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Maple River Education Coalition PAC
105 Peavey Rd, St 116 
Chaska, MN  55318 
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Educational Fascism in Minnesota

by John H. Scribante – Entrepreneur

Respectfully submitted to the U.S House of Representatives
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations 
Committee on Education and the Workforce

June 6, 2000

Statement

We’re gathered here this morning at a very interesting time… 56 years ago today, D-Day, 2,500 Allied soldiers died in Normandy fighting Fascist Germany for the freedom for Americans to pursue liberty. This offers us a unique perspective on this monumental issue of educational change. We’re poised at the beginning of the 21st century, and while the rest of the world is abandoning central labor planning, Minnesota is driving through School-to-Work programs for central control of its economy against the will of the people.

Consider that in just over 200 years, this country became the Greatest Nation on Earth. We’ve had more Nobel Prize recipients than any other industrialized nation. We’ve sent men into outer space and brought them back alive, and our science and technologies are copied worldwide. Those who accomplished these incredible feats were the product of an education system that emphasized academics, not life-long job training.

I’ve been to Eastern Europe, I’ve seen the life destroying results of governments trying to plan the economy and control education, and I’ve spoken to people who have been subject to their central controls. This is not what America was founded on… and besides; it has been proven not to work. Those of you who have sworn to uphold the United States Constitution will be hard pressed to support such a system of tyranny.

Today in Minnesota, the best interests of children have become secondary to the interests of bureaucrats, un-elected non-profits, and economic forecasts. In many districts, children are already being required to choose a "career cluster" by the end of 8th grade that will determine their secondary school curriculum. This system is a radical shift towards government central planning.

We don’t know what we will learn tomorrow. We can be sure that at any particular time, we are overlooking valuable information and opportunities. Our knowledge is incomplete and resources are, undoubtedly being misdirected. We have a 225-year proven method for discovering and correcting these errors called Capitalism. Entrepreneurs search out instances where resources are being underutilized and redirect them to those that produce profits… nothing else approaches its power to stimulate discovery. Since we don’t know today what we may learn tomorrow about educational methods and knowledge, we need entrepreneurship in education.

History has proven, time and time again, that where competition does not exist, mediocrity thrives. Nowhere is this truer than in many of America’s public schools.

If you must have government-funded education, at least leave the private schools and home schools alone to compete for ideas and innovation.

Businesses have been duped

Businessmen and woman are being told that they can and should become partners in the education of our children. With tax funded incentives, subsidies, reimbursements, and free training… how can these businesses resist?

According to the Minnesota School to Work publication called Making Connections, page 11: the SCANS report instructs business to "look outside your company and change your view of your responsibilities for human resource development. Your old responsibilities were to select the best available applicants and to retain those you hired. Your new responsibilities must be to improve the way you organize work and to develop the human resources in your community, your firm, and your nation."

The Minnesota STW program seeks 100% employer compliance and further provides a "Work-Based Learning Coordinator" to "help" me in my "responsibilities" of complying with this lunacy. Who is running my business anyway? I’ve got all the capital at risk… Just leave me out of this mess.

This experiment may be very attractive in the short run… but business will pay in the long run in higher taxes to fund these programs, in less educated people and a loss of economic freedom. Productive labor is their goal, not an educated populace. This will be the end of a free America.

My company needs entrepreneurial minds and intellectual capital. People who can think, read, write, and add. I interview many young people who are products of Minnesota schools, and they cannot solve simple conversion equations. Who is training students for what I need? What is wrong with teaching people how to think? I don’t need work skills… I need people who can think of great ideas and be willing to put their knowledge to the test!

Why is it that the government vigilantly looks for predatory pricing, anticompetitive, and monopolistic behavior in the private sector, and yet it is the greatest offender?

To quote Ralph Moore "The real credit in life should go to those who get into the arena – if they fail, they at least fail while daring to be great. Their place in life will never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

In a free market economy, consumers ultimately determine what is produced. What school or government bureaucrat could have predicted ten years ago how many webmasters we would need today? From the information I’ve seen from the Department of Labor’s SCANS reports, they’re planning on teaching manure spreading, car washing, working the fryer at the diner and how to take a message off an answering machine.

In St. Cloud, MN, the STW program has already put a company out of business and severed off the arm of a 17-year-old student running a machine on a STW assignment.

School-to-work is a dangerous shift in education policy in America. It moves public education’s mission from the transfer of academic knowledge to simply training children for specific jobs. And most tragically, the job for which it will train will have little or nothing to do with that child’s dreams, goals, or ambitions.

Parents, however in this three way partnership with business and the State may be troubled knowing that their children are the pawns that the educational system trains to meet the needs of industry.

The economic goals of bureaucrats should never be promoted over the virtue and importance of knowledge. School to work transition issues would disappear if schools focused on strengthening core curricula, setting high expectations, and improving discipline and forgetting about retrying failed ideas.

The Result

The sad truth is, in exchange for federal chump change, the state of Minnesota sold out it’s commitment to high academic standards and agreed to follow national standards based on moral relativism, politically correct group thinking, and getting kids out of the classroom to work in local businesses, beginning in kindergarten.

Our state threw out a system of education that worked brilliantly for most all Minnesota youngsters. It worked brilliantly, that is, until approximately 35 years ago when Minnesota public education started flirting with the progressive, trendy movement away from high academic standards. Under the Profile of Learning, high academic standards are practically banned from the classroom.

In 1993, the Minnesota legislature repealed 230 education statutes, thus creating a structural vacuum to make way for the new federal Goals 2000 system already in the works. This left Minnesota without tried and true standards.

There are no longer any course requirements for any child in Minnesota. No 4 years of English, no 4 years of history, no 3 years of math, or a year of geography, or years of science. Most public schools don’t have a copy of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and few even mention them in classes.

This system is really nothing new. Tyranny has always waited in the wings, ready to step to center stage at the first hint of apathy towards freedom.

For over 230 years we’ve enjoyed the finest freedom and prosperity the world has ever known. Yet we were warned by Edmund Burke that, "The eternal price of liberty is vigilance." As a people we’ve been asleep at the switch, and now our entire nation, not just Minnesota, has signed on to this crazy new system of totalitarianism, where everyone is under government’s control, from cradle to grave.

This system has been tried around the world, across the centuries. But it is radically new for those of us used to freedom. This new system has more to do with fascism than freedom.

Now we need to work to eliminate the entire STW & Goals 2000 system, while there is time. As Sir Winston Churchill wrote to convince the British to join in the fight against Nazi Germany:

"If you will not fight for the right—when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure—and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight—with all the odds against you—and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worst case. You may have to fight—when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

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