DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, LOOK FOR YOURSELF!   BY DAVE MUNDY:

 

Don’t take my word for it: look for yourself

March 18, 1998

A government-managed economy. Restrictions on who can work and where they can work, thereby controlling their standard of living. Limitations on the free expression of opinion. Human beings (including your children) are classified as "resources" of the State, subject to removal from the home when a parent doesn't conform to government-sanctioned beliefs.

Nazi Germany? Communist China? Soviet Russia? Fundamentalist Iran? A Jerry Falwellian America?

Would you believe Texas, 1998?

It's true.

Thanks to our state's participation in the federal School-to-Work (STW) program, control of what your children learn in school is now determined by the Texas Workforce Commission — which officially has authority over the Texas Education Agency — through its 28 regional workforce development boards.

Well, now, wait a minute. We have kids who can't even fill out employment applications. Teaching kids job skills is a good thing, ain't it? They need jobs! And besides, it's only the "religious right" that's fighting this, anyway.

Each regional workforce development board is charged with the task of determining that region's future workforce needs: how many architects, how many auto mechanics, how many ditch-diggers, how many computer technicians. Those figures will then be shipped along to individual school districts to serve as guides for tailoring their individual curriculums — for guidance, you understand, not to be construed as government quotas.

Yet.

The problem with such a grand design is that it's inherently discriminatory. How many jobs in engineering, law, architecture and medicine do you figure they'll need in the lower Rio Grande Valley, or in Houston's Fourth Ward? It would go a long way in explaining why suburban school districts like Katy continue to lead the state in test scores and college-admissions scores.

The edu-crats will argue that all of this is "voluntary." That's a lie. The Texas STW grant says "all" schools "will" participate. The same document says that Texas "will" pursue the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) and Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM) as a replacement for traditional high-school diplomas. Although our elected State Board of Education is yet to officially approve it, many schools — including Katy ISD — are already listing the work-related requirement of STW as one component students can include to receive a Distinguished Achievement Program diploma.

Students who are home-schooled or attend private schools will be forced into compliance by limiting their further educational and career choices. We're already seeing home-schoolers across the nation being denied college admission because they haven't participated in "mandatory volunteerism" and don't take the same tests that public-school students do. Businesses will be encouraged — with the threat of an education tax on businesses — to hire only students with CIMs and CAMs.

This is all, according to the edu-crats, "raising the bar" for students. Well, let's hear what the students think:

"As a junior at Heights High School (in Wichita, Kansas), I took the Work Keys last week," wrote 16-year-old Jenny Potochnik in the Wichita (KN) Eagle. "Then came the floor mopping question. We were instructed by video on how to mop a floor. Then we were given a scenario in which the person mopping the floor did something wrong. We were supposed to say what went wrong. No, I'm NOT kidding!

"There were also questions about refrigerator repair, the installation of electrical outlets, and the inner workings of a vacuum cleaner. I am a high school student, not an appliance repairman or electrician!" she continued. "...are you really so certain that what is being done to reform our schools, right now, will result in greater student learning? Ask my teachers. They are the experts, and they will tell you no."

School-to-Work is the third and final component of the complete transformation of the American education system from its traditional role of imparting a broad base of knowledge to its new role of educating workers for the corporate power structure. Goals:2000 was the first, spurring adoption in the states of "performance-based" curriculum guidelines (the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, in this state). Federalization of health care has also been accomplished in Texas through the 1997 Texas Healthy Kids Corporation, which mandates school-based health clinics; the Clinton Administration's nationalized health-care plan sneaked in through the back door.

Under TEKS/Goals:2000, we have established a two-tiered caste system in education. Only the 20 percent or so of students identified as "gifted and talented" will ever receive enough of an education to pursue noteworthy higher education and college degrees.

With school-based health clinics, we will monitor parental attitudes under the guise of "preventing child abuse." Let's face it, we've become very narrow-minded on the subject — if you're even accused of child abuse, you can never erase the stigma. It's a very effective method of control.

Also effective is the propaganda that only the "religious right" and "social conservatives" are fighting this corporate socialist (that's "fascist," for you political science majors) agenda. After all, who's loonier than a member of the religious right? Of course, the label has been applied to liberal Democrats in California, moderate Constitutionalists in Oregon and Libertarians in Tennessee, in addition to Texas' band of radical Republicans. I personally enjoy being labeled "a tool of the Religious Right," since the only times I've been to church over the last 20 years have been for weddings and funerals.

Unlike the Other Side, however, we won't say, "Take our word for it!" We'll encourage you to look at the evidence for yourself.

That's exactly how each of us did it.