The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Posted By: LukeRudkowski Mar 11, 2014

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In this video Luke Rudkowski speaks with Department of Education whistleblower Charlette Iserbyt about the deliberate dumbing down of America. The former US Department of Education Senior Policy Advisor suggests that the our educational system is not based upon children learning. Is the Carnegie foundation instrumental in developing a socialist-collectivist style educational system that is detrimental to our youth? Are the elites impacting the development of the general population through our school systems?

Via We Are Change

LukeRudkowski

Luke Rudkowski is an independent journalist, activist, live streamer and founder of WeAreChange.org.

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  • BuzzCoastin

    the ability & inclination to learn
    is distributed like a bell curve, low to high

    about 2% have the highest ability & inclination
    they rarely fit in to society, many become notorious

    47% have above average abilty & inclination
    they become the inner & outer parties
    the backbone of society
    the elite portion of this crowd rules the 99%

    50 % have below average abilities & inclination
    they become the herd
    the backbone of profligate consumerism
    the foundation of the oligarchs

    could edumacation have saved them?

    • Cortacespedes

      And what of the missing 1%?

      • Dingbert

        I’m guessing those are the people with almost no abilities that the rest try very hard to ignore when not insulting or patronizing them.

      • BuzzCoastin

        the extreemly average in ability & inclination
        they are usually the 1%
        having inherited their elite status
        they muddle through on the coattails of their ancestors
        and luck

      • kowalityjesus

        The brilliant ones disappear. Probably in a DUMB researching reverse engineered alien technology.

    • misinformation

      Where do these dubious figures come from?

    • Eric_D_Read

      Not a bad assessment, except that ability and inclination quite frequently do not go hand-in-hand.
      The world is full of over and under achievers.

      • BuzzCoastin

        by incliation I do not mean ambition
        what I mean by inclination is
        the willingness touse one’s abilty to learn

    • Woobniggurath

      You know what a bell curve sounds like? “Dung.”

      • BuzzCoastin

        thanks for chiming in
        from your side of the bell curve

  • Cortacespedes

    Woodrow Wilson summed it up more succinctly with this statement:

    “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

    However the phrase, “Limited learning for lifelong labor” is a wonderful dictum for modern “education”.

    • Apathesis

      Yeesh, he was a turd, eh? I’ve never read one good thing attributed to him.

    • misinformation

      Ah Wilson. One Progressive, in a long line, who view humanity too stupid to be left to their own devices – just lumps of clay in need of molding. Hooray for them and their hard-on for the Prussians.

  • Woobniggurath

    Luke Rudkowski: The splash image or title frame of this video is very unbecoming. Using images of children with strabismus as a sign of idiocy is pretty callous. It is also simply an ugly and amateurish graphic.

    Never been impressed by your stuff; not helping.

    • misinformation

      Not that this will change your opinion (and maybe you already knew) but that is an image from dees, called “Dumbing Down”: http://www.deesillustration.com/artwork.asp?item=348&cat=politics

      • Woobniggurath

        Whose strong opinions on the subject obviously do not preclude working for Disney.

        • misinformation

          Ok.

        • misinformation

          Based on the context, I guess the artist did some work for Disney? I’m not sure, don’t really know much about him. Again, based on context it seems as far as you’re concerned, working for Disney lessens the impact of an otherwise “anti-establishment message? Perhaps it does.

          Seems what it shouldn’t do is negate the utter disaster compulsory government schooling has been (unless one is a school bureaucrat, of course).

          Hmmmm? These two replies should’ve been combined” not sure what happened there.

  • Reuben_the_Red

    Collectivism is not a bad thing, aka crowd-sourcing, together we stand divided we fall, etc.

    This, on the other hand, is just plain old authoritarianism, which Rudkowski has simultaneously identified and misidentified. Of course an authoritarian society has authoritarian public education. Why would it not? True collectivism need not be top-down authoritarianism, but rather would place greater value on the individual and the ability of the individual to bring a unique perspective and make unique and therefore valuable contributions.

    For a visual reference, the inside of an authoritarian classroom is arranged like the inside of an authoritarian church. Everyone faces the front of the class, the authority figure. Sit down, shut up, don’t touch each other, are the three main things we are taught in grade school. It’s so obvious that we don’t notice it.

    On the other hand, a mental health support group, a cancer-survivors support group, or maybe an AA group, is arranged in a circle. This roughly demonstrates a scenario in which individuals are more valued in a collectivist system, than in a supposedly “individualist”/Ayn Rand society where the individual is trampled on if they do not conform to society and authority.

    • Andrew

      Collectivism and individualism need to be balanced. Either, alone, misses half the picture, and one cannot exist long without the other.

      • Reuben_the_Red

        Yeah that’s a good way to put it. Balanced, and integrated.

  • kowalityjesus

    trudat, homme. An unsung plurality is a genius in his/her own right.

  • happypedro

    She is mostly correct. Her views on cooperative learning being negative and competition being positive are incorrect. One can still be an individual while cooperating. All the available research — read David and Roger Johnson’s work on cooperative learning — shows that cooperative learning is healthier, more productive, more creative. She is also wrong about competition — read Alfie Kohn’s superbly documented book No Contest: The Case Against Competition. In competitions, most people lose and one succeeds to the degree one can screw over others — which is a recipe for disaster, and research shows it is far more counter-productive. All that said, she is absolutely right about the “elites” plan to dumb down people to be obedient workers. In fact, it is the implementation of competition which reduces individualism, as the focus is on defeating someone else (business is war, etc) rather than collaborating toward making something (which is more productive and creative a process). Competition is the tool of the elites. We compete everywhere — in school, in sports, in jobs — but most of that competition is learned. This is how we end up with a few people on top — the “elites” — and most people down below. Like the Super Bowl or the World Cup, on a few make it to the top, while most lose. Read this: http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/tcac.htm So she is correct about many things, but her views are twisted and incorrect in certain important areas. A far far far better pedagogist is Alfie Kohn. I highly recommend his books: http://alfiekohn.org/index.php

  • VaudeVillain

    Buzz doesn’t believe in authorities or their lies… whenever he gives figures, you can pretty much assume he just made them up and expects everyone to take his word for it.

    If this sounds an awful lot like he’s made himself out to be an authority who lies to promote his own interests… well, don’t tell him. He might get sad, and nobody wants to read his blank verse goth poetry.