will continue to research national issues as these will impact local districts in terms of standards, assessments, curriculum and costs to taxpayers.
  
• We will continue to examine the motives of multi-million dollar campaigns for specific educational agendas. There is a tremendous amount of money to made in education, don't doubt it for a minute. Whenever any organization states "it's for the children", listen with a critical ear. It doesn't matter if this line comes from the left or the right. Money is being made by servicing children by the NEA, the charter schools, virtual schools, software companies, computer companies, public employees, think tanks, lobbyists...and the list goes on and on.

The questions are: Do any of these entities have your child's best interest at heart? Is your child's best interest being superseded by becoming "human capital" for the purpose of supplying nation's workforce?

Question: Is a Version of the P20 Pipeline Already Being Used in St. Louis?

We've written previously about the educational data sets ready to be implemented for students to supply the workforce and reported in Pajamas Media. Data is set to be gathered via a P20 Pipeline on your student for information on blood tests, eye and hair color, gestational age at birth, voting status, non-school activity information and other interesting information. Your student will be tracked from preschool through age 20 and into the workforce. The data prepared is quite extensive and there are 351 data sets listed in the Education Data Model.

Why wait for a child to enroll in school to gather information? Selected pregnant women in the St. Louis City, Jefferson County, and Macoupin County, Illinois areas could be part of a national children's study for their children from birth through age 21. This is a story from Fox 2 in St. Louis detailing the collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and major medical universities.

What is the stated purpose of this study? By following children from the moment of birth until they turn 21, researchers hope to find out what role the environment plays in how children mature and grow. But environment is more than air and water; it also includes family, neighborhood, income, school, and race, among many other factors. By monitoring their environments, and running periodic blood and genetic tests, researchers want to answer hundreds of questions about children. (Emphasis added)

Does this information from a study about children from birth to age 21 either voluntarily or through school records bother you? Do you want the government and school to know details about your family, income and genetic information? We know what the purpose of the educational data system is from the Illinois Data System Warehouse Document.
It is to provide the workforce:

The term workforce is defined as consisting of the workers engaged in a specific activity, business or industry or the number of workers who are available to be assigned to any purpose as in a nation’s workforce.

The public workforce system is a network of federal, state, and local offices that function to support economic expansion and facilitate the development United States workforce. The system is designed to create partnership with employers, educators, and community leaders in order to foster economic development and high-growth opportunities in regional economies so that businesses find qualified workers to meet their present and future workforce needs. (Emphasis added)

This educational data is to be shared with the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. Where is the information from the pregnant women study being shared? From the National Children's Study website:

The National Children’s Study is led by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in collaboration with a consortium of federal government partners. Study partners include the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Here is some of the information they will gather on children in this study. (For a more detailed report you can access the 76 page brochure here). It seems as if it will indeed ask and answer hundreds of questions about children. Combined with the data sets from the schools, it appears there isn't much varying Federal agencies (over 40 Federal entities in the Children's study alone) won't know about your family or your child. Do you believe this is a positive development? Why do all these federal agencies need to garner information on families and individuals? Is this the role of government?

Whether you think it is a valid role or not, the government is already studying its first baby in the region. Here is an article about the first St. Louis infant born into the National Children's Study: http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2011/03/08/first-baby-born-into-national.html

A version of the P20 pipeline has arrived in St. Louis with a week old infant.

h/t to CT

Musings on Mr. Rogers, Achieving the Purpose of Your Being, and Human Capital

We are following up on our post from Sunday night, examining what's happened to the definition of education from 1939 to today. Seventy years ago it focused on the individual and "achieving the purpose of your being"; now it is focusing on preparing students to compete in a global society.

Continuing from Dr. John S. Brubacher's book "Modern Philosophies of Education", page 93:

This does not mean that individuality is to be unconfined in education. Basically, the pupil becomes in time what he eternally is. The child is not to be educated for self-expression, to express the self he now is. That self may be a weak, narrow, unlovely self. Rather is he to be educated to become the self which he was meant to be. To realize such a selfhoood will require much denial and restraint of the present self. Yet the discipline so imposed is not an end or measure of education, but only a means or a result. Only if the child's nature were in the order which obtained before the fall from grace and the exit from Eden would self-expression be a satisfactory aim of education. If the child is an immortal spirit, it is his eternally progressive soul-life that is to be cultivated. The soul instinctively strives for perfection and rejoices in its attainment. Moreover, it is as a soul and not as a citizen or worker that he is to be permanently known. He is to be educated for himself, just because he is educable. In Kantian fashion he is to be treated always as an end in himself and never as a means merely. His powers are to be developed because that is their destiny. Of course, there will be political, economic, religious, and social consequences of his education, but these will be effects and not objectives.

I think about tributes to Fred Rogers when he died in 2003. NPR replayed a conversation previously recorded with him in which a woman called and talked about the difference he had made in her autistic son's life. She indicated Mr. Rogers was the first conduit to the "real" world in her son's life. Mr. Rogers had the wonderful capacity to turn compliments from himself onto the other person, and he complimented the caller for the wonderful work she had done as a parent.

He then said something so profound that I remember it as if was yesterday, sitting in my car, listening to the radio. He said, "Children need to be allowed to be the people they are meant to be in the time they need to become that person". As Dr. Brubacher wrote in 1939: "Rather is he to be educated to become the self which he was meant to be".

I wasn't able to find the transcript of that interview, but I did find a link to a couple of others which expresses the 1939 idea of education and the emphasis on the person. Tom Juneau, a writer at Esquire Magazine told NPR after his death:

"He figured out quickly what people needed. He had a radar into people's hearts and souls and with his death, a light had gone out of the world. He was a power of goodness and personified grace....he tried to humanize each person."

In this additional interview Mr. Rogers said:

"So much what is spontaneous is what is truly inspired and all that I've done that is truly good has been inspired".

Reading about common core standards and reducing children to "human capital" and data sets is completely antithetical to what was written in 1939 and what Mr. Rogers lived. Can a computer that spits out the same assessments to multiple students nationwide capture the joy and caring of a teacher like Mr. Rogers....or a beloved teacher from your past? Nothing spontaneous can come from teachers in that framework. Inspiration and innovation can't exist in such a contained system and set of expectations and mandates. However, if the state and federal educational goal is to supply the workforce, rather than to "be the person you were meant to be in the time you were meant to be that person", I suppose the evolution of the spirit is a moot issue.