The Trojan Triangle

I discovered quite by accident that if you look at the advance planning for the education system, you will find evidence of the treason against the American people and the United States.  The international trade agreements were intentional torpedoes to our economy.  They destroyed our economy for the purpose of "rebalancing world economic growth".  In plain language, it was redistribution of wealth (your paycheck) to somebody else in some other country.   It's international communism - a criminal enterprise of theft followed by collectivization and a police state of control.  The evidence I'm referring to is a book titled, "Workforce 2000" published by the Hudson Institute in 1987.  Workforce 2000 was a study commissioned by the U.S. Secretary of Labor William Brock who just prior to becoming Labor Secretary had been the U.S. Trade Representative.

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"Labor, which the economist Adam Smith characterized as immobile, now flows around the world with increasing ease.  Where formerly a few managers and technicians crossed international borders for overseas jobs, now whole armies of workers travel from Turkey to labor in German factories, from Korea to build Saudi Arabian petrochemical plants, or from Mexico to staff American restaurants.

Loss of Economic Sovereignty

"As the world economy has become more integrated, the United States, like all other nations, has progressively lost control of its economic destiny.  The growing importance of trade means that no nation can expect sustained growth unless the world economy also grows.  These parallel growth patterns are reinforced by the tight linkages between national fiscal and monetary policies.  The U.S. can no longer unilaterally set its own interest rates, balance its trade accounts, or finance its deficit without consideration of the policies and attitudes of other countries.  A vast network of currency traders, central banks, and corporations determine relative currency valuations, trade flows, and national interest rates.  These, in turn, influence rates of economic growth, sectoral shifts, unemployment rates, and other national economic outcomes.  Sovereignty over economic matters has become a shared power.

The problem with what was written was that in 1987 it wasn't really true yet.  But after NAFTA and the Marrakesh Agreement to create the World Trade Organization in 1993 and 1995 respectively, it became true.  The reason they had to reveal their hand early was because they intended to change the education system and with a system as large and complex as ours, it required lead time. 

The history of legislation for education from 1965 (LBJ's 'Great Society') reads like a Gantt Chart for nationalization and federal management of the schools - and ultimately to where we are now which is on the brink of federal management of the economy and population through the integrated systems of school and work.   I haven't done a Gantt Chart but I have done a timeline where you can see the step by step, phased implementation of "human resource management".  All of the rhetoric used by academics and politicians about excellence in education that they never achieve is because that wasn't the real goal.  The real goal was to build the information systems for national management of "human capital" and with the national management systems - control of the economy in a socialist system of central planning and control.  And the Trojan Triangles are the hubs of control for education and economy in the surrounding areas.    

In 1989, George H. W. Bush convened a summit of Governors to discuss education "reform".   The conference and a snapshot history of the education leading up to the summit was documented in a report titled, "The Road to Charlottesville" by Maris A. Vinovski. According to the report, the summit was a dog and pony show (my words) for "reforms" that were already occurring in Congress.  The so-called reforms were the redesign of the education system to become a system for training workers rather than producing educated people. 

President George Bush and U.S. Secretary of Education Lauro Cavazos (right of Bush) with
Governors (left to right) Booth Gardner (D-WA), Terry Branstad (R-IA), and Bill Clinton (D-AR).

In 1991, George Bush announced a program called 'America 2000'.  Skipping the 'Edu-Speak Blah Blah Quality', the two elements of the program to focus on are:

Transforming America into a nation of students, and

Making our communities places where learning will happen.

Excerpts:

The President will ask Congress to provide 0 million in one-time start-up funds to create at least 535 New American Schools that ``break the mold'' of existing school designs.

These funds will provide up to million for each New American School to underwrite special staff training, instructional materials, or other support the school needs. The goal is to have at least one New American School operating in each congressional district by September 1996.

Once the schools are launched, the operating costs of the New American Schools will be no more than those of conventional schools.

The President also will ask Congress for start-up funds to help design state-of-the-art technology appropriate for New American Schools.

A New American School does not necessarily mean new bricks-and-mortar. Nor does a New American School have to rely on technology; the quality of learning is what matters.

C. America 2000 Communities

The President called on every community in the country to do four things:

Adopt the six national education goals,

Establish a community-wide strategy for achieving the goals,

Develop a report card for measuring its progress, and

Demonstrate its readiness to create and support a New American School.

Communities that accept this challenge will be designated, by the Governors of their States, as ``America 2000 Communities.''

III. Transforming America into ``A Nation of Students''

The President believes that learning is a life-long challenge. Approximately 85 percent of America's workers for the year 2000 are already in the workforce. Improving schools for today's and tomorrow's students is not sufficient to ensure a competitive America in the year 2000. The President called on Americans to move from ``A Nation at Risk'' to ``A Nation of Students'' by continuing to enhance the knowledge and skills of all Americans.

B. Establishing Standards for Job Skills and Knowledge

The President urged business and labor cooperatively to develop -- and then to use -- world class standards and core proficiencies for each industry. Federal resources will be sought to provide start-up assistance for this effort.

C. Creating Business and Community Skill Clinics

Today's workers will be assisted through skill clinics -- one-stop service centers located in businesses and communities across America where adults can get job skill diagnosis and referral services.

The administration will urge businesses to make skill clinics available to their employees and encourage America 2000 communities to establish community skill clinics.

Federal departments and agencies will be encouraged to establish such skill clinics and, working with the Office of Personnel Management, will be encouraged to undertake activities to upgrade their employees' skills.

E. Mobilizing ``A Nation of Students''

The President will work to transform ``A Nation at Risk'' into ``A Nation of Students.''

The President called on the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Labor to convene business and labor leaders, education and training experts, and Federal, State, and local government officials at a national conference on the education of adult Americans to launch a national effort to transform adult America into a ``Nation of Students.''

IV. Making our Communities Places Where Learning Will Happen

The President called on communities to adopt the six national education goals as their own, set a community strategy to meet them, produce a report card to measure results, and agree to create and support a New American School.

The President believes that it is essential to reaffirm such enduring values as personal responsibility, individual action, and other core principles that must underpin life in a democratic society. The aim of the America 2000 community campaign is to make our communities places where learning will happen.

Also in 1991, a report was released by the U.S. Labor Department titled, "What Work Requires From Schools, A SCANS Report for America 2000".   Picture me doing a Sam Kinison scream here...  This was a catastrophic  shift in the mission of schools.  It doesn't include what children need from the schools.  It was what WORK REQUIRES from the schools.  

The SCANS Project was initiated by the Department of Labor to identify and codify the skill requirements for work  to incorporate in the school curriculum.

"The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills",  September 14, 1990 

Commissioner Comments

At the initial meeting of this Commission in May 1990, Commissioners Palko and Sticht described some of their activities related to the subject of this investigation. Commissioner Palko discussed Project C3 (corporations, classrooms, and community) in Fort Worth, Texas, which is an attempt to better link educational activities and business needs through a careful analysis of 1,000 local jobs. Commissioner Palko and his colleagues are identifying the job tasks and basic skills associated with these occupations. Commissioner Sticht discussed the findings of his research for the U.S. Army which demonstrates the value and importance of learning in context.

The SCANS system was the work product of a project to provide the code table definitions for jobs, the list of skills required for the job and the integration of the coding system into school information management systems as a preliminary step towards conversion of the schools to be training camps for work. 

SCANS System

In a brief statement in a bibliography of SCANS Reports, I found a compact summary of SCANS that is a good introduction:

I. What is SCANS and Why Is It Important to Every American?
The acronym "SCANS" stands for "Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills." The "Secretary" is the Secretary of Labor, who in 1990, was Elizabeth Dole. The Commission was appointed for a term of two years, 1990-1992. Former Labor Secretary, William E. Brock was chair. Dr. Arnold Packer, economist, coauthor of the Hudson Institute's very influential report, Workforce 2000, 1987, and career federal government employee, was Executive Director. Published in segments, the SCANS "report" appears complicated, seems innocuous. It affects every child and adult!

1) It establishes an official U.S. education curriculum.
2) Created in the Labor Department by a special commission, it is unknown to the public.
3) Piece-by-piece, it is being written into federal laws binding on every state and local school. The SCANS curriculum

a) defines 5 worker attitudes/behaviors and 3 foundation communication/math skills which,
b) must be taught at all levels,
c) in all subjects,
d) in workplace contexts,
e) using "themes" selected from "traditional" subjects.

A more comprehensive history of SCANS was found on the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education.  It was co-written by Dr. Arnold Packer - same guy that co-authored the Workforce 2000 Report  mentioned above so when he gives the reason for the SCANS system, it is yet another "tell" on the strategic treasonous planning for the end of America as we knew it.

In 1992, George Bush announced the Job Training 2000 Initiative but is was too late in his administration to implement it so Bill Clinton carried on with just a name change for the program.  The Clinton Administration name for the conversion of the education system was "Goals 2000". 

In Bill Clinton's 1993 State of the Union speech before Congress, he laid out the agenda for his administration.  The following are excerpts from the speech - emphasis added.  But it should be noted that it was not easy to find an official transcript of the speech.  Most copies of the speech are summarized leaving out some very important passages - especially in hindsight.  The significance of the small business program, community development banks, enterprise zones and the reference to transportation will become apparent in sections following and in the other sides of the Trojan Triangle: 

...Because small business has created such a high percentage of all the new jobs in our Nation over the last 10 or 15 years, our plan includes the boldest targeted incentives for small business in history. We propose a permanent investment tax credit for the smallest firms in this country, with revenues of under $5 million. That's about 90 percent of the firms in America, employing about 40 percent of the work force but creating a big majority of the net new jobs for more than a decade. And we propose new rewards for entrepreneurs who take new risks. We propose to give small business access to all the new technologies of our time. And we propose to attack this credit crunch which has denied small business the credit they need to flourish and prosper.

With a new network of community development banks and $1 billion to make the dream of enterprise zones real, we propose to bring new hope and new jobs to storefronts and factories from south Boston to south Texas to south central Los Angeles. This plan invests in our roads, our bridges, our transit systems, in high-speed railways, and high-tech information systems.

Standing as we are on the edge of a new century, we know that economic growth depends as never before on opening up new markets overseas and expanding the volume of world trade. And so, we will insist on fair trade rules in international markets as a part of a national economic strategy to expand trade, including the successful completion of the latest round of world trade talks and the successful completion of a North American Free Trade Agreement, with appropriate safeguards for our workers and for the environment.

At the same time--and I say this to you in both parties and across America tonight, all the people who are listening--it is not enough to pass a budget or even to have a trade agreement. This world is changing so fast that we must have aggressive, targeted attempts to create the high-wage jobs of the future.

...
We have to recognize that all of our high school graduates need some further education in order to be competitive in this global economy. So we have to establish a partnership between businesses and education and the Government for apprenticeship programs in every State in this country to give our people the skills they need. Lifelong learning must benefit not just young high school graduates but workers too, throughout their career.

The average 18-year-old today will change jobs seven times in a lifetime. We have done a lot in this country on worker training in the last few years, but the system is too fractured. We must develop a unified, simplified, sensible, streamlined worker-training program so that workers receive the training they need regardless of why they lost their jobs or whether they simply need to learn something new to keep them.

So a summary is that they were developing a perpetual vocational training loop for jobs that are expected to last for only eight or nine years.  And the truth of that statement is born out by another SCANS document that was published in 1992 by the U.S. Department of Labor,  "Learning a Living:  A Blueprint for High Performance".   Among other things, the requirement for "certifications" for a job will lock people into the loop.  It's career security for educators and an entire lifetime of insecurity for the rest of the American people.  In effect, they will be tethered into a system low level jobs and re-training by the system of school and work.  Why would they design a system like this?

Global System of Commodified Labor

In the international system that was designed to prevent wars, they have turned people into commodities and systems for mass production of these commodities are being designed and implemented.   This is happening because the Internet has made possible, the hive mind working globally and horizontally within the narrow bands of intellectual disciplines.  Intellectuals in Britain are thinking and writing the same things that are being thought and written in Canada, the U.S., Brazil, China.   And they are all looking outward to serve a global community.  But who are the customers for whom this system is being designed?   It's certainly not to the benefit of people being trained. 

Watching it has been like watching lemmings running hell bent for the edge of the cliff.  But because the "governance system" is global, it seems that nobody has the power to stop it - except the people who are sucking up the world's wealth and resources like a vacuum cleaner sucks up dust.  It's not in their interest to stop it and they hire armies of lemmings to produce propaganda to support it. 

The voices of honest intellectuals are cries in the wilderness.   For example, the research for this commentary turned up this article.  The author identifies the contradiction but in 1997, it's safe to say that he wasn't yet aware of how the World Trade Organization provision for "trade in services" would turn labor into a commodity decreasing the value of labor to practically nothing.   

Profits without people

by Clinton E. Boutwell

Why - when corporations are shedding employees and reducing job opportunities as fast as they can - are business leaders demanding that educators produce a world-class workforce? Could it be, Mr. Boutwell speculates, that one way to keep wages and incomes low is to have a huge supply of highly educated workers but a small demand for their services?

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., had a busy year in 1993. He was recruited from RJR Nabisco to become the CEO of IBM. He was also the principal author of a book that berated American schools and teachers.(1) In that book, he held educators accountable for not increasing America's supply of world-class workers - those with high-tech skills and problem-solving abilities - that he claimed the corporations sorely needed.

Gerstner's recruitment to IBM turned out to be very propitious for him, though not for IBM's world-class employees. First, Gerstner was paid a bonus of $4,924,596 just to sign as CEO. Then he was given a stock package worth $10,820,880. That, plus some incidental incentives, brought Gerstner's total compensation package to more than $21 million.(2) For that kind of money, one would think that Gerstner would just take care of IBM's business and let educators take care of their own, especially when Gerstner's advice to educators was wrongheaded and disingenuously misleading.

Gerstner's own executive behavior gave the lie to the message of his book. IBM made its reputation and its huge profits by employing the high-tech researchers, engineers, and technical developers who represented the finest products of American schools - indeed, the very kind of graduates that Gerstner claimed the public schools were not supplying to business. Yet, in line with IBM's new "lean and mean" management strategy, Gerstner fired some 90,000 of those highly trained employees, about one-third of IBM's 270,000 workers. That was in addition to the other 183,000 high-quality employees that IBM fired before Gerstner arrived.(3)

Contrast Boutwell's observations of IBM dumping of thousands of what was indisputably one of the best, most highly qualified workforces that any corporation could have with this article on "Knowledge Workers".  The following are excerpts with emphasis added. 

Knowledge Workers
by Bettina Lankard Brown
1999

The globalization of work and continuing advances in technology are changing the nature of the work force. Blue-collar workers are being replaced by information specialists called "knowledge workers"--workers who are "equipped to maintain and expand our technological leadership role in the next century" (Kelly 1998, p. 89); workers who can think, work with ideas, and make decisions (Shea 1998). Also known as "gold-collar" workers, knowledge workers are sometimes identified by their professional specialty, e.g., lawyer, doctor, programmer, information system designer, information specialist librarians, teacher, and scientist (Bender 1998; Halal 1998;

What exactly do "knowledge workers" do? Knowledge workers use their intellect to convert their ideas into products, services, or processes (Miller 1998). They "own" their knowledge (Verespej 1999). They can "sell it, trade it, or give it away and still own it" (Allee 1997, p. 71). Their main value to an organization is their ability to gather and analyze information and make decisions that will benefit the company. They are able to work collaboratively with and learn from each other; they are willing to take risks, expecting to learn from their mistakes rather than be criticized for them (Rogoski 1999). Knowledge workers are continually learning, aware that knowledge has a limited shelf life (Allee 1997). In this information revolution, "brains have become more valuable than brawn" (Gordon 1997, p. 16).

What is the employment outlook for knowledge workers? Predictions are that the highly skilled will be the "creme de la creme" of white-collar workers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects "a net increase of more than 10,000 information professionals in the U. S. labor force by 2006" (Bender 1998, p. 35). However, the BLS also predicts that 700,000 manufacturing jobs will disappear by that same year due to automation ("Knowledge Workers" 1997). Reich believes that the greatest challenge will be to retrain these middle-class workers (McGinn and Raymond 1997-98). Workplace education that prepares individuals with information technology skills required for jobs in the knowledge sector must become a national priority in order to avoid growing inequalities

"Skills"

It was important to establish the fraud of the rhetoric concerning the U.S. labor market before continuing.  You must look at what they are doing rather than listening to what they say - because what they say is a pack of lies.  What they are doing and what they did reveals the real plans for the future labor market in America - and for other countries as well because the systems that are being implemented are global - harmonized systems from country to country.   

In 1994, legislation creating the National Skill Standards Act passed.  It is at this point that the concept of national system of vocational education takes shape - socializing workforce training costs, shifting away from academic learning and refocusing on vocations with defined skill sets and "certifications" for those vocations. 

National Skill Standards Act of 1994. 

SEC. 502. PURPOSE.

It is the purpose of this title to establish a National Skill Standards Board to serve as a catalyst in stimulating the development and adoption of a voluntary national system of skill standards and of assessment and certification of attainment of skill standards--

(1) that will serve as a cornerstone of the national strategy to enhance workforce skills;

(2) that will result in increased productivity, economic growth, and American economic competitiveness; and

(3) that can be used, consistent with civil rights laws--

(A) by the Nation, to ensure the development of a high skills, high quality, high performance workforce, including the most skilled frontline workforce in the world;

(B) by industries, as a vehicle for informing training providers and prospective employees of skills necessary for employment;

(C) by employers, to assist in evaluating the skill levels of prospective employees and to assist in the training of current employees;

(D) by labor organizations, to enhance the employment security of workers by providing portable credentials and skills;

(E) by workers, to--

(i) obtain certifications of their skills to protect against dislocation;

(ii) pursue career advancement; and

(iii) enhance their ability to reenter the workforce;

(F) by students and entry level workers, to determine the skill levels and competencies needed to be obtained in order to compete effectively for high wage jobs;

(G) by training providers and educators, to determine appropriate training services to offer;

(H) by government, to evaluate whether publicly funded training assists participants to meet skill standards where such standards exist and thereby protect the integrity of public expenditures;

(I) to facilitate the transition to high performance work organizations;

(J) to increase opportunities for minorities and women, including removing barriers to the entry of women into nontraditional employment; and

(K) to facilitate linkages between other components of the national strategy to enhance workforce skills, including school-to-work transition, secondary and postsecondary vocational-technical education, and job training programs.

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (H.R. 1385) passed into law redefining the mission of state employment offices to be "One-Stop Shop Centers for Workforce Development".  The following are excerpts from the Workforce Investment Act program information website produced by the Office of Career Transition Assistance, Employment and Training Administration of the Department of Labor presumably.   The website is no longer active so the pages were extracted into pdfs.

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 provides the framework for a unique national workforce
preparation and employment system designed to meet both the needs of the nation’s businesses and the needs of job seekers and those who want to further their careers. Title I of the legislation is based on the following elements:

• Training and employment programs must be designed and managed at the local level where the needs of businesses and individuals are best understood.
   
• Customers must be able to conveniently access the employment, education, training, and
  information services they need at a single location in their neighborhoods.
   
• Customers should have choices in deciding the training program that best fits their needs and the organizations that will provide that service. They should have control over their own career
  development.
   
• Customers have a right to information about how well training providers succeed in preparing
  people for jobs. Training providers will provide information on their success rates.
   
• Businesses will provide information, leadership, and play an active role in ensuring that the
  system prepares people for current and future jobs.

The new law makes changes to the current funding streams, target populations, system of delivery, accountability, long-term planning, labor market information system, and governance structure.

Title I authorizes the new Workforce Investment System. State workforce investment boards will be
established and States will develop five-year strategic plans. Governors will designate local "workforce investment areas" and oversee local workforce investment boards. New youth councils will be set up as a subgroup of the local board to guide the development and operation of programs for youth. Customers will benefit from a "One-Stop" delivery system, with career centers in their neighborhoods where they can access core employment services and be referred directly to job training, education, or other services.

Title III amends the Wagner-Peyser Act to require that Employment Service/Job Service activities
become part of the "One-Stop" system and establishes a national employment statistics initiative. It
requires linkages between the Act’s programs and Trade Adjustment Assistance and North American Free Trade Agreement Transitional Adjustment Assistance programs. It establishes a temporary "Twenty-First Century Workforce Commission" to study issues relating to the information technology workforce in the United States.

The operators of "One-Stop" Centers are to be selected by the local workforce investment boards through a competitive process or designation of a consortia that includes at least three of the Federal programs providing services at the "One-Stop."

Empowerment Through Training Accounts

Provisions of the Act promote individual responsibility and personal decision-making through the use of "Individual Training Accounts" which allow adult customers to "purchase" the training they determine best for them. This market-driven system will enable customers to get the skills and credentials they need to succeed in their local labor markets.

In cases where qualified customers receive intensive services, and are still not able to find jobs, they may receive training services which are directly linked to job opportunities in their local area. These services may include occupational skills training, on-the-job training, entrepreneurial training, skill upgrading, job readiness training, and adult education and literacy activities in conjunction with other training.

State and Local Workforce Investment Boards

Several new features are included in the law to ensure the full involvement of business, labor, and
community organizations in designing and ensuring the quality of the new workforce investment system. These include State and local workforce investment boards, local youth councils, and long-term State strategic planning.

Each State will establish both State and local workforce investment boards. The State board will help the Governor develop a five-year strategic plan describing statewide workforce development activities, explaining how the requirements of the Act will be implemented, and outlining how special population groups will be served... The plan which must also include details about how local Employment Service/Job Service activities fit into the new service delivery structure must be submitted to the Secretary of Labor. The state board will advise the Governor on ways to develop the statewide workforce investment system and a statewide labor market information system. The state board will also help the Governor monitor statewide activities and report to the Secretary of Labor.

Local workforce investment boards, in partnership with local elected officials, will plan and oversee the local system. Local plans will be submitted for the Governor’s approval. Local boards designate "One-Stop" operators and identify providers of training services, monitor system performance against established performance measures, negotiate local performance measures with the state board and the Governor, and help develop the labor market information system.

The significance of the integration of the schools with a concept of "workforce development" with private sector governing boards operating as independent entities with designated areas of operation will become apparent as the other two sides of the Trojan Triangles are presented.  

Florida was the first state to implement the One-Stop Shop System.  They have posted some good information about the system on their website.  It will give you the base of information to look for on the website for your state.

Vicky Davis
June 5, 2010