================================================================== The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070 ================================================================== THE NEW AMERICAN -- July 24, 1995 Copyright 1995 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI 54913 ================================================================== ARTICLE: Education TITLE: "Cradle to Grave" OBE AUTHOR: William F. Jasper ================================================================== Ever wonder where the funding comes from for all those commissions, committees, reports, studies, think tanks, and experimental programs that have such a horrendous impact on education? A major source, of course, is the federal hog trough (your tax dollars ). Long before the constitutional impediments to Washington's involvement in educa- tion matters were breached, however, there were the Carnegie founda- tions. It was the work of the Carnegie group of foundations half a century ago that paved the way for the federal invasion of education, and the Carnegie handprint can be found on most of the subversive influences afflicting our schools today. Thus, when a lengthy epistle from one of Carnegie's top educational technocrats to Hillary Rodham Clinton surfaced recently, all serious education observers took note. The 18-page letter was from Marc S. Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) and a longtime friend of the Clintons. As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton had brought in Tucker to "restructure" that state's educa- tion system. Kudos and a Proposal Tucker's missive to First Lady-elect Hillary Clinton was dated November 11, 1992 and opened with deliriously ecstatic congratulatory salutations, followed by the more serious business of proposing an "agenda" for the complete socialization of America. Tucker's long connections with the corridors of power in the vast Carnegie cosmos are significant enough by themselves to merit attention, but perhaps most interesting is the prominent mention in his letter of a name with an even more impressive cachet: Rockefeller. The letter begins: "Dear Hillary: "I still cannot believe you won. But utter delight that you did pervades all the circles in which I move. I met last Wednesday in David Rockefeller's office with him, John Sculley, Dave Barram and David Haselkorn. It was a great celebration. Both John and David R. were more expansive than I have ever seen them -- literally radiating happiness. My own view and theirs is this country has seized its last chance.... "The subject we were discussing was what you and Bill should do now about education, training and labor market policy. Following that meeting, I chaired another in Washington on the same topic. Those present at the second meeting included Tim Barnicle, Dave Barram, Mike Cohen, David Hornbeck, Hilary Pennington, Andy Planner, Lauren Resnick, Betsy Brown Ruzzi, Bob Schwartz, Mike Smith and Bill Spring.... Ira Magaziner was also invited to this meeting." So what is it that Messrs. Tucker, Rockefeller, Sculley, Hornbeck, and their enraptured confreres envision for Bill and Hillary for "education, training and labor market policy"? Nothing short of a radical, transformational outcome-based education scheme "to remold the entire American system." Nothing short of a national system of control over all jobs and education "that literally extends from cradle to grave" and that is mandatory "for everyone." "We think," wrote Tucker, "the great opportunity you have is to remold the entire American system for human resource development, almost all of the current components of which were put into place before World War II." "The Vision" Tucker rhapsodically expounded to Hillary: "First, a vision of the kind of national -- not federal -- human resources development system the nation could have. This is interwoven with a new approach to governing that should inform that vision. What is essential is that we create a seamless web of opportunities to develop one's skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone -- young and old, poor and rich, worker and full-time student." Tucker next outlined "a proposed legislative agenda you can use to implement this vision": * A national "apprenticeship system" to serve as "the keystone of a strategy for putting a whole new postsecondary training system in place." This scheme, he wrote, "contains what we think is a powerful idea for rolling out and scaling up the whole new human resources system nationwide over the next four years, using the (renamed) apprenticeship idea as the entering wedge." * A national "employment service and a new system of labor market boards" to control all education, jobs and job training. * A "special program to greatly raise the work-related skills of the people trapped in the core of our great cities." * Legislation "to advance the elementary and secondary reform agenda." Then, under a the heading, "The Vision," Tucker sketched "the essence of that vision," calling for "A seamless system of unending skill development that begins in the home with the very young and continues through school, postsecondary education and the workplace." The vision calls for "clear national standards of performance in general education (the knowledge and skills that everyone is expected to hold in common)." This will produce a "national system of education in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations and teacher education and licensure systems are all linked to the national standards," and "a system that rewards students who meet the national standards with further education and good jobs, providing them a strong incentive to work hard in school." "Creating such a system," declared Tucker, "means sweeping aside countless programs, building new ones, combining funding authorities, changing deeply embedded institutional structures, and so on." This is an activity at which Tucker and his cohorts seem to excel, though the "reforms" they have instituted in Arkansas, Kentucky, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Vermont, San Diego, and elsewhere have been utter disasters. Addressing the Opposition As confusing as the educational mummery employed by the Carnegie elitists may be, it is not sufficient to obscure the main feature of the Tucker-Rockefeller plan: outright government coercion. Tucker acknowledged that "everything we have heard indicates virtually universal opposition in the employer community to the proposal for a 11_2% levy on employers for training to support the costs associated with employed workers gaining these skills, whatever the levy is called." But Tucker and his comrades are not the sort to be deterred by mere "universal opposition" of the unwashed. "We propose that Bill take a leaf out of the German book," he wrote to Hillary. "One of the most important reasons that large German employers offer apprenticeship slots to German youngsters is that they fear, with good reason, that if they don't volunteer to do so, the law will require it. Bill could gather a group of leading executives and business organization leaders, and tell them straight out that he will hold back on submitting legislation to require a training levy, provided they commit themselves to a drive to get employers to get their average expenditures on front- line employees training up to 2% of front-line employee salaries and wages within two years." Tucker also recommended "that the President appoint a National Council on Human Resources Development" which would "consist of the relevant key White House officials, cabinet members and members of Congress. It would also include a small number of governors, educators, business executives, labor leaders and advocates for minorities and the poor." Moreover, "It would be established in such a way as to assure the continuity of membership across administrations, so that the consensus it forges outlasts any one administration." We can well imagine the composition of this permanent consensus- forming body now: Secretaries Richard Riley, Robert Reich, and Donna Shalala; Senators Teddy Kennedy and Richard Lugar; Representatives Barney Frank and Ron Dellums; Governors Roy Roemer and Pete Wilson; educators Theodore Sizer, David Hornbeck, Marc Tucker, and William Spady; business executives John Sculley and Felix Rohatyn; labor leaders Al Shanker and Keith Geiger; and "advocates" Jesse Jackson, Maya Anjelou, and Marian Wright Edelman. Perhaps it was just a Freudian slip which caused Tucker to refer to this proposed new body as "our council." Job Control Under the plan offered to Hillary, a national "Employment Service" would be created and "all available front-line jobs -- whether public or private -- must be listed in it by law." There is more: "A system of labor market boards is established at the local, state and federal levels to coordinate the systems for job training, postsecondary professional and technical education, adult basic education, job matching and counseling." As part of the Carnegie pursuit of "national standards," Tucker recommended: "Create National Board for Professional and Technical Standards. Board is private, not-for-profit, chartered by Congress. Charter specifies broad membership composed of leading figures from higher education, business, labor, government and advocacy groups. Board can receive appropriated funds from Congress, private foundations, individuals and corporations. Neither Congress nor the executive branch can dictate the standards set by the Board." Ingenious, no? Have your own, private, independent, unaccountable, congressionally chartered, taxpayer-funded board through which to dictate the "standards" that will direct the nation. The fascist-communist scheme outlined by Tucker was well described by Dr. Eugene Maxwell Boyce in his 1983 study, The Coming Revolution in Education. In that work, Boyce, a professor of education administration at the University of Georgia, wrote: "In the Communist ideology the function of universal education is clear, and easily understood. Universal education fits neatly into the authoritarian state. Education is tied directly to jobs -- control of the job being the critical control point in an authoritarian state. The level of education, and consequently the level of employment, is determined first, by level of achievement in school. They do not educate people for jobs that do not exist. No such direct, controlled relationship between education and jobs exists in democratic countries." Nor can it. The thoroughly coercive system proposed by the Carnegie-Tucker-Rockefeller cabal would be totalitarian regardless of the labels affixed to it. 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