Trading Facts for Feel-Good Experience.
1967. The NEA Journal published "The New Social Studies," which said,
". . . the most obvious change occurring in the social studies is a breaking away from the traditional dominance of history, geography, and civics. Materials from the behavioral sciences . . . sociology, social psychology, . . . are being incorporated into both Elementary and secondaries school programs."
[Dorothy M. Fraser, wrote “The ‘New’ Social Studies” in the November 1967 issue of the NEA Journal, volume 56, pages 24–25. At the time, she was the coordinator of the Social Sciences Teacher Education Program at the City University of New York.]
1988. Dr. Donald A. Cowan asked a leading question during a forum at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture:
"What will take the place of logic, fact, and analysis in the coming age? The central way of thought for this new era will be imagination. Imagination will be the active, creative agent of culture, transforming brute materials to a higher more knowable state . . . ."
1956. In Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, The Classification of Educational Goals, Professor Bloom wrote,
". . . a large part of what we call good teaching is the teachers ability to attain affective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues." [Generative Themes, Dialogic Praxis, Struggle Sessions, Affirmation]
Note: While a sound body of factual knowledge should be the foundation of all thinking processes, this model reduced factual knowledge and comprehension to the rank of lower order thinking skills, suggesting that traditional knowledge had become relatively insignificant--and could even be a hindrance. In contrast, the more subjective processes--application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation-- were elevated to higher order thinking skills.
How can students apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate without facts? How can they reach a rational conclusion without comprehension? They can't in the absence of foundational facts, those higher order thinking skills can only lead to subjective, uncertain answers. Without a broad knowledge base, children are rudderless and headed for disaster. Deprived of the factual comprehension needed for moral, spiritual, intellectual discernment, they cannot recognize deception. All the mercy of manipulative social revolutionaries, they are ready to embrace the new age neo-Pagan view of "reality," which has no basis in real reality. [Transgender, Queer Theory, Climate Activism, Critical Pedagogy, etc.]
Dr. Bloom's process controls the outcome or end-product of thinking which was often an opinion or a value judgment. By censoring a student's knowledge base, the teacher can direct the students thinking. It works. Through biased information, carefully design hypothetical stories, and pointed Socratic questioning, students are persuaded that their home-taught beliefs and values are incompatible with the needs for the 21st century.
1968. Professor John Goodlad reported that Professor Benjamin Bloom [called the father of OBE]
"was invited by UNESCO in 1968 to submit a proposal for a 6 to 9 week training program which would partially fulfill recommendations made at UNESCO Moscow meeting dealing with the formation of national centers for curriculum development research."
Bloom's "program was ultimately approved by UNESCO General Counsel John I. Goodlad & Associates, Curriculum Inquiry the Study of Curriculum Practice (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1979), page 261. Cited by Iserbyt, 1930-2022. [her books.]
1976. An NEA program titled "A Declaration of Interdependence: Education for a Global Community" was made available to schools across the country.
1981. Professor Benjamin Bloom explained that the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IAEEA, 1958)
"is an organization of 22 National research centers which are engaged in the study of Education this group has been concerned with the use of international tests the evaluation instruments also represent an international consensus on the knowledge and objectives most worth learning."
1985. The curriculum arm of the NEA, the Association of for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) co-sponsored and international curriculum symposium in the Netherlands. According to Education Week, the ASCD executive director, Dr. Gordon Cawelti, "urged representatives of other Western nations and Japan to press for the development of a 'world core curriculum' based on knowledge that will ensure 'peaceful and cooperative existence among the human species on this planet.' "This World Core Curriculum would be on the teachings of theosophist Alice Bailey, 1880-1949, who received her channeled instructions from her spirit guide Djhwal Khul. The framework would be written by occultist UN leader, Robert Mueller, 1923-2010. His beliefs and influence are explained in "The International Agenda."
1988. In "Globalism Tramples on American Values," Dr. D. L. Cuddy wrote:
". . . an American Forum on Education and International Competence will . . . have workshops on such topics as 'Developing Strategies for Internationalizing State Curriculum' and 'Political/ Religious Challenges to Global Education.' . . . According to a report by the Study Commission on Global Education. all School courses should be 'infused with a Global Perspective'," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1988 Cuddy, 81.
1993. The 240 International Affiliates of the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers joined to form Education International. Its new president was the former head of the NEA, Mary Atwood Futrell. Cuddy, 100.
The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, Revised and Abridged Edition, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, 2011.