[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E966-E967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

EDUCATION IN MINNESOTA

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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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