Throw More Money into Government-Controlled Education

Government failed miserably with Head Start but the taxpayers' memories are short. Sec. Duncan wants to throw $1 billion more to the Title I program to low-income school districts with no guarantee that it will make a bit of difference in the education outcomes of those students, particularly since curricula is dictated by the wicked Common Core standards with the nonsensical and unnecessarily complex math, collectivist indoctrination, and proselytizing for Islam. No wonder teachers with a conscience are retiring early after 22 years of teaching, nobody wants to jump through political correctness hoops, they want to teach traditional curriculum that made Americans successful before the Department of Education came into being and before Bill Gates decided to change it into "Conformity Core" Standards. Government intrusion into education is not a formula for success. Parents, teachers, and even some administrators have no idea how the data mining of their children is going to be used by third parties who will purchase the information. The start-up company, Knewton, has gathered information on 4 million children. Politico reports, "Students are tracked as they play online games, watch videos, read books, take quizzes and run laps in physical education. The monitoring continues as they work on assignments from home, with companies logging children's locations, homework schedules, Web browsing habits and, of course, their academic progress."

Knewton, according to parents, administrators, and teachers, collects more data on our children than the NSA. When parents protested against data-mining, Knewton's CEO Jose Ferreira responded that "concerns are overblown," he was helping them learn. He asked, "Is it simply that they don't want a for-profit company to map their kids' minds? If not, why not? They'd rather the NSA have it? What, you trust government?" Knewton, which advertises, "The world's most innovative learning companies use Knewton technology to boost student achievement," has the following partners:

• Santillana (Spain and Latin America)
• Wizard (Brazil)
• Sesameworkshop ("The Electric Company")
• Elsevier (scientific, technological, and medical information)
• Gyldendal (Norway)
• Sanoma Learning (Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Poland, and Sweden)
• Malmberg (Netherlands)
• Sebit (U.S., Europe, Turkey, Middle East, Asia)
• Adaptive Curriculum
• Microsoft
• Cengage Learning (Management and Sociology)
• Gutenberg Technology (My Ebook Factory)
• Lelivresscolaire.fr (French grammar, English grammar, math, geography, and history)
• Cambridge University Press
• MacMillan Education
• Triumph Learning (Common Core standards)
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Wiley Global Education (Australia and New Zealand)
• Pearson (Common Core standards and testing)

There is nothing wrong with helping children learn by traditional methods but there is no evidence that using technology to spy on children's habits and their thought-pattern is actually helping them learn. Technology can be used nefariously to implant thoughts and ideas into impressionable minds, brainwashing them into the ideology of the government's choice. It is impossible to demand "equity" in schools because not all schools are created equal and not all children are created equal, some have stronger musical intelligence, some logical, some are naturalists, some are mathematically gifted, some learn best kinesthetically, and some have stronger linguistic intelligence. Howard Gardner identifies 8 types of different intelligences in children, some are weaker and some are stronger in each child. A student coming from a small and remote school in Alaska cannot pick up where he/she left off when moving to another state. In many places, one cannot find an entire class of students ready, willing, and able to take advanced chemistry nor the teacher qualified to offer such a course. Perhaps it can be offered through the web but students need hands-on experimentation in a lab. Germany has "sorted out" information on children and their families in order to address allegiance problems to the state. "Children were used to control their parents by being encouraged to report what they did and said. Hitler realized that older people would be less enthusiastic about his ideas, so he made every effort to win the minds of the next generation." The control of people's ideas was introduced in the form of a gradual change. The brainwashing/education included:

• Nursery rhymes and songs were "about bloodshed, violence, and anti-Semitism
• No foreign languages for girls and only math related to cooking and childcare
• Textbooks were revisionist versions of Nazi propaganda
• Lesson included only Nazi ideals and ideology
• Girls were taught about church, 4 children, and cooking, no makeup, no expensive clothes, long hair worn in a bun
• Propaganda lessons about the ideal German family
• Boys studied math and science and outdoor activities/sports
• Membership in Youth Organizations was compulsory

Then there is the Virginia Goochland County Board of Education that was swamped by angry parents who wanted the repeal of a policy that would have forced 14-year-old home-schooled children to be interrogated by the school board about their religious beliefs. Virginia's religious exemption statute gives parents the right to control the upbringing and education of their children. What are some of these 600 plus data points collected on each child? When religion and political affiliation of your parents, or whether they voted or not in the last election are included in the data-mining, it is worrisome. Suppose you know this information and your next onscreen lesson is about the non-existence of God, or that Republicans are mean and hateful people who stand in the way of progress and success of the downtrodden, conservatives are enemies because they object to redistribution of wealth, government control, and high government taxation, then your child's obstacles will be overcome by training them to accept government control of their lives through subliminal messages included in their on screen lessons. Government curricula can thus make children believe whatever they want them to believe through subtle and subliminal brainwashing.