There is something new down at Indiana’s Department
of Education. Touted as a fresh approach and cure-all
to Indiana’s educational woes, this program
is believed by many businessmen and professional educators
to be a practical way of ensuring academic excellence
in Indiana’s public school students. It is called
P-16, with the “P” standing for pre-natal.
Initially discussed publically, on June 10, 2003,
the final draft was approved by the Indiana Education
Roundtable on October 28, 2003. The small detail of
cost has yet to be determined. It is a program that
“Papa Joe” Stalin would have loved.
There are, of course, some parts of the program that
are appealingly positive. (P-16 text quotes from the
October 28, 2003 draft). The third item for Early
Learning and School Readiness is “Focus on Reading”,
Page 10. No one is going to argue with this goal.
But goal Number 1 of this part of P-16 has the potential
for creating problems for parents in raising their
children. “Involve parents in planning and implementation
of all early learning and school readiness efforts”,
page 10. Therefore, of course, available all-day Kindergarten
is considered to be a necessity for ALL children.
As one continues reading the P-16 drafts, one frequently
sees the words/terms, business, workforce, career
counseling, and employers. The logical question follows:
What is the purpose of education? A liberal arts,
knowledge-based, education to prepare one for whatever
career choice one makes, or a narrowly-defined job
training track that children are channeled into by
the middle school grades at the latest. (#4, page
16: Ensuring College and Workforce Success: Ensure
that all K-12 schools have comprehensive guidance
programs that support high achievement for all students
and begin career and college counseling no later than
middle school. Also #4, page 21: Degree Completion
for Higher Education and Continued Learning: Provide
Indiana’s businesses and industries with increasing
pools of skilled and trained workers necessary to
compete in a global economy.
And what, or who, you might ask determines these
lists of career options that are ‘practical
choices’ for middle school students?
Do local school boards and parents get together to
decide what should and should not be available for
the students in their little niche of the woods? Hardly.
Why? Well, because local control of local schools
no longer exists, and the P-16 draft says so!
Page 2 of Indiana’s P-16 Plan for improving
Student Achievement: “The P-16 Plan builds on
progress made to date and is consistent with actions
called for in PL 146-1999, PL 221-1999, and the federal
Elementary and Secondary Education Act–The No
Child Left Behind Act of 2002, (NCLB)”. So who
is running the show? Parents may fight the ‘brush
fires’ of pornographic plays, books, and/or
movies, and even win. These are victories to be sure
but reality must be faced. NCLB eliminated local control
of schools, and cemented in its place “School-to-Work”.
Now, think about it: Our schools are increasingly
used as job training centers, ie. Ensuring College
and Workforce Success, #3, page 16, P-16 Plan.Encourage
students with progressive exposure to the world of
work through connected learning experiences including
job shadowing, career days, internships, cooperative
learning, academic and career majors, and other career
exploration opportunities. With “Big Brother”
deciding what career choices are to be offered. Plus,
predicted quotas that are deemed necessary for that
job within a time limit, say five years.
To try to put into perspective all of the possible
jobs available, think of the many different hobbies
that Americans pursue today. Almost every hobby has
at least one or two supporting jobs that help to keep
that particular hobby going. I once knew a man who
made a very comfortable living making rabbit hutches
in addition to cages for other types of animals. He
could hardly keep up with the orders. Was this a 6th
grade career choice? Would such an occupation even
be thought of by Big Brother in Washington? Of course
not.
So......it becomes evident that our children are
being tracked at an early age into pre-determined
career choices so that the remaining school curriculum
will be closely aligned to it, (ie, small learning
communities). That is to say, a state-planned economy
from the top down, vs. (our) free enterprise economics
system.
It becomes increasingly evident that the P-16 Plan
is no so much a plan for high academic standards as
it is a School-to-Work outline. Throughout the various
drafts, employers/businessmen are seen as an integral
part of the educational pathway, while students are
seen as happy, docile, productive workers in the making,
from the very beginning of their lives. It is an old
idea: The top down, pre-determined work of the masses,
is done to support the privileged few at the top.
These mega-managers are obsessive about wanting to
organize us “for our own good”. One has
to wonder if their homes and personal lives are also
so perfectly managed.
Thus, in a bloodless way, through our schools and
therefore our children, our entire society and country
is being changed, and parents are being lulled into
thinking that while there may be incompetent teachers
and schools out there somewhere, everything can’t
be all bad at their child’s school because Johnny
and Susie are making A’s and B’s.
To summarize the focus of P-16:
1. Local control of schools is gone through unconstitutional,
Federal control, (NCLB)
2. Freedom of career choices are gone. Buffet of choices
pre-determined top-down.
3. Planned Economy-Socialist 5-year type plans vs.
our free-enterprise market system.
4. Liberal Arts academic knowledge-based education
vs. process, attitudes, values, etc.
5. Children are not minions of the State.
To fight the P-16 Plan, one must read the drafts.
Then, to be able to decipher it, study the wealth
of information that Education Watch (formerly Maple
River Education Coalition), has researched.
This would certainly include the books, FedEd, and
Inside the New Federal Curriculum, both by Allen Quist.
Their website is www.EdWatch.org. Talk and write to
your Congressmen and Senators at both State and National
levels. Write Letters to the Editor. And, by way of
personal entertainment, velcro yourself to a local
school improvement committee. By force of Indiana
Public Law 221, every public school must have a school
improvement committee. You might not be able to stop
the agenda, but you can ask relevant questions that
hopefully will start to turn on a few light bulbs.
Example: Are we teaching to the ISTEP test? Also,
though these committees are rubber stamps, in reality,
it is still interesting to observe how the agenda
is implemented locally.
At any rate, the way to fight the P-16 Plan is to
learn, pray and talk–a lot! This is not a Christian-oriented
program, so we Christians have got to (prayerfully)
speak up and out!
