Note: This is the second in a series of articles on internationalization of the economy and the conversion of the education system to a system of marxist indoctrination. The first article was The Reincarnation of German Fascism.
How did marxist communists get into the schools? The answer to that question is that education became a function of labor policy subject to the international GATS agreement. You can see it by following the career of William Brock beginning in 1981.
The BIG LIE for the 21st Century was that more education was the solution for competition with cheap labor countries.
William E. Brock was appointed to Ronald Reagan’s cabinet as the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). As USTR, he kicked off negotiations for the Uruguay Round of trade talks. The World Trade Organization was established in 1995 as a result. The essence of the agreement was open borders for commerce including trade in services which is open borders for trade in human commodities – both blue and white collar workers. The prime corporate movers that lobbied to turn working people into human commodities up for trade were AIG, American Express and Citicorp.
In 1982, Maurice Greenberg of the American Insurance Group (AIG) initiated the formation of a lobbying group called the Coalition of Service Industries (CSI). Through the lobbying efforts of CSI, they were successful in getting the U.S. Government to begin collecting data on the service industries. In Lawrence H. Cunningham’s 2013 book, The AIG Story, is written the following:
Among the first ambitions that the CSI had was to persuade the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to measure trade in services.
The CSI reached that milestone in 1984 when amendments to U.S. trade law mandated improved government data collection on trade in services. The figures stunned those outside the service industries. Trade in services, it turned out, was a central piston of the economy: by the 1980s, 70 percent of the U.S. gross national product (GNP) and jobs were attributed to the service sector; international trade exceeded $1 trillion, and one-fourth of that was in services. Page 86-87
In Washington, the CSI also won the support of many influential members of Congress from both parties and their staffs. Such support enabled the CSI to occupy a unique role on trade policy in Washington, as a member of an advisory committee on trade in services. The coalition used that role to urge global trade representatives to include trade in services on the GATT Agenda. A breakthrough came quickly in 1982 when William Brock, the U.S. trade representative from 1980 to 1985 persuaded his counterparts in vital countries to add it to the November 1982 GATT ministerial meeting in Geneva. This was the first formal international recognition of the subject as legitimate.
[James Robinson, CEO of American Express] Robinson traveled to India on several occasions during this period to meet with ministers of trade and finance. Attempting to explain the importance of trade in services, and how India’s most valuable resource was its impressively educated and well-trained workforce, he would be met with blank stares. Within decades India would, in fact become a leader in many services.
Marrakesh Agreement, Appendix 1
In 2002, the Transnational Institute published the fourth paper in a series about trade in services titled, GATS 2000: Corporate Power at Work. The paper reveals the prime corporate movers that lobbied to turn working people into human commodities up for trade. Those companies are AIG, American Express and Citicorp.
According to the European Commission: “The GATS is not just something that exists between governments. It is first and foremost an instrument for the benefit of business.” To be more precise, the 1995 GATS agreement was the result of a sustained lobby campaign by the US Coalition of Service Industries, led by large US banks and insurance companies. The US Coalition of Service Industries and the European Service Forum work in close alliance with government negotiators, helping them to prepare GATS negotiating strategies and priorities.
IMF and World Bank conditionalities for financial support and loans have forced many developing countries to adopt extensive privatisation and liberalisation programmes. Global services companies stand ready to capture the most lucrative privatised public services, like energy provision, education, water supply or health care.
. . . In 1981, the chief executive officers of AIG, American Express and Citicorp concluded that there was a need to form a broader business coalition to push the demand to include ‘trade in services’ in the GATT agenda. They mandated American Express Vice-President Harry Freeman to form a coalition of services industries that would reach well beyond New York financial circles. In 1982, the US Coalition of Service Industries (USCSI) was officially launched under Freeman’s chairmanship.
Between 1982 and 1985, USCSI worked closely with the US Trade Representative (USTR) and the Department of Commerce to place services firmly on the global trade agenda. In late 1983, the USTR submitted a report to the GATT on the growing importance of services in the world economy, summarising existing international rules governing trade in services and suggesting possible approaches to a new regime. When the GATT Uruguay Round was launched at the September 1986 Punta del Este GATT Ministerial Conference, a Group on Negotiations on Services (GNS) was formed and negotiations formally started on a multilateral regime for trade in services within the GATT.
In a global “market” system of open borders for commerce – including trade in services, the issue becomes the price of labor – both blue and white collar. Obviously, the trade policy traitors didn’t want to let the American people know that they were being set up to “compete” with the cheapest labor in the world so the narrative was made to be about education and improving education for the global open market competition.
In 1985, William Brock became the Secretary of Labor leading a blindside attack on our education system. His first act was to commission the Hudson Institute to do a study on the impact of commodification of labor via open borders for commerce.
Keeping in mind they are talking about jobs and people:
Through powerful lobby machines like the US Coalition of Service Industries and the European Services Forum, these and other transnational corporations have effectively set the agenda for the GATS 2000 negotiations.
If achieved, this corporate GATS 2000 agenda will amount to a frontal attack on the fundamental social rights enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its accompanying Covenants and Charters. Not only will foreign-based for-profit corporations be able to access public dollars to takeover public hospitals and schools, but regulations on health and education standards will be undermined by global trade rules under the WTO. Chains of foreign-based, for-profit corporations would be able to invade the childcare, social security and prison systems in all WTO member countries. Our parks, wildlife and old growth forests could all become contested areas as global corporate ‘service’ providers compete with one another to exploit their resources. Meanwhile, unlimited access to foreign-based corporations would have to be given regarding municipal contracts for construction, sewage, garbage disposal, sanitation, tourism, and water services. Page 13.
Keeping in mind that for manufacturing, machines equalize competition between rich and poor countries but with the Service Sectors, competition all comes down to the price of labor giving countries like India and China a huge advantage. This was a no-brainer. The corporations that organized the Coalition of Service Industries were simply after cheap labor, Congress gave it to them and our country has been in decline ever since.
Archive of SCANS Reports that describe the restructuring of the U.S. System of Education to the disaster we have now.
July 29, 1986, Competitiveness and Economic Security
Witnesses testified about the changes in population demographics and the effects on the economy and social security. William Brock testified as Secretary of Labor, appointed in April of 1985. When Brock became the Secretary of Labor, he commissioned the Hudson Institute to do a study of the impact of globalization (open borders for commerce) on the American Workforce. That study was published in 1987 – a year after these hearings. Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the 21st Century.
July 29, 1986, Competitiveness and Economic Security
Subject of our demographic future. Marc Tucker, Carnegie Forum on Ed and Eco, testimony before a congressional committee. They talked about the Boston Compact, partnership arrangement between the schools and the Private Industry Council. [ Listening to Scherer’s opening statement, one would think that the baby boomers didn’t have children. In my family of baby boomers – among the four of us we had seventeen children 4:17.
The Business Community and School Reform: The Boston Compact at Five Years– model project for business takeover of the schools through partnership agreements.
July 31, 1986, Demographic Changes in the United States
Witnesses testified on the changing demographics towards an older population and increased needs of the elderly.
July 5, 1995 – U.S. Education and Worker Readiness – The participants spoke with reporters and answered questions on what students from the U.S., France, Germany and Scotland are expected to know and how prepared they are for the business world.
Milton Greenberg, Vice President of the National Alliance of Business
Albert Shanker, Former President of the American Federation of Teachers
Witnesses testified on the changing demographics towards an older population and increased needs of the elderly.
National Human Resource Management System
The term Human Resource is de-humanization. It strips you of your humanity and your citizenship.
Obviously, a system to manage human resources requires a data base of the humans to be managed including their education, skills and work history.
Skills Commission of the American Workforce
“Brock co-chaired the National Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce and chaired the Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills which set a new course for elementary and secondary education. He received the National Academy of Human Resources highest tribute and recognition for outstanding achievement in advancing human development.” Obituary in the Tennessee Journal (link to the Academy added).
The competition game as a political and psychological weapon against the working population began before the Reagan Administration but there is not enough time in a person’s lifetime to read everything that has been written about it. A convenient and relatively current place to start is with the Trump Administration and their government reorganization plan – but first, you need to read the conceptual design for a National Human Resource Management. The design was in a letter to Hillary Clinton from Marc Tucker, President of the National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE). It was placed in the Congressional Record by Congressman Bob Schaeffer of Colorado. Note the fact that Tucker mentions a meeting with David Rockefeller, John Sculley (CEO of Apple), Dave Barram and David Heselkom.
Corporate and Union Takeover of the Schools
The corporate takeover of school programming began decades and decades ago, but the easiest and most in your face way to learn about it is to read a paper written by Douglas Noble titled New American Schools and the New World Order.
Free your minds from the corporate corrals. Act in the interest of humanity and begin by doing that which is at the most fundamental level of human existence – protect the young from the corporate predators – the forces of evil who seek to enslave them.
At the point government made the profitability of corporations in a global economy the priority, our system of education ceased to be about education of the citizen. It became a system of training human resources for the global economy. The word education should be removed from the lexicon and schools should be called human resource factories. The people who are promoting school choice as a remedy haven’t really thought through the problem. What they should be worried about is government for a banana republic that provides management of the human resources for commerce.
The House Joint Economic Committee: Subcommittee on Economic Resources, Competitiveness and Security Economics held a series of three hearings in 1986 to discuss population, demographics and the economy – never mentioning that the U.S. trade agenda was to open the borders of the United States for commerce – including trade in services. James H. Scherer (D-NY) chaired the Committee. Note that there are no other members of Congress present for these three hearings save for one brief appearance for a single question from one other member. Note also that the population of young people they seemed to be talking about were the urban inner city ghetto youth of the big cities.
William Brock used that population as the universal model for the entire population upon which to restructure our system of education to be a vocational training system rather than a system of education. The restructuring of the system of education began in the Labor Department when William Brock became the Secretary of Labor in 1985. These hearings are classic examples of skewing statistics to fit a narrative with the unspoken narrative of being policy to support an open border and the inevitable flood uneducated, illegal migrants (cheap labor) across the border.
See 1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 – Simpson-Mazzoli Act.
2 Comments
Kristin
Re: this and “Green Communism”- please look up Dr. Carlos Perez, Director of SEL & Community Programs- “Dr Carlos Perez is the Director of Social and Emotional Learning and Community Programs. The importance of social emotional learning can have a significant impact on your child’s education.” I agree! I agree whole heartedly that “social emotional learning” has a significant impact on my child’s education, so much so that it interferes WITH my (had I one…) child’s education. Vicky I got this in the mail from our local school district. Apparently, the public schools are indoctrinating students with these buzzword worthy questionable “training” it is so bizarre. “PBIS” Positive Behavorial Interventions and Supports” I have no idea what that means or what they’re teaching children. I doubt they’ve hired licensed child psychologists in each and every class to go over this kind of thing with them. No wonder our children are so under educated! I would love to investigate this man, this “doctor” Perez person. By the way this is in Maricopa County AZ, city of Phoenix. I imagine most if not ALL US public schools are implementing this weirdo stuff. parents beware.
Vicky Davis
I will look up Carlos Perez. Thank you for the info. I’m working on how these marxist/communists infiltrated and took control of our schools. I do know one part of it – international associations that certify and accredit.
We no longer have institutions that educate. We have institutions that indoctrinate and destroy.