[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 71 (Friday, June 9, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E966-E967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         EDUCATION IN MINNESOTA

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. PETER HOEKSTRA

                              of michigan

                    in the house of representatives

                          Friday, June 9, 2000

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the Subcommittee on Oversight and 
Investigation of the House Education and the Workforce Committee 
conducted an oversight field hearing last Monday in the State of 
Minnesota.
  Among the most informative presentations made before the member 
participants was one delivered by Mr. John H. Scribante, a Minnesota 
businessman and honorable American.
  Mr. Scribante's passion for children and their need for first-rate 
learning opportunity was most impressive and we hereby submit for the 
Record the remarks of Mr. Scribante regarding the important topic of 
school reform.
  Mr. Speaker, we commend the excellent observations and conclusions 
made by Mr. Scribante to our colleagues.

                    Educational Fascism in Minnesota

       (A statement submitted 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; we've 
     pioneered open-heart surgery, 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,
       The world is open-ended. 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. However, 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. The application of this principal in education 
     should be obvious. Since we don't know today what we may 
     learn tomorrow about educational methods and knowledge, we 
     need entrepreneurship in education. Government is not 
     equipped for the task.
       History has proven, time and time again, that where 
     competition does not exist, mediocrity ensues. 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 women 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 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 education should never be promoted 
     over the virtue and importance of knowledge itself. 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

[[Page E967]]

     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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