Caller: John In Tennessee
We are joined this Saturday by Ms. Robin Eubanks, the creative force behind Invisible Serfs Collar.
Invisible Serfs Collar
"a group which desires to be strong has no use for the man who claims to think for himself."
My name is Robin Eubanks and I am an attorney. Not the sort who represents or defends people in a courtroom. I figure things out. Usually about what drives a business or industry, how it makes its money, and what the risks are to its revenue model.
I started off in Big Law doing corporate work and then helped start a legal department for a small healthcare company that grew to be a New York stock-exchange traded company. Healthcare turned into an excellent background for my current work in education as government regulation and special privileges drive the everyday dynamics of what raises money and creates costs. A background in Law is also excellent preparation for determining precisely what the terms commonly used actually mean. Especially in an industry that is consciously using language to hide the actual intended goals. My experience allowed me to recognize that education in the US and globally has been, for decades, engaged in a massive Newspeak (as in George Orwell’s 1984) campaign that creates a public illusion on what is being promised and what is coming to the schools and classrooms that are this country’s future. I know what the words and terms really mean to an Ed insider and how it differs from the common public perception. I have documented what was really behind the reading wars and math wars. I have pulled together what the real intended Common Core implementation looks like. And it is wildly different from the PR sales job used to gain adoption in most of the states.
For me the English language is both a sword and a shield. I have documented what is really going on, written a book describing how and why education became a weapon, and now we are going to talk about what the real Common Core implementation looks like in various communities in the US in this busy Summer of 2012.
Because this time I have treated the American taxpayer as if each of you were the client and gathered everything we need to know going forward. If you want to think of Common Core through the image of the Titanic hitting that iceberg, this blog’s purpose this summer is to slow us down so we can negotiate the icefield in the daylight with accurate information and make it home safely. I do not want to be left describing why we sunk. If we can avoid the iceberg the book can then get us safely to the kind of schools we really need and the 21st century economy that will allow as many of us as possible to prosper just as far as hard work and imagination will take us. It’s what made America great in the past. Unfettered by government seeking to restrict what any American can know or do, we can prosper again.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/locusts-of-the-mind-boring-gaping-holes-altering-wiring-and-living-on-our-dime/
Invisible Serfs Collar
Invisible Serfs Collar
Locusts of the Mind–Boring Gaping Holes, Altering Wiring, and Living on Our Dime
You know Mind Arson is one of my favorite terms for describing just what a genuine knowledge desert Transformational OBE (under its various names) or systems thinking are in a K-12 classroom. And how emotionally intrusive. But it misses the whole angle of these educators being deliberately brought in by the accreditation agencies to push the John Dewey political vision on unsuspecting and uncooperative school districts wanting to return to neighborhood schools after years of busing. Or on suburban districts with a history of solid academics for those students wanting to soak up the knowledge and skills created and cultivated by the Best Minds of the Past. Gypsy Principals and Gypsy Supers caught some of that will push anything and ask no questions if there is a lucrative promotion in it. But the phrase Locusts of the Mind really captures both and it’s a reminder of how these educators move profitably (for them. It’s gradually bankrupting us, morally AND financially) across states in deliberate pushes of ever more intense Mind Arson and bring in the same expensive vendors over and over again.
Would it surprise you to know that many of the most toxic ideas we have discussed somehow miraculously all come together for an SEL campaign called Responsive Classroom for elementary students? I mean what are the odds of it being a coincidence? What are the odds of everyone reconnecting because they are each functioning as different components of our old nemesis, Transformational OBE? In addition to the stealth capabilities of such a break-up, think of all the greater possibilities for many retired educators to supplement their taxpayer paid pensions by joining one of these vendors as a consultant. And you can bet this lucrative employment after retirement opportunities to capture even more taxpayer dollars are simply not available for anyone who showed a refusal to play along with this internal mental insurrection ploy while still on the official government payroll. See how it works? Being a talented, lecturing, purveyor of knowledge and real skills in the classroom vs an Insurrectionist Administrator is the employment decision that keeps on haunting everyone. Even after retirement.
Responsive Classroom came to my attention when a Toledo, Ohio newspaper mentioned that teachers, administrators and “even a member of the school board studied … a philosophy called social emotional learning, which focuses on school climate and student behavior.” Now longtime readers know I have stood on my tippie-toes and hollered via the Internet all summer that SEL and altering fundamental student values and attitudes are in fact the real focus of what is coming to schools and classrooms via the now openly-acknowledged CCSSI ruse. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/how-social-and-emotional-learning-as-the-primary-focus-is-coming-in-all-the-windows/ is the first of many posts detailing the extent of the intentional holistic redesign of each student’s personality in lieu of non-relevant knowledge like what led to the US Civil War or World War 2.
So for us SEL is more than a “philosophy” and we are not the least bit surprised to hear the dreaded words “positive behavior intervention programs.” Probably the NEA’s Purple America will be along too as it is Ohio. But what was so telling is who shows up when you actually look into Responsive Classroom, a Massachusetts-based company. There is the vice president of Academic Affairs at Bank Street College of Ed in NYC where Bill Ayers got his ed degree http://billayers.wordpress.com/biographyhistory/. And the managing director of Peter Senge’s Society for Organizational Learning to make sure systems theory and sustainability get their due emphasis in the SEL Responsive Classroom. Probably will make sure the SEL finds that Blind Spot that unconsciously guides human behavior. Oh, and a consultant from Cambridge Education to make sure the UNESCO Quality Assurance vision of just basic skills for all and no transmission of any knowledge likely to build up an Axemakers abstract logical mind.
There are others but the most intriguing to me was the executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility. Which unfortunately for us is not an altruistic group that works at soup kitchens and builds houses for the homeless. http://esrnational.org/ Nor does it go by its full name when it is brought into a school as part of a turnaround effort. You will just think it is some company called esr that does academic turnarounds, not a company with a preemptive positive behavioral program for middle and high schoolers. Just imagine your child can now have preemptive PBIS monitoring him or her for continuous improvement all through K-12 with all that data flowing to districts and the state and the national Data Quality Campaign. And people used to fret over Social Security Numbers as intrusive.
Back to the Responsive Classroom and the miracle of getting so many advocates of Dewey’s change the child political curriculum conveniently in one place. I wonder where they go for Board retreats? Let’s see how many of the RC fundamental principles you agree with:
1. The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
2. How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content go hand in hand. (Note: If you adhere to the Marxist theory of the mind you want all learning to be physical activity or vocational in nature. Marxists deplore and deny rational thought as too reminiscent in a belief in a human soul.)
3. The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction. (This is essentially the Marxist BEST theory that denies that individuals have an innate mental disposition and aptitudes and holds that all knowledge comes from the physical environment and interacting with others.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/real-change-will-require-new-values-and-new-ways-of-thinking-or-social-engineering-is-hard/ is one place that describes BEST. This is also the view that permeates the Communitarian philosophy that is so embedded in Common Core’s definition of Career Ready).
4. To be successful academically and socially, children need a set of social skills: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control. (You can ponder the manipulation possibilities of those aims in a classroom led by a teacher who has been trained or coerced into believing education is no longer to be about transmitting facts).
5. Knowing the children we teach–individually, culturally, and developmentally–is as important as knowing the content we teach. (In a movement pushing for Critical Race Theory in the classroom, you can just imagine the utter nonsense the teacher will have had foisted on her to then push on to the students).
6. Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children’s education. (Now you and I know that few parents want this SEL focus. This outreach simply makes the school the home based for political organizing of the parents to stroke their sense of grievance and willingness to act as a group. Alinsky’s IAF organizes schools to get at parents.
7. How the adults at school work together is as important as their individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community. (I’d rather have a knowledgeable teacher over one who isn’t but “plays nice with others” any day. This is just a reminder of how much the entire concept of the individual and especially its legitimacy is under assault via education. ALL individuals. Child, adolescent, or adult.
So that is the sort of program that is coming to your neighborhood school and classroom at great expense in the name of CCSSI, student achievement, soft skills, an anti-bullying campaign, or a federally-funded school turnaround. Changing the student becomes the whole point of education. I will close this post with a deeply troubling story from this weekend that illustrates why recognizing what is going on and stopping it matter so much.
In my other life as a chauffeuring parent to teenage activities I overheard the 9th Graders speculating on why their Honors Lit class had to write a paper on why a Growth Mindset was better than a Fixed Mindset based on an article they had been given called Brainiology. Now I recognized the concepts and knew the other without being told. Already on my Radar of Trouble. They are quite literally based on the Soviet psychological theories designed to create the perfect socialist mindset. They are also the political theories the Marxists.org site deifies Dewey for originally promulgating.
I had been disturbed that was what teachers were to be taught to use on students. But making students directly imbibe and then write about in a graded paper with no one knowing or acknowledging their true nature?
That’s the sort of classroom practices and policies that get imposed by Locusts of the Mind Principals and Supers and Vendors seeking their next promotion or lucrative contract in the Impose Dewey’s Vision No Matter What onslaught. In a suburban 9th Grade Honors Lit class in the first few weeks of school. What will they be pushing by Christmas?
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/didnt-the-president-just-admit-ccssi-was-a-ruse-to-change-classroom-interactions/
Invisible Serfs Collar
Didn’t the President Just Admit CCSSI was a Ruse to Change Classroom Interactions?
CCSSI is the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Nominally state-led and thus constitutional, CCSSI is an initiative pushed and embraced by the Obama Administration to supposedly create consistent areas of content knowledge for students that will no longer vary from state to state. That’s the rhetoric and political story being sold to parents and taxpayers and school boards and legislators and members of Congress. About 45 states and the District of Columbia have officially adopted CCSSI. Generally to get and keep federal funds. In my previous post I pointed out that the Hewlett Foundation had acknowledged that CCSSI was really just an excuse to alter classroom assessments, curriculum, and forms of instruction and classroom interaction. Hewlett, of course, as a major education funder, gets invited to meetings not open to mere taxpayers. We will have to take their word for it but it does fit with the known facts we have systematically uncovered.
Long-time readers of this blog know I have been showing all summer how the real implementation coming to a classroom near you looks much different and is dominated by practices intentionally engaging feelings and emotions. Plus policies attempting to alter student values, attitudes, and beliefs. Especially with respect to shifting to a non-fossil fuel new planned economy around Sustainability and altering the traditional respect for the legitimacy of the individual in Western thought. The Common Core implementation we have tracked is full of the communitarian ethos that the individual submit to the consensus of the group and its beliefs about the Common Good.
I created this blog to try to get that vitally important information widely disseminated in time since the implementation begins this school year. That’s 3 weeks ago in some districts. Last week President Obama gave a speech at a Nevada high school where he seemed to say that federal officials led the common-standards fight. He appeared to want to take credit for it. Now that would create Constitutional problems if true so an Ed Week reporter, Catherine Gewertz, swooped in to apparently try to put the President’s statements in a less troubling context. So she wrote a story called “Common Standards: Blaming and Bragging in Presidential Campaign” and made the issue of the federal involvement far worse. Her extended quote tied President Obama far more tightly to the altered consciousness form of education reform than she ever dreamed she was doing when she went for the save. Here’s why.
What President Obama actually said was this:
“almost every state has now agreed to raise standards for teaching and learning–and that’s the first time it’s happened in a generation.”
Now Catherine Gewertz takes that phrase I bolded “standards for learning and teaching” and immediately treats it multiple times as synonymous with the “common-standards” and the “common-standards” movement. I think that is true. But the “common-standards” she and President Obama are talking about is not CCSSI. You see “standards for teaching and learning” is what we lawyers call a term of art. It has a precise meaning. Moreover, it is a precise meaning that was created in Chicago about the time of the President’s reference to “in a generation.” It was created to be a national template for change. And President Obama is linked to its creation via its primary funder, the Joyce Foundation, where he served on the Board from 1994 to 2002. He is also linked through leading the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, another listed funder.
And no I am not going off some List of Contributors and jumping to conclusions because of the time periods involved and Board membership. You see when I was following up on the curriculum and instructional practices used at a paradigm shifting California high school supposedly redesigned for the 21st Century, I noticed first that the announced School Profile looked just like the IB Learner Profile except it wasn’t an IB school. So IB clearly fit into a broader education template. Then the school itself said they wanted all faculty to adhere to the curriculum and instructional practices laid out in a particular cited book, Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America’s Schools. The school cited the Second Edition published in 1998 so that is the one I tracked down used. As an aside to show its continuing relevance for what is coming to your schools and classrooms, I noticed that the Fourth Edition came out in February 2012.
There in the Preface is the whole history of “Best Practice” (and the “generous grant” from Joyce) and how it is a means of altering the nature of the curriculum and the types of instruction. What the book calls the “day-to-day teaching and learning” that needed to change “key classroom activities and practices that embody a new paradigm.” What the book calls Best Practice or “standards for teaching an learning” was supposed to create “the strongest and most enduring school renewal in this century.” If that sounds like it harkens back to John Dewey’s vision, it does.
“What is recommended across all subjects can only be called a neo-progressive transformation virtually all the authoritative voices in each field are calling for schools that are student-centered, active, experiential, democratic, collaborative, and yet rigorous and challenging.”
Those listed classroom Criteria are basically the “common-standards” movement. Which is why companies like Cambridge Education build their revenue stream around pushing this vision in the classroom in unlucky cutting edge Best Practice districts like Charlotte-Meck and now Fulton County in Georgia as we discussed in this post http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/you-mean-i-cant-teach-because-the-economy-should-not-grow/ . The book proceeds to lay out the reading practices now known as Whole Language which created the Reading Wars in the 90s and the math practices and policies that would ignite the Math Wars. Which were erroneously treated by most parents as distinct, unrelated controversies. As the 2nd edition, the book even complains about how the “conservative” California governor and “his appointed school board” had “recently eviscerated” the state’s innovative Best Practices math curriculum to “return to computation-based, skill-and-drill mathematics curriculum.”
Oh My. The horrors. So what we are implementing in the name of the Common Core is actually what was so controversial in the past except this time the new methods to measure “progress” were funded first. Plus as we saw in the previous post, Critical Race Theory (by name) is now being explicitly directed into the mandated classroom dialogues so we can expressly create Social Change Agents in the classroom. The deliberate cultivation of feelings and emotions completely saturates Best Practice precisely because that level of unconscious engagement is more lasting and memorable and altering.
But no where for federal government officials to be. Or any elected official or bureaucrat or district super or principal. Not even an elected President. Or a caring Teacher unless the reasons for such emotionally intrusive and manipulative interventions are widely known and agreed to.
President Obama’s advisors may have come into office infamously declaring they were “ready to rule.” But we are not subjects yet and this level of federal intrusion into the psyche should be Out of Bounds.
engrenage
Noun
engrenage m (plural engrenages)
1. gear (a wheel with grooves)
2. (figuratively) inescapable sequence of events
Invisible Serfs Collar
Gypsy Principals, Gypsy Supers, and Engrenage: 3 More Superb Things to Know
{Excerpt only - read entire article at above link}
And engrenage? I borrowed that new to me but most excellent term from a British think tank worried about the piecemeal steps that together shut down economic growth in the name of maybe, possibly, influencing the environment. Radical ed reform in the US is based on changing the nature of our economy so I have to keep my eye on Green Growth as well. Lucky me. They define engrenage as gearing. It is the process by which a body, local, state, national, or international, racks up laws or policies or regulations that appear separate and stand alone and harmless on their own. They actually fit though perfectly with other measures also being adopted. You end up with something you would never have gone along with if you could have seen the whole picture.
The whole picture I operate from since I have the guidebook. Transformational OBE presented itself under its own name in the 90s. The popular outcry prevented the adoption in the US although it did get adopted in other countries then. It’s back under new names and pieces, engrenage style. Being pushed and adopted by Gypsy Supers and their cooperating Gypsy Principals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delict
Delict
In civil law, a delict is an intentional or negligent act which gives rise to a legal obligation between parties even though there has been no contract between them. Due to the large number of civil law systems in the world, it is hard to state any generalities about the concept. Moreover in some civil law countries (e.g.: Italy, Spain) delicts are most serious crimes, similar to felonies in common law countries, whereas in other states (e.g.: France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark), they are crimes of intermediate seriousness (less serious than those termed crimes).
Delict as a willful wrong - Scots law
See also: Delict (Scots law)
In the most narrowly construed sense, delict is a Latin word (delictum = offence, wrong) and a legal term, which, in some civil law systems, signifies a willful wrong, similar to the common law concept of tort though differing in many substantive ways. The law of delicts in civil law countries is usually a general statute passed by the legislature whereas tort law in common law countries arises from case law. In addition, a delict is defined abstractly in terms of infringement of rights whereas in common law, there are many specific types of torts (English terminology).
Delict deals with the righting of legal wrongs in civil law, on the principle of liability for loss caused by failure in the duty of care, whether deliberate or accidental. When considering pursuing a claim under delict, in Scots law, there are three criteria that have to be met; firstly you have to establish that you were owed a duty of care, secondly you have to prove that that duty of care has been breached and lastly you have to show a causal link between the breach of care and the loss you have suffered.
German-speaking countries
By contrast, the civil law of German-speaking countries does not differentiate between delict and quasi-delict in the sense described above. Under German Deliktsrecht, referring to damages arising outside contract, claims to damages can arise from either intentional or negligent infliction of harm. Under § 823 BGB, damages can either be based on harm inflicted either on an object protected by law (Rechtsgut) such as life, health or property, or on the violation of a law protecting a certain legal interest.
South Africa
Main article: South African law of delict
South African law also uses the law of delict as opposed to torts. The South African common law elaborates a set of general principles in terms of which liability for loss is allocated. This should be seen in contrast to the Anglo American common law approach which has distinct tort actions, each with their own peculiar elements which require satisfaction before an action is founded. The delictual elements that have to be satisfied before a claimant can be successful are:
Conduct - which may consist of either a commission (positive action) or an omission (the failure to take required action), though liability for an omission will arise only where there is a duty to act.
Wrongfulness - the conduct complained of must be legally reprehensible. This is usually assessed with reference to the legal convictions of the community.
Fault - save in limited cases where liability is 'strict' (i.e. where neither intention nor negligence is required for liability) once the wrongfulness of the conduct is established, it is necessary to establish whether the person being sued acted intentionally or negligently, either of which is sufficient for liability to attach.
Damage - finally the conduct must have resulted in some form of loss or harm to the claimant in order for them to have a claim. This damage can take the form of patrimonial loss (a reduction in a person's financial position, such as is the case where the claimant incurred medical expenses) or non-patrimonial damages (damages that cannot be related to a person's financial estate, but compensation for something like pain and suffering.)
Causation - the conduct that the claimant complains of must have caused damage, in this regard both factual causation and legal causation are assessed. The purpose of legal causation is to limit the scope of factual causation, if the consequence of the action is too remote to have been foreseen by an objective, reasonable person the defendant will escape liability.
It is possible that a single set of facts may give rise to both a contractual and a delictual claim.
Public policy considerations are evident in the setting of the limits to each of the requirements.
However, § 826 BGB (and the similar Austrian § 1295 Abs 2 ABGB) compare closely to delict. Under this provision, someone who intentionally inflicts harm on another person in a way violating morality (gute Sitten) is liable for damages.
Session of Edinburgh – 1969
Delictual Obligations in Private International Law
(Twenty-sixth Commission, Rapporteur: Mr. Otto Kahn-Freund)
Delicts, Damages ex delicto, Delictual - Equivalent to torts. Damages ex delicto, or delictual damages, are those damages arising from delicts. See ABUSE OF RIGHTS.
Delictual fault refers to a legal obligation arising between people independent of any contractual or other legal relationship between them. Delictual fault arises when one person commits a tort against another person. It is an act productive of obligations that take place between persons judicially who are strangers to each other. Delictual fault is also the intentional or negligent causing of damages.[Hostetler v. W. Gray & Co., 523 So. 2d 1359, 1368 (La.App. 2 Cir. 1988)].
Wordnik
Delictual
Adask’s Law
Fundamental Presumptions
Adask’s Law
Answering For Another
Straight and Crooked Thinking
Straight and Crooked Thinking, first published in 1930 and revised in 1953, is a book by Robert H. Thouless which describes, assesses and critically analyses flaws in reasoning and argument. Thouless describes it as a practical manual, rather than a theoretical one.
Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development:
Our Common Future
Invisible Serfs Collar
When Deep Learning and Systems Thinking Radicalizes the Student, Factual Reality Ceases to Matter
To the student, that is. The problem for society is that factual realities like incentives and consequences and what makes an economy grow and what will make it contract or even implode are still out there. Like gravity, reality and economics and the likely result of giving government officials unrestrained power to make decisions for others will have their way regardless of intentions. Or whether anyone understands them or even believes in them. I wish more educators and politicians and charitable foundation employees involved in all these machinations would remember the wise words with which the eminent economist Ludwig Von Mises closed his epic book Human Action in the wake of the carnage of the Second World War.
Von Mises was writing about the regularity of “phenomena with regard to the interconnectedness of means and ends” in human activities. That’s what he regarded as economic knowledge. You and I would call it the wisdom that helps one successfully navigate daily life.
“The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race.
I am not quoting Von Mises to scare anyone. Well, I guess that is not really true. Think of it as an Impetus Bout of Deliberate Fright. It is time for those of us who are knowledgable about history and economics to speak up and tell those who are not, notably many Principals, Supers, accreditors, professors of sociology or education, and way too many politicians and public and private bureaucrats, that there are unacceptable costs for everyone associated with their planned education policies. Pushing Transformational Outcomes Based Education and its close cousin Systems Thinking and SEL through the schools and classrooms will not be a victimless, lucrative for insiders, Success For All scheme. It will make victims of all of us and the Educrats seem to be the least knowledgable on the likely consequences of their actions and inactions. That means-end correspondence Von Mises was referring to.
Virtually all of the actual curriculum for Common Core I have seen makes Sustainability the focus of classroom activities. And not in the sense of conservation of natural resources and please do not litter. As a connected Swede, Carl Lindberg, put it, the whole point of the UN inspired international Education for Sustainable Development is to “create a feeling of global responsibility” in each individual. Needless to say, teaching young children and adolescents that they are merely parts of a broader community that ultimately encompasses the whole planet via systems thinking is a useful tool to create just such a useful feeling. To cultivate that Senge-Scharmer Blind Spot we discussed here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/second-order-change-why-reform-is-a-misnomer-for-the-real-common-core/ so that each student’s perceptions and future behaviors can be manipulated.
To that manipulation toolbox the educators intend to use to gain Transformative political and social change without our consent, we need to add what the Hewlett Foundation calls Deep Learning Strategies. Deeper Learning is part of the Foundation’s 2010 plan to “equalize education for all students.” This will of course involve a levelling process for the intellectually gifted and involves a high level of ignorance for all but at least it is equitable. And the politicians and bureaucrats will not have to worry about Axemaker Minds pointing out the likely consequences thereby impeding the implementation of theories and planning. And those established businesses need not be as concerned about an Axemaker Mind creating market-disrupting new technology. Of course we will be in the situation of tragic concern Von Mises worried about when too many will remain too ignorant to even have the opportunity to disregard needed knowledge from the past.
This is what Hewlett defines as deeper learning (they really love to bold it too. I suppose to show their enthusiastic embrace). Remember this is all anyone is to get to know and this dovetails perfectly with the well-connected 21st Century Skills push. Almost verbatim. And before you get too excited about the mention of Core Academic Content, let me give you the examples they use:
“Learn about water, oxygen and nitrogen cycles, food webs, and similar topics.”
So the academic content relates to thinking of the world around you as full of systems. The academic content then either relates to Sustainability issues or other “real world challenges” the students will be asked to try to solve. Using their nonexistent base of conceptual knowledge and search engine skills. Hence the push for Relevance as part of the new 3 R’s of the Common Core implementation.
I have already given you the example of core academic content as one of the five key elements and Hewlett’s example. They mention “mastering core academic content” too. Since this comes up all the time with Common Core, I need to point out that “mastering” does not mean knowing. It means applying. No need to stock that conceptual mental hotel with facts. Mastering thus frequently contemplates classwork with the relevant facts presupplied. No need to worry though about bias or propaganda being part of the given facts. It’s not like there is a political purpose associated with the Common Core.
I will tell you the remaining four keys along with Hewlett’s specific examples. I also want to point out that the Hewlett Foundation believes that the purpose of academic content under Common Core is to “understand ecosystems.” Except the deep, emotional understanding being sought for each student is more Paul Ehrlich Newmindedness than Von Mises based in reality. Apparently though that emotional, connected to a New Vision for Future Society element makes for “better retention of content knowledge.” What’s better–Deeply remembered nonsense or slightly forgotten accuracies? I am afraid we are about to find out if we do not act soon.
Here goes:
Think critically and solve complex problems. Examples: Re-create a natural ecosystem in a terrarium. Collect data to understand the interdependence of physical and biological elements.
Work collaboratively. Example: Work in a team to design, build, and monitor the terrarium.
Communicate effectively. Example: Present data and conclusions in writing and to an audience.
Lastly, Learn how to learn independently. Example: Use teacher feedback, test results, and reflection to guide future learning and improve study habits.
Sounds perfectly dismal to me but I can see how this would add up to preventing more Axemaker Minds from developing. And Hewlett matters. They were one of the petitioners behind the socio-cultural learning theory push the Obama Administration officially adopted that we talked about here
And Hewlett’s vision for how to educate low income and minority students so they are essentially primed for the hoped-for Insurrection is embodied in how they and other educators define “Excellence and Equity.”
That will be the next post.
You are not going to like it but it is what is showing up in the suburbs as the New 3 R’s. It also explains the community organizing push we chronicled here
It all fits so well it makes you wonder if there is not an active coordination around a common purpose.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amitai-etzioni/the-crisis-of-american-co_b_1855390.html
Huffington Post
Huffington Post
The Crisis of American Consumerism
By Amitai Etzioni
Some people buy inflatable Santa Clauses, and they put them on the rooftop. You ask if they really need that, they chuckle and say "no, no, of course not." But, when you ask them about flatscreen TVs, nobody chuckles anymore, people feel uncomfortable.
The truth is, we have very limited real needs.
Much of the debate over how to address the economic crisis has focused on a single word: regulation. And it's easy to understand why. Bad behavior by a variety of businesses landed us in this mess -- so it seems rather obvious that the way to avoid future economic meltdowns is to create, and vigorously enforce, new rules proscribing such behavior. But the truth is quite a bit more complicated. The world economy consists of billions of transactions every day. There can never be enough inspectors, accountants, customs officers and police to ensure that all or even most of these transactions are properly carried out. Moreover, those charged with enforcing regulations are themselves not immune to corruption, and hence, they too must be supervised and held accountable to others -- and so on. You can see how regulation cannot by itself resolve the problem. What is needed instead is something far more sweeping: for people to internalize a different sense of how one ought to behave, and act on it because they believe it is right.
The normative values of a culture matter. Regulation is needed when culture fails, but it cannot alone serve as the mainstay of good conduct. But what kind of transformation in our normative culture is called for?
What needs to be eradicated, or at least greatly tempered, is consumerism: the obsession with acquisition that has become the organizing principle of American life. This is not the same thing as capitalism, nor is it the same thing as consumption. To explain the difference, it is useful to draw on Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. At the bottom of this hierarchy are basic creature comforts; once these are sated, more satisfaction is drawn from affection, self-esteem and, finally, self-actualization. As long as consumption is focused on satisfying basic human needs -- safety, shelter, food, clothing, health care, education -- it is not consumerism. But when, on attempts to satisfy these higher needs through the simple acquisition of goods and services, consumption turns into consumerism -- and consumerism becomes a social disease.
The link to the economic crisis should be obvious. A culture in which the urge to consume dominates the psychology of citizens is a culture in which people will do most anything to acquire the means to consume -- working slavish hours, behaving rapaciously in their business pursuits, and even bending the rules in order to maximize their earnings. They will also buy homes beyond their means and think nothing of running up credit-card debt. It therefore seems safe to say that consumerism is, as much as anything else, responsible for the current economic mess.
But consumerism will not just magically disappear from its central place in our culture. It needs to be supplanted by something.
A shift away from consumerism, and toward this something else, would obviously be a dramatic change for American society. But such grand cultural changes are far from unprecedented. Profound transformations in the definition of "the good life" have occurred throughout human history. Before the spirit of capitalism swept across much of the world, neither work nor commerce were highly valued pursuits -- indeed, they were often delegated to scorned minorities such as Jews. For centuries in aristocratic Europe and Japan, making war was a highly admired profession. In China, philosophy, poetry, and brush painting were respected during the heyday of the literati. Religion was once the dominant source of normative culture; then, following the Enlightenment, secular humanism was viewed in some parts of the world as the foundation of society. Such normative change is possible, especially in times of crisis.
To accomplish this sort of change, we do not have to give up on capitalism itself. This position does not call for a life of sackcloth and ashes, nor of altruism. And it does not call on poor people or poor nations to be content with their fate and learn to love their misery; clearly, the capitalist economy must be strong enough to provide for the basic creature comforts of all people. But it does call for a new balance between consumption and other human pursuits.
There is strong evidence that when consumption is used to try to address higher needs -- that is, needs beyond basic creature comforts -- it is ultimately Sisyphean. Several studies have shown that, across many nations with annual incomes above $20,000, there is no correlation between increased income and increased happiness. In the United States since World War II, per capita income has tripled, but levels of life satisfaction remain about the same, while the people of Japan, despite experiencing a sixfold increase in income since 1958, have seen their levels of contentment stay largely stagnant. Studies also indicate that many members of capitalist societies feel unsatisfied, if not outright deprived, however much they earn and consume, because others make and spend even more: Relative rather than absolute deprivation is what counts. This is a problem since, by definition, most people cannot consume more than most others.
Consumerism, it must be noted, afflicts not merely the upper class in affluent societies but also the middle class and many in the working class. Large numbers of people across society believe that they work merely to make ends meet, but an examination of their shopping lists and closets reveals that they spend good parts of their income on status goods such as brand-name clothing, the "right" kind of car, and other assorted items that they don't really need. This mentality may seem so integral to American culture that resisting it is doomed to futility. But the current economic downturn may provide an opening of sorts.
So far, much of this scaling-back has been involuntary, the result of economic necessity. What is needed next is to help people realize that limiting consumption is not a reflection of failure. Rather, it represents liberation from an obsession -- a chance to abandon consumerism and focus on... well, what exactly? What should replace the worship of consumer goods?
It must be a culture that extols sources of human flourishing besides acquisition. The two most obvious candidates to fill this role are communitarian pursuits and transcendental ones.
Communitarianism refers to investing time and energy in relations with the other, including family, friends and members of one's community. The term also encompasses service to the common good, such as volunteering, national service and politics. Communitarian life is not centered around altruism but around mutuality, in the sense that deeper and thicker involvement with the other is rewarding to both the recipient and the giver. Indeed, numerous studies show that communitarian pursuits breed deep contentment. A study of 50-year-old men shows that those with friendships are far less likely to experience heart disease. Another shows that life satisfaction in older adults is higher for those who participate in community service.
Transcendental pursuits refer to spiritual activities broadly understood, including religious, contemplative and artistic ones. The lifestyle of the Chinese literati, centered around poetry, philosophy and brush painting, was a case in point (but a limited one because this lifestyle was practiced by an elite social stratum). In modern society, transcendental pursuits have often been emphasized by bohemians, beginning artists and others involved in lifelong learning who consume modestly. Here again, however, these people make up only a small fraction of society. Clearly, for a culture to buy out of consumerism and move to satisfying higher human needs with transcendental projects, the option to participate in these pursuits must be available on a wider scale.
All this may seem abstract, not to mention utopian. But one can see a precedent of sorts for a society that emphasizes communitarian and transcendental pursuits among retired people, who spend the final decades of their lives painting not for a market or galleries but as a form of self-expression, socializing with each other, volunteering, and, in some cases, taking classes. One does not need shoes with fancy labels to benefit from a hike. Chess played with plastic pieces is the same game as the one played with carved mahogany or marble pieces. And I'm quite sure that the Lord does not listen better to prayers read from a leatherbound Bible than those read from a plain one, printed on recycled paper. In short, those who embrace this lifestyle will find that they can achieve a high level of contentment even if they give up a considerable segment of the surplus wealth they command.
The main way societies will determine whether the current crisis will serve as an event that leads to cultural transformation or merely constitute an interlude in the consumerism project is through a process I call "moral megalogues." Societies are constantly engaged in mass dialogues over what is right and wrong. Typically, only one or two topics dominate these megalogues at any given time. In earlier decades, women's rights and minority rights were topics of such discussions. Megalogues involve millions of members of a society exchanging views with one another at workplaces, during family gatherings, in the media, and at public events. They are often contentious and passionate, and, while they have no clear beginning or endpoint, they tend to lead to changes in a society's culture and its members' behavior.
Having a national conversation about this admittedly abstract question is merely a start, though. If a new shared understanding surrounding consumption is to evolve, education will have a crucial role to play. Schools, which often claim to focus solely on academics, are actually major avenues through which changes in societal values are fostered. For instance, many schools deeply impress on young children that they ought to respect the environment, not discriminate on racial or ethnic grounds, and resolve differences in a peaceful manner. There is no reason these schools cannot push back against consumerism while promoting communitarian and transcendental values as well. School uniforms (to counter conspicuous consumption) and an emphasis on community service are just two ways to work these ideas into the culture of public education.
I certainly do not expect that most people will move away from a consumerist mindset overnight. Some may keep one foot in the old value system even as they test the waters of the new one, just like those who wear a blazer with jeans. Still others may merely cut back on conspicuous consumption without guilt or fear of social censure. Societies shift direction gradually. All that is needed is for more and more people to turn the current economic crisis into a liberation from the obsession with consumer goods and the uberwork it requires-- and, bit by bit, begin to rethink their definition of what it means to live a good life.
Amitai Etzioni is professor of international relations and director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University, as well as the author of The Active Society and a frequent contributor to CNN.com.
The Active Society
A Theory of Societal and Political Processes
By Amitai Etzaioni
(1968; 1971)
Biography
After receiving his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1958, Dr. Amitai Etzioni served as a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University for 20 years; part of that time as the Chairman of the department. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1978 before serving as a Senior Advisor to the White House from 1979-1980. In 1980, Dr. Etzioni was named the first University Professor at The George Washington University, where he is the Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. From 1987-1989, he served as the Thomas Henry Carroll Ford Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School.
Dr. Etzioni served as the president of the American Sociological Association in 1994-95, and in 1989-90 was the founding president of the international Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. In 1990, he founded the Communitarian Network, a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to shoring up the moral, social and political foundations of society. He was the editor of The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, the organization's quarterly journal, from 1991-2004. In 1991, the press began referring to Dr. Etzioni as the 'guru' of the communitarian movement.
Dr. Etzioni is the author of numerous books, including The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), The Limits of Privacy (New York: Basic Books, 1999), The New Golden Rule (New York: Basic Books, 1996), which received the Simon Wiesenthal Center's 1997 Tolerance Book Award, The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Books, 1993), and The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics, (New York: Free Press, 1988). His most recent books are My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Outside of academia, Dr. Etzioni's voice is frequently heard in the media.
In 2001, he was named among the top 100 American intellectuals as measured by academic citations in Richard Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.
Also in 2001, Dr. Etzioni was awarded the John P. McGovern Award in Behavioral Sciences as well as the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was also the recipient of the Seventh James Wilbur Award for Extraordinary Contributions to the Appreciation and Advancement of Human Values by the Conference on Value Inquiry, as well as the Sociological Practice Association's Outstanding Contribution Award.
Dr. Etzioni is married and has five sons.
http://ebookslibrarys.seesaa.net/article/289453266.html
Liberalism, Communitarianism and Education: Reclaiming Liberal Education
DNC Attendees Cheer for Communism with Peter Schiff
http://www.womensgroup.org/SUSD.html
Women's Group
Women's Group
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
BY
JOAN M. VEON, CFP
Channeling Reality / Vicky Davis
Marshall Plan for Latin America:
Alliance for Progress
Communists... are what they call their rivals. Economic Developers... are what they call their allies but they are one and the same in practice.
Channeling Reality / Vicky Davis
Operation Pan America
Pan America
Surviving the Middle Class Crash
How to Live in Your Car
Spingola.com
Deanna Spingola | Republic Broadcasting Network | Spingola Speaks
Vaccine Awareness Week
5 Days, 5 First-Rate Guests Discuss the Very Real Dangers of Vaccines
Lethal Injection: The Story Of Vaccination
Natural News
Delusional reality: Everything peddled by politicians, media, banks and television is a fiction
(NaturalNews) The "War on Terror" is a complete fabrication. There is no terrorism other than what the government creates in order to sell its agenda of a police state takeover. Click here to read Paul Craig Roberts' article that lays this out in brilliant detail.
The CDC's war on West Nile virus is also a complete fabrication. There is no real West Nile virus threat. (Read article here.) The odds of being killed by West Nile are, much like with "terrorism," even lower than the odds of being killed by a bee sting.
The "economic recovery" of America is a fairy tale. Over the last few days, the federal debt reached a jaw-dropping $16 trillion -- nearly $5 trillion of that debt has been incurred under one person: President Obama. Unemployment is at record highs. Half the population is on federal aid of one form or another. Food stamp costs have skyrocketed.
"Obamacare" is a fiasco. Dubbed the "Affordable Care Act," in reality health insurance costs have vastly increased after the passage of this ill-conceived law.
Bin Laden wasn't killed by U.S. Navy Seals. The war is a fake. The news is faked. The media is completely, utterly faked, running totally fictional stories. CNN is actually an elaborate theater operation, faking sets, locations, sound effects and everything else you can imagine. Don't believe me? Watch this totally faked CNN broadcast from the Gulf War, featuring "journalist" Charles Jaco:
The whole thing is so hilarious it's almost an SNL skit! At one point, a fake air raid siren sounds off,
indicating a biological weapons attack (total fear mongering on CNN), and one of the guests in the fake studio frantically straps on a HELMET! Yeah, because helmets are the defense of choice against biological attacks, it seems. See if you can actually watch this CNN video and not laugh out loud...
Newspapers run fake news like "organic foods are no healthier than conventional foods."
The FBI plans and carries out fake terror plots all across the USA http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_FBI_entrapment_terror_plots.html
All the ads of Big Pharma are completely faked, promoting dangerous prescription drugs that are approved by the FDA based on faked clinical studied.
The USDA, EPA, FDA, ATF, DEA are all fake operations, actually running their own scams and frauds rather than protecting the American public from anything. We'd all be better off to simply abolish every federal regulator and start over.
The history taught in public schools is wildly faked. The explanations of who killed JFK and MLK are all faked. They don't want you to know real history.
Banking financial instruments are all faked. And the bank RATINGS are utterly faked. It's all complete fiction, and that fiction will soon unravel.
The food you buy is faked, by the way. Fake colors, fake flavors, fake marketing claims on the packaging, and even fake chemical ingredients. All the real nutrients are processed out, leaving "fake food."
Cities are fake ecosystems. City parks are faked with weed killer, pesticides, and non-native plants everywhere. Your tap water faucet is a "fake waterfall" in your kitchen. It's all illusion. Behind the mechanics, there is no real waterfall. It's all a series of electrical pumps and pipes that bring the water to you. Once the electricity stops, the illusion collapses.
The FDIC's insurance of your bank deposits is an illusion. When the banks go bankrupt -- an event that's coming very, very soon -- the FDIC will go bankrupt right along when them. Your deposits will be lost.
Your "pension" is an illusion. It's nothing more than a fabricated promise to pay you some amount of money at some future date. It does not exist in the real world, and it can vanish literally overnight.
Geopolitical lines are also fake. The thick red line that outlines your state on a map doesn't exist in the real world. Drive out there and see for yourself: there is NO LINE. So why do we pretend there is?
AIDS is not real. It's a completely fictional disease used by the CDC to scare everybody into giving it more funding and more power. HIV tests are completely bogus, as even the scientists who run the tests readily admit.
The "cure for cancer" is not real, at least not as hyped by the pink ribbon non-profits. They aren't even looking for a cancer cure, folks. It would put the entire cancer industry out of business!
Vaccine mythology is completely faked. It's all a fairy tale. There is no immunity granted by the injection of "attenuated" viral strains combined with stealth cancer viruses and chemical adjuvants. Vaccines are "medical theater" that don't even work. The "vaccine science" is all faked by the drug companies, and this is now a matter a public record from whistleblower scientists who worked on those vaccines and took part in spiking the clinical blood samples with animal antibodies!
Airport security is fake. It's all "security theater." All the TSA molestations in the world still haven't caught a single terrorist.
Government power is an illusion. It's all a bluff. The government only has power because people believe it does. Hence the need for costumes (uniforms) and sparkly, shiny objects (badges) to mesmerize the gullible masses.
Entitlements are an illusion which will soon end. The U.S. government is now $16 trillion in debt, meaning the money the government has been spending is FAKE. When reality comes due, entitlement programs will collapse.
The stock market as a fair investment device is faked. As the Facebook IPO proved, Wall Street is really just a rigged game for insiders to loot gullible investors.
Your DVD player is faked. Remember when VCRs simply played the tape when you inserted the tape? Now your DVD player has to connect to the "cloud" somewhere, download updates, reboot, decode, sync, run a bunch of algorithms and then if you're lucky it actually plays a movie. But this entire process is "virtual" (digital) and not real (analog).
In fact, your email doesn't exist. Your saved files and documents don't exist. The web page you're reading right now doesn't exist. Your bank account doesn't exist. One electromagnetic pulse burst is all it would take to wipe out all electronic devices (and most data storage) across the country. Imagine your entire Facebook history, Twitter history and email history wiped clean in a microsecond. (For many, that wouldn't be such a bad thing, actually.)
Most of your life is played out in a virtual world, almost as if you were an animated character in a computer simulation... something like The Matrix.
You are living in a dream world, Neo.
So what's real?
• Physical books. No batteries required.
• Family, including pets.
• Dirt (soil).
• Gardening, permaculture, seeds.
• Gold and silver.
• Consciousness, free will, awareness.
• The sun. Warmth and light. Energy for life.
• Liquid water. Perhaps the most miraculous substance in the universe.
• Honeybees, insects and pollinators.
• Sea salt. Minerals. Elements for health.
• Love, compassion, forgiveness, humility.
• Firearms, hammers and other purely mechanical devices that don't need "firmware" to operate.
Words of wisdom from the Health Ranger
• Start trading your VIRTUAL things for REAL things. At the moment, for example, you can "spend" your virtual electronic money (in your electronic bank account) in order to buy real things such as seeds, garden tools and silver.
• Do not put all your eggs in the "virtual" basket. Even if you think your financial assets are diversified by being held in different funds or banks, they're all still 100% virtual! (Fiat money isn't REAL.)
• Make yourself learn how to navigate reality. Instead of playing Farmville, grow a real garden with real dirt and real seeds. Learn real skills and familiarize yourself with the real (natural) world. Turn off your GPS and learn to read a map, for starters.
• Kill your TV! There is nothing more stupid, insidious and mind-numbing than the TV. Nothing will separate you from reality faster than television. If you have cable TV, cancel it. If you have satellite TV, disconnect it. Remove this insidious technology from your life or it will dominate your mind, your beliefs, your emotions and your reactions to everything that happens in the world. Television is a pathway to total zombification. It's not just the ads either; the programs are also laced with propaganda, violence, perversion and negative influence.
And keep reading NaturalNews.com and other alternative news websites. We are the last safe harbor of truthful information left on the planet. We aim to report what's REAL, not the fictions peddled by the delusional institutions that attempt to dominate your mind and stuff it full of falsehoods.
Activist Post
Identity Profiling: Covert Biometrics
By Julie Beal
The Daily Bell
End of the GOP?
Texans Against Agenda 21
Central Planning LA21
When I think of Communism, I think of Stalin's murderous regime and images of the Cold War stalemate between the United Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America. But what is the hallmark of Communism? What is Communism? Why does it leave such a bad taste in our mouths? Is it because of the dictatorial rule of heartless Russian and Chinese leaders? Is it the image of a starving populace? Is it the freedom crushing power of a rogue police state? These are what I envision when I think of Communism.
But this is not Communism. What we see in our history books are the consequences of collectivist thinking. What we had in America for the first 100 years was individualist thinking. But this was before the Marxist revolutions of the 20th century. Communism is Marxism, Marxism is collectivism, and collectivism ignores individual responsibility and individual freedom. Our Founding Fathers understood that in order to be a truly free society, it takes responsible individuals who care about their own lives and who care about the lives of others. A free society requires responsibility. Responsibility to stay informed, to make informed decisions, and to continuously participate in a responsible government. But all of that has faded away in this country. And the inevitable result is a paradigm shift, from the perception of individuals, to a perception of a collective body of Darwinian monkeys who are stupid, un-educated, and irresponsible.
Marx and Darwin knew of each other, they even communicated ideas to each other. These two ideologues have contributed more to our current state of affairs than any other two individuals since Adam and Eve. The future of the United States of America depends on rooting out the ideas and philosophies of these two people.
Throughout my research it has been difficult to pinpoint one philosophy, one contributing paradigm, to the current fiasco we find ourselves in today. I believe it is because the one being behind the downfall of our great nation, has taken all previously failed ideas, and combined them into a tasteless soup of crap, and the stench is unbearable.
What do we call this new agenda? Sustainable Development. It is a mix of fascism, communism, and all of the other "isms". It takes the "best" parts of each and combines them into a central planner's greatest dream. A utopia where we all live in "sustainable cities" where there are no cars and we all walk or bike to work and take mass transit from mega-region to mega-region.
This utopian dream is implemented from the bottom up. Through non-profit organizations and fascist public-private partnerships, funding for mass-transit projects, complete streets, mixed-use high density housing developments, and green spaces, is provided. The bottom up agenda is called Local Agenda 21, or LA21. They have a guidebook, the Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide. It is quite an amazing and shocking document. Everyone should read it. From this Planning Guide, local action plans are developed. Like Mission Verde and SA2020 here in San Antonio.
The days of brutal Communistic regimes are over. Welcome to the future. (Or at least what the central planners want) A global system of control, implemented from the bottom up, subversively, right under our noses. All in the name of saving our planet and leveling the playing field. I guess Marx's dream may finally come true. Unless we continue to fight it.
Political Outcast
‘Agenda 21’ and Why is the GOP Now Opposed to It?
Zero Hedge
Labor Day 2012: The Future Of Work
By Tyler Durden
Genius female chimpanzee found to be smarter than U.S. high school students
(NaturalNews) A twenties-something "genius ape" named Natasha has been found to demonstrate more intelligence than a typical U.S. high school student. The findings have been published in the peer-reviewed science journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
As the paper documents, Natasha repeatedly demonstrates skills and reasoning that escape modern-day high school students. "The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional," wrote authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (reported at Discovery.com, link below).
According to these scientists, Natasha has demonstrated the following skills; all of which escape the dumbed-down mental capacity of a typical U.S. high school student:
• An ability to repeatedly escape the chimpanzee enclosure using planning skills.
• An ability to disable an electric fence by throwing branches on it and observing the sparks. Once the sparks stopped, Natasha knew the fence was disabled and then proceeded to climb it. (A typical U.S. high school student cannot figure out how to pull his pants up around his waist.)
• The ability to wield a special tool to avoid a trap while locating hidden food. (U.S. high school students eat toxic food chemicals every day which trap them in a lifetime of chronic disease.)
• According to scientists, "ape intelligence might be a bundling of skills related to learning, tool usage, understanding of quantities, and an ability to reach conclusions based on evidence and reasoning." (http://news.discovery.com/animals/ape-genius-chimpanzee-intelligence-...) U.S. high school students, on the other hand, largely run their lives based on drama, jealousy, sex and emotional reactions to simple stimuli such as corporate logos on basketball shoes.
• Intelligent chimpanzees are well known to manufacture their own tools in order to extract (yummy) termites out of holes in trees. A typical U.S. high school student barely has the skill to open a frozen burrito wrapper and punch "START" on a microwave oven.
On a similar note, it is well known that the U.S. military conducts vaccine medical experiments on human soldiers for the sole reason that "humans are cheaper than monkeys." Lab monkeys actually try to escape from vaccine assaults, while humans actually line up at pharmacies and PAY to be injected with experimental vaccines!
The question isn't whether apes are smarter than humans... it's actually this far more important question: Are many humans dumber than apes?
Chimpanzees are more AWARE than the average human, too
According to the latest science, chimpanzees are conscious, aware beings with just as much awareness as humans (http://news.discovery.com/animals/chimpanzees-self-awareness-110504.h...). Humans, on the other hand, go to great lengths to diminish their awareness with alcohol, drugs and mind-altering psychiatric drugs.
Chimpanzees are acutely aware of their environments, while a typical high-school-aged human seems to exist in a sleepwalking zombie state from which only violent video games or online porn can cause them to awaken. While a typical chimpanzee works to observe reality while attempting to make sense of the world, a typical high school teen tries to escape reality and reject the real world.
Discovery.com promotes zombified humans and psychiatric drugs
Interestingly, organizations contributing to the problem of dumbed-down, zombified humans include Discovery.com where the story of Natasha the genius ape was originally reported. To the right of the story is an advertisement for -- get this -- a mind-altering psychiatric drug known as ABILIFY. The text right there on the page next to the story about how smart the "genius ape" is reads:
Antidepressants can increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, teens and young adults. (See screen shot below.)
Apparently, Discovery News did not think this fact is a sufficient reason to ban such ads from its website. As long as there's money to be made promoting these toxic chemicals, who cares if a few children commit suicide or blow away their classmates in a mass shooting?
That's how stupid humans are, by the way: They promote things that harm other humans as long as they make a profit in the process. Chimpanzees don't seek out mind-altering psychiatric drugs. Only a human is stupid enough to assault their brain chemistry with a patented, synthetic chemical made in a factory. You can't brainwash an ape into thinking childhood is a disease. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPS9SohzMjw
The real hilarity in this story, however, is the subhead text in the Discovery.com article which reads, "Zoo Chimp Makes Elaborate Plots to Attack Humans" while adjacent to this column, the site runs an ad for a mind-altering drug that accomplishes the same thing!
Here's the image from the Discovery News website, which makes Discovery.com look like an ignorant cabal of drug-pimping apes:
LaRouchePac
UNSURVIVABLE
News With Views
COOLECTIVIST MINDSET: RECIPE FOR REVOLUTION
By Debra Rae
White Paper: Solid Traceability Strengthens Compliance
Introduction to a Stateless Society
Amazon
The Shield of Achilles
By Phillip Bobbitt
(2003)
For five centuries, the State has evolved according to epoch-making cycles of war and peace. But now our world has changed irrevocably. What faces us in this era of fear and uncertainty? How do we protect ourselves against war machines that can penetrate the defenses of any state? Visionary and prophetic, The Shield of Achilles looks back at history, at the “Long War” of 1914-1990, and at the future: the death of the nation-state and the birth of a new kind of conflict without precedent.
New pickins for T. Boone Pickens?
Reality Bloger
A Glimpse At Your Own Future
By Clint Richardson
Before It’s News
Out of Space and Into Time
Rational hope for the irrationally hopeless
By John Kaminski
1. There is no chance man will ever fully understand anything by only using only "the aid of laws which belong to the external world perceived by man". [ . . .] "As earthly beings, between conception and death, we are fighters against the laws of nature. And if we really want to rise to self-knowledge, we have to examine that activity in the human being which works against death."
2. When a man loses his inner feeling for time — his really intimate connection with the past — then his life becomes a chaos. Experience of space alone can do nothing to help towards the health of his whole being. Something in man belongs not to space but only to time. For man to remain man, memory must make the past present in him. Being present in time is something indispensable for a man.
3. If a man is to be the central point of knowledge he must begin by knowing himself. His senses make him a being of time in the midst of space. If he is to perceive his own being, he must summon from within himself cognitional powers not connected with either senses or space. Science focuses entirely on space. The true being of man has been generally lost to view. The answer there leads man out of space and into time, and inevitably, into spirit.
During his extraordinarily productive lifetime, the iconic German mystic Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was much abused by the powers that be. They burned down his Goetheneum, his spiritual science search center, and ridiculed his teachings for his refusal to remove Christ from the center of his message.
In this 1923 lecture in Wales, titled "First Steps Toward Imaginative Knowledge," Steiner outlined a process of realization that aimed to restore robotized humanity, compulsively deluded by their pathologically motivated abstractions, to a more natural state.
The message was "get out of space and into time".
A disciple of the genius Goethe and later 19th century mystics, Steiner is revered to this day by millions around the world for his invention of the spiritual science of anthroposophy, as well as biodynamic farming and his humane system of Waldorf education, one of the few philosophical schools remaining in the world that does not advocate killing infidels, putting this material near the top of the heap among the world's blood-drenched religious systems.
Steiner told his audience of post-World War I Welshmen (this is a heavily condensed version):
Man is a microcosm of the world. Understanding the universe can be found only by understanding man.
The overwhelming riddle: we can't even see ourselves, not into the deepest mysteries of how we got here, what we are doing here, and where do we go when we die.
This creates the mirror inside ourselves where we can ask these questions: when we live in space we run out of time.
When we live in time, we create a much more comfortable place, and understand a whole lot more about life, which brings the only kind of comfort that really counts — understanding.
"A simple reflection will show that a man's true being, his inner activity as an individual, cannot be found in the world that holds good for his senses."
Echoing our remembered instincts from childhood and using the process of transference, we invent or choose an ultimate authority figure: Jesus, Allah, or the criminally self-justifying slime known as the Jewish Sanhedrin, who talk about ethics as they steal every treasure they can lay their hands on.
Much more than you think, this choice determines every event that goes on in the human world.
As we envision our future a hundred years hence we cannot fail to note the likelihood of what remains of our corpses will be dust. Thus the human mind invents a fantasy to anesthetize this ultimate terror, and twists every canon of human nobility into a noose around its own neck.
Knowledge — science in particular — does nothing to build up our hopes for peace of mind; it only tears down every chance we thought we had for ultimate safety.
The answers to all these archetypal questions can be found nowhere in space, but only in time.
With our own eyes we furtively observe that people die, and after sympathetic respects to the surviving loved ones, we shut our brains to the rest of it, and think about it as little as possible.
Standardized religions were created as an emotional shorthand to deal with these issues, to give people certainty and allow them to transcend heartbreak, because without these beliefs one's concentration becomes endlessly distracted by doubt.
Only the result of the religious world didn't turn out that way.
Priests of competing doctrines sanctified their kings and justified their wars, making the human situation intractable, a common and constant slaughterhouse with everyone trying to prove that their version of the "truth" was better than everyone else's.
In an electrified and technologized civilization, where most people don't remember what happened last week, never mind last century, Steiner cautioned that without a functional knowledge of the past, the present always remained on shaky ground and the future posed a peril rather than a promise.
This is the same box into which we put our religious beliefs.
The angelic beings who fly out of the holy books are the same vicious wasps who flew out of Pandora's box (I think Aeschylus said that long ago). What war would have ever happened without the cynical but divine approval of the politically correct holy man of the moment?
Are all these thoughts that serve to justify a hopeful vision of the future merely only deliberate delusional lies to shield us from the fatal finitude of our feckless follies?
These answers are found nowhere in space, but only in time.
Time to see the same scams go round and round six or seven times and begin to see how humanity has always been exploited by the same usurious formulas and mind-numbing addictions.
Time to see the hours and years wasted on processes presented to you as beneficial only to taste only the sourness of your hope when you are unfairly dismissed after years of honest effort.
Time to see the hoax of what is presented to us as reality, or what they say is good for our health that is actually killing us.
And most important of all, time to fix everything, and for just a moment on a perfect evening with every tie secured and every hope still promising, to relax and give thanks for the privilege of participating in this whole complex cornucopia of opportunities and disasters.
Modern man is blind to the history of his own planet.
Everything prior to Greece and Rome was amputated from the modern mind by robotic Christian zealots who burned the Library at Alexandria. Like so many vampires in the night, the Catholic Church raged around the world burning heretics who wouldn't pay the priests.
Same way the Americans do today, waving the cross of democracy and killing those who beg to differ. More vampires in the night.
God didn't create the world in seven days and then turn on the lights.
Although Steiner has a tendency to lapse into nature spirits and Sun beings, he knew more than he even knew he knew in delving into the origins and evolution of human consciousness, particularly in his descriptions of Old Saturn, which was the prehistoric Earth's Sun before our current Sun arrived on the scene of our history.
(This assertion peeks out of the myth of the ancient Cretan legend of Zeus disemboweling his father Uranus and banishing him to the distant universe.)
Modern science — specifically the thunderbolts theory of the electric universe as well as the Saturn Death Cult document — has reached the astounding conclusions that early Earth was illuminated only by the relatively dim star known as Old Saturn and encased in the purple haze of a plasmic sheath.
Through the work of Velikovsky, Comyns Beamont and others, the fabled Golden Age of ancient legend is now theorized to have been the arrival of our present Sun on the scene, which scrambled the lineup of planets and at its conclusion sent moons and planets and shards of exploded heavenly bodies in all directions, creating catastrophes and indelible memories in those who survived and told of dragons and fire gods from the sky.
All human religious rituals derive from these events.
Our past has been concealed from us by Alexandrian Zealots (now the Likud) who reasoned that by creating a foolproof God immune from criticism, everyone could be completely controlled. That why all the other images of competing religions had to be destroyed — to cover up the coverup.
The price we have paid for this self-delusional folly is the profound deterioration of all life on this planet in recent years and decades.
The value of Steiner's intuitive assertions that humans make decisions in a part of their brains that is not ruled by the senses and in no part of real space as we understand it — thought does not exist in space, only in time — immediately and obviously shows us the mental space in which all these arguments and decisions take place, but it has no place in real, 3-dimensional space.
This mental space we fill up with our religious systems is as attempt to create some kind of moral operating framework essential to some degree of social order. When we fill that mental space that is no part of real space with the stories our priests have told us, we create nothing but constant conflict — we create certainty in our minds, but sheer havoc in real space.
Which may mean that constant doubt is the real guarantor of lasting peace.
I have for some years held to the notion that devoting one's life to a religious ideal in expectation of eternal life containing whatever pleasant images you prefer is a actually a cowardly and short-sighted way to live. Accepting someone else's creed in totality means you have erased the individuality in yourself. It's one thing to integrate good advice into your behavior, but it's quite another to make that advice your very own, because then you're only giving yourself away — according to a verifiable track record of two thousand years — to someone who definitely does not have your best interests at heart.
Only cowards lust after eternal life, breaking every moral rule ever invented just to follow those teachings to guarantee the coveted prize. I would not presume to know for what use the Big Man Upstairs everybody talks about has in store for me after I croak, but through reason and time I conclude that when you make your life a prayer for everything that is morally right and just, no further prayers are needed, and at the point of departure there is no doubt about the satisfaction of going home to where you came from after a job well done.
There is a higher law than even this, best seen when you look a man in the eye, tell him what you're going to do, and always keep your promise. That's the only true barometer of civilization, and we're far beneath the Romans or the Greeks.
The striving for eternal life reveals an insult to the giver of every gift you have received in this life. By your aspirations you admit defeat in this world. And by admitting defeat, and powerlessness before God, you doom the world to a self-abnegating oblivion through slavery and death into permanent extinction.
Since the dawn of time, one strand of DNA has lived forever and, as a matter of fact, lives inside you and your children right now. We already have eternal life; we just don't have eternal egos.
This imaginary ship of life we have built for our minds in that place in our thinking that "is not of space" is fatally flawed, because it's built on the premise that it lasts forever, and it does not.
Only our faith in that seed that has remained alive all this time and lives inside us is of any importance. All the rest just falls away as mere dithering. But in the fear we can't let go of, we load our guns and look for people who are not like us, trying to kill something that can't be killed — our own deaths.
What you do determines where you go when you die — you actually already made your subconscious involuntary choice by your life's intent. The purpose of man is to live a life of truthful action that benefits everyone where there is no doubt the correctness of his motives because they are so obviously beneficial. All the rest of that crap the priests lay on you? Don't sweat it.
The world is about to come to the portal point of official recognition of death as reality. No more fantasies about Seventh Heavens and Nirvanas. Just one life to live and give your all, knowing that you are an eternal part of it and it is an eternal part of you.
We can fix everything, and everything will turn out all right. It's just a matter of time.
References:
Rudolf Steiner: The Evolution of Consciousness: Rudolf Steiner Press, Sussex, 1991, pp. 6-10.
The Electric Universe: A Sound Cosmology for the 21st Century
Saturn Death Cult: The link between planetary catastrophe, ancient mythology and occult ritual
John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, constantly trying to figure out why we are destroying ourselves, and pinpointing a corrupt belief system as the engine of our demise. Solely dependent on contributions from readers, please support his work by mail: 250 N. McCall Rd. #2, Englewood FL 34223 USA.
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Bill Joy At TED: We Can’t Pick The Future But We Can Steer It
After establishing his reputation as a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in 2000 Bill Joy published a landmark cover story for Wired Magazine called Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us. In it he raises a number of questions about the ethical dimensions and unintended consequences of technology and his concern that, along the accelerating path of technological progress, people such as Ray Kurzweil are underestimating enormously the probability of disaster for humanity. Joy’s conclusion at the time was:
“The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.”
Following his article there was a huge outcry against Joy alleging that he was a Luddite, ideologically connected to Samuel Butler and even Ted Kaczynski.
In this TED video, shot a number of years after his Wired article, Bill Joy puts forward a more even-handed point of view by discussing both what technologies worry and inspire him. His current message: Proceed with caution. We can’t pick the future but we can steer it.
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"Everything that God created fits together perfectly."
