This is an excerpt from an article in the Natural News newsletter. Read the full article at www.naturalnews.com.
What's the real agenda behind the No Child Left Behind Act?
NCLB may be one of the greatest travesties ever foisted on an unsuspecting populace. Not because its goals are unrealistic, its mandate is unfunded, it favors federal control, or that it is based on punishment. The great insult of NCLB is its unspoken goal of ensuring competence in reading, math, and science to the exclusion of all the other subjects which provide the tools needed to foster citizenship in a democracy.
Competence in reading, math, and science sounds like a worthy goal. But when the job security of teachers and administrators is threatened by standardized test results, it becomes a certainty that all the efforts of the school community will be geared toward enabling the passing of the tests at all cost, with little regard for anything else. One result of this pressure on school staff is that instead of attending their accelerated classes, high achieving students are now frequently used as 'peer tutors' to help lower-achieving students.
The message of NCLB is that reading, math, and science proficiency, to the exclusion of everything else, is what is needed for the job market in the 21st century. These are the skills required to find a place in the corporate world. The corporate machine does not require knowledge of history, economics, geography, philosophy, literature, communications or the arts. Knowledge of these subjects doesn't contribute to the bottom line and tends to create people with the propensity to question authority, something such regimented entities as corporations, governments, and militaries don't want or tolerate.
Being able to write or speak and thus being able to comment on the state of affairs are considered undesirable attributes of masses of people who must be controlled, manipulated and exploited. Proficiency only in reading, math, and science stamps out uniqueness among individuals and replaces it with standardization. It is from uniqueness that the individual gains value. Strip him of his uniqueness, and he becomes no more than a commodity to be valued accordingly. With the loss of uniqueness goes the loss of independence and the ability to advocate for one's self.
NCLB halts the rise of the individual in its tracks. Thinking, questioning, and creating are now out. NCLB returns us to the time of minimal education for the masses which stressed the ability to work and obey orders. This method of producing people for the new world order returns us to a time when almost no child got ahead, therefore no child was left behind.
About the author
Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using "alternative" treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.
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