What others have said about None Dare Call It Education:  

"A once great public school system now graduates students who can’t read, write, or calculate. None Dare Call It Education explains why the teaching of knowledge and basic skills has been replaced by Values Clarification, Outcome-Based Education, Whole Language, inventive spelling, new-new math, School-to-Work, school-based clinics, and other fads and follies. It is must reading for all parents."

--- Phyllis Schlafly

As a parent, as an education researcher, and as an elected member of the Ohio State Board of Education, I can attest that None Dare Call It Education tells it like it is. John Stormer has done a magnificent job of simplifying some very complex issues affecting the education of our children. His book equips us to clearly identify the source of the breakdown in education and shows what must be done about it. Buy the book, read it, share it with others. Above all--for the sake of our children and our future, take action!

--- Diana Fessler, Member Ohio State Board of Education  

As a former public school board member and more recently as a 12-year state legislator, I have looked for a clearly written and substantiated account of the demise of public education. None Dare Call It Education explains why and how schools are failing to be what they could and should be for our children. Being familiar with much of the documentation used and having lived through the years the book covers, my personal experience verifies every statement and conclusion. Everyone who cares about young people should read and reread this book.

--- Representative William Linton Missouri General Assembly

None Dare Call It

Education

by John A. Stormer

The documented account of how education "reforms" are undermining academics and traditional values.

From the Inside Jacket:

In 1954, the report of the special congressional committee which investigated the influence of tax-exempt foundations in education said:

"Theoretically, a society could be completely made over in something like 15 years, the time it takes to inculcate a new culture into a rising crop of youngsters."

Forty years later Focus on the Family psychologist Dr. James Dobson warned:

"The pre-dominant values system of an entire culture can be overturned in one generation, or certainly in two, by those with unlimited access to children."

None Dare Call It Education documents what the schools of America are doing to the children of America academically and morally. The book also shows how America’s culture--the way we live--has changed as the schools, their textbooks and their teaching methods have changed.

None Dare Call It Education shows that the biggest changes are still ahead. Goals 2000 and School-to-Work laws passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton will transform the schools of America and the nation’s employment practices by 2001. A U.S. Department of Education publication says:

"School-to-Work changes the purpose of education from intellectual development to vocational preparation."

In 1989, a leading educator told Governors and Cabinet level officials:

"We no longer see the teaching of facts and information as the primary function of education... Building a new kind of people must be part of education."

None Dare Call It Education tells how it is being done. The book also tells what awakened parents and citizens can do to restore the teaching of the three R’s and the reinforcement of the traditional values of homes and families to America’s schools.

Introduction

What’s Happening To Our Schools and To Our Children?

Most of us would like to think today’s schools provide the same education we think we received. We’ve heard about "dumbing down," high school graduates who have trouble reading their diplomas, drugs, unmarried teen-agers having babies, and the violence and killings in inner city schools or in far off little towns like Paducah, Kentucky, Jonesboro, Arkansas or Springfield, Oregon. Even so, many feel hope that the schools our children or grandchildren attend are doing a good job--although they may be somewhat different from those we attended.

This book is filled with examples of horrible and outrageous happenings in America’s schools. The "horrible examples" were collected from teachers and parents, state and local school board members, state legislative files, a U.S. Senate speech about new-new math which would be funny if not so tragic, newspaper articles about moral outrages in the nation’s schools and illustrations from school textbooks.

As you read you’ll understand why the nationally-syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell says:

"If every parent in America knew what was really going on in the public schools, there would be a revolution."

The "horrible examples" won’t be found in every school. However, they result from a faulty philosophy of education which influences all public schools (and many private institutions). That faulty philosophy (1) has produced schools which are failing children academically, (2) is subjecting children to wrong moral influences, and (3) establishes the foundation from which education "reformers" are working to remake our children, our society and our culture.

That word culture, as it refers to the "culture of a nation," is defined by the 1951 American College Dictionary as...

"...the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings, which is transmitted from one generation to another."

America’s culture--the values and traditions which determine the way we live and the way of life we will hand down to our children and grandchildren--is being transformed.

Periodically America gets a "wake up call." In the seven months during which this book was being completed, twenty-one students and teachers were gunned down and killed in schools by fellow students. Fifty others were wounded. On May 22, 1998m a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial recounted the on-going killings and said:

"We can ask ourselves over and over why these tragedies happen. What leads these kids to kill? A screwed up home life? A psychological disorder? An innate evil? We can speculate, but we can never know for sure."

The following day President Clinton in his regular Saturday radio address said of the rash of in-school killings:

"We must face up to the fact that these are more than isolated incidents. They are symptoms of a changing culture..."

Our culture--the sum total of the ways of living built up by one group of human beings which is transmitted from one generation to another--has been changed as President Clinton acknowledged.

Our nation and many of its laws, our ideas about family and marriage and our attitudes toward life, liberty and property have changed drastically. In effect, America has lived through a revolution. It’s been a revolution which has been unfolding slowly, step-by-step for several generations. The revolution has changed what too many Americans thing about school, work, sex, responsibility, right and wrong and the importance of spoken and written agreements. Consider how America has changed. In 1960...

"...a radio or TV station was in danger of losing its operating license from the Federal Communications Commission if it permitted the words "Hell" or "Damn" to go out over the air waves... prayer and Bible reading were permitted in America’s schools... it was safe to walk even big city streets at night... there was no drug problem, no X-rated, R-rated or PG movies... there was no coed dorms on college campuses or in Army barracks, no birth control pills (they were introduced in May 1960) and no legalized abortions... homosexuals hid their sin rather than parading it openly and proudly in demonstrations and on TV (perhaps that’s why there was no AIDS or HIV)."

America has changed! People under age 50 have a hard time comprehending the changes. They haven’t known any America other than today’s violent, sex-crazy, drug-dependent world. Because the changes happened little by little, even older Americans who lived through them didn’t notice what was happening. However, what must be characterized as a revolution has produced a different America and a different way of living than that which existed before 1960.

How has it all happened? The disruptions of several wars, the TV and the entertainment media, the government and changes in the doctrine and practices of many churches have impacted on how Americans think and live.

No influence is greater than that of America’s schools. Children spend over thirty hours a week in school during 13 of their most formative years. Educational goals and what is taught and how it is taught have changed in the last 65 years. It was done by a group of education "reformers" who over 65 years ago said they would use the schools to produce "a new social order." The changes have transformed how we think and live. That’s what this book is about.

In succeeding chapters you’ll see "horrible and outrageous examples" like those summarized here documented with details. In Chapter 1, titled What Are Schools Doing To Our Children Academically?, you’ll read...

"...how children across America, instead of being taught to spell, are encouraged to use ‘inventive spelling’ and parents are instructed not to correct them. ‘Educators’ say spelling isn’t necessary because ‘spell-check’ on computers will do the work."

You’ll read how...

"...official state Outcome-Based Education guidelines instruct teachers to encourage students to guess at words and meanings from pictures printed with the stories rather than teach them to sound out words phonetically."

You’ll learn that...

"...’new-new math books’ tell students that math isn’t too important anymore because computers do the work and then instructs them to ‘guess and check’ until they get ‘right’ answers."

Chapter 1 also gives the details on Massachusetts’ testing of incoming teachers in 1998:

"...56-percent of the college graduates being tested for teaching jobs flunked. To help more pass, the State Board of Education lowered the ‘passing grade’ for the eighth-grade level test. The governor was outraged. He expressed concerns that ‘perhaps thousands of teachers in the classroom today are not meeting the standards.’ Similar alarming reports are documented from other states."

Creating New People

Falling academics--the dumbing down of our children--is not the only problem. Some kids do learn and excel. Chapter 10 documents the techniques used to manipulate the thinking and values of the very smart kids. They are taught to base their thinking and decisions on faulty, humanistic, God-is-not-relevant foundations. They are being trained and prepared to be the leaders of "the new social order" which education "reformers" say they are working to create.

Traditional Values Undermined

All the atrocities are not in the area of academics. Chapter 2, titled What Are Schools Doing To Our Children Morally? details how the Illinois State Board of Education had 61 Illinois high schools give a test to 11th grade students. Questions asked students which types of sexual activities are least likely and most likely to expose people to HIV and what are the best ways of avoiding pregnancy, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. The multiple choice questions had students choose between...

"...anal and oral sex, mutual masturbation, French kissing, having vaginal sex with or without a condom, and only having sex with people you know. The test did not give students any opportunity to choose abstinence or answer ‘None of the above.’"

No one, including the state supervisor who signed the letter which sent the test to 61 schools, admitted to having seen the questions. The State Superintendent Joseph Spagnolo issued a public apology.

In response to his official "explanation" the Chicago Sun Times editorial on June 5, 1998 carried the headline "Excuses, excuses." The paper said that blaming "an unnamed bureaucrat for this ‘egregious error’ was not good enough." The editorial said that the questions were no mistake, but rather they were...

"...a window into the mind-set of educational bureaucrats and assorted activists determined to force their vision of permissive sex education on parents and students--even when the vision conflicts with Illinois law."

Some would say, "I’m glad I don’t live in Illinois!" However, the Illinois State Board of Education indicated that they had received the controversial questions from the Council of Chief State School Officers, the organization to which the top education official in each state belongs. They indicated the questions had been used in many other states as well. The four actual questions and the choices they offered students are printed in Chapter 4--along with a host of other moral outrages to which other students, including even those in kindergarten, are subjected in state after state.

Chapter 4 is titled, Textbooks Destroy The Foundations of America’s Way of Life. Examples from textbooks used in America’s schools are over a 40-year period show how schools have undermined the twelve basic foundational concepts of western civilization and American life. Those foundational concepts are being replaced with the false teachings of Humanist Manifestos I and II. The examples show how textbooks have been changed to...

"...(1) weaken marriage and family, (2) downgrade parental authority, (3) change traditional attitudes toward sex, morality and life, (4) substitute situational ethics for absolutes of right and wrong, (5) deny the importance of spoken or written contracts, and (6) undermine national independence and sovereignty."

There are multitudes of dedicated teachers in the public school system. But they teach in schools controlled by a faulty, flawed humanistic philosophy. It is a philosophy constructed years ago by "reformers" who redefined the purpose of education and based it on an incorrect view of the nature of children and their purpose in life.

I’m not writing about a conspiracy. Conspiracies deal with what is done in secret. The education "reformers" who have made America’s schools the primary agency for changing our culture and our way of life wrote and spoke openly about their dreams and their goals. The tragedy is that for too long no one noticed--or no one took their words seriously. Now we are reaping the harvest in a serious academic decline and a changed national culture--a changed way of living. It’s time to look deeply into their goals to see how they are achieving them in the lives of our children.

How they laid their false foundations for what is happening to America’s way of life today is detailed in Chapter 3. Without a knowledge of what they planned, it is impossible to understand how American society and its culture have been transformed--or where we are headed. What those "pioneer" reformers started planning for our children and our nation over 65 years ago, their present day successors in education and government are implementing now.

Chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 tell who the new reformers are and what they are planning and doing through Goals 2000 and School-to-Work laws which Congress passed and President Clinton signed. These laws will make School-to-Work mandatory in all public schools by 2001.

What is School-to-Work? You’ll read a U.S. Department of Education document which says that...

"...School-to-Work changes the purpose of education from intellectual development to vocational development."

By the 7th or 8th grade "assessments" will be made which will determine what job a child’s future education or vocational training will prepare him for. It’s already happening. The 1997 Annual Report to Congress by the Secretaries of Education and Labor says that...

"...as of June 1996, 23 percent of the 115,000 elementary and secondary schools in America were engaged in STW ...and all 50 states have applied for and received STW planning grants."

You’ll learn that a top education official has told state governors and cabinet officials that...

"...We no longer see the teaching of facts and information as the primary function of education... Building a new kind of people must be part of the curriculum."

What kind of "new people" do these "educators" have in mind? Representative Henry Hyde is Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. In a letter to his congressional colleagues he said:

"Behavior modification is a significant part of restructuring our schools. School children will be trained to be "politically correct," to be unbiased, to understand diversity, to accept "alternative life-styles..."

The Outcome-Based Education process described in Chapter 8 is the method for doing it. The man credited with being the brains behind Outcome-Based Education and many of the on-going school "reforms" says:

"The purpose of education is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students."

How will it be done? Lamar Alexander told the 1989 Kansas Governor’s Education Conference that schools should be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily year-round and serve children from age three months to eighteen years of age. Shortly after he made that proposal Alexander was named U.S. Secretary of Education by President George Bush. You’ll read Alexander’s actual words in Chapter 6.

Many who have read even this far will say, "It could never happen in America!" It is happening. Under the guise of "education reform" our nation and the way we live and think is being transformed. In the process academic excellence has disappeared and new attitudes and values are being implanted into our children’s minds and hearts.

Even if you are sure that your children and grandchildren are not being affected, they will grow up to live in a world where a majority of the people are products of schools which are greatly different from the ones we attended.

Read the rest of this book to see the details and the proofs of what is happening right now. Then read Chapter 12 to see what some communities are doing about it--and what you can do to restore America’s traditional values and culture for our children and our grandchildren.

John A. Stormer
Florissant, Missouri
July 4, 1998