|
Three laws passed during the Clinton administration created the scaffolding designed to change the U.S. from a free enterprise economy and representative government to a centrally planned and managed economy. All 50 states were required to implement these laws: Goals 2000, School-to-Work Opportunities Act, and Workforce Investment Act. These laws align and consolidate all local, state, and federal policies, programs, and funding into a single state-managed economic system
Workforce Training (School-to-Work) for a State Planned/Managed Economy:
• Creates public/private partnership with government, corporations, and education -- hallmark of authoritarian state
• Centerpiece of federally designed framework for education based on European models
• Dumbed down national curriculum standards, curriculum, and testing with socialist, globalist worldview
• Violates U.S. statutory prohibitions against federal intrusion in curricula
• Massive data collection to build workforce database
• Uses failed methodologies of progressive Outcome-based Education (“mastery learning” and “performance-based”) that is also found in Common Core
• Federal Department of Labor carved economy into private industry sectors with skill certificates
• Skill certificates awarded for specific job-readiness will become mandatory for future hiring
• Students must choose career endorsement by end of 8th grade with narrowed curriculum choice
• Class time is spent training at job sites
• ALL students, schools (public, private, home) and businesses expected to participate
• Government rewards and sanctions force compliance by “partners”
• Government defines new “covenant” with parents for rearing children, subordinating parents to government
• No Child Left Behind (2001) embedded the entire system in place
• Supporters include Washington D.C., giant corporations, Democrat and Republican governors, National Education Association, and the education establishment. Opponents: Grassroots America
Conclusion
Our Founding Fathers believed an academic education was necessary for Americans to remain free and capable of self-governance. Now the government has decided that public education is no longer the acquiring of knowledge but rather job training to meet government economic objectives – a state planned and managed economy similar to that of the former Soviet Union. This system is based upon a worldview that the value of humans -- “human capital” – is merely productive capability for the “best interests of the state.”
Government is requiring ALL children to make occupational decisions in middle school according to predicted local workforce needs. What happened to individual and family choice?
What if a 30-year-old decides the career choice made in his teens is now the wrong choice for his adult life? Because Workforce Training/School-to-Work focuses on meeting state workforce quotes rather than producing well-rounded generalists who can cope with rapid changes in work and civic life, TODAY’S YOUTH WILL NOT BE PREPARED FOR THE 21st CENTURY.
History is littered with the remains of failed regimes that tried to herd people into a mold decided by an all-powerful state – such as the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Americans have made it clear that WE DO NOT WANT this type of government.
|
