An Interesting Quotation:

As I was preparing “Indiana EdAlert” to publicize how the Indiana public education system will be corrupted by the Indiana P-16 Plan for student control it became obvious that, in order to reach certain conclusions, the members of the edRoundtable had made many assumptions about the level of education needed in the future. Along with those assumptions they would have had to forecast what the next hundred years would bring to this country. My own crystal ball just isn’t that good. Recently, I ran across a quotation from one of my favorite authors, Michael Chrichton, that clearly defined this problem. I use it here to show the utter foolishness of anyone alive today trying to forecast the level of education this country will need over the next hundred years.

Michael says: “Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horse shit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses.

“But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% of its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900.

“They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, Internet, interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CD’s, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, super-conduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS. None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn’t know what you are talking about.”

Now, the people who brought us the Indiana P-16 Plan and the Smaller Learning Centers are trying to tell us that they can predict all the new things that will appear in this century and the education system that will be needed to create all the unknown things that will appear over the next hundred years. I think not. The system they envision is about total control. From it I can tell that, to paraphrase Michael, “they don’t know what they are talking about”.

The forces that will drive knowledge creation for the next hundred years have already been set in place. There is a robot driving around on Mars today with a second due to arrive in the next few days. Our president has directed NASA to consider a permanent base on the moon and a manned visit to Mars. In the last month China has broken the iron control of its people and now allows them to own gold. That single move will create a vast capitalistic society. It is skipping the wired telephone service and going directly to wireless cell phones. It took us over a hundred years to get here, they did it in five. There are more cell phones in China, today, than wired phones in the United States. This week China closed the bypass gates to allow the Three Gorge lake to begin to form. This is the reservoir for the largest hydroelectric plan in the world. The lake is 365 miles long and has displaced more than a million people. China can now produce the world’s cheapest power and the world’s cheapest aluminum. A fire has just been lit under the Chinese industrial complex. The job’s for the slave labor pool envisioned by the creators of the P-16 Plan just moved to China.

We do not need a slave labor force in this country. We need a highly, academically, educated work force each of whom could conceivably become another Thomas Eidson.

Back to the United States. In 1850, 98 percent of the people in Massachusetts were literate. That year Massachusetts started state control of education and began opening compulsory schooling. There was much resistance, sometimes violence with guns used. The last holdout group was arrested in Barnstable by the militia and marched to school in the 1880's. In 1990 a report released by Senator Ted Kennedy’s office stated that since that time the literacy rate has never exceeded 91%. So much for compulsory education. The P-16 Plan represents ultimate people control by the education system and will produce a vast regression (massive dropouts) of students if adopted. Public Schools were fought so hard in Texas that the last local private school was not consolidated until 1939. I would have attended that school.

I propose that the exact opposite education plan should be inaugurated. More on that in another Editorial.

In the meantime, may I suggest that each member of the edRoundtable and each member of the Indiana School Board get a copy of E. D. Hirsch’s book “Cultural Literacy” and read it. Address the issues in that book and, in detail, ensure to us, those who support the system and the consumers of education services, that their new system will create students that can discuss, or is familiar with, every item in that book.

I also call on each member of the Indiana School Board to stand behind their work and submit their resignation, undated, to the Governor and if education results are not improved each can be accepted in one year’s time. That’s the minimum standard we can accept in this modern time. It, the needed education standards, cannot be met by a controlled student body and labor force. We must face reality and stop the psychological teaching. Students need to know their multiplication tables and how to conjugate a verb. The people who prepared and submitted this report must be accountable. This century will see a permanent manned colony on the moon. Address that fact with the education system defined in the P-16 Plan.