Dr. Dennis Cuddy -- The Global Economy and School-To-Work

THE GLOBAL ECONOMY AND SCHOOL-TO-WORK

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
June 2, 2008
NewsWithViews.com

One of the power elite's most powerful control devices is to get nations in debt, as they did with Britain via the Bank of England in the late 17th century. When the American colonies started printing their own money in the 1760s, Britain began a campaign against them (e.g., Stamp Act). This resulted in the American Revolution, which caused the power elite to plot how it could destroy this new independent republic.

Philip Freneau in AMERICAN MUSEUM (July 1792) explained that the power elite's "grand nostrum" was the creation of debt "made as big as possible, as perpetual as possible, in as few hands as possible." The Bank of the United States would be a key component of this effort, and when President Andrew Jackson made economic war on the Second Bank of the United States (not renewing its charter), an assassin attempted to kill him. The assassin failed but said he had powerful backers in Europe.

These backers, the power elite, wanted to break apart the U.S. According to John Lothrop Motley (U.S. Minister to Austria, 1861-1867) in a letter to his mother on March 15, 1861, "The great conspiracy to establish the Southern Republic" was concocted not long after the attempted assassination of President Jackson, and was "brought to maturity by (President) Buchanan's Cabinet Ministers" about twenty years later.

On November 21, 1864 President Lincoln wrote to William Elkin that "the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war." Lincoln was assassinated less than five months later.

U.S. Minister Motley wrote in an 1861 letter to THE LONDON TIMES that the great conspiracy was "to establish a great Gulf Empire, including (in addition to the southern U.S. states) Mexico, Central America, Cuba and other islands, with unlimited cotton fields and unlimited negroes." Today, the power elite's plan has been modified to include "unlimited Hispanics" working for low wages, as power elite member Cecil Rhodes' secret plan involved "absorbing the wealth of the world" in Rhodes' own words. To do this, the power elite has created a global economy via GATT, etc. They also plan to link regional economic arrangements like NAFTA together with other regional arrangements. Regional economic integration will be followed by global economic integration. As Peter Drucker said in POST-CAPITALIST SOCIETY (1993): "These regions will not replace the nation-state. But they will sideline it…. The economic integration of the three countries (U.S., Canada and Mexico) into one region is proceeding so fast that it will make little difference whether the marriage is sanctified legally or not."

The power elite also controls politicians of both major political parties in the U.S. via financial support. Political candidates this year are emphasizing technology in education so that students can get high-paying high-tech jobs to compete in the global economy. This sounds good, but it won't work because there are only so many high-tech jobs to be had. Remember what happened when students were advised to become computer programmers? India produced computer programmers who worked for less, and many American computer jobs were outsourced. You can now see many former computer programmers in unemployment lines or bagging groceries.

Here's what will happen to a child beginning school in the U.S. today. He'll first receive a general education because we want well-rounded students who learn math and science but also who appreciate art, music, literature, and who know about history and government, etc. We know he'll be dumbed down, though, because a recent survey by Common Core found that 57% of 17-year-olds didn't know the Civil War occurred between 1850 and 1900! Around grade 8, he'll be asked to choose a skill path, but he'll be told he can change paths later because we value the freedom to choose one's profession.

Compare that to a child who enters school in China with over 1.2 billion people, four times the population of America. There is a town in China today that specializes in neckties. The people there are becoming experts in this field. The schools beginning in kindergarten will emphasize reading, math, etc., all in terms of their relevance to the manufacture of neckties. The same will happen to other Chinese towns. They will specialize their schools to become producers of highly skilled workers in everything from tires and clothing to biotech products and telecommunications equipment. And these workers will produce these products at far less expense than American workers because salaries will be far lower. The Communist dictators of China will see to it.

How can Americans compete with that? We can't. If American states try to do the same as China, then what happens? Does each of the fifty states compete against each other in the training of highly skilled workers in all fields? Then what happens to state X if state Y produces better workers in a particular field? Do all the states agree upon which state will specialize in each field? Then are all children in a particular state trained in that field? If the answer to the last question is "no" because that state wants well-rounded citizens free to choose their own career paths, then that state will be at a disadvantage against other states and countries that specialize in certain occupational fields. The power elite loves this because they see people only as worker bees.

However, America used to stand for something besides economic gain. We used to stand for a set of values such as freedom, but the power elite's control of the global economy will destroy that. The following is a brief history of school-to-work (STW), which is the current educational undertaking in the U.S. preparing us eventually to become like China or face economic ruin in the global economy.

Plank 10 of Marx's COMMUNIST MANIFESTO provides for a "combination of education with industrial production," and in 1913 when Stalin was having difficulty getting his Marxist cadres into key positions for the "class struggle," he described a "regionalism" strategy (e.g., NAFTA, later) against nationalism and used the slogan "workers of the world unite."

Self-described American Communist Scott Nearing in THE NEXT STEP (1922) described how a world economic organization (e.g., GATT and World Trade Organization, later) would be the first step toward world government, but first in THE NEW EDUCATION (1915) he applauded "breaking away from the three Rs" and Cincinnati's "halftime in shop, halftime in school" system. In the October 12, 1917 NEW YORK TIMES, Judge John Hylan wrote about a letter by Dr. Abraham Flexner (secretary of the Rockefeller General Education Board and formerly of the Carnegie Foundation) describing a "secret conference" of New York City board of education members to elect a board president who would institute a type of STW/OBE (outcome-based education) program. Hylan became mayor of New York and "pitched out the Rockefeller agents,… the kind of education the coolies receive in China… for the mill and factory." William McAndrew, who had been in charge of the "new-program schools," admiringly referred to the "polytechnic institute" (which the Soviets would adopt).

After Hylan's expose of this STW/OBE plan, it wasn't until the "Eight-Year Study" (1933-1941) funded by the Carnegie Corporation and Rockefeller's General Education Board that another major attempt was evident. Research director for the study's Evaluation Staff was Ralph Tyler, who would later conduct a project for the Carnegie Corporation that would in 1969 become the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). One of Tyler's associates in the "Eight-Year Study" was "values clarification" originator Louis Raths, and another associate was Estonian "change agent" Hilda Taba.

In the early 1950s, Ford Foundation president H. Rowan Gaither told a congressional committee research director Norman Dodd that they were operating under directives from the White House "to make every effort to so alter life in the U.S. as to make possible a comfortable merger with the Soviet Union." And in 1960, HEW published SOVIET EDUCATION PROGRAMS stating "wherever we went, we felt the pulse of the Soviet government's drive to educate and train a new generation of technically skilled citizens…. USSR plans to bring all secondary school children into labor education and training experiences through the regular school program."

By 1970, Americans were coming to be thought of as "human capital" (note Lester Thurow's 1970 book, INVESTMENT IN HUMAN CAPITAL), and in 1971 UNESCO's secretariat asked George Parkyn to "outline a possible model" for an education system that resulted in TOWARDS A CONCEPTUAL MODEL OF LIFE-LONG EDUCATION describing how students would choose a vocational field and work part-time and receive "certificates" of educational attainment.

Two years later, Michael Lerner (who would become an important advisor to Hillary Clinton) wrote THE NEW SOCIALIST REVOLUTION, proclaiming: "Education will be radically transformed in our socialist community'. The main emphasis will be on learning how to… live and work collectively…. The next level is learning some series of skills for one's first set of jobs." And in Vladimir Turchenko's THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION AND THE REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION (1976) imported into the U.S. is described "linking instruction with productive labor."

In the early 1980s, neither the Soviet nor German socialist education systems had been adopted nationwide in the U.S., as Prof. Eugene Boyce in THE COMING REVOLUTION IN EDUCATION (1983) wrote that "in the Communist ideology… education is tied directly to jobs…. No such direct controlled relationship between education and jobs exists in democratic countries." However, in 1985 two things happened. At the beginning of the year, the Carnegie Corporation gave $600,000 to establish the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy; and later that year the Carnegie Corporation negotiated the Soviet-American Exchange Agreement for the U.S. government, whereby Soviet educators became involved in planning curricula for some U.S. schools. In the Winter 1987/1988 ACTION IN TEACHER EDUCATION, Professors Martin Haberman and James Collins wrote in "The Future of the Teaching Profession" that "schooling is now seen primarily as job training and, for this reason, quite comparable to schooling in non-democratic societies. Once education is redefined as a personal good and as emphasizing preparation for the world of work as its first purpose, our schools can appropriately be compared with those of the U.S.S.R."

The next year, the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE, formerly the Carnegie Forum) with Marc Tucker as president was asked to help in developing the National Education Goals upon which "America 2000" and "Goals 2000" would be based. Then in June 1990, NCEE (with board members Hillary Clinton and David Rockefeller, Jr.) produced AMERICA'S CHOICE: HIGH SKILLS OR LOW WAGES? (proposing a "Certificate of Initial Mastery"), which greatly influenced the establishment of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) by the Department of Labor. In September, POLYTECHNICAL EDUCATION: A STEP (funded by the U.S. Department of Education) by Robert Beck was published, stating: "The Soviet Union… has developed aa curriculum known as polytechnical education… rooted in Marxist-Lenninist ideology…. The German Democratic Republic has accomplished a good deal with its polytechnical education…. The ideology of Soviet education has blessed the melding of restructured academic studies… and the preparation of students for skilled labor…. That at this should be carefully monitored for possible adaptation in American public education is not a farfetched idea." (POLYTECHNICAL EDUCATION: A STEP was published by the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at the University of California at Berkeley just three months after AMERICA'S CHOICE: HIGH SKILLS OR LOW WAGES?, a report by the NCEE's Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce which included Laura D'Andrea Tyson, the director of research for the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California at Berkeley, who has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and would become chairman of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors.)

In June of the next year (1991), the SCANS report recommended establishing a national system for certifying competency, similar to Germany's "certificate of mastery." Also in 1991, Carnegie Foundation chairman David Hornbeck's co-edited HUMAN CAPITAL AND AMERICA'S FUTURE was published describing an approach he admitted might be subject to the charge of "big brotherism."

On August 2, 1992, Assistant Labor Secretary Roberts Jones announced that the federal government was preparing to deny aid and student loans to schools that failed to prepare their graduates with the skills needed to compete for jobs in the modern workplace, saying "this is a touchy subject." Shortly thereafter, Marc Tucker wrote a letter to Hillary Clinton saying he had just come from David Rockefeller, Jr.'s office where they were "celebrating" Bill Clinton's election as president, as that will allow putting into place their agenda to integrate education into a national system of "human resources development… from cradle to grave… (for) everyone…. We propose that Bill (Clinton) take a leaf out of the German book" (regarding required) "apprenticeship slots." Relevant to this, however, was a paper commissioned by the School-To-Work Transition Team in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) within the U.S. Department of Education (one of a set of commissioned papers published by OERI in June 1994). In this paper, "Determinants and Consequences of Fit Between Vocational Education and Employment in Germany," Professors James Witte and Arne Kalleberg stated that "the German apprenticeship system is so expensive…. Germany's contemporary vocational system is closely linked to its secondary educational system. At age ten, students are tracked in a rigid educational system…. After initial assignment, movement between tracks is rare."

NCEE board member Hillary Clinton had been promoting the Certificate of Initial Mastery (concept), and in April 1994 NCEE's Tucker had published THE CERTIFICATE OF INITIAL MASTERY: A PRIMER. The same year, Sen. Ted Kennedy's School-To-Work Opportunities Act was passed, and a national campaign was underway to promote the concept. In 1996, Miss America Shawntel Smith in Michigan spoke about "our investment in human capital. That's what School-To-Work is all about."

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Currently, students have the most to say about what career paths they take. But as "human capital," their paths increasingly will be directed by society via "STW/OBE educational programs so that they "demonstrate certain skills." A leading OBE consultant today, Harvard University Professor Howard Gardner (who was involved in the infamous MACOS project) wrote FRAMES OF MIND: THE THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES in which he proposed that "ultimately, the educational plans that are pursued need to be orchestrated across various interest groups of the society so that they can, taken together, help the society to achieve its larger goals. Individual profiles must be considered in the light of goals pursued by the wider society; and sometimes, in fact, individuals with gifts in certain directions must nonetheless be guided along other, less favored paths, simply because the needs of the culture are particularly urgent in that realm at that time." Student "profiles" are an important part of certain STW initiatives, with employers having continued access to these as part of a permanent file on all individuals who are now considered to be "lifelong learners." In Communist China, the file is called a "dangan" and describes the value of the individual ("human capital") to the State. Gardner also wrote TO OPEN MINDS: CHINESE CLUES TO THE DILEMMA OF CONTEMPORARY EDUCATION. If Americans aren't careful, STW/OBE educational programs will pave the way toward an ominous techno-feudal world of the future.

Dennis Laurence Cuddy, historian and political analyst, received a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (major in American History, minor in political science). Dr. Cuddy has taught at the university level, has been a political and economic risk analyst for an international consulting firm, and has been a Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education.

Cuddy has also testified before members of Congress on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Cuddy has authored or edited twenty books and booklets, and has written hundreds of articles appearing in newspapers around the nation, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He has been a guest on numerous radio talk shows in various parts of the country, such as ABC Radio in New York City, and he has also been a guest on the national television programs USA Today and CBS's Nightwatch.