To: Dave Mesecher, Chair, IEEE L.I.
cc: D. Scarl, Glen Cove

This is in response to Don Scarl's letter in response to yours in the April PULSE.

Of Mr. Scarl's nine paragraphs, I accept #s 1, 2, 3, 5, & 7; have serious questions on #s 4 & 6; but emphatically disagree with #s 8 & 9. (Not too bad a box score!) A couple of old sayings come to mind: "Ignorance is bliss," and "If you can keep your cool while all around you are losing theirs, maybe you don't understand the situation!"

Numbers 4 & 6 discuss the students of today, and his observation that "fewer native-born Americans are willing to choose a difficult, but rewarding, education when there are easier options." I wonder when was the last time Mr. Scarl gave a moderately challenging scientific reading assignment and demanded a 200-word response/analysis written in standard English. A few months ago I spoke with the Chairman of the Business School at a prominent L.I. University, who sought me out after a meeting at which I had raised questions about student language/literacy capabilities. He told me he was very alarmed about his many students who, when assigned to read material and write about it, could do neither! So what's happening, and how is it pertinent to engineering?

A scholarly and revealing analysis may be found in the 1989 report "Who Takes Science?" published by the American Institute of Physics. It's an elegant demographic study of more than 28,000 high school seniors, their ethnicities, and their academic standings vis-à-vis their career choices. It presents clear evidence that students of physics (the basic basic for all serious science students) in high school are predominantly the good readers. It further concludes that many, especially certain minorities, top out their technical studies at Algebra I, LARGELY DUE TO DEFICIENT READING SKILLS. Excerpts and quotations from the report are part of the article, "Scientific Literacy - The Reading Connection," on www.TLC.LI. In discussing the problem with Yocov Shamash, he agrees that there is such a problem.

Thinking globally, our Nation has invested all-time high amounts of our money at the Federal level, hundred$ of billion$ since 1965, the onset of the "Great Society" initiative. Were that money well-spent, we should have the most efficient education system on the planet, at reasonable local costs. What DO we have? Just the opposite on both counts. All-time highs in school costs, plus teen suicides, drug-abuse, shootings, pregnancies, and actual numbers of verbal SAT scores above 750 (our best and brightest) dropping more than 50% between 1972 and 1990. Also a 1989 report of studies showing every state in the union claiming achievement test scores "above the national average!" The report was reviewed - and not faulted - by U.S. Department of Education psychometricians, yet no Congressional investigation has occurred, nor awareness that we have been silently robbed of our national education standards. How long since YOUR school district quietly "purchased new norms" from its test-scoring provider?

I sit on the Education Committee of LIA, and hear frequent complaints from college representatives (e.g., Suffolk Community, Katherine Gibbs) that L.I. high-school graduates' English skills are inadequate for college work. As a lawyer's stock-in-trade is advice, an engineer's stock-in-trade is information, which must be communicated by language, one way or another. We can only think in terms of language; therefore language inadequacies beget thinking inadequacies.

The big question about ALL of the above is, "How do they get away with it?!!!" "They" is the ubiquitous "they" meaning all socio- political bureaucratic entities that supposedly are using OUR tax money to look out for OUR interests. Where are our Congressional Representatives who have power of the purse, to fund things which are in our national interest, and de-fund those which are not?  Where is our national press corps, who supposedly bring us all the news necessary to run our Constitutional Republic, the greatest experiment in human freedom in the history of the world?

For answers there is much reading and searching to do, among scholars and researchers who have served in government agencies (e.g., the US Dept. of Ed.) and come out and written books such as "The Deliberate Dumbing-Down of America," "Educating for the 'New World Order,'" "None Dare Call it Education," to name a small percentage.

After 25 years in radar systems work, I switched to education, searching earnestly for the "science" of my new profession, how does it run, where are the connections between theory and everyday practices. It turned out there are NO connections! It runs on politics and ideology! Turning to the "Why" quest, I met the author of "Educating for the 'New World Order'" who explained that the mischief is deliberate and politically driven. (We've been close friends ever since.) I personally served a term as adjunct professor of special-ed and reading at a prominent L.I. college, and found myself drawn into participating in academic fraud. It's written up in the Congressional Record, June 7, 1984, S.J.Res. 138, "To Establish a Commission on Teacher Education," which never made it out of committee.  While you're on the TLC website, read "Recipe for Violence." Two million inmates in our prisons (mostly minority illiterates), increasing so as to double every 6-7 years.

If you study the UN and its maneuvers, you will find that education is part of its agenda to so alter our culture that we will surrender our national sovereignty and Constitutional rights (and a few others) to become a part of the "New World Order" under the UN Charter, an inferior and uncontrollable plan for global government. Just read its own book, "Our Global Neighborhood," by the UN's 29-member "Commission on Global Governance," available for "$14.95 at Barnes & Noble. The danger is not from some overseas cabal, but from those in our own government (the water INSIDE the Ship of State) who are working to deliver us into the clutches of the UN. Study the "Patriot" legislation (shoved down Congress' throat with no debate), and Patriot II which is in the works. See if you like your new mix of security & freedom a la Orwell. True courage, in our current predicament, is to speak out about our national danger, while there is still time. I like a 1939 Winston Churchill speech to Parliament:

"If you will not fight when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your 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 worse fate. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves."

Charlie
crichardson@ieee.org