Washington Times, Page A2, Friday, February 12, 1999
Author assails 'psychological profiling' by public schools
By Robert Stacy McCain, THE WASHINGTON TIMESPublic schools are using psychological methods to manipulate children in the classroom, while accumulating data on children through "profiling" assessments, according to the author of a new book.
"Education today is not about basics, it's not about proficiency at anything, it's not about literacy," contends Beverly K. Eakman, a former teacher. "What education is about is mental hygiene. As soon as you understand that, everything you see in the classroom -- or everything you don't see -- starts to make sense."
In her book, "The Cloning of the American Mind: Eliminating Morality Through Education," Mrs. Eakman blames an "illiteracy cartel" for replacing academic fundamentals with psychological manipulation in America's schools.
The illiteracy cartel, she says, "derives its power from those who stand to benefit financially and politically from ignorance and educational malpractice." Using personal information about students and their families , Mrs. Eakman argues, educators are able to "get into the belief systems of the students and correct the viewpoints they find distasteful."
Tests assess how well students respond to these manipulations, she says.
Combining this knowledge with schools' ability to determine a child's academic path toward a career -- enhanced by "School-to-Work" legislation -- educators can now predicate "children's job prospects on whether or not they hold 'acceptable' viewpoints," Mrs. Eakman said.
She calls this "the holy grail of social engineering."
Mrs. Eakman maintains that a key weapon in the cartel's arsenal is "psychographics," a method defined by one dictionary as "the study of social class based upon the demographics ... income, race, color, religion and personality traits," characteristics that "can be measured to predict behavior."
Used by marketers and advertisers, psychographics "is based on the proposition that all consumer behavior is predictable," Mrs. Eakman says, and she worries that educators -- combining psychographics with behavioral modification methods -- are using schools "to mold future public opinion."
This emphasis on shaping students' opinions and attitudes, she believes, explains why less time in class is spent on academic fundamentals.
Mrs. Eakman, who lives in Kensington, Md., is a District of Columbia native who taught school for nine years in California and Texas. She later wrote speeches for the late Warren Burger, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, and worked for Voice of America.
Her research into the "illiteracy cartel" began at an education conference in 1986, when she met Anita Hoge, a parent from West Alexander, Pa., who had begun investigating an Educational Quality Assessment test given to children in her school district.
That EQA test asked students to respond to such statements as: "The prospect of working most of my adult life depresses me." Mrs. Hoge's requests for more information about the test were stonewalled by local and state education officials.
The tests were "held tighter than the Pentagon Papers," Mrs. Eakman says.
When the tests were finally released, "I looked at this thing, and it was 70 percent personality profile," she recalls. "Then I got hold of the scoring mechanism [which] gave points for a 'minimum positive attitude.' ... The interpretive literature [for the EQA test] spelled out exactly what they were looking for: 'locus of control,' 'willingness to receive stimuli,' 'conform to group goals.'"
This was psychological testing under the guise of "assessment," Mrs. Eakman contends. Because the test had been created by federally funded agencies, Pennsylvania had also violated a 1970 law enacted by Congress that forbids the federal government from exercising "direction, supervision or control over" public schools, including curriculum and "instructional materials."
Mrs. Hoge's battle over the Pennsylvania EQA test and what it revealed about the direction of public education was the subject of Mrs. Eakman's first book, "Educating for the New World Order."
Published in 1991, the book was "a surprise, a sleeper," according to its author, going through five printings and selling more than 30,000 copies. She describes the reaction as "overwhelming," and it prompted her to join with civil rights attorney William Adair Bonner to form the National Education Consortium, which has "started a new field of education law" involving testing and student privacy issues.
While public schools tout the importance of "parental involvement," Mrs. Eakman says, the difficulty parents face in finding out what goes on in the classroom -- as illustrated by the battle over the Pennsylvania EQA tests -- points in a different direction.
"What [schools] really want is for parents -- especially traditional parents -- to be pushed out of the way," she says. "They want to generate a 'Lord of the Flies' mentality, where the kids absorb more of their values from their peers than from their parents."
Her new book traces the origins of this educational philosophy, examining the ideas of social theorists such as Erich Fromm and Theodor Adorno, who viewed the traditional family as a breeding ground for fascist tendencies -- what Adorno called "the authoritarian personality."
Believing that schools required new methods to change traditional attitudes, Mrs. Eakman says, activists developed tactics to get approval for new programs. Those tactics were described in a 1974 book, "Training for Change Agents," commissioned by the U.S. Office of Education, the predecessor to the Department of Education, created in 1979.
Mrs. Eakman's new book offers tips on fighting the tactics of "change agents," but she realizes that many parents have given up on the public school system altogether, opting instead for private schools or home schooling.
She says "franchisable private schools" may be part of the solution, but legal changes are necessary to make such schools feasible.
"We need to take the red tape out of starting a private school," Mrs. Eakman says, noting that she attended Maret School in the District. "My little school, Maret, was started with three sisters from Switzerland. You can't do that today."
Because the education establishment is successful in "de-legitimizing" its critics, Mrs. Eakman says, reformers who advocate a return to academic basics have probably "lost the war" for control of public schools.
"We are a resistance movement," she says, "and we'd better start acting like it."
Copyright© 1999 News World Communications