Legacy
The Future is Now
By Karl C. Priest November 5, 2017
A speech was delivered to the West Virginia Education Summit. I asked some friends for their thoughts on a report ('Personalized learning' pitched as alternative to current WV ed methods) about that speech. The friends are all highly intelligent and keenly attuned to what is happening (and has happened) in the Culture War frontline –the education of children. I share below some of the thoughts from three of the friends. To keep it simple, they will be referred to as F1, F2, and F3.
First, some items taken from the news report of the West Virginia speech. Criticizing “the proportion of high school graduates who enter college needing remediation in basic literacy and numeracy, the lady speaker (CEO of iNACOL) argued “that jobs are threatened by future automation.” She also criticized “current prevailing education models” and advocated for “personalized learning’ and the related idea of ‘competency based education’ as superior to current methods of education. She believes that very good teachers can use online education to “help personalize instruction”. To her, personalized learning includes student “choice in what, how, when and where they learn” including “character” and “ethics”. Also, she supported the education buzzwords of “competency or mastery based education.”
To those not informed about what is happening in public education, the speaker’s ideas may not seem too bad. My three friends reveal that those ideas are quite sinister. All of their points are enlightening, but I have bold-fonted some that particularly stood out to me.
F1: The personalized learning track is the terrible trend it is all heading in. The combination of fast-tracking college courses, sync of K-12 CCSS to college courses and entrance, and the do-it-yourself college courses cover several main issues parents are already dropping the ball on.
First- competency based = personalized = outcome-based. No one cares if someone is actually being taught as long as they can show competency in a skill.
If you are taking your own courses on your own time on your own pc, no one knows if you are really competent or if you just guessed at the same things to pass or asked Google for the answers. Yet, do it enough and fast enough and you have a Masters.
Only students in the most important STEM-based tracks are truly judged for competency, because ALL future jobs are related to the real need for real science in biology, nano-tech, future tech, and green energy futures. Nothing else in education matters at this point.
On the finer point of concerns of teacher jobs- they are almost fully shifted to facilitator. The transition will take at least 4 more years, but once done the emphasis will be on technology-based fast tracking.
The consensus is that education is a huge time-waste compared to the better model of computer upgrades. The science is on replacing education with tech-based upgrades via direct brain implants. Sounds crazy, but cannot be ignored any longer. Starting in the early 2020's, you will hear nothing but one report after the next, but the programs will be covered under other clever ideas, programs, and names that are apparently too clever for parents to notice.
F2: My opinion in brief is that while individualized learning sounds wonderful to us, iNACOL does not define individualized learning as we do. Individualized learning as iNACO defines it computer-based, Skinner type learning that merely conditions students to give an acceptable response. The students can’t move on until they give that response. That is not learning!
The term next generation learning in the article alarmed me. I just learned this week about the piloting of Next Generation high schools that are designed to condition students not teach...Next Generation high schools are described by students and parents as prisons. This is where conditioned learning is headed and its purpose is to make students compliant.
Two other points should be made. The “i ” in iNACOL stands for international. The federal control of education established by the Every Student Achieves Act (ESSA) passed into law in 12/15 is necessary to lead the U.S. into internationally controlled education. This has been Bill Gates’ agenda all along - to internationalize our education so we will not resist the mandates of Agenda 21 now Agenda 2030.
The term competent -based education is not one that promotes individual achievement or excellence. A quick reference to the dictionary found these meanings of competent-efficient and capable; acceptable and satisfactory, though not outstanding.
Competency-based learning in our terms means dumbed-down and that is certainly not something we would promote.
Here is a link to iNACOL’s website: https://www.inacol.org/our-work/
F3: First of all, ultimately, no one including the facilitator/teacher will know what the kids are getting since these will be computer-generated IEP's at some point. Each child will have a different expected outcome since with all the data mining, each child is tracked and channeled into a particular work-force training. Remember that the ultimate goal is to prepare the children--whom the educrats term "human capital" for the workforce.
How is that for starters? If you had triplets in the same class, they could each be on a different page with their IEPs.
Who will a parent complain to? One, they will have no documents to prove their concerns and two, the teacher will not be accountable because she couldn't possibly even be aware of what each of many children are learning. She will be nothing more than a state-paid baby-sitter.
The emphasis is now on SEL-- social emotional learning . This could be translated as behavior modification.
In a de-classified document from the Department of Defense from 1963 (“The Effects of Electronic Data Processing in Future Instructional Systems” by Don D. Bushnell). It is short, but you will certainly get the point. Read this carefully. This is what will be done TO the children. Here is the part I wanted you to read especially.
“Another area of potential development in computer applications is the attitude changing machine. Dr. Bertram Raven, in the Psychology Department at the University of California at Los Angeles, is in the process of building a computer based device for changing attitudes. This device will work on the principle that students' attitudes can be changed effectively by using the Socratic method of asking an appropriate series of leading questions logically designed to right the balance between appropriate attitudes and those deemed less acceptable. For instance, after first determining a student's constellation of attitudes through appropriate testing procedures, the machine would calculate which attitudes are out of phase and which of these are amenable to change. If the student was opposed to foreign trade, for example, and a favorable disposition were sought, the machine would select an appropriate series of statements and questions organized to right the imbalance in the student's attitudes.
“The machine, for instance, would have detected that the student liked President Kennedy and was against the spread of communism; therefore, the student would be shown that JFK favored foreign trade and that foreign trade to underdeveloped countries helped to arrest the communist infiltration of these governments. If the student's attitudes toward Kennedy and against communism were sufficiently strong, Dr. Raven would hypothesize that a positive change in attitude toward foreign trade would be effectively brought about by showing the student the inconsistency of his views. There is considerable evidence that such techniques do effectively change attitudes. The question arises: what is the appropriate subject material, or 'attitudes,' in this instance, with which to indoctrinate the student?”
The kids' attitudes will be adjusted to the state (UN) desired standards ---the children will mock a belief in God, accept LGBTQABCD as normal, and be perfect little Global citizens.
Raven appears to still be alive. I read several documents about him but this is a quick summary from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertram_Raven): “His current interests have centered particularly on interpersonal influence and social power relationships which developed out of his original work on social power. That early work has since been expanded to a broader reaching Power/Interaction Model of Interpersonal Influence. The model and theory has been applied to organizational power relationships, health psychology (e.g., compliance in health care), close relationships, educational settings. Historical and political analyses have applied the model to power confrontations between political figures and religion as a mechanism of social control. A Power/Interaction Inventory has been developed which will allow for cross-cultural comparisons.”
So...in 1963, Bushnell was paid by the Department of Defense to explain how computers could be used to change the attitudes of children. With the educrats hope of one computer per child, their dreams are in the process of being fulfilled. Their hope isn’t that the children will acquire academic knowledge...but that their attitudes will be changed to the position desired by the globalist elite.
Take a look at Knewton-Educational Datapalooza! (More about Knewton is HERE.)
Thank you, my three friends! You have made clear the current weapons of the Enemy in the front line of the Culture War.
In the Culture War, the technology strategy began in 1963 as described by Bushnell. The theology strategy began in 1974, but was temporarily blocked. Now, the theology of mindfulness is sweeping schools and society. Technology is unstoppable as it engulfs the lives of children.
The Church must face the facts that the future is here.
ADDENDUM
Computer Adaptive Testing (CAT)
A core feature of Smarter Balanced assessments is that they are customized for each student for a more accurate measurement for every student. To accomplish this, the computer-based test adjusts the difficulty of questions throughout the assessment based on the student’s response. If a student answers a question correctly, the next question will be harder; if a student answers incorrectly, the next question will be easier. This system is called computer adaptive testing, and it is part of the summative (end-of-year) assessments. (http://www.smarterbalanced.org/assessments/testing-technology/)
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