How Big Brother Plans Your Career

NewsMax.com / Commentary

How Big Brother Plans Your Career
Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
WASHINGTON – The School to Work program, which is written into U.S. law, aims to decide for your children what line of work they should be trained and educated for, according to the needs of the state, collaborating with big business. It has all the appearances of a back-door approach to the police state.

William L. Shirer, in his book "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” cites this phenomenon in Nazi Germany:

"[The workbook was introduced] and eventually no worker could be hired unless he possessed one. In it was kept a record of his skills and employment. The workbook not only provided the State and the employer with up-to-date date on every single employee in the nation, but was used to tie a worker to the bench. If he desired to leave for other employment, his employer could retain his workbook, which meant that he could not be legally employed elsewhere.”

Robert Holland, author of "Not With My Child, You Don’t,” says the similarities of the Hitler’s "full employment” system and the School to Work Law "snapping into place” right here in the United States are "quite eerie and disturbing.”

The system won’t develop overnight, of course. For such a program to be imposed on a freedom-loving public, there must be stealth and gradualism. But the machinery for it has been written into law.

As Holland points out in a study prepared for Free Republic, School to Work legislation repeatedly makes it clear its provisions are for "all students” and "all schools.”

Many of us grew up with dreams and aspirations as to what career path we wished to follow. We may even have changed our minds or careers along the way. We followed our ambitions, often taking hard knocks and learning life’s lessons along the way.

School to Work (STW) will have none of that. Some power elites will determine your children’s careers, and see that they are trained to follow a predetermined paths. School to Work is not about educating boys and girls so they can make their own career decisions. It is about training your children to fit into whatever narrow scheme the elites have decided.

The Usual Suspects

This plan can be traced to "the usual suspects,” i.e., wealthy, powerful establishment foundations and left-wing politicians with a statist complex. State-directed skills training would fit the "national good,” as determined by the elites.

In the mid-1980s, there was a raging debate as to whether the U.S. should embark on a "national industrial policy” program. The Reagan administration had rejected the idea, much to the chagrin of left-wing politicians who felt that because many of our trading partners were making such top-down decisions for their people, obviously we couldn’t compete in a global economy unless we did likewise.

So planners did what planners always do. If the bumpkins elected by the people don’t follow the wisdom of their betters, well, the planners will simply have to work around them.

A Carnegie Corp. forum on education and the economy resulted in a Carnegie spinoff, National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE). This entity was led by educrat Marc Tucker, who designed the grandiose Human Resource Development Plan. In 1990, NCEE unveiled the first national report boosting the "necessity” of School to Work.

Hillary, of Course

In the forefront of those boosting the plan were Arkansas lawyer Hillary Clinton and industrial consultant Ira Magaziner. This duo would later push for a national health system that went down in flames when exposed to the light of day. Those pesky voters again!

This was followed by a series of reports from the U.S. Department of Labor in the first Bush administration. One can speculate that if Ronald Reagan had been around for another term, he would have given this meddling short shrift.

Electronic Resume – for Kindergartners

These reports declared that, quoting Holland, "all schools must bend single-mindedly to the task of socializing a skilled workforce.” The plan "even offered a model electronic resume to be kept for all students, K through 12, wherein their ‘workforce competencies’ would be rated and recorded for the benefit of their future employers. It had a line identifying each child according to Social Security number.”

When the Clintons came to Washington and took the reins of power, the agenda was front and center. What followed were the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act and the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

From all of this emerged a National Skill Standards Board, which has divided the economy into 15 sectors. The machinery for the state determining your child’s future was in place.

Next: How a computer chooses your life’s work.

THIS Article at News Max / Commentary

And what in the hell does the above have to do with what is being discussed?

The ability to learn new skills. It is relevent for several reasons.

One rationale given for instituting programs like "School to Work" is that extensive training is required for various menial jobs. I don't believe that is true. I think the reason why public school graduates are unwilling and unable to learn new skills (and are generally depressed) is because of "learned helplessness."

Take a look around at recent high school graduates. Do many of them have a "can-do" attitude? Or are they generally apathetic and depressed?

One reason for this is that children learn helplessness in school. The situation is very much analagous to the experiment with the dog. Children are put into a "box" (school) and held their against their wills for twelve years. They are then punished and rewarded for various behaviors, but behaviors that are not necessarily what they themselves desire. The net effect is that students are punished and rewarded for behaviors that are oftentimes further punishment, at least from their point of view.

In an analagous sense, they are like the dog that is enclosed in a box and electrocuted randomly. When the dog is placed in a box where he can escape, he no longer has the desire or ability to move. When a student enters the real world where he can use his skills in order to "reward" himself, he no longer has the ability or desire to do so.

Who trained you to use that complex tool known as the computer?

My aren't we full of ourselves today.

The point is that professional educators, the kind that push programs like School-to-Work, will turn a self-learned skill into a jobs program. If it were up to the NEA, learning Windows would require 300 hours of training, and only training given by certified professionals.

Take a look around at recent high school graduates. Do many of them have a "can-do" attitude? Or are they generally apathetic and depressed?

I guess it would depend on the group of students.

My recent first hand experieces are almost opposite of what this thread generally accepts as truth.

I've attended year end sports banquets, band banquets, and other activities and seen bright, accomplished, motivated kids with parents that greatly support their kids and teachers that eveyone likes and respects. Heck, there was even prayer and preaching at one of the banquets, and sabers and rifles at another event!

The version of school to work that I've seen lays out three options that are not mandated or rigid. The road maps chart the course that will best help a student prepare for university studies, community college/voc-tech studies, or basic knowlege. A student can easily see that if they wan the best shot at university acceptance, they will need to pass certain classes and take a certain level of math, science, and English.

Those that don't have the desire or aptitude for academics don't need calculus as much at they need technical math and vocational studies.

If a student want to cross over, they can, but it will be difficult just as changing majors in college can be a problem.

But I'll agree that if a school mandates and maintains rigid tracks that there would be many problems with that system.

Washington State has already started on this plan. Some schools are already tracking kids through a system called, "Aiming High." Basicly, what this program does is separate the top testing students from the main student body and offer enriched college preparatory classes. The remaining students are condemned to "Aiming for Mediocrity," where movies of classic books are shown in class instead of reading the books.

You are a Humanoid Resource on the global masters!
You must obey and do as they say.
They know the job and life that is best for you!
Slavery is freedom, War is Peace

Remember, when all else fails... that's our hands on the hammer.

Recently our son took a test given to his entire high school to help them "plan their futures." The results determined he should be either a "microbiologist" or a "dancer."

Our son was mortified by the later; these days the former seems riskier to me.

Could have been worse, I guess.

Of his two best friends, both straight-A, church-going kids like himself, one was designated as a "mortician" and the other a "future meat-cutter."

I'm very familar with both of these programs (although Black Ice is my personal favorite). The problem is not spyware or unauthorized access on the personal computer. It is the software running on the proxy servers utilized by Comcast, etc. They track through their own systems and most people, even though their NEW and improved "user agreements" state that they (the ISP) MAY track customers browsing, etc. are totally unaware of it. When it made a local newspaper here, Comcast was getting quite a few cancellations, according to a friend who works there. Sadly, most of their customers that found out about this practice just didn't care!

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