digital media – IAHE Action

Testing, Assessments, Standards, Teaching Machines… The Science of Creating Obedient Citizens. Behavioral Science. Part 2

This is a continuation of our multi-part series. Read Part 1 here.

4. Conditioned to Compromise, Conform, Lie and Cheat to get the Grade, “Success”, The Positive Reinforcement Reward.

Students want so much to make the grade, get the score, have ‘success’, please the test givers, their parents, peers, audience and get the conditioned reward, that they confess to lying, cheating and stealing to do so…and being okay with their “ethic.”

Josephson Institute on Ethics…

Age: 17 or under (51%); 18-24 (36%); 25-40 (18%); 41-50 (11%); Over 50 (10%). Teens are five times and young adults (18-24) are three times more likely than those over 40 to hold the cynical belief that lying and cheating is necessary to success. This belief is one of the most significant and reliable predictors of dishonest behavior in the adult world.

“According to the Josephson Institute of Ethics 2010 survey of 43,000 young people, 92 percent of students were satisfied with their personal ethics and character. However:

While 89 percent of students believe that being a good person is more important than being rich, almost one in three boys and one in four girls admitted stealing from a store within the past year. Moreover, 21 percent admitted they stole something from a parent or other relative, and 18 percent admitted stealing from a friend.

On lying, more than two in five said they sometimes lie to save money (48 percent of males and 35 percent of females). While 92 percent of students believe their parents want them to do the right thing, more than eight in ten confessed they lied to a parent about something significant.

Rampant cheating in school continues. A majority of students (59 percent) admitted cheating on a test during the last year, with 34 percent doing it more than two times. One in three admitted they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment.

In its 2008 report on the relationship between un-ethical behavior in school and unethical behavior as adults, the Josephson Institute of Ethics reported:

Regardless of current age, people who cheated on exams in high school two or more times are considerably more likely to be dishonest later in life. Compared to those who never cheated, high school cheaters are:

Three times more likely to lie to a customer (20% vs. 6%) or inflate an insurance claim (6% vs. 2%) and more than twice as likely to inflate an expense claim (10% vs. 4%).

Twice as likely to lie to or deceive their boss (20% vs. 10%) or lie about their address to get a child into a better school (29% vs. 15%) and one-and-a-half times more likely to lie to spouse or significant other (35% vs. 22%) or cheat on taxes (18% vs. 13%).” [4]

5. The problem with Digital media and the human brain

It is a basic practice that when cognition is low, “educators” use behavioral science.

When the client or student is low on cognitive skills, the mediator employs a system of currency, the rewards, and coercions to get them to learn, conform, and cooperate with the desired behavior. The stickers on the refrigerator, the ice cream after the doctor appointment, the candy, the rewards cards, coupons, the new video game, material enticement, whatever shiny object to attract and hold up as an external currency. This is how animals are trained with treats, or affection for a good performance. This is the external reward under the control of the giver of the reward to define “success” or failure and keep the student on the leash.

In order to keep cognition low, planners continue to employ behavioral science. The human brain is an information processor. Information to process is received via the sensory systems of sight, sound, smell, balance, proprioception, taste, temperature, and pain and converted to representations in the brain. Sensory information (stimuli) must be transduced from the various forms of receptors into electrical, chemical and structural changes within the brain. This involves encoding, organization, elaboration and integration with previous experiences and memories that are stored all over the brain, nervous system and muscle. This takes time to create an accurate representation in a brain and to catalog it for appropriate recall, analysis and application of reasoned thought. Information processing in the human is an analog process, not a binary, digital one. [9]

When human sensory systems receive too much information, too rapidly, from too many sources, with too much change in scenes, volumes, colors, too many visuals, the systems cannot handle the volume of stimuli. This overwhelms the system and it resorts to the emotional, limbic, survival centers of the brain. This is the same default for preconditioned responses, fear conditioning, stimuli that the amygdala has associated with previously fearful, traumatic, or unpleasant experiences. The Midbrain, functions primarily on an emotional, fight, flight, fright, reactionary, and survival oriented level. This is not cerebral cognition. This is not rational, reasoning, or thoughtful response.

This is the level of Operant Conditioning. Trained impulse reflexive behaviors. Like Pavlov’s dogs, and Skinner’s Utopianists. Success means survival in “The Call of The Wild” and in government subsidized “education” for 21st-century labor force development.

“A government strong enough to act in defiance of public feeling may disregard…for it is able to punish. But a government entirely dependent on opinion looks for some security as to what that opinion shall be, strives for the control of the forces that shape it, and is fearful of suffering the people to be educated in sentiments hostile to its institutions.” ~ Lord Acton (1834-1902) Essays in the History of Liberty

6. Forging Shackles: The Master – Slave or Patron – Proselyte Paradigm

The consequences of operant conditioning go beyond the immediate reinforcements. A student who tests well, will be offered monetary rewards, scholarships, special considerations in placement and in turn become indebted to his patrons. This is the simple master-slave relationship. The relationship becomes one of obligation of servitude to identify with one’s patron in funding, master in academia and their ideologies.

A student who receives an academic or merit scholarship is psychologically under obligation and angst to perform well in his studies, rank high in testing, and carry on the creed, in order to continue to receive the monetary rewards, subsidies, approbation and favors.

Often these relationships result in references for future professional positions in academia, research consortia, networks or related positions in the intelligentsia, bureaucracy, or influential laborforce. By this time, the recipient has long lost their individuality and the patrons know it. These well-trained proselytes, high-performance pleasers, become the fiercest defenders of their patrons, mentors, system and alma maters in which they excelled, received recognition, approbation, and identity. They will quite often demonstrate an obeisance, a worship of the patrons and masters who have forged their chains.

To accept money from another creates a relationship in which the recipient is the slave and the donor the master. The slave will continue to carry the baggage.

7. Big Money in Test Prepping

Students in public schools spend over half their school days in preparation for accountability testing. Student Outcomes on testing determine funding, program continuation, teacher and administration employment. Now that vouchers have infected many private schools, they too, spend days on end prepping to pass the state and national tests to make the grade to continue voucher dollars. Prepping vendors market videos, on-line courses, private tutoring, extended courses, test prep study guides, etc.

Parents shell out millions (thousands per student) to purchase Junior all the possible advantages to score high on the college placement, industry, and digital badge tests. They pay thousands of dollars in prep and continue to pay for taking the same exams repeatedly to keep raising scores. Practice does not make perfect, but it does create permanence in conditioning the logic of the test. Those that invest dollars in prepping to give the desired answers often get rewarded with higher scores. Test scores are often used to award monetary scholarships, which again reinforces the notion that it takes money to get more money. This also reinforces the attitudes expressed in the Josephson Institute Ethics studies on why students are willing to lie, cheat and steal to get the high scores. And why so many go on to lie, cheat, and rationalize their unprincipled actions later in life. They’ve been ‘rewarded,’ conditioned to do so.

8. Academia reinforces the notion that there is No Absolute Truth.

In a survival oriented society of animals, the concept of moral absolutes, or absolute truth has little bearing. It is survival of the fittest, might makes right, the Darwinian dogma promoted by socialists that invaded campuses over a century ago.

Humanists (B.F. Skinner signed the Humanist Manifesto II) aligned with Marxist philosophies have labored toward creating a Utopia. They continue efforts to systematically transform humans to fit their idealized Utopian society.

The Academy for Systemic Change, promoting the utopian plans of MIT systems engineers, Peter Senge and Joe Hsueh, provides insightful systems maps to produce their “Effective Responsible Happy Citizens” goals. “The goal is to invest in various high-leverage points to the extent where the system tips to self-sustaining change processes.” [8]

Those key leverage points consist of: Peer Pressure Network Loops and Student Testing Outcomes.

In his book, The Fascist, His State, His Mind, E.B. Ashton points out that the Germans and Italians embraced fascism because the mindset of the people was such that they wanted it. Focusing on material goods, productivity, and prosperity as coordinated and distributed by the state, removed from the people the need to think. Citizens under Mussolini and Hitler’s National Socialist Workers (Nazi) Party, had only to do, to obey, to be “Effective Responsible Happy Citizens” just as the Academy for Systemic Change envisions for our citizens today.

The problem with conditioning citizens using awards, stickers, degrees of expertise and positions of authority in business and bureaucracy is that they eventually begin to believe they really are experts, above the law, above their fellow citizens, above God. This is what Chuck Colson said had allowed him to lie, cheat and steal during the 1970’s Watergate scandal and what the German Academics said allowed them to take the oath to the Nazi party. Their extensive education had taught them that they could rationalize away their principles, their faith, their consciences and convictions of right and just as defined by God.

[4] http://josephsoninstitute.org/surveys/

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/on-education/2008/12/02/cheating-on-the-rise-among-high-school-students

http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2000092200

http://www.gtbe.org/uploads/images/files/Doing%20the%20Right%20Thing%20-%20for%20Public%20Schools(1).pdf

[8][Academy for Systemic Change Common Core State Standards Systems Map Version 2013.6.13]

[9] https://dawnkazmierzak.net/2016/09/08/the-digital-dictatorships-formation-of-mastered-minions-the-road-to-serfdom/

To be continued.

Dr. Dawn Kazmierzak has over twenty years in private practice Optometry. Academic stickers include majors in biology, neurobiology, neuroscience, visual science, doctorate of Optometry; post-graduate work for SUNY and West Point (USMC) in developmental and hospital-based Optometry; cognitive science Feuerstein trained in Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) and FIE (Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment). Having been transmitted a love of learning and commitment to discerning the truth from her parents, she and her husband labor to model this transmission to their daughter.

It was (and is), the anchors of faith in Christ and Biblical study that shielded Dawn from the operant conditioning that accompanies academic “successes.” These studies and stickers (degrees, certifications) were chosen in preparation for participation in third-world medical missions. If individuals lack the abilities to see, it is very difficult to teach themselves, grow in their faith, or provide for their families. “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18 This applies to physical, cognitive(mental) and spiritual ‘sight.’

You, as a homeschool parent, do not need all these stickers to transmit truth to and equip your child for their future; but, in her opinion, one does need a relationship with The Author, who defines what is true, right and just. Genesis 18:19. This relationship will provide all you need.

Blessings on your transmissions of your culture!

Testing, Assessments, Standards, Teaching Machines…The Science of Creating Obedient Citizens. Behavioral Science. Part 1

In this multi-part series, Dr. Dawn Kazmierzak reminds us of how and why Behavioral Science is applied in the education of the public. This series of posts also explains why Dawn and her husband have chosen privately-funded, parent-directed education for their daughter.

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has long been forgotten.” ~ B.F. Skinner, father of Operant Conditioning.

1. Behavior modifies the Neural System.

The human brain is neuroplastic. It changes all the time. The mere act of seeing something, reading something, doing something, thinking about something or being emotionally engaged in something changes the brain itself. “The behavior modifies the neural system no less than the neural system directs the behavior.” *

Behavioral Science is the branch of psychology that specializes in studying behaviors and means of influencing, modifying, and controlling those behaviors. Behavioral Science is known to ply its trade on and through living things such as: animals, humans, communities, markets, cultures, herds, etc. as well as computers and artificial intelligence.

Behavioral Sciences utilizes tests, assessments, embedded formative assessments, computers, artificial intelligence, peer relations, group dynamics, ethical training, digital media, digital learning, public relations media, polls, social media, advertising etc. to ply its trade on its subjects. Behaviors are largely modified without subject consent.

Russian psychologist, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) is noted for his Classical Conditioning of dogs, often called Pavlovian Conditioning. Pavlov trained, (conditioned), dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell by associating the ringing of a bell each time the dogs were presented with food. The dogs associated the stimulus, the ringing bell, with the food so well, that eventually, they would salivate with only the ringing of the bell and no food presented. Their habit became reflexive, formed and embedded. The association of two stimuli to elicit a behavior is called “classical conditioning.” Classical conditioning is a form of learning. Cell phones are conditioning users ad nauseum these days. The general public resembles Alessandro Volta’s electrified frogs with each buzz, beep, jingle, flash or vibration of the conditioning cell phone.

American psychologist, Burrhus Frederic (B.F.) Skinner (1904-1990) took Pavlov’s work further. Skinner is known as the father of Operant Conditioning, the branch of Behaviorism that seeks to reinforce the desired behavior, action, or ideology, via the use of positive or negative consequences. Skinner designed tests, assessments, teaching machines, operant conditioning chambers, etc. using rewards for desired responses and punishment, “aversive stimulus,” for undesirable responses. (Or resistance to the desired behavior criteria: the logic or standards of the training experiment – the test.)

Skinner advanced the use of testing, assessment, “teaching machines” that would train human beings to the desired behaviors of his utopian society, which he wrote about in his novel entitled “Walden Two.” The methods espoused in Skinner’s novel are now known and employed as applied behavior **analysis (ABA). **Note the misleading word “analysis” which is, in fact, shaping the neural system, behaviors, attitudes, values and framework upon which future stimuli will be integrated and acted upon. Any test, assessment, media that stimulates any of the receptive sensory systems (auditory, visual, proprioceptive, olfactory, tactile, chemical, thermal, pain, vestibular) or engages cognition, thought, of the participant changes the subject himself.

2. Rewards, Testing, Stickers, Grades, Degrees and Positive Reinforcement, Operant conditioning in the Brain – Yours, your child’s, your culture’s.

Learning happens every moment whether we are cognizant of it or not. We can experience active learning in which we are intentional about building brain pathways, encoding new information with previous experiences and organizing this input for future reference, rumination, pruning or reflexive reactions. Learning also happens passively, even when we are not focused, engaged and perceiving accurately nor being organized wisely.

Learning happens whether the information is true, accurate, beneficial, novel, interesting or in agreement with our personal convictions and faith. This is why education was to be administered by parents. Genesis 18:19 provides explicit details and intentions in establishing parents with the transmission of knowledge, beliefs and values to their children.

“For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what He has promised.” ~ Genesis 18:19

This decree contains the four essentials for successful transmission of culture. The Source is God; the content is that which is right and just; the transmitter is the parent and the target is the child, and heirs.

Behavioral science has long yoked with political science to remove the parents from the education and transmission of culture to their heirs and to instead create a dependency on the government as being the “paternal state.”

When the education of the child became a taxpayer funded, government administrated entity, compulsory, and universal,- it removed the parents as being the transmitters of knowledge, values, and beliefs. It also sought to remove the responsibility of the parents to answer to God for successful transmission of what is right and just. The responsibility remains.

In the statist model, the parents were replaced with a Third-party payer system that had millions of payers, taxpayers, who demanded accountability for their assumed interests and returns on their third party payer investments.

Thus, enters the Operant Conditioning system of tests, assessments, teaching machines, social-emotional rewards and punishment based not upon the parents’ assigned content, but upon those of the administration, governors, planners, peer review, group consensus, investors, vendors, employees, and future employers of the infrastructure upon which the paternal government builds its power; and shapes public opinion.

So, in order to convince:

Parents- that junior is learning;

Taxpayers- that teachers are laboring;

Administrators- that teachers are intimidated and teaching to the test;

Employers- that workers (human capital) will be produced and productive;

Government- that taxes will be harvested;

Colleges and Universities- that academia will still produce proselytes;

and Politicians – that folks will be easily led …the Operant Conditioning reward system is employed on all levels. (How many reward cards do you have? How many regulated tax-deferred ‘savings’ accounts…ESA, FSA, HSA, 401 K, 529, IRA, SIMPLE, Roth etc. ….or non-profit tax deductible affiliations? How many degrees? Certifications? Guild memberships? Accreditations?)

3. Tests used to Sort, Lane, verify conformity of proselytes, to assign stickers of state to wards of state.

Each time the politically “correct” answer is regurgitated in the class, on the quiz, on the test, on the “assessment,” on the computer…. the student gets a “good boy!” This desired response is positively reinforced via a hit of dopamine in the reward center of the brain, the nucleus accumbens. Consistently regurgitating the “correct” response results in more approbation: “You memorize well, Johnny….You are so smart! ….. We need to advance you to the Alpha class. …..You will go to college and manage other people. You may even run testing machines like I do.” Or “Johnny, you may be a scientist…or even a planner! Planners are above us managers. Keep giving the “right” answer, the one the planners want or you may just be a ‘worker.’”

Tests are used for embedding ideas, conformity, shaping predictable behaviors and for student sorting. Laning and sifting out which students perform well, meaning conform well and take orders well. These will be good for administrators in civil servant, bureaucracy positions. The use of digital media, computers with artificial intelligence with self-adapting algorithms makes Skinner’s dreams of “teaching machines” to upload Utopian mindsets a very present reality. The logic uploaded is not that of the Source, God, nor that of the parent, but rather the logic of the software. The software programmer embeds the logic of the governing authorities over him; whoever pays his wage dictates what is deemed as “correct,” politically correct.

Most of Socialist Europe employs classical education methods whose content is reinforced via high-pressure testing, sorting and laning for assigned positions within the socialist frameworks often called “republics.”

See the educational methods and mindset of Germany, Hungary, Austria, United Kingdom, Romania, Italy, Russia, Ukraine and China. Access, Placement, Advancement, lifework and societal rank are determined by test performance and evaluations at specific ages. These systems remove the need for the individual to think and self-direct. They are conditioned to only “do” as told, to fulfill their assigned role in the state. Germans know this as “Gleichschaltung,” the integration of man into the State. [ 7]

In the early to mid 20th century, parents from Europe and Asia sent their children to America for education. But, as American education duplicates the socialist mindset of these socialist nations, her education system is no longer one of excellence nor is it fit for those seeking to prepare their heirs for constitutional self-governance.

See articles from academics on the failure of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Programme of International Student Assessment known as PISA exams, which entails over 60 countries and by Bruce G. Hammond on Chinese test takers– China and Testing Great Test Scores, Bad Schools: A Cautionary Tale From China .

If the student regurgitates the desired responses flawlessly they will get many “A’s,” the teacher will get good evaluations, the school will get its funding for successful operant conditioning, the student will get scholarships, Advanced Placement (AP) credits, approval from parents and family. The student will be called a ‘scholar’ and advance to the next round of testing and assessments conditioning him to do whatever it takes to pass the test, get the grade, get the neurochemical fix and sense of self-worth that is reinforced in these operations. Students learn to “give the system, the test, the teacher, what they want,” advance past “GO” collect the rewards and keep collecting the stickers, the currency, the prestige and the position – the ‘reward’.

[7] Milton Mayer in They Thought They Were Free, The Germans 1933-1945 https://dawnkazmierzak.net/2016/07/13/they-thought-they-were-free-the-germans-1933-1945/comment-page-1/#comment-97

To be continued.

Blessings on your transmissions of your culture!

“Rapid Instructional Experience” and Its Effect on the Brain

Politico Pro (paywall) reported September 20, 2016, during a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor, U.S. Secretary of Education John King said he worries that ‘students who are homeschooled are not getting the kind of rapid instructional experience they would get in school’—unless parents are “very intentional about it”.

IAHE Action wonders if the Secretary is referring to personalized learning through digital media, when he speaks of “rapid instructional experience?” We have concerns about this type of education and have asked friend of IAHE Action, Dr. Dawn Kazmierzak, who has studied this subject to share thoughts on how a “rapid instructional experience” negatively impacts the brain and a person’s ability to think deeply. She has an undergraduate degree in biology and neurobiology. Her doctorate is in visual science and optometry. Post-doctorate residency is in hospital-based and developmental optometry.

Does this explain why some now insist information be presented in small segments? Has the use of computers affected their ability to think deeply? What do you think?

“The behavior of a human being modifies its neural structure no less than the neural system directs its behavior. What a person does, or engages in formats that person’s brain.

The human brain is an information processor. Information must be given meaning. There is a distinct difference between the physical stimuli that our sensory systems are presented with and the perception we make of those stimuli. In order for that to occur, the brain must transduce sensory input and make a representation of it in the brain. Transduction is the process by which the physical stimulus is detected (light, taste, smell, heat, cold, touch, proprioception, sound, pain etc.) via specific sensory receptors (photo, chemo, thermo, mechano, and nociceptors) and is converted to a form of energy used by the nervous system. Representation is the way information is encoded and organized as an analogue of the stimulus within the structure of the nervous system (brain, for our discussion.)

The rational thinking areas of the brain, the cerebral cortex employ analogue encoding and organization. This is accomplished by memory retrieval of past experiences, making comparisons, contrasts, forming relationships, conducting analyses, forming categories, and making new dendritic pathways connecting, organizing, encoding this new sensory input; thereby organizing an internal perception, providing meaning and future access to this new information.

Rational memory is stored across many regions of the cerebral cortex. It takes 5-10 minutes of focused attention to begin to consolidate a new memory trace. It is estimated to take nearly 60 minutes of focused attention to form a more permanent memory consolidation. No memory is truly permanent and all memory must be rehearsed, refreshed and the pathways utilized or those non-accessed paths will be pruned.

The middle pre-frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex is responsible for the elaboration of thought, prevention of distractibility, keeping mental functions toward the goals, impulse control, deep thought- increase in the depth and abstractness of thought, planning for the future, fear modulation, and response flexibility. Other cognitive roles of the middle pre-frontal lobe include the mental functions of morality, consideration of consequences prior to action, solving complicated mathematical, legal and philosophical problems, emotional balance, attunement in communication with others, and empathy.

To summarize: the rational portions of the brain, the cerebral hemispheres, particularly the left-brain, middle prefrontal lobe, hippocampus etc. employ detailed-oriented, time-consuming methods to form an Analogue memory trace (an accurate as possible representation of that stimulus encoded and organized in such a way that the individual can retrieve, modify, and build upon the information in the future.) Traditionally human beings, parents in particular, have transmitted values, knowledge and beliefs to their heirs by personally overseeing the processing of information and the formation of meanings assigned to the physical stimuli to which their children have been exposed.

The Social Emotional Training (SEL) path, utilizing the lower parts of the brain, the Limbic System, cerebellum etc.

Digital media is not analogue. Digital media is binary, either “on” or “off.” “Yes or No.” It is fast, harsh, shocking, rapidly changing and overwhelmingly too much stimulation, too much information, and too frequent distractions for the rational portions of the brain to process. Digital media sends the nervous system into high alert, a hyper-stimulated, agitated, impulsive, stressed condition.

Digital media’s vast amount of sensory stimuli and the speed at which they are presented cause the nervous system to default into survival mode utilizing the Limbic system, the fright, flight, fight, emotional centers of the midbrain. The Amygdala of the limbic system is responsible for associations known as fear conditioning, which results in reflexive behaviors in response to sensory triggers that become linked to previously stressful or highly emotional/rewarding events.

Memory is most deeply seeded when associated with intense emotional stimulation such as fear or pleasure. The use of videos, digital gaming, social-emotional training, social media and group experiential “learning” situations, have become commonplace in efforts to format a reflexive, non-rational, behavior in the culture.

The reward center of the mid-brain, the nucleus accumbens, receives a hit of dopamine with each perceived “success” in a video game, social-emotional setting, on-line task, clone phone message, therefore providing an internal “reward”. This neurochemical reward, behavioral conditioning is responsible for the noted euphoric response, neural compulsion loops and addictions increasingly cataloged with digital gaming and Internet use. Currently, it is estimated that over 30% of American youth have IAD, Internet addiction disorder, via clone phones, (smart phones) many youth and adults are never unplugged from the Internet.

The use of digital media training, e-learning, embeds at a neural reflexive level the logic of the software program. “Educational” training software employs the use of Artificial Intelligence with self-adapting algorithms to meet the individual participant where they are and to adapt the program to reward the student when the desired logic of the program is followed. These are also called embedded formative assessments. When an individual interacts with digital media, the individual is being assessed, and formatted with or without their consent. (Embedded within the program)

Desired responses are hardwired into the individual so that the participant is trained, just as B.F. Skinner, Professor at Indiana University and Vladimir Turchenko of the USSR Academy of Sciences envisioned in the 60’s.

“At the present time,” writes Turchenko, “education has merged organically into a single system of social production, science and technology, in a system that is as a whole undergoing revolutionary changes at an historically unprecedented rate.” Turchenko’s book, published in 1973 examines the fundamental directions that the revolution in education will take: introduction of teaching machines, instruction being at a younger age (toddlers, preschool…), linking instruction with productive labour, “continuous” education, and so on.” **

The present reality. Via the revolutionary use of digital media bypassing the rational executive thinking areas of the brain, we now have a Digital Dictatorship. We now have herds of socially and emotionally manipulated individuals. They have been conditioned to respond to symbols, phrases, emotions, and imperative commands. Those who are incapable of individual liberty, thoughtful rumination, meaningful dialog or self-governing democracy are ripe and ready for obedience to the dictatorship who promises yet more external and internal “rewards” as defined by the logic of the programmers.

Recall that dictatorship is embraced because the citizens have been formatted to want to be dictated. Dictatorships need not be the result of brute force, but by the control of the means that influence the populace….such as “education” and “media.””

**from the cover of Turchenko’s book entitled The Scientific and Technological Revolution and the Revolution in Education published in 1973.