Molding Human Resources for the Global Workforce
Molding Human Resources for the Global Workforce
The hidden education agenda behind the campaign promises
by Berit Kjos
“…all of us, including the ‘owners’, must be subjected to a large degree of social control… The major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual. It must seek to give him understanding of the transition to a new social order.”1 (Willard Givens, Executive Secretary, National Education Association, 1934)
“Our objective will require a change in the prevailing culture—the attitudes, values, norms, and accepted ways of doing things.”2 (Mark Tucker, the mastermind behind school-to-work)
Do you wonder who really plans your child’s education? What their true motives are? Or why most of our current presidential candidates seem to echo President Clinton’s nice sentiments about high standards, accountability, and school-to-work?
You can find some revealing answers at UNESCO’s website on Worldwide Action in Education. Ponder its network of globalist partners:
“UNESCO launched in 1992 a new International Project on Technical and Vocational Education. The UNEVOC [UN Educational-Vocational] project is designed to create more effective working relationships between UNESCO and such UN specialized agencies as ILO [International Labor Organization], regional organizations, NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations), public and private funding sources and, last but certainly not least, the private business community…. The overall aim of the project is to network policy planners, teacher training and technical institutes, teachers, schools and students throughout the world, in a bid to assist in reducing the gap between North and South in building human resources for development. UNEVOC is an example of new thinking pointing towards the involvement of the ‘wider civil society.'”
The above partners include radical environmental and feminist groups that want our children steeped in their ideology. As you might expect, it also includes the mighty NEA (National Education Association), its militant global sister IE (International Education), and other ruling elites in the planned “civil society.” These groups believe they can best serve the new world community by conforming your child’s mind to the collective thinking and values of the envisioned global village.
But more “conservative” international organizations support this transformation as well. Senator John McCain is Chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), a non-profit organization which is neither Republican nor partisan. You may have encountered some of its questionable “pro-democracy” global activism through a WND report titled McCain Rocks the Vote. In his busy schedule, John McCain may have little time to follow all the activities of the institute he heads, but concerned taxpayers need to understand the program our government helps fund.
The many global issues the IRI tackles include education — the key to developing, assessing, and monitoring human resources around the world. An IRI project, the Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC), exposes a small portion of the immense human resource development system already being established around the world. Working with UNESCO and the World Bank, it suggests that the old American education system — once the envy of the world — is out. A new revolutionary system must take its place. Let’s consider some of its international aims, then compare these with UN goals and their implementation in the United States.
Global Standards: “Bench marking for educational quality will be global rather than local.”
Lifelong learning, a UNESCO plan involving continual assessments, monitoring, and remediation: “Life-long learning by our people is the engine for future national economic growth.”
Cradle-to-grave transformation: “Recent developments in information technology and telecommunications offer tools for redesign of education at all levels.”
Support for the UNESCO-World Bank system for indoctrinating, training, monitoring and remediating human resources around the world: “In the World Conference on Education for All, convened in Thailand in 1990, all the governments of the world restated their obligation to ensure basic education for permanent learning and human development.”
Promote the concept of “local control” while holding local schools accountable to assessed “outcomes” that meet global standards and benchmarks: “…schools in local communities must be seen as the fundamental action factor for change…. it is essential to accomplish reinvention in the practices of teaching and learning in the classroom”
Replace individualism with collectivism through the consensus process: “Innovators in education must be committed to completely new teaching methods… and cooperative learning among the students themselves (UNESCO, 1991).”
Plan politically correct strategies for transmitting the right ideology: “The InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB), together with other international organizations (OECD, UNESCO) and the ministries of education from Latin America and the Caribbean, should establish a central, virtual knowledge bank….”3
Keep in mind, it is easy to sympathize with the world’s poor and needy. We want to help those who hurt. But the planned solution will create new and larger problems. It won’t bring American freedom to the third world. Instead, it will merge our great nation with a UN-led system that punishes individualism, absolute truths, and the dreaded “separatism” that clashes with socialist solidarity. (Our next article, on the new chief of UNESCO, will explain this ideology)
Interactive computer programs can mold and manage minds around the world like no former totalitarian system ever could. That’s why the Clinton-Gore administration has fought so hard for funds to rebuild or rewire our nation’s schools. This technology will surely move poor nations toward the planned social and economic equality. But it will also force America into the same totalitarian mold. The admission by Thomas Sticht, a member of (the Labor) Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) exposed the threat to American families:
“Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poorly educated labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it can be managed and trained — not its general educational level, although a small cadre of highly educated creative people are essential to innovation and growth. Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low income families into the middle class.”4
THE U.S. BRANCH OF THE UNESCO SYSTEM. America leads the parade into this new world management system. Our U.S. Departments of Education (DOE), Labor (DOL) and Health and Human Services (DHHS) work with the corresponding UN agencies: UNESCO, WHO, and ILO. Each national agency carries out the unconstitutional agenda of its UN partner, yet all six work together within the new “seamless” system — the label both DHHS Secretary Donna Shalala and Marc Tucker use to describe today’s vast international and inter-agency system of human resource management.
DEPARTMENT UN U.S.
Education UNESCO DOE
(Mental) Health WHO DHHS
Labor (workforce) ILO DOL
Dr. Shirley McCune (see Star Wars Joins the United Religions at the Presidio) gave us a glimpse of the planned changes when she spoke at the 1989 Governor’s Conference on Education, led by Governor Bill Clinton. In her keynote address she said,
“What’s happening in America … is a total transformation of our society. We have moved into a new era.… I’m not sure we have really begun to comprehend . . . the incredible amount of… human resource development.…”
By the end of the conference the governors had chosen six education goals, starting with “by year 2000, every child will come to school ready to learn.”
The following year, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank convened the “World Conference on Education for All” mentioned in the above IRI report. It introduced the same six goals that our governors had chosen the previous year. Do you wonder who chose the goals first – UNESCO or the USA?
Actually, the answer has two sides. First, American foundations as well as political and educational leaders were funding and pushing this international program even before the United Nations was founded. Second, the first head of UNESCO was Julian Huxley, the brother of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. He brought the socialist education agenda into UNESCO, the UN agency responsible for human resource development. Laying the foundation for worldwide training in collectivism, he set the stage for the collapse of traditional Western education and culture. Economic and ideological concerns would instead steer the learning process.
In 1991, President George Bush introduced America 2000, the Republican version of UNESCO’s education system. It, too, would be built around the familiar six UNESCO goals. “New schools for a new world….” he told America. “Re-invent — literally start from scratch and reinvent the American school…. Our challenge amounts to nothing less than a revolution in American education.”
On October 30 of that same year, the U.S. Coalition for Education for All (USCEFA) convened a conference titled Learning for All: Bridging Domestic and International Education with First Lady Barbara Bush as the “honorary chair.” It would provide a vital link between the UNESCO plan and U.S. implementation. Partners in this venture included UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the NEA, and a long string of organizations involved in education at every level, as well as such innocuous organizations as World Vision.
The coalition was part of a 156-nation network working to reform education worldwide by bridging the gap between individual nations and UNESCO’s Education for All. Keynote speaker Elena Lenskaya, deputy to the Minister of Education of Russia, spoke on the topic, “Education for a New World Order.”
This program became the law of our land when President Clinton signed the Goals 2000: Educate America Act in March, 1994. The Clinton-Gore administration had added two goals to the original six: parent participation and teacher training. Both are vital to global uniformity and were outlined in the original UNESCO plan.
Behind our backs, this secretive international coalition continues to meet and make plans that are changing our lives. But the mainstream media keeps silent. The apt title of the USCEFA’s 1994 conference summarized its vision: “A Revolution in World Education: Toward Systemic Change.” The theme below highlights the move toward global as well as community partnerships. Keep in mind, this was written two years before Hillary Clinton released her book, It Takes a Village:
“The traditional African belief that ‘it takes an entire village to raise a child’ is proving increasingly true. As we enter the next century, it may well take an entire nation–or world–to educate our children.”
In case you wonder how far this movement has spread, read this statement from the 1994 USCEFA conference brochure,
“Nearly five years ago the world came together at the “World Conference on Education for All” in Jomtien, Thailand to ensure the right to education for all people. Since then, education systems around the world have embarked on significantly different programs of systemic reforms….”
SCHOOL TO WORK. According to UNESCO’s report on “Worldwide Action in Education,” this “seamless” education system “is aimed at two essential goals:”
1. Socialization: “Education… for all the world’s citizens… is essential because education is the principal means for preparing people to participate effectively in the development of their communities ….” (see ” The U.N. Plan for Your Community”)
2. Training for a global workforce: “Education must prepare the citizens of today to live and work … in a world in which the only constant will be change.”
To meet these goals, UNESCO must work with governments around the world to involve everyone in the consensus process. In the envisioned world of social solidarity and economic equality, no one can be exempt from participation. Every human resource must be continually assessed for its value both to the community and to the global economy. Solidarity implies conformity and compliance, while individualism and traditional values imply conflict.
Adaptation to “a world where the only constant will be change” means putting aside contrary beliefs that block conformity to an evolving body of global beliefs and values. Total Quality Management may sound good and practical when applied to manufactured products. But when the product is human capital, the process becomes abhorrent to those who value American freedom and personal convictions. In a 1996 letter to his colleagues, U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde warned us of the danger:
“Children’s careers will be chosen for them by workforce development boards and federal agencies ‘at the earliest possible age’. … All children and adults will be forced to be retrained in order to qualify for work certificates – home, Christian, privately-schooled children included!â€
Even so, President Clinton signed HR 1385 – The Workforce Investment Act into law in 1998, thus establishing this hierarchical workforce development system across the country. Like Goals 2000, it will reward compliance and punish individual or contrary thinking. Yet, states from coast to coast had already begun to implement their branch of this massive national/international workforce system. Each individual state plan reflects the uniform vision and revolutionary strategies of the UNESCO framework.
Hard to believe? Just check your state’s implementation plan for nice-sounding buzzwords designed to win the consent of the masses. You would find phrases such as lifelong learning, seamless system, cooperative education, community service, high expectations, teacher learning centers, management teams, stakeholders, career awareness, certificate of mastery, rigorous standards…. But the promising words hide a monstrous international web of controls that violates everything that made America great.
The North Dakota School-to-Work Implementation Plan tells us that “success… is predicated on making fundamental changes to the infrastructure and culture of schools….” It calls for full participation:
“All stakeholders — employers, students, parents, teachers, counselors, labor and business leaders and community — are accepting responsibility for developing expectations, public awareness, system components, and the content needed for life long learning and success in the workforce and as citizens.”5
“Adopt high national standards,” said Clinton in his 1997 State of the Union address. “Every state and school must shape the curriculum to reflect these standards…. To help schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will… develop national tests….”
Well, his national tests didn’t win the public’s consent. But it matters little. Every state and school knows that the needed federal funds have strings attached. Therefore schools across the country are “teaching to the tests” which already reflect the new global ideology. Since schools and educators will be held accountable for their students’ “success” on assessments that measure acceptance of politically correct ideology, the promised “local control” has little significance beyond administrative details and limited curriculum choices.
The “high national standards†are high only to those who measure them against achievements in third world countries and inner city schools. Based not on academics but on affective standards (see Glossary) set by the Department of Health and Human services and on work skills and competencies set by the Department of Labor, they are low enough to ensure success for anyone willing to conform to the new values. Individual progress would be tracked through the monstrous national-international information system (see EO #13011).
The new standards fit the “seamless web†of “cradle to grave†learning designed by Marc Tucker. As chief of the National Center on Education and the Economy, which began as an agency within the globalist Carnegie Foundation, Tucker leads the nationwide school-to-work program. In a jubilant 1992 post-election letter to Hillary Clinton, he described the new education program:
“…regulated on the basis of outcomes… in which curriculum, pedagogy, examinations, and teacher education and licensure systems are all linked to the national standards… a system that rewards students who meet the national standards with further education and good jobs….â€6
Tucker’s “pedagogy†for developing “human resources†follows the school-to-work pattern developed in the former USSR. It’s not surprising then, that the massive Goals 2000: Educate America Act would parallel Soviet education in virtually all its details: early childhood education, state-controlled child raising through community “partnershipsâ€, vocational training for all, mandated “parental involvement†in government programs, indoctrination in the politically correct ideology, lifelong monitoring of compliance, etc. Vladimir Turchenko summarized the Soviet education goals – and the new American goals—in The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Revolution in Education:
“One of the most important functions of education today is… the preparation of a skilled labor force for the national economy…. A second task is to ensure the socialization of the younger generation…. [This] involves shifting the focus of instruction from memorization to teaching how to think… The upbringing of the younger generation will become the affair of all.â€
That’s Hillary’s village and the United Nations’ Sustainable Community. But more conservative organizations such as the IRI have joined the bandwagon toward global change and “democratic” solidarity. Hopefully, IRI leaders such as Chairman John McCain don’t understand the world education system and didn’t intend to use the World Bank, UNESCO, and the conclusions of its World Conference on Education for All as education partners or authorities.
HUMAN RESOURCES OR PERSONS WITH INHERENT WORTH. To the World Bank, humans are little more than raw material to be developed for the global economy. They are pawns to be molded and manipulated within planned slots in the envisioned “sustainable community.”
The World Bank has already established its own education program – one that complements the UNESCO program. Its expertise in developing human resources that raise the worth of a community’s “social capital” (the assessed value of the community based on solidarity and citizen participation) would serve globalist visionaries well.
It would not serve the Christian community. Unless churches awaken to the changes ahead and trumpet a warning across America, we may soon lose our God-given freedoms. Yet, all too many church leaders support these changes. Few realize that the system our current candidates promote will totally replace traditional facts and academics. It is not what they want us to believe. Don’t be deceived by the nice rhetoric.
The high stakes in this year’s elections should encourage all of us to pray for God’s guidance and to carefully consider the issues. The immediate future of our nation, our children, and our grandchildren may depend on our willingness to examine the threats, weigh the alternatives, and make wise choices. May God lead us, and may we have the grace and courage to listen and follow.
“They will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you. For I am with you,’ says the Lord, ‘to deliver you.'”(Jeremiah 1:19)