"WE MUST BE COMMITTED TO A NEW KIND OF GOVERNMENT" -President Clinton State of the Union Address

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    On Tuesday, February 5, 1997 President Clinton gave his State of the Union speech before Congress. Like a prophet describing the promised land, the president proclaimed the progress this country has made over the past four years under the wise guidance of his administration, as well as the brighter future that lies ahead for all Americans, should his remaining agenda be quickly passed by Congress. The president's address covered many subjects including balancing the budget, campaign finance reform, welfare reform and AIDS research. By far the most focused topic was education, which he called "my number one priority for the next four years." Why is a subject that should be the concern of local school boards and parents of such great importance to the President of the United States?

    The president's State of the Union address was strong and well crafted, and one could not help but feel good inside to hear the vision of a glorious future and to see on television the House chamber filled with standing applauders. But like most speeches made by politicians, this one will require some scrutiny in order to properly determine the truth that lies therein. "A man is known by his friends" and to properly assess the president's interest in the nation's educational system, one must look to his associates and contacts with special interest to understand more clearly the agenda he has for this nation.

    One such associate is a man by the name of Marc Tucker who is president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) and longtime friend of the Clintons. When Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas he invited Mr. Tucker over to restructure that state's educational system. After Clinton was elected president, Mr. Tucker wrote the following congratulatory letter and plan of action to Hillary Clinton. The letter was dated November 11, 1992, and reads:

"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....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 now do about education, training, and labor market policy. Following that meeting, I chaired another in Washington on the same topic.... Our purpose in these meetings was to propose concrete actions that the Clinton administration could take.... We took a very large leap forward in terms of how to advance the agenda on which you and we have all been working --- a practical plan for putting all of the major components of the system in place within 4 years, by the time Bill has to run again.... We think 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.

"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. It needs to be a system...regulated on the basis of outcomes....To implement this vision...use your proposal for an apprenticeship system as the keystone of a strategy for putting the whole new post-secondary training system in place...the whole new human resources system nationwide over the next four years, using the (renamed) apprenticeship idea as the entering wedge....Create one national system....(criteria for selection includes) commitment to developing an outcome- and performance-based system for human resources development system....(Program components include) develop uniform reporting system for providers, requiring them to provide information in that format on characteristics of clients. Develop computer-based system for combining this data at local labor market board offices with employment data from the state...including subsequent employment histories for graduates. Design all programs around the forthcoming general education standards.... We propose that Bill take a leaf out of the German book. 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...do the same.... Radical changes in attitudes, values and beliefs are required to move any combination of these agendas."

    "Goals 2000" is an education reform program conceived during President Bush's term and signed into law by Bill Clinton. It is now public law 103-227 and the legal incarnation of the concept of Outcome-Based Education (OBE). OBE is the brainchild of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and the NCEE, among others, who are financed mainly by the Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller Foundation. Remember that Mr. Tucker is president of NCEE, and he and the Rockefellers had a celebration when their friends, the Clintons, won the White House.

    "Goals 2000" is as controversial as it is massive. Like many unconstitutional federal programs imposed on the states, it dangles large grants of money as enticements for the states to conform to their mandates, which they do most eagerly. States then bring their public schools in line with the "Goals 2000 standards" in the areas of school facilities, teaching methods, sex education, "gender equitable" curriculum, "politically correct" textbooks that have a revisionist's view of American history, and ad nauseum. Pretending that certain elements of "Goals 2000" is voluntary, the program encourages states to make schools "one stop shopping" centers which offer a variety of social services including health care and child care. These "school based clinics" (SBC's) would also distribute contraceptives and refer for abortions if needed.

    More alarming than the above is that the wording of the "Parental Assistance" and "Parental Participation" clause of the program implies that parents and schools are on equal footing when it comes to authority over the child student. To "improve family life", states are "encouraged" to send "professionals" to visit the home when a baby is born to give "counseling". School hours are to be lengthened, programming added, children are to spend more time at school with school personnel, and receive more home visits from professionals, leaving less time for families to have together, especially if you consider that both parents are working.

       The purpose for all of this control, so aptly described in Mr. Tucker's letter to Hillary Clinton, is the development of "human capital" for the work place. This is also summed up by Dr. Shirley McCune who worked for the federally funded Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL) until 1994. In 1983 she authored a 63-page working paper for the Kansas Department of Education, entitled, "Framing a Future for Education". In the paper she stated, "Schools must become more effective and more efficient in providing society with human resources which are essential for our national well-being." She said that students would be expected to develop the "ability to work in groups, use skills in critical thinking, problem solving...synthesizing, decision making and communication---key factors for successful participation in the work force." Students would be the "human capital" for the world's economy, and there would also be "lifelong learning" with an increase in adult education and retraining. She went on to say, "The future of all institutions and our total society rests on our ability to develop human capital or to 'grow better people'". In 1989 Dr. McCune spoke at a Kansas Governor's conference on education where she stated, "What we're into is the total restructuring of society....More and more the school is the cob or the center of all human resource development services.... The earlier we intervene into the lives of people, the cheaper it is." [emphasis supplied]. About the same time, McCune delivered the main speech at a teacher's "in-service" session where she proclaimed,

"Radical change is necessary now; you cannot escape it....Strategies and behaviors must be changed because the dawning of this new age is far more significant than the transformation of the national and world economics which is taking place.... It will shape a new social character or person who views the world in very different ways.... The schools will become the training institutions whose function it is to affect all other sectors of society - economic, social, and political."

Her statements leave little doubt as to why the powers at be are stressing their "commitment" to education as they are.

    The campaign to promote OBE standards into the nation's school systems is subversive and undemocratic in nature, and it uses tactics in promoting its agenda that are inherently dishonest. A case in point is the "community action tool kit" prepared by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (funded by the U.S. Department of Education) for the National Education Goals Panel in 1994, and distributed to activists at the grass roots level. This kit elicited a howl of protest from Editor Robert Holland of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.. He wrote to U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley and said,

"I have today obtained a copy of the 'Community Action Toolkit' of the National Education Goals Panel, of which you are a member....The kit makes this statement: 'Only by changing the attitudes and behaviors of community members will it be possible to reach the National Education Goals.' With all due respect, sir, that does not sound like the government believes that we citizens have any choice regarding the shape education reform will take. In fact, isn't such a government-directed propaganda campaign unprecedented in U.S. history? Some of the topics in this kit: 'Describe Allies and Opponents, Identify Change Agents, Trouble-shooting in the Event of Opposition, and Avoid the Term Outcome-Based Education' ....Finally, sir, what is your authority under the United States Constitution to conduct a campaign aimed at rigging the outcomes of the education debate in every community in America?"

    Under the pretense of "setting national standards", the education elite has effectively gained control over every school in the U.S. This was protested by Kenneth Goodman (past president of the International Reading Assoc.) in the September 7, 1994 issue of Education Week..

"I accuse the politicians and technicians of the standards movement of using standards as a cover for a well-orchestrated attempt to centralize power and thus control who will teach, who will learn, what will be taught in the nation's schools, and who will determine the curriculum for schools and for teacher education....The standards movement promises the political power brokers that by controlling outcomes they can control schools while appearing to support local control."

    Years ago Marc Tucker was with the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, the creators of the "Community Action Tool Kit". His statement to Hillary Clinton asserting that "radical changes in attitudes, values and beliefs are required to move any combination of these agendas", as well as the tool kit's claim that "only by changing the attitudes and behaviors of community members will it be possible to reach the National Education Goals", reveal the true character of this initiative. The attitude of the educational elite at large may be summed up this way: "Those who oppose our agenda are not seeing things correctly. We must change their beliefs". Such an approach is socialist and totalitarian in nature. This truth is reaffirmed by Emanuel Josephson in his book, Rockefeller Internationalist, The Man Who Misrules The World (1917) in which he said,

"The Carnegie - Rockefeller influence is bad. In two generations they can change the minds of the people to make them conform to the cult of Rockefeller, or the cult of Carnegie, rather than the fundamental principles of American democracy."

Josephson's prediction is now history.

"Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate.... After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community....The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided.... It does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1840).

"My own view [and the Rockefellers'] is this country has seized its last chance." Marc Tucker, President of Carnegie's National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) and Bill Clinton's friend.

Coming up: Part II - The President's Speech, Cradle to Grave Human Resource Development

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