The U.S. Department of Education is sponsoring two very significant conferences during November and December 1997. They involve President Clinton's pledge to make education his number one priority for the next four years. All educators have a crucial role to play and the public has a compelling interest in understanding the plan, entitled Goals 2000. This is the program which the President has made his number one priority.
Goals 2000 is the "centerpiece of educational reform and restructuring" for the United States. It is called "framework legislation" because it sets the parameters for life in the 21st century. In reality, it is nothing less than a shocking glimpse into the Orwellian present/future of all Americans. Goals 2000 is calculated to bring sweeping changes to the lives of both students and parents as well as to society as a whole.
Dr. Shirley McCune, an advocate of the program, makes this revealing statement. "What we are into is a total restructuring of society. What is happening in America today is not simply a chance situation and the usual winds of change. What it amounts to is a total transformation of our society."
United States Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) wrote to his colleagues in Congress of the grave implications this program has for the country. "The plan for Goals 2000 was developed by Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Ira Magaziner and Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy [NCEE], prior to Clinton's election. It is a concept for dumbing-down our schools and changing the character of the nation through behavior modification. It moves away from an academically intensive curriculum to one that is integrated with vocational training."
President Clinton signed this landmark legislation in 1994. It is recognized as a milestone in the monumental journey toward the transformation of society as we converge upon the new century and the anticipated new civilization.
Both the complexity and the far-reaching implications of this 155-page document make it difficult to portray its full intent, but its principles portend fundamental changes for families, schools and communities. Marc Tucker admits to the scale of change envisioned in the scheme to "rebuild the entire American system." Their plan sets in place a national system of socialist control over all jobs and education "that literally extends from the cradle to the grave", and that is mandatory for everyone. Tucker continued, "We think the great opportunity you have is to rebuild the entire American system for human resource development." New American, 8-22-96.
The center or nucleus of the new society will no longer be the home or the family; it will be the school. Increasingly, schools are displacing the traditional family unit. Students are now getting such non-educational services as healthcare, social services (welfare, counseling and social security services), childcare, nutrition, employment services, international curriculum, and a host of other things from their schools.
This massive government program is designed to assert its primacy over the family. It may be labeled as a family support or parental assistance program, but, in reality, it is advancing a plan of parental obsolescence with replacement by a United Nations agency, disguised as a benevolent government program .
Goals 2000 affects all of society because it tracks and controls the entire lifespan of every citizen with programs beginning at birth and continuing with "lifelong learning".
BIRTH TO THREE YEARS: The first national education goal states, "By the year 2000 all children in America will start school ready to learn." This is to be accomplished using Parental Information Resource Centers and programs such as PAT (Parents as Teachers). Former teacher and author Kathy Finnegan says this begins with specially trained state social workers investigating the homes of pregnant women and women with small children ostensibly to instruct the parents; but the primary goal is to observe the home, parents and surroundings. Few parents are aware of how interested and observant the social worker really is. These "certified parent educators" privately record their observations into the child's cumulative electronic portfolio. These parent educators are especially interested in "risk factors" that might require the intervention of other governmental social service agencies.
KINDERGARTEN THROUGH THIRD GRADE: Education Researcher Anita Hoge explains how the system is designed to work. She says the early mental health initiative now involves children, kindergarten through third grade. Play rooms are set up where specially trained mentors/programmers observe the children. If any "abnormal" or "suspect" behavior is observed, the social worker will call the parents saying something innocuous like, "We are fearful that your child is at risk of future failure in school. Can we come to visit in your home?" They gain access in this way and when once they do this, the parents have no protection, no due process. For almost any reason, (untidy housekeeping, etc.) they can declare the child "at risk", removing the child from the home.
GENERAL "EDUCATIONAL" GOALS: Goals 2000 is a major shift of power. It gives the federal government control of each individual's compliance with national standards. Anita Hoge told The WINDS that "under a policy called Total Quality Control Systems (TQM), federal money enforces national goals, national testing, national teacher certification, national curriculum, with a national database to monitor all of the above. "Pennsylvania was the pilot for the national test. So when they say they're testing integrity, I understand how it's scored. When I first found the evaluation for state tests, I immediately felt betrayed because I found that they're scoring it through collectivism."
National standards are not reserved for students only, they are to be imposed on society as a whole.This is being accomplished by "partnershipping" schools with a multitude of non-educational agencies, services and businesses, referred to as "coordinated access". This is part of a massive program of transforming the community through the takeover of schools, making schools the hub. The family is drawn into this system through parent education, day-care programs, school-based health clinics, and "lifelong learning" in a continuingly expanding program.
The plan is particularly concerned with those it considers to be on the fringe of compliance. This plays out in your schools as follows: Title 1 identifies a child "at risk" or "future risk" if he does not meet a state outcome (standard). The next step is remediation which reopens the door for the healthcare agenda that had been pushed by the present administration in Washington. This is accomplished by use of Medicare funds made available by a special waiver which drops the poverty specification and expands the "medical need clause". This is the pretext used for the entrance of this invasive system of socialized (physical, mental, social) healthcare.
Congressman Henry Hyde says on the surface, "School-to-Work sounds good. But when carried to its logical extreme, it chooses careers for every American worker. Children's careers will be chosen for them by Workforce Development Boards and federal agencies 'at the earliest possible age.' In some cases, as is currently happening in Pennsylvania, this is [taking place] in the third grade. We do want all Americans to have an opportunity to work, but forcing them to work where and how the federal agencies deem necessary is not the way to go."
Under this part of Goals 2000, explained Anita Hoge, the student is identified with an "assessment" (his value or worth to the community). This indicates where he can best be "used" in the work force. The assessment aligns the student with his designated place in society. It determines whether he goes directly into the work place or is allowed to go to college. When School-to-Work (STW) is fully implemented, the program's criteria designates that 80% of students would enter the work force and 20% would be admitted to college.
STW incorporates basic literacy with social, moral and mental health areas such as sociability, diversity, honesty and integrity, relating with others, etc. The artifice in this strategy is the fact that the government has reinterpreted meanings and definitions, creating a skewed value, then making that value the unvarying standard.
The President has called for national standards and national testing. The insidious element is that values and attitudes are the critical part of what is being tested and standardized. The new tests do not measure knowledge; they are subjective, evaluating the ethics, beliefs, ideals and views. Students are rated by proficiency in a process called "beyond text". The answer is not in the text. Trainees must give their opinion, their value judgment, which will then be scored according to the government's engineered standard.
The key that accesses the new society will be possession of the government diploma called the Certificate of Initial Mastery. Job eligibility, college admission, driving privileges, etc., are tied to the individual's alignment with these contrived standards.
Contrary to his initial support of the legislation, Representative Mel Hancock (R-MO) has blatantly repudiated his endorsement of the plan. "After taking a closer look at Goals 2000 it is obvious...that the National Education Association, in cooperation with the socialistic segments of our government, are attempting to implement the Marxist theories of reeducating a society as part of a potential overthrow of our constitutional government - as advocated by Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin. Even though I originally voted for the bill, I am withdrawing my support and will do everything possible...to rescind Goals 2000."
The real object of Goals 2000 envisions the transformation of society as a whole. Those older individuals who can be brought into the mind-set of this system will be trained and cultured to fill their places alongside those currently being produced. It is designed to lead into a world order where the global economy is not only merged, but managed at a central level. This is all leading to a world school system where multinational corporations harvest standardized workers from the world labor pool. Goals 2000 is in the business of creating "products" who have no allegiance to Christian ethics, parents or country, but are simply being created to fuel the world economy.
Dr. Eugene Maxwell Boyce stated in his 1983 study, The Coming Revolution in Education: "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."
One educator has stated it in these words: "We used to be an 'or' society. We are now moving into an 'or else' society. You do this or else.... This system of control says "you do this... or you won't get a diploma, or you won't get a job, or you won't go to college, or you won't drive a car." This is a manipulative system where basic freedom is taken away, a scheme aimed at compliance where if you don't move in step with the plan, you stand to lose your healthcare or your right to a job. Lack of compliance means the loss of privileges.
When Total Quality Management is fully in place, Americans will have totally managed lives with no variables or options. TQM will allow the government to mandate appropriate attitudes and actions. If your place in society means anything to you, your only consideration will be compliance whatever the cost.
Students today are being taught to think as global citizens. They've been totally steeped in environmentalism and a whole array of scare tactics that shape their world view. Schools are the indoctrination centers of the global citizen-global worker. They more closely resemble the failed communist and socialist experiments of the cold war era.
Kathy Finnegan, author of Goals 2000 - Restructuring Our Schools - Restructuring Society, says most parents have no idea of "the harm that will come from thirteen years of sitting in government indoctrination centers. The stakes are very high. We're not talking about whether schools are worse than they were twenty years ago." This is the culmination of the long contemplated plan for the takeover of the mind of America, bringing it into the New World Order. The real question is, are parents prepared to face the consequences of committing their children into the hands of this system?
Parents should not operate under the illusion that Goals 2000 is something to be confronted at the turn of the century. It is law now and has been for three and one-half years. Government money is funding the program almost universally throughout the country.
Parents are fully responsible for the training and education of the children which have been entrusted to their care. If we shift that responsibility to the church, the state, or any other entity, we alone bear the full and final responsibility for the outcome.
The excuses are abundant. "We're a two income family, so we couldn't homeschool", or "I'm not qualified to teach my children". The list is long, but excuses will not stand in a court of law, much less in earth's final judgment.
The searching question comes:
"Where is thy flock that was given thee to shepherd, thy beautiful flock? And what wilt thou say when He shall punish thee? Shall not sorrows overtake thee as a woman in travail? And if thou say in thine heart, wherefore come these things upon me? For the greatness of thine iniquity is thy true condition revealed." Jeremiah 13: 20-22.
Written 11/4/97