In grades K-12, both white and minority students scored, on the average, in the 87th percentile. In math, whites scored in the 82nd percentile while minorities scored in the 77th percentile.

In the public schools, however, there is a sharp contrast. White public school eighth grade students, nationally scored in the 58th percentile in math and the 57th percentile in reading. Black eighth grade students, on the other hand, scored on the average at the 24th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading. Hispanics scored at the 29th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading.

Additional statistics on homeschooling achievement

Iserbyt knows what she is talking about. She served as Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Department of Education, during the first Reagan Administration. Iserbyt is a former school board director in Camden, Maine and was co-founder and research analyst of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM) from 1978 to 2000.

Iserbyt documents the transformation of our school system chronologically, beginning in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, then chapter by chapter through the recent decades. You may be skeptical. Why would anyone develop a plan to deliberately keep the young people of our country ignorant?

As stated in the foreward of the book, “Mrs. Iserbyt has also documented the gradual transformation of our once academically successful education system into one devoted to training children to become compliant human resources to be used by government and industry for their own purposes. This is how fascist-socialist societies train their children to become servants of their government masters. The successful implementation of this new philosophy of education will spell the end of the American dream of individual freedom and opportunity. The government will plan your life for you, and unless you comply with government restrictions and regulations your ability to pursue a career of your own choice will be severely limited.”

“What is so mind boggling is that all of this is being financed by American people through their own taxes. In other words, the American people are underwriting the destruction of their own freedom and way of life by lavishly financing through federal grants the very social scientists who are undermining our national sovereignty and preparing our children to become the dumbed-down vassals of the new world order.”

Sound far-fetched? Too much like a conspiracy theory? Please take the time to investigate for yourself. The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America is available from Amazon or as a free ebook download from Iserbyt’s website:

www.deliberatedumbingdown.com

“These are the things I teach, these are the things you pay me to teach. Make of them what you will.”

1. Confusion – “Everything I teach is out of context. I teach the un-relating of everything. I teach dis-connections.”

2. Class Position – “The lesson of numbered classes is that everyone has a place in the pyramid and there is  no way out of your class except by number magic.”

3. Indifference – “I teach children not to care too much about anything, even though they want to make it appear that they do.”

4. Emotional Dependency – “Rights may be granted or withheld by any authority without appeal, because rights do not exist inside a school… unless school authorities say they do.”

5. Intellectual Dependency – “Good students wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. … Successful children do the thinking I assign them with a minimum of resistance and a decent show of enthusiasm.”

6. Provisional Self-Esteem – “I teach that a kid’s self-respect should depend on expert opinion. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged.”

7. One Can’t Hide – “I teach students that they are always watched, that each is under constant surveillance by myself and my colleagues. … Students are encouraged to tattle on each other or even to tattle on their own parents.”

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking the schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that powerful interests cannot afford to let it happen.”

Gatto concluded his 1991 speech with “School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.”

For the entire content of that speech, as well as one he gave in 1991 titled “The Psychopathic School” upon receiving the New York City Teach of the Year award, as well as additional chapters, read the book, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling.

Those words I heard many years ago at a homeschool convention have helped to shape my opinions about education.

According to author, Madeleine L’Engle, “These are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin.”

Whether it is an overt goal of the public education system, as some would argue, or just an inevitable byproduct of finding expedient methods for instructing and controlling large numbers of children, public school students are being shaped into a mold.

An example of one who could not be made into a muffin, is Fanny Crosby. Blind from the age of six weeks, Fanny went on to become one of the most prolific hymnwriters, writing over 8,000 hymns in her lifetime. While possessing inordinate talent in the area of poetry and songwriting, Fanny failed miserably at math. I don’t know if she ever would have passed today’s proficiency exams.

Can you picture Thomas Edison forced to sit through classes on writing poetry or discussing and analyzing literature?

Homeschooling gives you the freedom to focus on your child’s strengths and areas of interest. You can provide instruction that goes deeper in areas you view as important and beneficial, rather than a smattering of superficial information covering a wide range of subjects.

Someone once said that we are learning less and less about more and more until someday we’ll know nothing about everything.

Don’t let that happen to your children. Find out where their talents and interests lie and dive in!

Remember when our grandparents, great-grandparents, and such stated that  they only had an eighth-grade education? Well, check this out Exam PDF Version

Could any of us have passed the eighth grade in 1895? This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 Salina, Kansas, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, Kansas and reprinted by the Salina Journal.