The RECORD

Editor's Note: This column was written in 2005, and refers to an incident that occurred in 2003.

A fourteen-year-old retarded girl was abducted from the Maine Mall and raped two years ago. Three Nigerian immigrants were arrested and charged with gross sexual assault. Newspaper and television coverage was widespread and, this being every parent's nightmare, a lot of people heard about it. Very few, however, know how it finally turned out. I didn't know myself until the girl's mother, Laurie Stanley from Bridgton, called me. She was crying with frustration and asked me to write about it.

The Nigerians got away with it, essentially, and this fact was all but ignored by local media. Charges against Kingsley Nwaturocha were dropped. Dan Eneagu and Okey Chukwurah pled guilty to misdemeanor assault. Eneagu got a suspended sentence and two years probation. Chukwurah got a $1000 fine. That's it. The Portland Press Herald ran a tiny news brief buried in the December 10, 2003 issue, saying: "A Nigerian man accused of raping a 14-year-old Gorham girl in Old Orchard Beach last year has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault charges and has been released after his attorneys said the man would receive a death sentence if deported."

The York County District Attorney's office contacted Laurie Stanley the day before trial to tell her that Eneagu would be killed in Nigeria if he were deported. Is that what you want? A woman from the DA's office asked her over the phone. As mad as I was that they raped my daughter, she said, "I didn't want that." I didn't want them to die. I listened silently. What would you have done?

"If they raped my daughter," I said, "execution would be fine with me."

Semen found in the girl matched Eneagu's DNA. A rape conviction would have been a slam-dunk, yet the DA's office offered a plea bargain on the belief that the men would be deported and executed in Nigeria if convicted of felony rape. That seemed suspicious to me. Checking into it, I discovered that a rape conviction is extremely difficult under Islamic law and it would have been highly unlikely for those men charged with rape in Maine to be accountable there. I called Eneagu's attorney, Nicholas Mahoney, several times to ask where he got his information but he didn't return my calls.

Islamic law, or Sharia, considers a woman's testimony worth only half that of a man's. Robert Spencer, author of Islam Unveiled, wrote in his article Rape in Islam: Blaming the Victim that four Muslim male witnesses are required for a conviction and that without these witnesses and a confession from the accused rapist, the victim will stand condemned by her very accusation: she wasn't raped, so she must be guilty of zina. Zina, under Islamic Law, is sexual activity outside of marriage. In Nigeria, women found guilty of zina are sentenced to death by stoning.

York County Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Moskowitz negotiated Eneagu's plea bargain and I asked him if he verified the defense attorney's execution claim. He told me he called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, but they had no idea about it. Then, he consulted an immigration lawyer in Portland, who referred him to a Nigerian in Portland whose opinion was that there was a good chance Eneagu would be killed. When I related what I had learned about Islamic law, he said I was comparing apples to oranges because Eneagu would have been deported already convicted, and would not likely be re-tried in Nigeria. When I asked Moskowitz if he thought justice was done, he said he had no regrets about how he handled the case and would do the same thing again.

I called the immigration lawyer Moskowitz talked to, an attorney named George Hepner. He said he didn't have an opinion about Eneagu at the time and referred Moskowitz to Najim Animashaun of South Portland. Animashaun is Muslim, a practicing attorney in Maine. He has also practiced in the UK and in Nigeria. He told me he didn't specifically recall consulting with Moskowitz on the Eneagu case either, although he might have. He said he often discusses hypotheticals concerning certain legal cases and does remember talking to Eneagu's attorney, Nick Mahoney. He told me it was very unlikely Eneagu would have been executed. Eneagu is not a Muslim and Islamic law is only applied to Muslims. He said though Islamic law is practiced only in some parts of Nigeria and death sentences are often made, they're seldom carried out. When I asked why, he said Islamic officials are afraid of executing someone wrongly because they themselves would be accountable in the afterlife if they made a mistake.

Laurie Stanley called me originally, not just because the men were never convicted of rape, but also because she read another tiny news brief in the Portland Press Herald that day last September about Kingsley Nwaturocha against whom the rape charge was dropped. He was granted $95,000 because he claimed to have been beaten by corrections officers at the York County Jail while awaiting trial. I was trying to get my daughter into a residential school to protect her because it was getting to point that I couldn't handle her, Stanley said. I was afraid she might go off with someone like she did at the Maine Mall, but the school wouldn't pay for it and the state wouldn't either. And now he gets all that money. My daughter was raped, bitten, and burned with a cigarette. They gave her herpes. She had to be tested for AIDS. She was robbed of her innocence, and he gets $95,000!

Stanley found an attorney willing to file suit against Nwaturocha, but he discovered that the Nigerian had gotten his payoff three months earlier and moved to Maryland. Believing the money to be gone by then and because it would be difficult to file suit in a state so far away, the attorney dropped the case. Stanley's frustration became unbearable and she wanted the story told. After seeing how everything turned out, she wishes now the men were executed.

My inquiries into this sad case produced as many questions as answers. Why didn't the York County DA's office scrutinize the defense's execution claims more closely? Why didn't they just enforce Maine law instead of worrying about Nigerian law? Why would the local media virtually ignore the plea bargain? Were they afraid of public outrage? Was it overzealous opposition to the death penalty? Why delay reporting the $95,000 settlement for three months? Was it sympathy for immigrants? Whatever it was, two of those men are still here, free to walk among us, and they don't have to register as sex offenders because they were never convicted of rape.

Tom McLaughlin is a teacher and columnist living in Lovell, Maine. Hundreds of his columns have been published in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts newspapers as well as online at familysecuritymatters.com, realclearpolitics.com, freerepublic.com and many other venues. He can be reached on his blog at http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/

By Dallas E. Henry

Some years ago, probably over 10, I was privileged to attend a meeting in Lewiston that had a featured speaker, Dr. Judith Reisman, author of the book, Kinsey Sex and Lies. Dr. Reisman mentioned that this is the book that most all sex education curriculum in public schools is based on. During her remarks she shared some alarming information that she called "The Gay Agenda." I have never forgotten the information she shared.

Below is the actual agenda of the Homosexual Rights Movement from 35 years ago. It is still alarming and what's more, they are making significant progress. Every Pastor and Church leader needs to be fully informed about this. The Homosexual Activists are very serious and fully committed to see their agenda fully realized. We are their target since we represent morality which they are trying to redefine along with the term "family" and "marriage".

Please review their agenda and then browse the links provided at the end of this update.

The 1972 Gay Rights Platform

In February 1972, the National Coalition of Gay Organizations met at the Armitage Avenue United Methodist Church in Chicago. An invitation had been sent out to 495 homosexual organizations across the U.S. to come and prepare a "gay stance for the 1972 elections."

About 200 individuals from 18 states representing 85 organizations showed up for the two-day event. Conference participants adopted the 1972 Gay Rights Platform, which included 17 federal and state "demands."

For over 30 years it has been the beacon of the homosexual movement in America. Back in 1972 their demands seemed so outlandish that nobody took them seriously. But gay activists have been extremely focused and relentless in achieving their goals. (Notice the bottom goal on the list.)

It gives an interesting perspective. If someone back then had suggested that we would be discussing this subject today and be in the position we're in, it would not only have been considered unbelievable, it truly would have been beyond the ability of the average person to imagine it.

DEMANDS:

Federal:

1. Amend all federal Civil Rights Acts, other legislation and government controls to prohibit discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and public services.

2. Issuance by the President of an executive order prohibiting the military from excluding for reasons of their sexual orientation, persons who of their own volition desire entrance into the Armed Services; and from issuing less-than-fully-honorable discharges for homosexuality; and the upgrading to fully honorable all such discharges previously issued, with retroactive benefits.

3. Issuance by the President of an executive order prohibiting discrimination in the federal civil service because of sexual orientation, in hiring and promoting; and prohibiting discrimination against homosexuals in security clearances.

4. Elimination of tax inequities victimizing single persons and same-sex couples.

5. Elimination of bars to the entry, immigration and naturalization of homosexual aliens.

6. Federal encouragement and support for sex education courses, prepared and taught by Gay women and men, presenting homosexuality as a valid, healthy preference and lifestyle as a viable alternative to heterosexuality.

7. Appropriate executive orders, regulations and legislation banning the compiling, maintenance and dissemination of information on an individual's sexual preferences, behavior, and social and political activities for dossiers and data banks.

8. Federal funding of aid programs of Gay men's and women's organizations designed to alleviate the problems encountered by Gay women and men which are engendered by an oppressive sexist society.

9. Immediate release of all Gay women and men now incarcerated in detention centers, prisons and mental institutions because of sexual offense charges relating to victimless crimes or sexual orientation; and that adequate compensation be made for the physical and mental duress encountered; and that all existing records relating to the incarceration be immediately expunged.

State:

1. All federal legislation and programs enumerated in Demands 1, 6, 7, 8 and 9 above should be implemented at the State level where applicable.

2. Repeal of all state laws prohibiting private sexual acts involving consenting persons; equalization for homosexuals and heterosexuals for the enforcement of all laws.

3. Repeal all state laws prohibiting solicitation for private voluntary sexual liaisons; and laws prohibiting prostitution, both male and female.

4. Enactment of legislation prohibiting insurance companies and other state-regulated enterprises from discriminating because of sexual orientation, in insurance and in bonding or any other prerequisite to employment or control of one's personal demesne.

5. Enactment of legislation so that child custody, adoption, visitation rights, foster parenting, and the like shall not be denied because of sexual orientation or marital status.

6. Repeal of all laws prohibiting transvestism and cross-dressing.

7. Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.

8. Repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit; and the extension of legal benefits to all persons who cohabitate regardless of sex or numbers. "The greatest single victory of the gay movement over the past decade has been to shift the debate from behavior to identity, thus forcing opponents into a position where they can be seen as attacking the civil rights of homosexual citizens."

From The Homosexualization of America, by homosexual activist Dennis Altman.

The following is a list of links to further educate yourself regarding what is going on behind the scenes in this movement to homosexualize our state and nation

How America Went Gay by by Charles W. Socarides, M.D.
http://www.leaderu.com/jhs/socarides.html

The Way Life Should Be [a video from a homosexual point of view]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCzJn3PRhfk

Gay Activists War against Christianity
http://www.afajournal.org/2006/february/206GayWar.asp

The Homosexual Agenda: Threat to Religious Freedom
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3520.html

World Views of Sex Ed by Mark Earley
http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=997

Homosexual Group to Protest Christian Colleges
http://www.citizenlink.org/CLtopstories/A000003917.cfm

By Michael Heath

I suspect Mr. Harnett did not have a very good weekend. Mr. Harnett is the Assistant Attorney General who is in charge of the so-called "civil rights teams." He emailed me Friday morning. I published his email in the RECORD. Within hours of us publishing the RECORD he called and left a voicemail.

He sounded emotional on the phone and claimed that I am a weak man. He said that I fight my battles through you, our RECORD readers. He expected me to pick up the telephone and call him after receiving the morning email. He didn't want you to know what he wrote to me. There was no indication on the email that it was confidential. In his email he pointed out an error in my previous day's email regarding funding. We included his criticism of me, unedited.

Oh yes, he also mentioned that HIS voicemail box and incoming email was quite full. We've been getting our share of emails and calls. Please forgive me if I am not able to get back to every email, or respond to all the phone calls. Hopefully this publication will provide some answers.

I need to make a few observations about this developing story:

1. The League believes that the civil rights team project should be immediately defunded and shut down at the state level. We have believed this since the beginning. We have never supported this program.

2. I have met with Mr. Harnett and his boss, the Attorney General. I was informed of the fact that the civil rights team project "has nothing to do with sexual morality" and that "sexual orientation" is now the law, so I better get used to homosexuality being discussed by the children.

3. I am not afraid of Mr. Harnett, Mr. Rowe or anyone over at the State House.

4. I am afraid of a Holy God who isn't happy about adults providing "safe zones" for kids to discuss and affirm sex outside of marriage.

5. I reject Mr. Harnett's views regarding the value of celebrating "multi-culturalism" in the name of civil rights. Maine has a culture that is being undermined and devalued by people intent on redefining that traditional culture. Mr. Harnett seems to be among that group.

6. I did not contact Mr. Harnett last week and invite comment. His published email to me was unsolicited, apparently in reaction to the Cony story on "transgendering" that we published on Monday of last week.

7. The last time the civil rights team issue attracted public attention our ministry was viciously attacked. The sign in front of our building was destroyed, and our internet forum was hacked and ruined. We lost six months of work.

8. We don't hate people, and we don't create the problem. The problem started this time when a troubled 19 year old who needs counseling and spiritual help was included in a "civil rights team" event last Monday. School officials pretended she was a hero for choosing to become a man. She was there as a workshop leader to teach about "Transgendering." Last time the problem started when Mr. Harnett wouldn't allow me inside his statewide "diversity" conference where he was putting kids in touch with "transgendering." We asked to tape those sessions. We were denied.

9. We are posting the emails we receive on this, and other, matters.

10. I have asked Mr. Harnett repeatedly in the past few years for detail regarding the $250,000 that is spent annually. I have never received any detail beyond the overall totals. I have stopped asking. He is trying to deceive good people. Civil rights have nothing to do with holding workshops with Maine school children on Pakistani dance, yoga, withcraft and islam.

I feel bad, I really do.

By Charlotte Thomason Iserbyt

In 1990 our family bought a Greek Revival house in Bath, Maine, built in 1870 during the great days of sailing ships. The house contained demanding and beautiful books used in Bath schools at that time, a treasure trove that gave me total documentation that education in the late 1800s, which only went through 8th grade, was vastly superior to 12th grade "education" in Maine today. These college-level school books, as well as the Salina, Kansas 1898 eighth grade final exam, which the average Harvard graduate could not pass, supported conclusions I had reached over a period of thirty years as a researcher, school board member, co-founder (with Bettina Dobbs) of Guardians of Education for Maine (1980-1998), and Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, 1980-1982. Those conclusions were that the creation of moral chaos and the "Dumbing Down" of America have been deliberate in order to move our ration toward the totalitarian, socialist government called for by Lenin and Stalin.

Citizens who know nothing of their country's history, its free economic and political systems, or of those alien systems such as democracy, fascism, socialism, and communism, who cannot read well, write or calculate, will accept whatever the highly paid "change agents" feed them in regard to "the need for change." Example: citizens' acceptance of free trade (NAFTA and GATT) which sounds so nice, but is really a socialistic, international "redistribution of wealth." If a citizen doesn't know what he has, how can he know or care when that thing is taken from him? The danger is not teaching our children American history and their rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was underscored by a recent survey commissioned by the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and conducted at 339 U.S.colleges and universities, which found that more than two-thirds of the students and administrators were unable to remember that freedom of the religion and freedom of the press are guaranted by the Bill of Rights. When asked what essential rights are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, over one-quarter failed to mention freedom of speech, and over three-quarters did not name freedom of assembly or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Only 21% mentioned freedom of religion, and less than 30% mentioned freedom of the press.

How long will Maine citizens support the higly-paid education "change agents" in Augusta as they continue to bulldoze what was, prior to 1965, a good academic education system? All this is done under the guise of accountability (the dubious saving of money through consolation and/or regionalism-- which is communism) restructuring, revisioning, Guiding Principles, Maine Learning Results, and the present highly controversial international, lifelong, "School-to-Work" system which, by the way, is the same failed system used in socialist and communist countries.

The frightening tone of this latest un-American "Dumbing Down" agenda, which is an attempt at scare tactics, is expressed in the following question posed in the Select Panel Report.

"Will a global economy coupled with chemical and biological tools of warfare necessitate new forms of governance, citizenship and divisions of power? We cannot really know."

The latest "Select Panel Report" goes on to recommend the consolidation of Maine's 286 small school units into 35 large school units, necessitating the building of Taj Mahal-sized schools to serve not only students but the entire community, the type one sees sprouting up across the country. Did Maine taxpayers learn nothing from the disastrous results of the 1957 Sinclair Act which consolidated many of Maine's small schools in the Sixties?

What blew my mind in this Select Panel's Draft was the following blatant admission of what many taxpayers have been complaining about for a long, long time: "Maine has one of the most expensive public school systems in the nation and yet our results measured by multiple indices are flat through recent years."

Really? Why admit this now? Because they need a disaster, in the form of a crisis or scare tactic, in order to get taxpayers so upset they will cough up millions of dollars more for the next bound-to-fail (academically, that is) reform movement. We should all remember the failed National Commission on Excellence which resulted in the publication of "A Nation at Risk." "A Nation at Risk" was an attempt to con Americans into supporting the very restructuring which culminated in the controversial Pavlovian, lowest common denominator Outcomes-Based Education (OBE); America 2000; the School-to-Work Opportunities Act; and the highly controversial No Child Left Behind Act. This writer worked in the office which prepared the "Nation at Risk" report, and heard the late Secretary of Education T.H. Bell say, in 1981, at the first "closed to the public" meeting of the Commission, that "We need a crisis in order to move ahead with the radical changes necessary for education restructuring."

The change agents in Augusta, including our elected officials, have some nerve expecting us to pay for another round of reform which has nothing to do with traditional academics and your child's future upward mobility! Instead, it has everything to do with Pavlovian, robotic "training," and low-paying third-world jobs for the planned global economy. This is limited learning for lifelong labor! In "Human Capital and America's Future: An Economic Strategy for the Future," co-edited by David Hornbeck of the Carnegie Foundation of the Advancement of Teaching, one finds a shocking statement: "Employer beliefs about the superior capabilities of educated people turned out not to be confirmed in practice. Educated employees have higher turnover rates, lower job satisfaction, and poorer promotion records than less educated employees." Hornbeck's statement about the preference for dumbed-down employees is not to be taken lightly, since he is probably the principal designer of national education/"School-to-Work" restructuring programs upon which Maine's "revisioning" agenda is based.

The Select Panel report recommends "expanding school choice," and that does not mean traditional private school or home-school choice, but government-funded and controlled private education, which includes tuition tax credits, vouchers, charter schools and virtual computerized charter schools used by home-schoolers who are connected with the school district's central office! Charter schools are designed to provide job training in a "planned" (that is, socialist) economy.

The Select Panel Report recommends preparing leaders as "Change Agents." This writer was trained in 1976 to be a Change Agent, which included "identifying resisters," those smart taxpayers who resist controversial moral relativistic Dumbing Down programs being implemented in the schools. The first national heardquarters for Change Agent training, the National Training Laboratorie, was established in the Fifties in Bethel, Maine.

The Select Panel Report recommends laptop computers for grades 5-12, and calls for intergrating technology into student learning, teaching and living, and makes the very dubious claim that recent research demonstrates the students benefit from the use of technology.

The Select Panel Report recommends "Improving Teacher Quality by Monitoring and Coaching." This recommendation mirrors recommendations in the Carnegie Corporation's "A Nation Prepared: Teachers in the 21st Century," which says in part, "The practice of teaching must be influenced by, and evaluated, on the basis of research." Was the superior, inexpensive education in Bath, Maine and Salina, Kansas in the 1890s based on research? (This writer served as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education from whence all research for the "dumbing down" curriculae and values-destroying programs and methods emanated!) I pity the poor teachers and students being "monitored and coached," conditioned and experimented on like Pavlovian dogs!

The Select Panel Report recommends a longer school year, with a 20% increase in school time; half for professional development. The Select Panel Report believes that "dramatic change needs to occur in the governance and political organization of the system," a statement which reflects all the national restructuring reports of the Nineties. This is one scary proposal!

The Select Panel also "clearly defines school board responsibilities," a statement which is intended to "reduce and/or limit traditional school board authority and responsibilities."

Maine citizens must oppose this alien agenda, especially its call for another failed consolidation of our schools, and its recommedations for publicly-funded private education. This is not "free choice" at all, because it includes federally funded charter schools.

There is nothing new about the plan proposed in the Select Panel Report. This agenda reaches back to 1927, at least, when Dr. Augustus Thomas, Maine's Commissioner of Education, spoke to the World Federation of Education Associations (WFEA). Thomas said in part:

"...This means that the world must await a long process of education and a building up of public conscience and an international morality, or, in other words, until there is a worldwide sentiment which will back up the modern conception of a world community. This brings us to the international mind, which is nothing more or less than the habit of thinking of foreign relations and business affecting the several countries of the civilized world as free co-operating equals."

"As Maine goes, so goes the nation" applies equally in regard to education. Maine has always been a "pilot" state, a laboratory for the rest of the country for education change, from academics, to the work force training necessary for U.S. participation in an unconstitutional world government.

It is time for citizens of Maine to say, "STOP!... LEAVE US ALONE!"

The above-depicted report can by downloaded by typing the following into Google:

8FinalSPReportDraftSBE101205_000.pdf

Charlotte Iserbyt's well-documented history of American education, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America... A Chronological Paper Trail" can be downloaded FREE by typing the following into Google:

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com

By Mike Heath

Yesterday I told you about the failing grade that Learning Results has received from nearly everyone. Thinking again today about education, I'm sure you are aware of Governor Baldacci's school consolidation proposal. The leader of the Senate is promising that some form of consolidation will happen, even though there is growing resistance to the idea statewide. The League doesn't normally receive calls and emails on an issue like this. We are, however, hearing from people on this one. They are rightfully concerned about giving more of their shrinking local control to Augusta. Today I'm sending along a helpful article by Charlotte Isebyt. We published this a little less than a year ago in the print version of The RECORD.

Maine's Neverending Assault on Traditional Education

In 1990 our family bought a Greek Revival house in Bath, Maine, built in 1870 during the great days of sailing ships. The house contained demanding and beautiful books used in Bath schools at that time, a treasure trove that gave me total documentation that education in the late 1800s, which only went through 8th grade, was vastly superior to 12th grade "education" in Maine today. These college-level school books, as well as the Salina, Kansas 1898 eighth grade final exam, which the average Harvard graduate could not pass, supported conclusions I had reached over a period of thirty years as a researcher, school board member, co-founder (with Bettina Dobbs) of Guardians of Education for Maine (1980-1998), and Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Education, 1980-1982. Those conclusions were that the creation of moral chaos and the "Dumbing Down" of America have been deliberate in order to move our ration toward the totalitarian, socialist government called for by Lenin and Stalin.

Citizens who know nothing of their country's history, its free economic and political systems, or of those alien systems such as democracy, fascism, socialism, and communism, who cannot read well, write or calculate, will accept whatever the highly paid "change agents" feed them in regard to "the need for change." Example: citizens' acceptance of free trade (NAFTA and GATT) which sounds so nice, but is really a socialistic, international "redistribution of wealth." If a citizen doesn't know what he has, how can he know or care when that thing is taken from him? The danger is not teaching our children American history and their rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights was underscored by a recent survey commissioned by the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and conducted at 339 U.S.colleges and universities, which found that more than two-thirds of the students and administrators were unable to remember that freedom of the religion and freedom of the press are guaranted by the Bill of Rights. When asked what essential rights are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, over one-quarter failed to mention freedom of speech, and over three-quarters did not name freedom of assembly or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Only 21% mentioned freedom of religion, and less than 30% mentioned freedom of the press.

How long will Maine citizens support the higly-paid education "change agents" in Augusta as they continue to bulldoze what was, prior to 1965, a good academic education system? All this is done under the guise of accountability (the dubious saving of money through consolation and/or regionalism-- which is communism) restructuring, revisioning, Guiding Principles, Maine Learning Results, and the present highly controversial international, lifelong, "School-to-Work" system which, by the way, is the same failed system used in socialist and communist countries.

The frightening tone of this latest un-American "Dumbing Down" agenda, which is an attempt at scare tactics, is expressed in the following question posed in the Select Panel Report.

"Will a global economy coupled with chemical and biological tools of warfare necessitate new forms of governance, citizenship and divisions of power? We cannot really know."

The latest "Select Panel Report" goes on to recommend the consolidation of Maine's 286 small school units into 35 large school units, necessitating the building of Taj Mahal-sized schools to serve not only students but the entire community, the type one sees sprouting up across the country. Did Maine taxpayers learn nothing from the disastrous results of the 1957 Sinclair Act which consolidated many of Maine's small schools in the Sixties?

What blew my mind in this Select Panel's Draft was the following blatant admission of what many taxpayers have been complaining about for a long, long time: "Maine has one of the most expensive public school systems in the nation and yet our results measured by multiple indices are flat through recent years."

Really? Why admit this now? Because they need a disaster, in the form of a crisis or scare tactic, in order to get taxpayers so upset they will cough up millions of dollars more for the next bound-to-fail (academically, that is) reform movement. We should all remember the failed National Commission on Excellence which resulted in the publication of "A Nation at Risk." "A Nation at Risk" was an attempt to con Americans into supporting the very restructuring which culminated in the controversial Pavlovian, lowest common denominator Outcomes-Based Education (OBE); America 2000; the School-to-Work Opportunities Act; and the highly controversial No Child Left Behind Act. This writer worked in the office which prepared the "Nation at Risk" report, and heard the late Secretary of Education T.H. Bell say, in 1981, at the first "closed to the public" meeting of the Commission, that "We need a crisis in order to move ahead with the radical changes necessary for education restructuring."

The change agents in Augusta, including our elected officials, have some nerve expecting us to pay for another round of reform which has nothing to do with traditional academics and your child's future upward mobility! Instead, it has everything to do with Pavlovian, robotic "training," and low-paying third-world jobs for the planned global economy. This is limited learning for lifelong labor! In "Human Capital and America's Future: An Economic Strategy for the Future," co-edited by David Hornbeck of the Carnegie Foundation of the Advancement of Teaching, one finds a shocking statement: "Employer beliefs about the superior capabilities of educated people turned out not to be confirmed in practice. Educated employees have higher turnover rates, lower job satisfaction, and poorer promotion records than less educated employees." Hornbeck's statement about the preference for dumbed-down employees is not to be taken lightly, since he is probably the principal designer of national education/"School-to-Work" restructuring programs upon which Maine's "revisioning" agenda is based.

The Select Panel report recommends "expanding school choice," and that does not mean traditional private school or home-school choice, but government-funded and controlled private education, which includes tuition tax credits, vouchers, charter schools and virtual computerized charter schools used by home-schoolers who are connected with the school district's central office! Charter schools are designed to provide job training in a "planned" (that is, socialist) economy.

The Select Panel Report recommends preparing leaders as "Change Agents." This writer was trained in 1976 to be a Change Agent, which included "identifying resisters," those smart taxpayers who resist controversial moral relativistic Dumbing Down programs being implemented in the schools. The first national heardquarters for Change Agent training, the National Training Laboratorie, was established in the Fifties in Bethel, Maine.

The Select Panel Report recommends laptop computers for grades 5-12, and calls for intergrating technology into student learning, teaching and living, and makes the very dubious claim that recent research demonstrates the students benefit from the use of technology.

The Select Panel Report recommends "Improving Teacher Quality by Monitoring and Coaching." This recommendation mirrors recommendations in the Carnegie Corporation's "A Nation Prepared: Teachers in the 21st Century," which says in part, "The practice of teaching must be influenced by, and evaluated, on the basis of research." Was the superior, inexpensive education in Bath, Maine and Salina, Kansas in the 1890s based on research? (This writer served as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education from whence all research for the "dumbing down" curriculae and values-destroying programs and methods emanated!) I pity the poor teachers and students being "monitored and coached," conditioned and experimented on like Pavlovian dogs!

The Select Panel Report recommends a longer school year, with a 20% increase in school time; half for professional development. The Select Panel Report believes that "dramatic change needs to occur in the governance and political organization of the system," a statement which reflects all the national restructuring reports of the Nineties. This is one scary proposal!

The Select Panel also "clearly defines school board responsibilities," a statement which is intended to "reduce and/or limit traditional school board authority and responsibilities."

Maine citizens must oppose this alien agenda, especially its call for another failed consolidation of our schools, and its recommedations for publicly-funded private education. This is not "free choice" at all, because it includes federally funded charter schools.

There is nothing new about the plan proposed in the Select Panel Report. This agenda reaches back to 1927, at least, when Dr. Augustus Thomas, Maine's Commissioner of Education, spoke to the World Federation of Education Associations (WFEA). Thomas said in part:

"...This means that the world must await a long process of education and a building up of public conscience and an international morality, or, in other words, until there is a worldwide sentiment which will back up the modern conception of a world community. This brings us to the international mind, which is nothing more or less than the habit of thinking of foreign relations and business affecting the several countries of the civilized world as free co-operating equals."

"As Maine goes, so goes the nation" applies equally in regard to education. Maine has always been a "pilot" state, a laboratory for the rest of the country for education change, from academics, to the work force training necessary for U.S. participation in an unconstitutional world government.

It is time for citizens of Maine to say, "STOP!... LEAVE US ALONE!"

The above-depicted report can by downloaded by typing the following into Google:

8FinalSPReportDraftSBE101205_000.pdf

Charlotte Iserbyt's well-documented history of American education, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America... A Chronological Paper Trail" can be downloaded FREE by typing the following into Google:

http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com