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THE NEW AMERICAN -- July 24, 1995 
Copyright 1995 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated 
P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI  54913 
 
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ARTICLE: Education 
TITLE: "Cradle to Grave" OBE 
AUTHOR: William F. Jasper 
 
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Ever wonder where the funding comes from for all those commissions,
committees, reports, studies, think tanks, and experimental programs 
that have such a horrendous impact on education? A major source, of
course, is the federal hog trough (your tax dollars ). Long before 
the constitutional impediments to Washington's involvement in educa-
tion matters were breached, however, there were the Carnegie founda-
tions. It was the work of the Carnegie group of foundations half a 
century ago that paved the way for the federal invasion of education, 
and the Carnegie handprint can be found on most of the subversive 
influences afflicting our schools today. 
 
Thus, when a lengthy epistle from one of Carnegie's top educational
technocrats to Hillary Rodham Clinton surfaced recently, all serious
education observers took note. The 18-page letter was from Marc S.
Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy
(NCEE) and a longtime friend of the Clintons. As governor of Arkansas, 
Bill Clinton had brought in Tucker to "restructure" that state's educa-
tion system. 
 
Kudos and a Proposal 
 
Tucker's missive to First Lady-elect Hillary Clinton was dated November 11,
1992 and opened with deliriously ecstatic congratulatory salutations,
followed by the more serious business of proposing an "agenda" for the
complete socialization of America. Tucker's long connections with the
corridors of power in the vast Carnegie cosmos are significant enough by
themselves to merit attention, but perhaps most interesting is the
prominent mention in his letter of a name with an even more impressive
cachet: Rockefeller. The letter begins: 
 
"Dear Hillary: 
 
"I still cannot believe you won. But utter delight that you did
pervades all the circles in which I move. I met last Wednesday in David
Rockefeller's office with him, John Sculley, Dave Barram and David
Haselkorn. It was a great celebration. Both John and David R. were
more expansive than I have ever seen them -- literally radiating
happiness. My own view and theirs is this country has seized its 
last chance.... 
 
"The subject we were discussing was what you and Bill should do now
about education, training and labor market policy. Following that
meeting, I chaired another in Washington on the same topic. Those 
present at the second meeting included Tim Barnicle, Dave Barram, 
Mike Cohen, David Hornbeck, Hilary Pennington, Andy Planner, Lauren 
Resnick, Betsy Brown Ruzzi, Bob Schwartz, Mike Smith and Bill 
Spring.... Ira Magaziner was also invited to this meeting." 
 
So what is it that Messrs. Tucker, Rockefeller, Sculley, Hornbeck,
and their enraptured confreres envision for Bill and Hillary for
"education, training and labor market policy"? Nothing short of a 
radical, transformational outcome-based education scheme "to remold 
the entire American system." Nothing short of a national system of 
control over all jobs and education "that literally extends from 
cradle to grave" and that is mandatory "for everyone." "We think," 
wrote Tucker, "the great opportunity you have is to remold the entire 
American system for human resource development, almost all of the 
current components of which were put into place before World War II." 
 
"The Vision" 
 
Tucker rhapsodically expounded to Hillary: "First, a vision of the
kind of national -- not federal -- human resources development system 
the nation could have. This is interwoven with a new approach to 
governing that should inform that vision. What is essential is that 
we create a seamless web of opportunities to develop one's skills 
that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system 
for everyone -- young and old, poor and rich, worker and full-time 
student." 
 
Tucker next outlined "a proposed legislative agenda you can use to
implement this vision": 
 
*  A national "apprenticeship system" to serve as "the keystone of
a strategy for putting a whole new postsecondary training system in
place."  This scheme, he wrote, "contains what we think is a powerful 
idea for rolling out and scaling up the whole new human resources system
nationwide over the next four years, using the (renamed) apprenticeship 
idea as the entering wedge." 
 
*  A national "employment service and a new system of labor market
boards" to control all education, jobs and job training. 
 
*  A "special program to greatly raise the work-related skills of
the people trapped in the core of our great cities." 
 
*  Legislation "to advance the elementary and secondary reform
agenda." 
 
Then, under a the heading, "The Vision," Tucker sketched "the
essence of that vision," calling for "A seamless system of unending 
skill development that begins in the home with the very young and 
continues through school, postsecondary education and the workplace." 
The vision calls for "clear national standards of performance in 
general education (the knowledge and skills that everyone is expected 
to hold in common)." This will produce a "national system of education 
in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations and teacher education and 
licensure systems are all linked to the national standards," and "a 
system that rewards students who meet the national standards with 
further education and good jobs, providing them a strong incentive to 
work hard in school." 
 
"Creating such a system," declared Tucker, "means sweeping aside
countless programs, building new ones, combining funding authorities,
changing deeply embedded institutional structures, and so on." This is 
an activity at which Tucker and his cohorts seem to excel, though the 
"reforms" they have instituted in Arkansas, Kentucky, Rochester, 
Pittsburgh, Vermont, San Diego, and elsewhere have been utter disasters. 
 
Addressing the Opposition 
 
As confusing as the educational mummery employed by the Carnegie
elitists may be, it is not sufficient to obscure the main feature of 
the Tucker-Rockefeller plan: outright government coercion. Tucker
acknowledged that "everything we have heard indicates virtually universal
opposition in the employer community to the proposal for a 11_2% levy on
employers for training to support the costs associated with employed 
workers gaining these skills, whatever the levy is called." 
 
But Tucker and his comrades are not the sort to be deterred by mere
"universal opposition" of the unwashed. "We propose that Bill take
a leaf out of the German book," he wrote to Hillary. "One of the most
important reasons that large German employers offer apprenticeship 
slots to German youngsters is that they fear, with good reason, that 
if they don't volunteer to do so, the law will require it. Bill could 
gather a group of leading executives and business organization leaders, 
and tell them straight out that he will hold back on submitting 
legislation to require a training levy, provided they commit themselves 
to a drive to get employers to get their average expenditures on front-
line employees training up to 2% of front-line employee salaries and 
wages within two years." 
 
Tucker also recommended "that the President appoint a National
Council on Human Resources Development" which would "consist of the 
relevant key White House officials, cabinet members and members of 
Congress. It would also include a small number of governors, educators, 
business executives, labor leaders and advocates for minorities and 
the poor." Moreover, "It would be established in such a way as to 
assure the continuity of membership across administrations, so that 
the consensus it forges outlasts any one administration." 
 
We can well imagine the composition of this permanent consensus-
forming body now: Secretaries Richard Riley, Robert Reich, and Donna
Shalala; Senators Teddy Kennedy and Richard Lugar; Representatives 
Barney Frank and Ron Dellums; Governors Roy Roemer and Pete Wilson; 
educators Theodore Sizer, David Hornbeck, Marc Tucker, and William 
Spady; business executives John Sculley and Felix Rohatyn; labor 
leaders Al Shanker and Keith Geiger; and "advocates" Jesse Jackson, 
Maya Anjelou, and Marian Wright Edelman.  Perhaps it was just a 
Freudian slip which caused Tucker to refer to this proposed new body 
as "our council." 
 
Job Control 
 
Under the plan offered to Hillary, a national "Employment Service"
would be created and "all available front-line jobs -- whether public 
or private -- must be listed in it by law." There is more: "A system 
of labor market boards is established at the local, state and federal 
levels to coordinate the systems for job training, postsecondary 
professional and technical education, adult basic education, job 
matching and counseling."  
 
As part of the Carnegie pursuit of "national standards," Tucker
recommended: 
 
"Create National Board for Professional and Technical Standards.
Board is private, not-for-profit, chartered by Congress. Charter 
specifies broad membership composed of leading figures from higher 
education, business, labor, government and advocacy groups. Board 
can receive appropriated funds from Congress, private foundations, 
individuals and corporations.  Neither Congress nor the executive 
branch can dictate the standards set by the Board." 
 
Ingenious, no? Have your own, private, independent, unaccountable,
congressionally chartered, taxpayer-funded board through which to
dictate the "standards" that will direct the nation. 
 
The fascist-communist scheme outlined by Tucker was well described
by Dr. Eugene Maxwell Boyce in his 1983 study, The Coming Revolution 
in Education.  In that work, Boyce, a professor of education 
administration at the University of Georgia, wrote: "In the Communist 
ideology the function of universal education is clear, and easily 
understood. Universal education fits neatly into the authoritarian 
state. Education is tied directly to jobs -- control of the job being 
the critical control point in an authoritarian state. The level of 
education, and consequently the level of employment, is determined 
first, by level of achievement in school.  They do not educate people 
for jobs that do not exist. No such direct, controlled relationship 
between education and jobs exists in democratic countries." 
 
Nor can it. The thoroughly coercive system proposed by the
Carnegie-Tucker-Rockefeller cabal would be totalitarian  regardless
of the labels affixed to it. 
 
END 
 
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THE NEW AMERICAN -- July 24, 1995 
Copyright 1995 -- American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated 
P.O. Box 8040, Appleton, WI  54913 
 
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