Several syndicated columnists throughout the nation have begun to submit articles to attempt to explain the ramifications of the Careers Act, also known as "School-to-work" legislation, which is a 116 page plan. Having read several of these articles, it is apparent that these "well meaning" people are either sadly uninformed regarding STW or they are deliberately deceiving the American people. Therefore, as citizens, we cannot remain silent while control of the educational standards or objectives and the means of evaluating the outcomes are given to the federal government, and the state governors and their "appointees." This is nothing short of a massive new bureaucracy!
American business and industry have been enticed to participate in the total control or the work force and education by government through STW. STW completely changes the purpose of education by replacing the acquisition of knowledge with workplace competencies. Implementation of STW is currently in progress with school counselors and unelected officials directing the career paths of our children.
Federal funding for School-To-Work is passed to the state by a "block grant" ($49 million over 4 years) directly to the governor. Governor Engler is the sole Michigan elected official responsible for STW implementation. He established the Michigan Jobs Commission by Executive Order in 1993. The appointed Michigan Jobs Commission and infrastructure have been working feverishly to establish the new system. The Michigan Legislature has had little knowledge of, or involvement in, the roll out of School-To-Work. As their awareness increases, so does their concern.
Note that most of the participants in this massive effort have not read the STW legislation under which they operate. They also have failed to read a copy of the STW Federal Implementation Grant Applications defining the onerous obligations imposed on them and the citizens of Michigan by this legislation.
"Labor boards" will work in collusion with the educrats to decide the needs of the U.S. economy, region by region (in fact, these boards have already been organized in many areas). Then your children become the fodder for the state. They will become the "human resources" to be used by the state, by its official bureaucrats, and channeled to wherever the state declares a need for human "resources."
To make this more palatable to unsuspecting American parents, extensive personal information on every youth and older citizen in the country has been compiled regarding health, family, education and values. The collected data are stored under Social Security numbers in national data computer banks. The STW plan is based on the Federal SCANS report; attributes such as honesty and integrity will be assessed and scored. Government will dictate proper behaviors. Ignoring individual privacy, lifelong data generally will be available to all who are part of the STW system for lifelong tracking of individuals. This data will later be used to determine three or four options from which each student will have a "choice." These choices will give only an illusion of freedom, for no student can choose beyond what has been pre-determined by the electronic dossier and corroborated with the needs of the labor market in geographic regions.
According to STW, students will be legally emancipated at the age of 16 years; that is, by the 10th grade, students will be considered adults, and most will have completed their schooling and will have received a CIM (certificate of initial Mastery). A student MUST have a career chosen by no later than 11th grade. No one will be permitted employment without this certificate. So, with their CIM, these 16-year-olds will obtain employment in their "chosen field" as an "apprentice" for two years, receiving wages at or below minimum wage, without benefits. After apprenticeship, they are not guaranteed employment. It is likely that most businesses will replenish their needs frugally, with new apprentices. In fact, in this plan, there are expected high levels of unemployment and forced retraining in other fields - through the age of 72!
Entry into college for professional training will not be a personal choice. Selection will be determined by the state in relation to the "needs" of the economy of a particular "region." However, this Act does indicate that the percentage of the student population needed for college training will be reduced by present standards. If you were able to peruse the outcomes, curriculum, and the proficiency tests that are proposed for schools through the Goals 2000, you can be assured that rigorous academic achievement will at be the criteria by which students would be chosen to attend college. [Note: these "proficiency tests" were implemented this year in Michigan. Nearly 75% of the students in the state FAILED these tests. It appears that they are trying to separate the "intellectuals" from the rest. - Editor]
The business community, currently frustrated by incompetent employees and rising remediation/training costs will ultimately realize that this legislation will not relieve them of their dilemma. Rather, it will encumber them with additional, burdensome regulations and costs that will make it impossible for many businesses to survive. As we have already been experiencing, large corporations will merge, eliminating small businesses. By centralizing and controlling the workplace, we remove much of the impetus for individual entrepreneurship; we shut off creative avenues or career preparation, we reduce everyone to limited routes for job creation, and there is no reason for anyone to do anything but the bare minimum. We couldn't assign a more devastating program for our country's future if we set out to destroy it ourselves!
As you can see, this Act is far reaching, and will change American life and society for the 21st century. It is truly the blueprint for a "planned economy." It will eliminate the source of free enterprise and entrepreneurship by controlling the mainspring of human progress. Individual freedom and liberty regarding one's life and pursuit of happiness will be denied to American citizens.
In February, 1996, MEAP results released by the Department of Education showed that in grade 4 only 49.9% had satisfactory scores and grade 7 had 42.3% satisfactory achievement. Michigan schools are failing to teach our children to read and are embarking on this massive systemic change to School-To-Work.
As advocates for our children (Parents, not "breeding stock"), we must demand that they be able to choose their future life roles without federal or state intervention or control. Children are not state property and should not be labeled as the pejorative "human capital."
The only solution to America's education crisis is to take the Federal Government totally out of the education business and return to local control by elected officials and taxpayers.
This chilling educational plan for the 21st century is literally "cradle to grave" government control over every individual - by controlling labor opportunities for every citizen.
This legislation can certainly be considered "progressive" since it will cause our form of government to evolve into a different species. Originally we were a Republic where people had God-given rights protected by law. Gradually, a democracy emerged where people have privileges that are granted (or eliminated) by government. Just ask yourself, when will it stop?
The Union Leader, a newspaper in New Hampshire, Thursday, December 1, 1988 had an interesting article by Dennis Cuddy, Ph.D. The piece ran with this heading; _Problems with Character Education Curricula._
"A leading developer of character education is the American Institute for Character Education (ACIE)...they had negotiated an arrangement to use and place in every public (no longer public with Goals 2000 solidly in place but government controlled) school in America.... this marvelous life-changing material and curriculum. (You can bet it is!) You find in the teachers handbook the buzz word "clarifying values" (but whose values?). The program is not based on Judeo-Christian values, but rather ideas shared by major world religions and cultures.
The Thomas Jefferson Research Center (TJRC) was founded in 1963 and distributes AICE's character education material...in the Teachers Guide for the Intermediate Level...the preface draws from the motivational discoveries of the late Dr. Abraham Maslow (named 1967 Humanist of the Year)...References in the Teachers Guide by Arthur Gates claim children's self-esteem are damaged by "authoritarian family structures" and "authoritarian education in the schools."
This is nothing more than challenging a child's fixed belief system and the total removal of moral absolutes.
In another work of Dr. Cuddy, "A Chronology of Education with Quotable Quotes," he opens with this statement; "If someone told the American people today that he or she and those with the same philosophy or ideology were going to destroy the values parents were instilling in their children, and that these same people were going to take control of the country, there would be tremendous and swift reaction by the American people..." In the September 1981 issue of _The Humanist_, Blackham (a founder of the 4 million member International Humanist and Ethical Union) proclaimed that if schools teach dependence on one self "they are more revolutionary than any conspiracy to overthrow the government."
Dr. Cuddy's, _A Chronology of Education With Quotable Quotes_, is available from Pro-Family Forum, Inc., P.O. Box 1059, Highland City, FL 33846-1059. Order a copy, but not before you remove your children from these schools who are misusing our public trust!
Mrs. Clara Pilchak
Republican State Committeewoman, Dist. 10
But our planet and our age have had more than passing acquaintance with utopias empowered. And without exception, the promises of the utopian dream have yielded to dystopian nightmares. The tens of millions of victims of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho, Kim, Fidel, Pol Pot, Amin, Lumumba, Qhadaffi, Khomeini, and dozens of other utopic despots cry out to us. They warn us against the utopian siren call. They warn us of the fundamental truth embodied in George Washington's definition of government: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
World government, of course, would necessitate world wide force - unprecedented power on a global scale. Make no mistake about it, that is what the advocates of "an empowered United Nations" are really after. And what is more disturbing is that they have very nearly succeeded in grasping hold of this power without most inhabitants of this planet having the slightest idea of what is being planned for them.
Since World War II, calls for world government and an end to national sovereignty have proliferated, usually emanating from individuals associated with organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the World Federalist Association (WFA). Below are but a few of the many examples that could be cited.
-In 1950, a Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution authored by CFR globalists Robert M. Hutchins, Rexford C. Tugwell, and others was introduced in Congress by Senator Glen Taylor (D-ID). The submitted World Constitution declared that iniquity and war inseparably spring from the competitive anarchy of the nation-states; that therefore the age of nations must end. It held as well that nations must "surrender their arms" to the proposed "Federal Republic of the World."
-In 1960, Rhodes Scholar Walt Whitman Rostow (CFR) claimed that urgent imperatives "argue strongly for movement in the direction of federalized world organization under effective international law" and for "effective international control of military power." The real world problem, said Rostow, is "national sovereignty," and "it is therefore an American interest to see an end to nationhood as it has been historically defined." Incredibly, Rostow was given a top spot in the Kennedy State Department.
-In 1961, the Kennedy State Department brought forth an official policy entitled Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World (Department of State Publication 7277). This amazing document proposed a plan of "progressive controlled disarmament" in which all national armaments, including those of the United States, would be transferred to the United Nations. This disarmament "would proceed to a point where no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened UN Peace Force."
-On Earth Day, April 22, 1970, Norman Cousins (CFR), the longtime president of the United World Federalists (now the World Federalist Association), proclaimed, "Humanity needs world order. The fully sovereign nation is incapable of dealing with the poisoning of the environment... The management of the planet... requires a world government."
-The appeals for world government multiplied with the approach of the UN's 50th anniversary in 1995.
-In a June 22, 1993 letter on White House stationery to the World Federalist Association, President Bill Clinton congratulated the WFA on awarding the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award to the president's longtime friend and No. 2 State Department appointee, Strobe Talbot. Clinton's letter boasted, "Norman Cousins worked for world peace and world government....Best wishes for future success."
-In the World Bank's 1994 Human Development Report, an essay by Nobel Prize winning economist Jan Tinbergen, entitled "Global Governance for the 21st Century," declares: "Mankind's problems can no longer be solved by national governments. What is needed is a World Government." And this government, says he, should be empowered with a "World Police" and a program for "the redistribution of world income."
The real problem we face, however, is that these appeals and proposals are now being implemented through UN treaties and conventions which are establishing "supranational institutions" with real power and force. Lord Acton's famous dictum that "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" is a sobering truism acknowledged by all intelligent people. To this maxim should be added what we might call the Rummel Carollary "Power kills and absolute power kills absolutely." R.J. Rummel, a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, has spent the past eight years of his life in an intensive study of a very grim but important phenomenon of our century: genocide and government mass murder, or what he calls "democide." He has thus far produced four powerful and harrowing books, the latest volume being _Death by Government_. "The more power a government has," notes Dr. Rummel, "the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power governments, the more power is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide."
One graph in his newest book lists the top 15 of "this century's mega-murderers - those states killing in cold blood, aside from warfare, 1 million or more men, women and children." The bloodiest of those criminal regimes - the USSR and Red China -- were not only invited into the UN, but were given special status on the UN Security Council!
The UN could (and does) accommodate these mega-murderers because "the rule of law," in UN terms, is radically, fundamentally different from the "rule of law" understood by the American Founding Fathers and as embodied in our Constitution. Whereas the U.S. Constitution is rooted in the traditional Western and Judeo-Christian legal concepts of divine law and natural law which circumscribe the limits of government power, the UN Charter is based in the framework of positivist legal theory which virtually guarantees unrestrained, despotic government.
All of its empty platitudes about "peace," "justice," "law," and "human rights" notwithstanding, the UN is a lawless organization made up largely of criminal regimes pursuing a malevolent, tyrannical agenda. A global, regimented police state under the UN would mean a grim existence - if that is, you are one of the "lucky" ones allowed to exist.
One sure thing Dr. Rummel's research points up with unmistakable clarity is this: "Power will achieve its murderous potential."
Surely the human mind cannot even begin to conceive the enormity of the global slaughter that would certainly accompany the "Plague of Power" issuing from a world government under any entity other than God Himself.
John F. McManus