Bright School Responsible Use Policy For Grades K-2: Fill & Download for Free

I am not sure I could just pick one, but in at or near the top is KMLA--Korean Minjok Leadership Academy. I have been lucky enough to visit and have been able to get to know a number of students. To support my nomination here is an interview with one of the students who went there and is now finishing a Masters in Leadership and Public Policy before moving on to a a job at Bain. She depicts KMLA in detail both what is great and what is stressful and competitive about it.**********************************************************************I say this a lot because it is true—I am lucky. One of my greatest joys in life is being able to talk to some of the brightest, thoughtful and kindest people in the world. These people have given me insights about life and the world I never would have had without their generosity of spirit and their willingness to answer a lot of questions. What follows is the first part of an interview with Jenni.If you want to find out what it is like to attend the school The New York Times highlighted as one of the best in the world, then read on. If you want to find out why some of the stereotypes about schools like this and the students who attend them are often wrong, then read on. If you want to see why international students bring with them far more than high scores and grades to their universities and colleges in the US, then read on. You won’t be disappointed.***********************************************************************QuestionsCan you tell us a little about you and your family? Where did you grow up in Korea? Can you talk about the changes you saw growing up just in terms of the tremendous growth that’s taken place in your lifetime there?We’ve been doing long distance for some time now, but my family is close to my heart – we are a formidable team who believe in each other. I feel it is only in the past few years that I learned to love my parents for who they are and genuinely wished them well in their growth as fellow human beings. These are the internal changes I suspect most slightly disgruntled children go through with their less-than perfect, but still wonderful and loving, parents. I also know that my parents changed a lot while raising my sister and me – they’ve become more patient, more understanding, and more trusting.My parents persevered through turbulent times – the Asian Financial Crisis of ’97, near-fatal health crises for both my mother and father, challenges of parenthood and marriage. The ride wasn’t always smooth, but I’m really proud of what they’ve achieved together. By turbulent times, I mean hard times that must have made my parents think they were not good enough for my sister and me, that they were not doing things right. The very fact that they each overcame such crushing moments of self-doubt makes me believe I can persevere too.My father showed me fortitude and responsibility. For better or worse, I have never seen my father shed a tear. He endured so much growing up – namely poverty and the loss of his parents. Yet he accomplished much through perseverance and sheer intelligence. I know it has to be that, because my father has never been much of a networker and he did not come from wealth. My mother kindled and nurtured my curiosity and love of learning. I learned to read and write and do multiplication tables all at a young age (around when I was 5 years old) because she chose to teach and expose me to education and knowledge simply to impart her love of learning.Due to my father’s job, we moved around a dozen times or so, living in one place for no more than 1-2 years: various satellite cities in Korea (5-6 cities), the U.S. (Wisconsin), back to Korea (3-4 cities), the U.S. (New Jersey), and then a more permanent residence in Seoul. This was awesome in that I got to live in a lot of different places. My parents valued cultural exposure and as a result, my sister and I got to do a lot of cool things – see ballet and theatre in New York, visit famous Buddhist temples in the southern provinces of Korea, take figure skating lessons in the ice rink Sarah Hughes trained in at New Jersey (although I will always be a Michelle Kwan fan). In school though, I was sometimes popular, sometimes bullied, but rarely happy and content to just be myself. Too much seemed to depend on a myriad of factors outside of my control. I remember how I hated K-drama and but all my friends would talk about episodes incessantly, so I felt pressure to watch it. I also didn’t know any popular music because my mom would put on classical music at home.Additionally, the constant moving around deeply influenced how I form and perceive relationships with others – I somehow always expect to not fit in and be misunderstood. One of the things that never changed was the importance of school. This unfortunately led to the misguided belief that with academic success, I would be safe from teenage scorn and loneliness – I would always have admirers, be they doting teachers or approving classmates. I was always very good at school, and thrived in New Jersey where I was tracked into an accelerated/smart kids program – trivia, mock trial, math team, spelling bee, you name it. I did it all. I was also the first Asian to be elected to student council at my school – this was 8th grade and I thought life was pretty good. And then I was moved to Seoul very suddenly.When we came back to Seoul in 2004, I felt miserable because I was uprooted and airdropped into a public middle school system where I did not belong. I hid my color – in fact, I literally had to change my hair color to jet black (I had highlights before) and don uniforms three sizes too big for me (my sizes were sold out by the time I transferred). I miraculously made friends. In the meantime though, my sister was my closest ally and best friend. My younger sister taught me what it means to be a good friend and a kind person, and we fought a lot growing up. I learned to share for the first time in my life thanks to her, and she has become much more outspoken when challenging my assumptions – although I am older, and that is supposed to mean a lot in Korean society, I know she is my peer in terms of character development.Considered somewhat of a late bloomer, my sister began thriving during her high school years. Unlike me, my resolute sister quashed all of my mother’s attempts to assign her a tutor or enroll her in a hagwon. In light of the education hysteria that eats students alive in Korea, I think this is a tremendous achievement and this is one of the many reasons why I admire my sister. Now I see her making big strides in her first year of college (which is one of the best in Korea), including making a major transition from the humanities to the sciences; although she loves literature and is an excellent writer, she made the choice to follow her true passion, biology, and study medicine. She recently won a full-ride scholarship to any pharmacy school she chooses to go to. Seeing all these new developments, I almost wish I could be back home permanently. Almost. I have to admit that I made a conscious choice to be away from my family when I went to KMLA for high school. I was separated by a 3- hour mountainous drive from our small and expensive apartment in downtown Seoul. My family and I began our long distance relationship then.You applied to and were accepted to KMLA. Can you describe what KMLA is? A number of years ago the NY Times highlighted KMLA as one of the top secondary schools in the world. They also indicated that it was a high stress place.My answer has a huge caveat – times have changed. I am the 12th wave (Class of 2010), but Korean Minjok Leadership Academy (KMLA) is now accepting the 20th wave students. In 2000, I first heard of this exclusive, one-of-a-kind boarding school that accepted only geniuses or future leaders of Korea and was intrigued. The KMLA that became famous then was not the same KMLA I entered in 2007. The budget, the curriculum, the ridiculous regulations, and the teachers are all different and evolving, as are the type of students who apply and get in. For instance, everyone in the 1st wave had tuition paid for in full by the then-successful Pasteur Milk Company (the president of this company founded our school), but the generous scholarships came to an end after the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-99. Also, the student population ballooned to 100 per grade from ~10 students. KMLA is still growing and refining itself. It is also facing a lot more competition from other new independent, selective boarding schools in Korea.But organizational culture preserves certain a character trait that I feel is essential to KMLA: the emphasis on tradition combined with new knowledge. I was fascinated by the effort KMLA took to brand itself – the uniforms are modified Korean traditional costumes called hanbok, teachers forbid and/or strongly discourage romantic relationships, the daily morning kendo/qigong/taekwondo exercises before breakfast, and the gorgeous, rustic campus is styled after traditional Korean architecture. There was an English Only Policy (EOP) that many students did not abide by, and there was a teacher who stood in line in the cafeteria to monitor that we had eaten all our food. We had antiquated things like study hours: 7-9pm was mandatory and if I recall correctly, 10pm-12am was optional but encouraged. Our dorm mother (a former military cadet) and dorm father checked our rooms every week to see that we had cleaned our rooms and showers dutifully. I still remember hosing down the bathroom frantically and sweeping the dust into the hallway instead of the dustbin. All these rules! It was annoying and sometimes downright depressing, but helped students bond and form a collective experience of KMLA.We also added hugely to our experience through student activities. One thing I can say for sure about KMLA is that there is a really vibrant student culture that we actively produce and consume. There are all these really cool student performance groups ranging from a traditional percussion troupe (the rhythmic thunder stopped and started my heartbeat) to rock bands to a theatre circle. (I am a little sad that my university in the US doesn’t have many rock bands when it has all these talented musicians to spare – they all end up going into acapella groups, which is great, but a saturated pool.) I did some hip-hop dancing and absolutely loved the stage and performing and practicing, but generally was really nerdy (well, everyone there was a huge nerd to begin with) and really got into the debate scene. It was wonderful being part of my school’s English Debate Society (EDS). It was tidy little gift pack with so many goodies: teamwork, pressure (just enough to be exciting, not too much to be overwhelming), public speaking, awards, and recognition. I even got to run EDS for a semester as club president. Okay, well actually, sometimes it was really stressful – selecting new members, having to deal with school politics and everyone’s huge ego (including mine), getting adequate prep for all the competitions, conducing training and having to give negative constructive feedback to younger folks (I got quite pushy in the process and I regret my harshness). I did so many activities – newspaper, dance, orchestra, debate, and other things I don’t even remember very well. I think this is why I entirely stopped over committing to extracurricular activities once I got to college.KMLA was a high-stress place because the vast majority of the students were overachieving and ambitious students who were probably “famous” at their respective middle schools – many of us felt we had to excel and get into good colleges and make something of ourselves once we got to KMLA. This was both very good and very bad: we were so motivated, but did not know the first thing about self-care. Uncertain and feeling lost and alienated (we were teenagers), we huddled close to one another and became a community. Those who did not find inspiring, challenging classes or good mentors were left to their own devices and I feel this is really where some students bloomed (winning International Olympiads and starting their own businesses) and others faltered in confusion as they saw themselves falling behind, even though they really weren’t… This was sad. The fact is, KMLA back then did a great job of choosing brilliant students with so much potential, but did not do as a stellar job in cultivating these students and providing them with the right training and resources. I believe we all did the best we could, both students and faculty (there was virtually almost no staff). Obviously, I don’t think “doing your best” is enough, and I do expect any educational institutions I attend to systematically collect, analyze, and incorporate student/faculty feedback. Doesn’t KMLA sound a lot like my university in the US, with regard to it being a high-stress place? I think the journalistic attacks against KMLA are quite exaggerated and worth taking with a grain of salt.How did you balance the stress with education?I balanced the stress by writing in my journal (I used to journal actively for 8 years, from 2005-2012) and by relating to a few close friends whom I felt were kindred spirits (great gossips and foodies). I took up hip hop dancing during middle school with my friends, continued in high school, because I discovered non-random movement could be creative, entertaining, and wonderful. I read a lot of good books, danced whenever I felt like it (especially while pulling an all-nighter for an exam), and vented by gadding non-stop with my roommates over late night snacks. Our school had a talented baker who distributed pastries at 9:30pm (yes, I had an official “snack time” in high school), but my friend would entice me to go and sneak away warm, freshly baked bread at 4:30pm while our doughy victims were resting on the cooling rack. If we were caught, I don’t remember the scolding. I only remember the delicious sneaky taste of pilfered bread. I also loved taking long walks with my roommates after dinner in the woodsy paths next to the dilapidated, unfinished girl’s dorms (the school ran out of money before they finished construction).Is it really true the unofficial motto of the school is ‘four hours fail’?I think you mean ‘five hours fail’, not ‘four hours fail’. Also, this phrase ‘five hours fail’ refers to a Korean 4-character phrase Sa Dang Oh Rak that entered our language in the early 1980s. Literally, the translation of Sa Dang Oh Rak is ‘four get, five fall’ and spelled out in English, it means one will get into the schools of their dreams if they sleep four hours (and spend the rest of the night studying) and if they sleep an hour more, they will not get in. ‘Five hour fail’ (or conversely, ‘four hour succeed’) merely means that one has to work very hard to achieve their dreams and that each marginal unit of effort (it could be number of hours, could be number books you’ve read, etc) actually adds up in the long run. Why did this phrase enter our language in the 1980s? Well this is the era when government and education systems became advanced and stable enough in post-war Korea that test-taking into good schools became a valid and acceptable way of achieving your dreams – it was an era signaling meritocracy and the rise of Korea as a Asian tiger and we began our rise in the ranks of other OECD countries. It’s a national mentality, not an institution-specific mentality.Most of all, it is really not meant to be taken literally at all. Would you take “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” literally? I’d say no. But I guess you could, by eating an apple every day. Can’t hurt, right? So this is where we get to the juicier part of the apple – some morons took this phrase literally! Old school educators rather perversely used this phrase as motivational fodder for students preparing for the Soo-Neng exam (think the gaokao of Korea), and thus perpetuated this saying and also put additional pressure on students to study harder and actually sleep less (which is less self-care, which is very sad and very counterproductive).However, to use another Korean saying, does smoke rise from an unlit furnace? (It means every rumor has some basis.) Why do education experts like you come to think ‘five hour fail’ is the unofficial motto of KMLA? This is because KMLA students do indeed collectively sleep little at night and study hard before exams – sometimes out in the hallways with a battery-powered lamp (it was lights out at 2am), all night long, as I often did during exam weeks. I attribute this to two factors: 1) terrible time management and 2) strong desire to get good grades. I had terrible time management, as did many other students, and we would talk all night and end up sleeping during class. We had so many extracurricular activities and so much reading to do and excellent Wi-Fi service. Most of us still did really well in our studies because despite managing time in a terrible way, because we would sacrifice sleep so we could do what we were supposed to do best: study and get good grades. Some kids dropped out of school, for a multitude of reasons, but I suspect not being able to handle their newfound freedom led to devastating grades. On the other hand, I also had a roommate who got 8 hours of sleep a night and also did really well academically. She’s a bona fide life hack.In an earlier post about KMLA you helped me to gather quotes from other KMLA students who are doing exceptional things in and out of class. What sort of things were you involved with at KMLA and how did they help shape the person you are today?I was involved with the debate team, Model UN, two orchestras, a student hip hop group, the English newspaper, and various student community service groups. All had varying time commitments, and I spent the most time on debate and it really shaped the way I viewed myself in high school. I had really good coaches and enjoyed the company of my teammates. At two tournaments, I won the Best Speaker award (one in the Czech Republic, one in Korea). I was always sad though that I had never won a tournament with my team – we once made it to the final round, I think. Debate helped boost my ego and confidence, but also brought me down when I got low speaker points or when I felt a coach/a teammate did not like me. I also had the honor of being part of the national team twice to compete in the World Schools Debating Championship (2009 Greece, 2010 Doha). There were a lot of trophies, banquets, new friends, and international traveling, but also a lot of drama, rivalry, and bruised egos. By the end of high school, I felt that it was time to move on – I wanted to learn and discuss rather than pretend I was an expert and argue a point for the sake of arguing. In retrospect, I wish I had tried theatre – I love the stage and also love the arts.A lot of people around the world have pretty bad stereotypes about Asians students, especially international students. . The issues go far deeper than the simplistic ‘they are good at math ‘Meme’. I see that many educators and people who should know better talk in grand statements about how the education system in paces like Korea promotes rote learning without any critical thinking or without any larger philosophical frame. First of all do you think educators are in part correct about some of the emphasis on exam and test prep abut that they are also wrong about how some schools transcend this and that perhaps the paradigm is shifting a bit at the top schools in Korea?I think KMLA tried hard to shift the paradigm by defining what the ideal education system looked like, and then trying to enforce rules to implement this ideal. Our motto (official one) loosely translates as follows: “A minjok-centric education for the bright future of our nation is to learn for the sake of learning, not for promises of wealth or power; to choose careers on the basis of our true talents and desires, not on the basis of wealth or power. This is my true happiness and the bright future of our nation.” Believe me, a lot of us rolled our eyes dramatically as we recited it every Monday morning in our large gymnasium for our weekly morning ceremonies. But I would say this motto alone reflects a lot of critical thinking and a deep and large philosophical frame. Whether this ideal is being realized is another question – one of my favorite teachers at KMLA once sat down with me in the cafeteria and asked me why I felt so much pressure to go to a great university. The fact that he had to talk to me shows how difficult it was for me to study for the sake of learning.However, I always thought that once I got to college, I would choose my career on the basis of my true talents and desires. I am still confident that I can do this, that I am doing this. I believe that KMLA helped nurture idealists and dreamers and softened a little the blow of reality – the possibility of failure, the derision of colleagues, the inevitable times of extreme self-doubt.Jenni at KMLA graduation ceremonyWhy did you decide to apply to schools in the US and ultimately to pursue your education there?I applied to schools in the U.S. because I thought it would be the best way for me to enter a bigger playing field. I wanted more exposure and a chance to do something on a large scale that would impact the world, not just Korea. I wanted to learn from the best professors and study academics concepts in its original language. I also felt staying in Korea would be far too challenging for me – preparing for the Soo-Neng university entrance exam, having to choose a major before I even arrived on campus, working so hard only to realize that I would just be living in Korea with my parents (no offense to my parents, it’s just what most people on the cusp of adulthood want -- independence).How many schools did you apply to and how much time did all your efforts take (test prep, essays, etc.).I applied to 10 or 11 schools. My efforts took a long time. Taking the TOEFL was no big deal – I could speak English and that meant grammar came naturally to me. The others tests (AP, SAT, SAT subject tests) also did not take a long time. I thought the coursework at KMLA prepared me adequate (some exceptionally well, like AP U.S. History and AP Biology) for my AP exams and I only had to do a two-week or week-long actual test prep using Kaplan, Barron’s etc. For SAT, I took practice tests often, but nothing very focused and serious. I got very focused and serious a month before I took the exam – I lived and breathed SAT vocabulary and honed my critical reading test-taking skills and learned to think like the test-makers to spot the “right” answer. Writing the Common App essay took the longest (months) and it definitely took a lot of soul-searching and several revisions. I was afraid I would lose my voice with too many revisions, so it was safest to have my mother comment on my essay – she would read more for the broader story and not try to fix sentence structures or diction. I ended up sticking with an essay that I scribbled out one summer shortly after my grandfather passed away, which was about my grandmother. I spent long nights talking with my friends, getting peer feedback, and reading lots of good books to inspire me. I remember hashing out an essay on being quarantined for swine flu for a Georgetown SFS application after reading Saramago’s Blindness. The essay-writing part was draining since I put so much of myself into the process.You were selected to compete for one of the most selective merit scholarship programs in the US (and the world for that matter). It is based on 3 things: scholarship, leadership, and service. Can you outline or show how you demonstrated these qualities?I am not a big fan of tooting my horn, so this is hard to answer. I think it could have to do with my doing well academically, being the president of student activities such as debate, and desire to do something that would benefit my community – I genuinely did enjoy meaningful volunteer activities, such as tutoring children in low-income areas or hosting a Christmas party at my school for senior citizens who lived alone. I also was really, really, really lucky – the right person saw my application at the right time, and referred my application to the merit scholarship program. Maybe you can answer better, since you were the one to refer my application to the scholarship program. What was the biggest factor that made you do this?You were named as a finalist for the scholarship, which meant you had to fly to the US and compete over several days. You participated in classes, writing and thinking exams, and interviews. Can you describe what it was like to go through this? Were you confident that you indeed get the scholarship?Not to sound insane, but this was a lot of fun. My favorite part was sitting in on interesting classes (I still remember the lecture by a religious studies professor about the formation of extremist communities in cultural enclaves as a process of otherization), eating delicious food, and exploring the quaint Downtown Mall and shopping. I also met really interesting and intelligent people, but also found myself being very awkward and shy. I hadn’t mastered cocktail hour talk yet – it nearly killed me, because there’s major cognitive dissonance that happens when I am trying to impress yet realizing that I should be more genuine and authentic.The writing exam and the monitored class discussion were not that stressful. They were about interesting topics and I loved discussing the material with other motivated students. But the interview at the end was challenging and I was not very confident that I would get the scholarship (I’m never confident about results – even when I ace something, I always expect the worst before I see results). A panel of serious looking adults in suits stared at me and asked aggressive questions. The results came out while I was on my flight back to Korea – so I got to find out the good news as soon as I landed.***********************************************************************Time and wisdom are linked. The blur of events come at us unceasingly;it takes effort to pull away and think, learn, and change. For some of us, it takes decades to discover some things about ourselves that have been submerged in dark corners of of neural network. For others, it never comes. And then there are the blessed few who can reflect about life if not in real time, then very soon after. Jenni is one of these.I do not know that I have read any words for a current student that contains such wisdom about how she has grown and learned not just how to love to learn but how to take this and turn it ito widom for how to live an examined life. Socrates would approve. If this all sounds too abstract let me try to be a little more specific. Jenni's words on the way she moved through her education and her relationship with family, friends and teachers contains insights that anyone, no matter what age, should study. She has the ability to step back from the blur of the world and see how she has acted and for what reasons. In doing so she has developed the hard won skill of questioning not just others, but herself. Knowing the why behind our actions is the stuff of philosophy and Jenni has earned at least an honorary degree in this field.Her experience in one of the best and most competitive (these two often go hand in hand) schools demonstrates what it takes not just to succeed but to thrive. Clearly, this isn't easy. There are many in the world who think that students like Jenni have had it easy. She has supportive parents, the advantage of a global upbringing, and the chance to compete with some of the top students, not just in Korea, but in the world. Yet her words underscore the difficulty of keeping up with the rest of these exceptional students that surround her. In doing so, she occasionally made choices she would no longer make. This is a part of her wisdom. There are many more ways she is wise and in Part 2 of her interview she will share them. She will refute many of the current stereotypes about gifted students who have a well paved path to success. As I said at the beginning, I am lucky. Jenni has given me a chance to ask questions of myself and my motives for doing things that I do not think I would have asked otherwise. I hope some readers here will have a similar experience

Edit: I first wrote this answer as a Senior in highschool, I’m editing it to expand on my ideas and add new thoughts now that I’ve completed my first year in college. First is my philosophy of the Highschool Experience. (But really who am I to know?) For a list of recommendations, skip to the end! I’m also Rewriting my answer to be less cocky—humility is more flattering ;)In kindergarten and first grade I had the best teacher any child could wish for. Ms. Hayden was GT certified, and understood better than anyone I‘ve met how to meet someone where they are and push them to learn. For kids entering school for the first time especially, everybody is in a wildly different place. You get kids who grew up on Leapfrog educational programming who can already read fluently, and kids who don’t yet know their ABC’s. Every child in her class learned, and every activity was tailored to push every student forward. The most advanced students got to explorer fascinating new ideas well beyond what is included in a kindergarten curriculum, and no students who didn’t meet standards were on-level by the end of the year.In those two years, I had seen how amazing learning could be. Because of Ms Hayden, school was something I always looked forward to. As my primary schooling went on, classes were never stimulating to me. Sadly, as amazing as teachers are, the Ms. Hayden’s of the world are few and far between. School started to lose its excitement, and while my awe and wonder—my hunger for learning—never dwindled, class stopped being a place to get the knowledge I craved. I decided that I needed to skip ahead a few grades.My parents wouldn’t have it. They firmly believed that, while academically I definitely needed something more, outcast 2nd grade me didn’t have the maturity to match my older 4th grade contemporaries. My mom worked at my school and got me into 4th grade science class, and while this wasn’t everything I needed, it was leagues better than what I had before, and let me finally start growing again. In 4th grade I sat in on my school’s AP Biology class, (I attended a K-12 school at the time) but that’s the furthest that fix ever went.Where I really lived was extra-curriculars. I was allowed to join the middle school robotics team and other after-school activities where my curiosity could run wild. I sat through school—nay, lived—for after-school activities.(Source: Lego Mindstorms EV3 - Mr Stevenson´s Digital & Product Design Classroom)Highschool was when everything changed. Suddenly I had (very limited) choice in my classes! Mixed with all my boring history and geography classes I got to take physics and math courses where I felt like I could actually learn! The course curriculums were still unfulfilling, but I was becoming an autonomous human and I could finally make something of the classes myself! I had to put in the initiative, but it didn’t matter if the teachers couldn’t make me learn. I was in a room with someone who knew about a subject and could give me guidance when I ran into a wall, and arguably more importantly, I had the internet!Schools and parents feel like they have to restrict and regulate the internet. To run a school, it’s true that you will probably have to heavily restrict some student’s access to the internet, and to run a school fairly, you have to restrict everyone’s internet. The internet is a big, scary, dangerous place filled with misinformation and treachery to the brim, but a bright kid can dig through the garbage and find gold. The internet was built to be a tool for researchers and academics to share information, and as it’s spread into every domain, it’s become the most powerful tool for sharing and finding information humanity has ever seen. (Naturally, I broke my school’s internet security in a 5 year battle between myself breaking through, and the IT guy patching the hole. It ended when I came up with a solution he didn’t know how to patch, until I shut down the server required for the hack upon my graduation. Many underclassmen were disappointed.)I believe that (academically) a parent’s job is to enable their child to get access to as much good information as they can, and to encourage them to learn about their passion. If their passion is astrophysics or 2nd century BCE Greco-Roman Poetry, amazing! If their passion is video games or sports, that’s amazing too! What is important is that kids feel validated and supported, and are encouraged to learn how to learn, regardless what they are learning about. The toolkit a kid will develop researching strategy for an online videogame will be immeasurably valuable in their future pursuits. Learning how to learn is more critical to success than learning any one thing.For most people, highschool makes them learn what they need to be a functioning member of society and to meet the minimum qualifications to go to a university where they can specialize. Skipping ahead in highschool will undoubtedly make your child’s school work more challenging than it is now, but more challenging doesn’t automatically equate to more learning. The only blatantly obvious measurable advantage skipping ahead in highschool gives you is getting to university faster.Everybody is living life on a timer, and the fortunate ones of us don’t know how much time we have. I, like many people, fell into the trap of trying to speed-run life. I made the mistake of thinking if I get done with highschool sooner I can move on to bigger and better things. To try to race through life is to miss out on the beauty along the way. Setting goals is, for many, a key step toward success. Achieving goals is a great benchmark for progress and improvement in life! But success is not defined by goals, and getting to them quicker doesn’t strictly make you more successful. More importantly, goals are not fulfilling. Achieving a goal feels amazing—you’ve moved forward and you get a little bump of dopamine—but there’s always another goal, and most people who have achieved all of their goals are left feeling empty. If you’ve done everything you wanted to do, what is left to get out of life?(Source: Darpey on speedrun.com Gif tutorial (big files))No, fulfillment comes from living life well. Fulfillment comes from doing what makes you happy and self-actualization. Hobbies usually don’t result in measurable rewards, but doing hobbies makes you feel good. Truly, highschool is a place to learn what the state says we need to know, but highschool isn’t just a place to learn these seemingly arbitrary facts and ideas.Highschool is much more than just a place. Highschool is a time, highschool is a period, highschool is a life. My friends and I had a group-chat to discuss the weird happenings in our unconventional little school, aptly titled The Harmony Experience. And that really sums up what highschool is—an experience. You enter highschool one person and graduate someone completely different. You make friends in highschool, but more importantly you learn how to make friends in highschool. You go through rough times in highschool, but more importantly you learn how to handle adversity in highschool. Some find love and experience heartbreak in highschool, but more importantly you learn how to love, you learn what not to do again and you learn to deal with what was previously unfathomable pain that you can’t do anything about.I was never excited for graduation. It was a celebration to me of something I never wanted to be a part of, and something practically everybody did. Graduating wasn’t an accomplishment. I was never excited to graduate, I was just excited to finish. It wasn’t until much later that I realized we don’t celebrate passing the required classes, we celebrate making it through the highschool experience and coming out a better person!Sure, speed-running highschool gets you done with your classes, and graduating early is an awesome bragging right! But you can’t speed-run an experience, you can only cut out parts of it. For so long I felt highschool was a hold on my life, and once it was over I could really live—but no matter what you’re doing, as long as you’re breathing, that’s part of your life.And life is something meant to be lived.My English teacher driving our homemade go-kart in our highschool parking lotMy two best friends! I was the (unofficially offical) photographer for our prom, so I’m not in any photos… 😕I really need to start documenting my life better. One of the only photos of me on the day of our graduation!“But wait!” I hear you say. “I read your 1300 word essay on your childhood and philosophy on highschool,” and maybe even under your breath: “And it offered some solid insight. But you didn’t get at the heart of the problem! Your ideas about experiencing life are cool and all, but my daughter isn’t academically challenged enough! That’s the core of what I’m trying to address with this question!”You’re right! I haven’t. All I’ve shared is what little wisdom an almost-20 year old can have. And kudos to you for making it this far! But if you’re looking for recommendations, I’ll share what I did do in highschool to academically make the most of things, and what I wish I had done to have made it even better. Hindsight is 20/20 after all, but things that worked for me won’t necessarily work for everyone.The internet is your (child’s) best friend! There is an infinite wealth of information and tools for learning things that you aren’t getting inside of the classroom. Some obvious great tools, and some great not-so-obvious resources are:Khan Academy (Duh.) - Everyone has seen it, I was hesitant to use it at first (and I still can’t say I’ve used it a lot) but it does offers some AMAZING courses on varied topicsBrilliant - A really neat learning platform that is quickly growing. Brilliant intuitively teachEs lots of topics, mostly in STEM fields. If you decide to purchase a membership, I’m sure one of your favorite YouTubers has done a sponsorship with Brilliant, use one of their codes to get a discount and support creators! Speaking of…YouTube - A lot of parents are wary of YouTube’s efficacy as a learning platform, but it was by far the most influential resource I had in highschool for learning new things. Some great places to start would be: Anything by the Green brothers (CrashCourse, Sci Show, etc.); I’m a math fanatic, Black Pen Red Pen and Dr. Peyam make some excellent math videos from late highschool math to more advanced collegiate math; Nile Red for Chemistry; Extra History has the best animated history series I’ve ever seen, once you get past his voice. By the same people, Extra Credits has fantastic game design videos; CGP Grey is great for a diverse set of topics mostly covering the future, the past, and how to live well; Economics Explained has some of the best Economics videos; 3Blue1Brown has the best intuitions for mathematical concepts out there, with incredible visual representations to go with them; Adam Ragusea and Binging with Babbish for cooking; Andrew Huang for Music; ElectroBOOM for comedic electrical engineering concepts; Applied Science for advanced engineering and electronics concepts; Kurzgesagt (In A Nutshell) for deep dives into varied topics with stunning animation and amazing videos; MinutePhysics for physics; Live Overflow for programming and hacking; Computerphile and Numberphile (obvious); Exurb1a for AMAZING philosophy (Explicit warning). There are hundreds of creators I love and I am so sorry I couldn’t include all them(ElectroBOOM demonstrating AC current)Wikipedia - Wikipedia gets a bad rap from teachers, but the editing standards are higher for this platform than even legitimate encyclopedias, and no force is stronger than the will for someone to correct someone else on the internet. If something exists, there is a Wikipedia article about it. I cannot tell you how many late-nights-turned-early-mornings I’ve spent going down the information rabbit hole clicking through Wikipedia articlesOld textbooks - There are dozens of websites—of varying legality—filled with textbooks on any topic you could imagine, all the way to the Ph.D level. Some legitimate ones are LibreTexts; OpenStax by Rice University; MERLOTx from California State University; Open Textbook Library by University of MinnesotaMIT OCW - MIT Open Courseware and other similar released college courses are unaccredited college courses offered for free from the best universities. They can include homework assignments, sample tests, and video lectures recorded from the lecture halls of Ivy-League UniversitiesPublications - Peer-reviewed published literature is dense to read, but working through and annotating papers just a little bit out of your academic reach builds understanding of a topic or field better than anything else I’ve tried. You can read solid papers in any field, from Law and Policy, to Sociology and Psychology, to History and the Humanities; everything from the obvious Science and Math to the unexpected Underwater Basket Weaving and Gender Studies has solid published peer-reviewed papers. A good way to find papers is through Google Scholar, and to access papers there are free resources such as PubMed and Arxiv; if your child is enrolled in a dual credit program they can access hundreds of publications through their school’s website. And don’t forget to check your local library! Many local public libraries also have digital collections accessible at their brick-and-mortar locations and—less commonly—on their websites.Dual Credit. If your daughter’s school is partnered with a local community college or accredited online college, she can attend actual college classes—and get both highschool and college credit for them. These classes transfer to all state colleges (in the same state) and most private universities. Their letter grade does not impact college GPA, so don’t worry about doing poorly in a strange environment and ruining your chances with scholarships, jobs, or grad-schools. If your daughter’s school is not partnered with your local community college, see if community colleges nearby offer dual credit programs. Often, the school does not have to have a partnership with the college for your child to receive dual credit. Talk with your Highschool Counselor and the Dual Credit Counselor at the college to discuss the possibility of dual credit for your daughter. My highschool was partnered with Tarrant County Community College, but I also took classes at Dallas County Community College for highschool credit. These courses can be online, in person at your highschool (a Professor/Lecturer would travel to your school to teach) or in person at the community college. There are a surprising number of course options that your daughter can enroll in.AP Tests. The Advanced Placement program by The College Board (the college-entrance monopoly that runs the SAT) offers a way to get college credit through testing. These are usually accompanied by a highschool class, but the class is not a prerequisite to the test. If The College Board offers Something you’re interested in, you can have your daughters highschool councilor order the test to her school to take it. Your daughter can study with online tools posted above, or—as I did—purchase AP prep books from your local Half Priced Books, Barnes & Noble, or online and work through them to learn the content! If your child excels at standardized tests, this is definitely a route to go. I recommend doing this in conjunction with Dual Credit if that is an option.Passion Projects. If you have an interest, any interest at all, do something new and exciting with it. It doesn’t have to be new to the world, just new to you. If your passion is soccer, try a series of complex new moves. Maybe record yourself doing it, or teach newbies! Coaching an adult intro soccer club is just as doable as coaching kids, but there’s no babysitting, they can feed and drive themselves, and you get to learn about life from those more experienced than you. If your passion is with STEM, do a project in your field! Design and program a Braille translating device. If your passion is physics, build a Farnesworth Fusor in your highschool Physics lab, get an old CRT TV off Craig’s List do some particle physics, or record through a telescope and do astrophysics-y math to the sky! If you love math, research a new topic, come up with a cool way to visualize it, and show it off to your friends and teachers! If you like computers, write a small web or unity game! If your passion is with the arts, see if your school will let you make an installation! Get your friends to do some of the grunt work and help you out, and pay them by convincing a teacher to let you order pizza to the school! The possibilities are endless, but to do any of these well you need to…Terrible 2015 cell-phone photo of a braille translator I designed and built in 8th grade. It took 1st place at the engineering fair!Find a Mentor! The most convenient mentors are teachers or family, but they don’t have to be someone at your school or someone you live with. Mentors can be anyone in your community who knows a thing or two (because they’ve seen a thing or two, sorry I couldn’t resist) about whatever field you have a passion for. Don’t be afraid to ask anybody you see doing big things, most people LOVE to find young people with a passion. In fact, being young makes it a billion times easier to score funding or a wicked knowledgeable mentor—like a professor at a local university or an employee at a local company. Find an artist at a local design or advertising firm, an engineer at a local engineering firm, or a professor or lecturer at a local school and send them an email! Just be up front with what you’re looking for and what you expect of them, and it’s okay not to know what to expect. Tell your prospective mentor you don’t know what to expect and that you’re just looking to see what could happen. A go-getter attitude is hard to say no to, and if they’re too busy, or just flat-out uninterested, that’s okay too. The worst case scenario is being told no, and the best case scenario is a portfolio that gets you into your dream school and a sure-fire dream job, all before you’ve gotten your Highschool Diploma.When everything is set and done, your academic success is your own responsibility. Moving to a higher grade level won’t give you any more opportunities to learn and succeed than you have right now. Speed-running highschool will only give you less time to seize the opportunities you have, and those opportunities are endless.Go bigger, not faster, and you’ll go further than you ever imagined. Carpe Diem.-Shawn Aaron McAnalley Jr(Source: I graduated Highschool with 2 published papers, and 84 college credit hours with a near full-ride scholarship to UTA. Regrettably I did not maintain a good GPA. Don’t make my mistakes, grades matter. But most importantly, I lived. I made the most of the highschool experience)

There is no such thing as a “weaker” student, rather weak materials, logic and teachers produce poor students. First, find materials that the student has a passion for. Once you find that subject or topic, then the student should become an expert in it. Although I am a paralegal by training and profession, my passion and love is recreational health and wellness along with fitness and sports nutrition. I spend hours studying it, practicing it and reading all about it. Watch the documentary below and you will know more than your teachers about the deliberate dumbing down of the system of education.Here is how you will build your confidence: read my entire answer, challenge it, check the resources and then how you learn and process information from what you are learning in school will change forever.I am not weak in knowledge about fitness, however, I have lost interest in learning about common law, bankruptcy, real estate law and litigation. I almost hate spending time in law now. It is so boring and useless that am working towards establishing myself as the fitness specialist that I spent most time studying.It is imperative that you become a very sophisticated reader and writer while developing your skills to understand and process information. When you get to the point of deconstructing or unpackaging ideas and information with logical reasoning, then you have become the superior student.American education and most western education is built on a web of myths, lies (LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME by James Lowen) illusions and indoctrination to accept what the architects of control (documentary below)have put out there. We are being systematically and deliberately being dumbed down in order to NOT ask the questions that really matter concerning life on this planet.The real war is a war on your consciousness and the colonization of your mind in the pursuit of mind control of the masses by the elites. Now we are talking about the origins of evil and the manipulation of consciousness. Read Jim Keith and Jim Mars.So you are NOT a weak student when you study and challenge what you are learning and deconstruct the source and validity of this knowledge.Teachers in the social sciences fear me because they know they are teaching lies and deception to their students that produce mindless people who lack the capacity to articulate, much less, understand what they are learning and why.Read what one educational whistleblower says about what you are learning below by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt.Here is what J. Krishnamurti says in his book EDUCATION AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE about our current systems of education that are destroying your mind and promoting global genocide:When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia. This is especially true in colleges and universities. We are turning out, as if through a mould, a type of human being whose chief interest is to find security, to become somebody important, or to have a good time with as little thought as possible.Conventional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. Conformity leads to mediocrity. To be different from the group or to resist environment is not easy and is often risky as long as we worship success. The urge to be successful, which is the pursuit of reward whether in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, the search for inward or outward security, the desire of comfort – this whole process smothers discontent, puts and end to spontaneity and breeds fear; and fear blocks the intelligent un-derstanding of life. With increasing age, dullness of mind and heart sets in.There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life,efficiency breeds ruthlessness. Is this not what is actually taking place all over the world? Our present education is geared to industrialization and war, its principal aim being to develop efficiency; and we are caught in the machine of ruthless competition and mural destruction. If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?To bring about right education, we must obviously un-derstand the meaning of life as a whole, and for that we have to be able to think not consistently, but directly and truly.A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. We cannot understand existence abstractly or theoretically. To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.The function of education is to create human beings who are integrated and therefor intelligent. We may take degrees and be mechanically efficient without being intelligent. Intelligence is not mere information; it is not derived from books, nor does it consiste of clever self-defensive responses and aggressive assertion. One who has not studied may be more intelligent than the learned. We have made examination and degrees the criterion of intelligence and have developed cunning minds that avoid vital human issues.Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others is education.Education should help us to discover lasting values so that we do not merely cling to formulas or repeat slogans; it should help us to break down our national and social barriers, instead of emphasizing them, for they breed antagonism between man and man. Unfortunately, the present system of education is making us subservient, mechanical and deeply thoughtless; though it awakens us intellectually inwardly it leaves us incomplete, stultified and uncreative.Without an integrated understanding of life, our individual and collective problems will only deepen and extend. The purpose of education is not to produce mere scholars, technicians, and job hungers, but integrated men and women who are free of fear; for only between such human beings can there be enduring peace.When there is no self-knowledge, self-expression becomes self-assertion, with all its aggressive and ambitious conflicts. Education should awaken the capacity to be self-aware and not merely indulge in gratifying self-expression.What is the good of learning if in the process of living we are destroying ourselves: As we are having a series of devastating wars, one right after another, there is obviously something radically wrong with the way we bring up our children. I think most of us are aware of this, but we do not know how to deal with it.Systems, whether educational or political, are not changed mysteriously; they are transformed when there is a fundamental change in ourselves. The individual is of first importance, not the system; and as long as the individual does not understand the total process of himself no system, whether of the left or of the right, can bring order and peace to the world.THE ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself, and the learned man is stupid when he relies on books, on knowledge and on authority to give him understanding. Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process.Thus education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each one of us that the whole of existence is gathered. What we now call education is a matter of accumulating information and knowledge from books, which anyone can do who can read. Such education offers a subtle form of escape from ourselves and, like all escapes, it inevitably creates increasing misery.Conflict and confusion result from our own wrong relationship with people, things and ideas, and until we understand that relationship and alter it, mere learning, the gathering of facts and the acquiring of various skills, can only lead us to engulfing chaos and destruction. As society is now organized, we send our children to school to learn some technique by which they can eventually earn a livelihood. We want to make the child first and foremost a specialist, hoping thus to give him a secure economic position. But does the cultivation of a technique enable us to understand ourselves?While it is obviously necessary to know how to read and write, and to learn engineering or some other profession, will technique give us the capacity to understand life? Surely, technique is secondary; and if technique is the only thing we are striving for, we are obviously denying what is by far the greater part of life.Life is pain, joy, beauty, ugliness, love, and when we understand it as a whole, at every level, that understanding creates its own technique. But the contrary is not true: technique can never bring about creative understanding. Present-day education is a complete failure because it has overemphasized technique. In overemphasizing technique we destroy man.To cultivate capacity and efficiency without understanding life, without having a comprehensive perception of the ways of thought and desire, will only make us increasingly ruthless, which is to engender wars and jeopardize our physical security. The exclusive cultivation of technique has produced scientists, mathematicians, bridge builders, space conquerors; but do they understand the total process of life? Can any specialist experience life as a whole? Only when he ceases to be a specialist"."MANY of us seem to think that by teaching every human being to read and write, we shall solve our human problems; but this idea has proved to be false. The so-called educated are not peace-loving, integrated people, and they too are responsible for the confusion and misery of the world. The right kind of education means the awakening of intelligence, the fostering of an integrated life, and only such education can create a new culture and a peaceful world; but to bring about this new kind of education, we must make a fresh start on an entirely different basis.With the world falling into ruin about us, we discuss theories and vain political questions, and play with superficial reforms. Does this not indicate utter thoughtlessness on our part? Some may agree that it does, but they will go on doing exactly as they have always done - and that is the sadness of existence. When we hear a truth and do not act upon it, it becomes a poison within ourselves, and that poison spreads, bringing psychological disturbances, unbalance and ill health. Only when creative intelligence is awakened in the individual is there a possibility of a peaceful and happy life".What truth are you listening to that empowers you to become self educated?A WHISTLEBLOWER'S ACCOUNTCharlotte Thomson Iserbyt, former Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, blew the whistle in the `80s on government activities withheld from the public. Her inside knowledge will help you protect your children from controversial methods and programs. In this book you will discover:how good teachers across America have been forced to use controversial, non-academic methodshow "school choice" is being used to further dangerous reform goals, and how home schooling and private education are especially vulnerable.how workforce training (school-to-work) is an essential part of an overall plan for a global economy, and how this plan will shortcircuit your child's future career plans and opportunities.how the international, national, regional, state and local agendas for education reform are all interconnected and have been for decades.A CHRONOLOGICAL PAPER TRAILthe deliberate dumbing down of america is a chronological history of the past 100+ years of education reform. Each chapter takes a period of history and recounts the significant events, including important geopolitical and societal contextual information. Citations from government plans, policy documents, and key writings by leading reformers record the rise of the modern education reform movement. Americans of all ages will welcome this riveting expose of what really happened to what was once the finest education system in the world.Readers will appreciate the user-friendliness of this chronological history designed for the average reader not just the academician. This book will be used by citizens at public hearings, board meetings, or for easy presentation to elected officials.Publication of the deliberate dumbing down of america is certain to add fuel to the fire in this nation's phonics wars. Iserbyt provides documentation that Direct Instruction, the latest education reform fad in the classroom, is being institutionalized under the guise of "traditional" phonics thanks to the passage of the unconstitutional Reading Excellence Act of 1998.Coexistence on this tightly knit earth should be viewed as an existence not only without wars...but also without [the government] telling us how to live, what to say, what to think, what to know, and what not to know. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from a speech given September 11, 1973.For over a twenty-five-year period the research used in this chronology has been collected from many sources: the United States Department of Education; international agencies; state agencies; the media; concerned educators; parents; legislators, and talented researchers with whom I have worked for at least twenty-five years. In the process of gathering this information two beliefs that most Americans hold in common became clear:1) If a child can read, write and compute at a reasonably proficient level, he will be able to do just about anything he wishes, enabling him to control his destiny to the extent that God allows (remain free).2) Providing such basic educational proficiencies is not and should not be an expensive proposition.Since most Americans believe the second premise-that providing basic educational proficiencies is not and should not be an expensive proposition-it becomes obvious that it is only a radical agenda, the purpose of which is to change values and attitudes (brainwash), that is the costly agenda. In other words, brainwashing by our schools and universities is what is bankrupting our nation and our children's minds.In 1997 there were 46.4 million public school students. During 1993-1994 (the latest years the statistics were available) the average per pupil expenditure was $6,330.00 in 1996 constant dollars. Multiply the number of students by the per pupil expenditure (using old-fashioned mathematical procedures) for a total K-12 budget per year of $293.7 billion dollars. If one adds the cost of higher education to this figure, one arrives at a total budget per year of over half a trillion dollars. The sorry result of such an incredibly large expenditure-the performance of American students-is discussed on page 12 of Pursuing Excellence-A Study of U.S. Twelfth Grade Mathematics and Science Achievement in International Context: Initial Findings from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMMS], a report from the U.S. Department of Education (NCES 98-049). Pursuing Excellence reads:Achievement of Students, Key Points: U. S. twelfth graders scored below the international average and among the lowest of the 21 TIMSS nations in both mathematics and science general knowledge in the final year of secondary school. (p. 24)Obviously, something is terribly wrong when a $6,330 per pupil expenditure produces such pathetic results. This writer has visited private schools which charge $1,000-per-year in tuition which enjoy superior academic results. Parents of home-schooled children spend a maximum of $1,000-per-year and usually have similar excellent results.There are many talented and respected researchers and activists who have carefully documented the "weird" activities which have taken place "in the name of education." Any opposition to change agent activities in local schools has invariably been met with cries of "Prove your case, document your statements," etc. "Resisters"-usually parents-have been called every name in the book. Parents have been told for over thirty years, "You're the only parent who has ever complained." The media has been convinced to join in the attack upon common sense views, effectively discrediting the perspective of well-informed citizens. Documentation, when presented, has been ignored and called incomplete. The classic response by the education establishment has been, "You're taking that out of context!"-even when presented with an entire book which uses their own words to detail exactly what the "resisters" are claiming to be true.The desire by "resisters" to prove their case has been so strong that they have continued to amass-over a thirty- to fifty-year period-what must surely amount to tons of materials containing irrefutable proof, in the education change agents' own words, of deliberate, malicious intent to achieve behavioral changes in students/parents/society which have nothing to do with commonly understood educational objectives. Upon delivery of such proof, "resisters" are consistently met with the "shoot the messenger" stonewalling response by teachers, school boards, superintendents, state and local officials, as well as the supposedly objective institutions of academia and the press.This resister's book, or collection of research in book form, was put together primarily to satisfy my own need to see the various components which led to the dumbing down of the United States of America assembled in chronological order-in writing. Even I, who had observed these weird activities taking place at all levels of government, was reluctant to accept a malicious intent behind each individual, chronological activity or innovation, unless I could connect it with other, similar activities taking place at other times. This book, which makes such connections, has provided for me a much-needed sense of closure.the deliberate dumbing down of america is also a book for my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I want them to know that there were thousands of Americans who may not have died or been shot at in overseas wars, but were shot at in small-town 'wars' at school board meetings, at state legislative hearings on education, and, most importantly, in the media. I want my progeny to know that whatever intellectual and spiritual freedoms to which they may still lay claim were fought for-are a result of-the courageous work of incredible people who dared to tell the truth against all odds.I want them to know that there will always be hope for freedom if they follow in these people's footsteps; if they cherish the concept of 'free will'; if they believe that human beings are special, not animals, and that they have intellects, souls, and consciences. I want them to know that if the government schools are allowed to teach children K-12 using Pavlovian/Skinnerian animal training methods-which provide tangible rewards only for correct answers-there can be no freedom.Why? People 'trained'-not educated-by such educational techniques will be fearful of taking principled, sometimes controversial, stands when called for because these people will have been programmed to speak up only if a positive reward or response is forthcoming. The price of freedom has often been paid with pain and loneliness.In 1971 when I returned to the United States after living in the West Indies for three years, I was shocked to find public education had become a warm, fuzzy, soft, mushy, touchy-feely experience, where its purpose had become socialization, not learning. From that time on, and with the advantage of having two young sons in the public schools, I became involved as a member of a philosophy committee for a school, as an elected school board member, as co-founder of Guardians of Education for Maine (GEM), and finally as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) in the U.S. Department of Education during President Ronald Reagan's first term of office. OERI was, and is, the office from which all the controversial national and international educational restructuring has emanated.Those ten years (1971-1981) changed my life. As an American who had spent many years working abroad, I had experienced traveling in and living in socialist countries. When I returned to the United States I realized that America's transition from a sovereign constitutional republic to a socialist democracy would not come about through warfare (bullets and tanks) but through the implementation and installation of the "system" in all areas of government-federal, state and local. The brainwashing for acceptance of the "system's" control would take place in the school-through indoctrination and the use of behavior modification, which comes under so many labels, the most recent labels being Outcome-Based Education, Skinnerian Mastery Learning or Direct Instruction. In the seventies I and many others waged the war against values clarification, which was later renamed "critical thinking," which regardless of the label-and there are bound to be many more labels on the horizon-is nothing but pure, unadulterated destruction of absolute values of right and wrong upon which stable and free societies depend and upon which our nation was founded.In 1973 I started this long journey into becoming a "resister," placing the first incriminating piece of paper in my "education" files. That first piece of paper was a purple ditto sheet entitled "All About Me," next to which was a smiley face. It was an open-ended questionnaire beginning with: "My name is _______________." My son brought it home from public school in fourth grade. The questions were highly personal; so much so that they encouraged my son to lie, since he didn't want to "spill the beans" about his mother, father and brother. The purpose of such a questionnaire was to find out the student's state of mind, how he felt, what he liked and disliked, and what his values were. With this knowledge it would be easier for the government school to modify his values and behavior at will-without, of course, the student's knowledge or parents' consent.That was just the beginning. There was more to come: the new social studies textbook World of Mankind. Published by Follett, this book instructed the teacher how to instill humanistic (no right/no wrong) values in the K-3 students. At the text's suggestion they were encouraged to take little tots for walks in town during which he/she would point out big and small houses, asking the little tots who they thought lived in the houses. Poor or Rich? "What do you think they eat in the big house?...in the little house?" When I complained about this non-educational activity at a school board meeting I was dismissed as a censor and the press did its usual hatchet job on me as a misguided parent. A friend of mine-a very bright gal who had also lived abroad for years-told me that she had overheard discussion of me at the local co-op. The word was out in town that I was a "kook." That was not a "positive response/reward" for my taking what I believed to be a principled position. Since I had not been "trained" I was just mad!Next stop on the road to becoming a "resister" was to become a member of the school philosophy committee. Our Harvard-educated, professional change agent superintendent gave all of the committee members a copy of "The Philosophy of Education" (1975 version) from the Montgomery County schools in Maryland, hoping to influence whatever recommendations we would make. (For those who like to eat dessert before soup, turn to page ____ and read the entry under 1946 concerning "Community-Centered Schools: The Blueprint for Education in Montgomery County, Maryland." This document was in fact the "Blueprint" for the nation's schools.) When asked to write a paper expressing our views on the goals of education, I wrote that, amongst other goals, I felt the schools should strive to instill "sound morals and values in the students." The superintendent and a few teachers on the committee zeroed in on me, asking "What's the definition of 'sound' and whose values?"After two failed attempts to get elected to the school board, I finally succeeded in 1976 on the third try. The votes were counted three times, even though I had won by a very healthy margin!My experience on the school board taught me that when it comes to modern education, "the end justifies the means." Our change agent superintendent was more at home with a lie than he was with the truth. Whatever good I accomplished while on the school board-stopping the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System [PPBS] now known as Total Quality Management [TQM] or Generally Accepted Accounting Procedures/Generally Accepted Federal Funding Reporting [GAAP/GAFFR], getting values clarification banned by the board, and demanding five [yes, 5!] minutes of grammar per day, etc.-was tossed out two weeks after I left office.Another milestone on my journey was an in-service training session entitled "Innovations in Education." A retired teacher, who understood what was happening in education, paid for me to attend. This training program developed by Professor Ronald Havelock of the University of Michigan and funded by the United States Office of Education taught teachers and administrators how to "sneak in" controversial methods of teaching and "innovative" programs. These controversial, "innovative" programs included health education, sex education, drug and alcohol education, death education, critical thinking education, etc. Since then I have always found it interesting that the controversial school programs are the only ones that have the word "education" attached to them! I don't recall-until recently-"math ed.," "reading ed.," "history ed.," or "science ed." A good rule of thumb for teachers, parents and school board members interested in academics and traditional values is to question any subject that has the word "education" attached to it.This in-service training literally "blew my mind." I have never recovered from it. The presenter (change agent) taught us how to "manipulate" the taxpayers/parents into accepting controversial programs. He explained how to identify the "resisters" in the community and how to get around their resistance. He instructed us in how to go to the highly respected members of the community-those with the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, Junior League, Little League, YMCA, Historical Society, etc.-to manipulate them into supporting the controversial/non-academic programs and into bad-mouthing the resisters. Advice was also given as to how to get the media to support these programs.I left-with my very valuable textbook, Innovations in Education: A Change Agent's Guide, under my arm-feeling very sick to my stomach and in complete denial over that in which I had been involved. This was not the nation in which I grew up; something seriously disturbing had happened between 1953 when I left the United States and 1971 when I returned.Orchestrated ConsensusIn retrospect, I had just found out that the United States was engaged in war. People write important books about war: books documenting the battles fought, the names of the generals involved, the names of those who fired the first shot. This book is simply a history book about another kind of war: * one fought using psychological methods; * a one-hundred-year war; * a different, more deadly war than any in which our country has ever been involved; * a war about which the average American hasn't the foggiest idea.. The reason Americans do not understand this war is because it has been fought in secret-in the schools of our nation, using our children who are captive in classrooms. The wagers of this war are using very sophisticated and effective tools:* Hegelian Dialectic (common ground, consensus and compromise) * Gradualism (two steps forward; one step backward) * Semantic deception (redefining terms to get agreement without understanding).The Hegelian Dialectic4 is a process formulated by the German philosopher Fredrich Hegel (1770-1831) and used by Karl Marx's in codifying revolutionary Communism as dialectical materialism. This process can be illustrated as:Synthesis (consensus)Thesis AntithesisThe "Thesis" represents either an established practice or point of view which is pitted against the "Antithesis"-usually a crisis of opposition fabricated or created by change agents-causing the "Thesis" to compromise itself, incorporating some part of the "Antithesis" to produce the "Synthesis"-sometimes called consensus. This is the primary tool in the bag of tricks used by change agents who are trained to direct this process all over the country; much like the in-service training I received. A good example of this concept was voiced by T.H. Bell when he was Secretary of Education: "[We] need to create a crisis to get consensus in order to bring about change." (The reader might be reminded that it was under T.H. Bell's direction that the Department of Education implemented the changes "suggested" by A Nation at Risk-the alarm that was sounded in the early 1980's to announce the "crisis" in education.)Since we have been, as a nation, so relentlessly exposed to this Hegelian dialectical process (which is essential to the smooth operation of the "system") under the guise of "reaching consensus" in our involvement in parent-teacher organizations, on school boards, in legislatures, and even in goal setting in community service organizations and groups-including our churches-I want to explain clearly how it works in a practical application. A good example with which most of us can identify involves property taxes for local schools. Let us consider an example from Michigan:The internationalist change agents must abolish local control (the "Thesis") in order to restructure our schools from academics to global workforce training (the "Synthesis"). Funding of education with the property tax allows local control, but it also enables the change agents and teachers' unions to create higher and higher school budgets paid for with higher taxes, thus infuriating homeowners. Eventually, property owners accept the change agent's radical proposal (the "Anti- thesis") to reduce their property taxes by transferring education funding from the local property tax to the state income tax. Thus, the change agents accomplish their ultimate goal; the transfer of funding of education from the local level to the state level. When this transfer occurs it increases state/federal control and funding, leading to the federal/internationalist goal of implementing global workforce training through the schools (the "Synthesis").5Regarding the power of gradualism, remember the story of the frog and how he didn't save himself because he didn't realize what was happening to him? He was thrown into cold water which, in turn, was gradually heated up until finally it reached the boiling point and he was dead. This is how "gradualism" works through a series of "created crises" which utilize Hegel's dialectical process, leading us to more radical change than we would ever otherwise accept.In the instance of "semantic deception"-do you remember your kindly principal telling you that the new decision-making program would help your child make better decisions? What good parent wouldn't want his or her child to learn how to make "good" decisions? Did you know that the decision-making program is the same controversial values clarification program recently rejected by your school board against which you may have given repeated testimony? As I've said before, the wagers of this intellectual social war have employed very effective weapons to implement their changes.This war has, in fact, become the war to end all wars. If citizens on this planet can be brainwashed or robotized, using dumbed-down Pavlovian/Skinnerian education, to accept what those in control want, there will be no more wars. If there are no rights or wrongs, there will be no one wanting to "right" a "wrong." Robots have no conscience. The only permissible conscience will be the United Nations or a global conscience. Whether an action is good or bad will be decided by a "Global Government's Global Conscience," as recommended by Dr. Brock Chisholm, Executive Secretary of the World Health Organization, Interim Commission, in 1947-and later in 1996 by current United States Secretary of State Madeline Albright. (See p. ___for quotes in entry under 1947.)You may protest, "But, no one has died in this war." Is that the only criteria we have with which to measure whether war is war? The tragedy is that many Americans have died in other wars to protect the freedoms being taken away in this one. This war which produces the death of intellect and freedom is not waged by a foreign enemy but by the silent enemy in the ivory towers, in our own government, and in tax-exempt foundations-the enemy whose every move I have tried to document in this book, usually in his/her/its own words.Ronald Havelock's change agent in-service training prepared me for what I would find in the U.S. Department of Education when I worked there from 1981-1982. The use of taxpayers' hard-earned money to fund Havelock's "Change Agent Manual" was only one out of hundreds of expensive U.S. Department of Education grants each year going everywhere, even overseas, to further the cause of internationalist "dumbing down" education (behavior modification) so necessary for the present introduction of global work force training. I was relieved of my duties after leaking an important technology grant (computer-assisted instruction proposal) to the press.Much of this book contains quotes from government documents detailing the real purposes of American education: * to use the schools to change America from a free, individual nation to a socialist, global "state," just one of many socialist states which will be subservient to the United Nations Charter, not the United States Constitution; * to brainwash our children, starting at birth, to reject individualism in favor of collectivism; * to reject high academic standards in favor of OBE/ISO 1400/90006 egalitarianism; * to reject truth and absolutes in favor of tolerance, situational ethics and consensus; * to reject American values in favor of internationalist values (globalism); * to reject freedom to choose one's career in favor of the totalitarian K-12 school-to-work/OBE process, aptly named "limited learning for lifelong labor,"7 coordinated through United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.Only when all children in public, private and home schools are robotized-and believe as one-will World Government be acceptable to citizens and able to be implemented without firing a shot. The attractive-sounding "choice" proposals will enable the globalist elite to achieve their goal: the robotization (brainwashing) of all Americans in order to gain their acceptance of lifelong education and workforce training-part of the world management system to achieve a new global feudalism.The socialist/fascist global workforce training agenda is being implemented as I write this book. The report to the European Commission entitled "Transatlantic Co-operation in International Education: Projects of the Handswerkskammer Koblenz with Partners in the United States and in the European Union" by Karl-Jurgen Wilbert and Bernard Eckgold (May 1997) says in part:In June, 1994, with the support of the Handswerkskamer Koblenz, an American-German vocational education conference took place...at the University of Texas at Austin. The vocational education researchers and economic specialists...were in agreement that an economic and employment policy is necessary where a systematic vocational training is as equally important as an academic education, as a "career pathway."...The first practical steps along these lines, which are also significant from the point of view of the educational policy, were made with the vocational training of American apprentices in skilled craft companies, in the area of the Koblenz chamber. [emphasis added]Under section "e) Scientific Assistance for the Projects," one reads:The international projects ought to be scientifically assisted and analyzed both for the feedback to the transatlantic dialogue on educa- tional policy, and also for the assessment and qualitative improvement of the cross-border vocational education projects. As a result it should be made possible on the German side to set up a connection to other projects of German-American cooperation in vocational training; e.g., of the federal institute for vocational training for the project in the U.S. state of Maine. On the USA side an interlinking with other initiatives for vocational training-for example, through the Center for the Study of Human Resources at the University of Texas, Austin-would be desirable.This particular document discusses the history of apprenticeships-especially the role of medieval guilds-and attempts to make a case for nations which heretofore have cherished liberal economic ideas-i.e., individual economic freedom-to return to a system of cooperative economic solutions (the guild system used in the Middle Ages which accepted very young children from farms and cities and trained them in "necessary" skills). Another word for this is "serfdom." Had our elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels read this document, they could never have voted in favor of socialist/fascist legislation implementing workforce training to meet the needs of the global economy. Unless, of course, they happen to support such a totalitarian economic system. (This incredible document can be accessed at the following internet address: http://www.kwk-koblenz.de/ausland/trans-uk.doc )Just as Barbara Tuchman or another historian would do in writing the history of the other kinds of wars, I have identified chronologically the major battles, players, dates and places. I know that researchers and writers with far more talent than I will feel that I have neglected some key events in this war. I stand guilty on all counts, even before their well-researched charges are submitted. Yes, much of importance has been left out, due to space limitations, but the overview of the battlefields and maneuvers will give the reader an opportunity to glimpse the immensity of this conflict.In order to win a battle one must know who the "real" enemy is. Otherwise, one is shooting in the dark and often hitting those not the least bit responsible for the mayhem. This book, hopefully, identifies the "real" enemy and provides Americans involved in this war-be they plain, ordinary citizens, elected officials, or traditional teachers-with the ammunition to fight to obtain victory.1 Noted Soviet dissident, slave labor camp intern, and author of The Gulag Archipelago and numerous other books.2 Statistics taken from The Condition of Education, 1997, published by the National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, NCES 97-388. Internet address: http://www.ed/gov/NCES.3 OBE/ML/DI or outcomes-based education/mastery learning/direct instruction.4Dean Gotcher, author of The Dialectic & Praxis: Diaprax and the End of the Ages and other materials dealing with dialectical consensus building and human relations training, has done some excellent work in this area of research. For more detailed information on this process, please write to Dean Gotcher of the Institution for Authority Research, 5436 S. Boston Pl., Tulsa, Oklahoma 74l05, or call (918) 742-3855.5 See Appendix ___ for an article by Tim Clem which explains this process in much more detail.6 ISO stands for International Standards of Operation for manufacturing (9000) and human resources (1400), coordinated through the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).7 "Privatization or Socialization" by C. Weatherly, 1994. Delivered as part of a speech to a group in Minnesota and later published in the Christian Conscience magazine (Vol. 1, No. 2: February 1995, pp. 29-30).Now you are becoming smarter than your peer and the gatekeepers called teachers. Educate yourself FIRST and then you will be able to use your skills, gifts and talents for good and not evil.