A WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Year Nineteen ... Number Forty-Five ... November 10, 1972
PROOFS OF A CONSPIRACY TO BUILD
A TOTAL, MANAGED GLOBAL SOCIETY
PART TEN
THE DELPHI TECHNIQUE ENTERS
THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
Lawrence P. Grayson, acting director of the Division of Technology of the U.S. Office of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare, was very frank, and may have said more than he intended to say. In an article appearing in Science, March 17, 1972, under the awesome title, "Costs, Benefits, Effectiveness: Challenge to Educational Technology," he gave this succinct view of the situation facing the Planners who are busily installing the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System (PPBS) in the public schools of the Nation:
"Educational decision makers often presume that people who resist a change in an approach to education do not understand the advantages to be gained by that change. This is not necessarily so. It is precisely because parents, students, and others fully perceive the implications of an innovation that they may resist it. This is the case particularly when the innovation may affect established values of the student or impart new ones in a way which conflicts with the values established in his home or community or with those of his background or culture."
He is speaking, of course, of the introduction of PPBS, which does, admittedly, conflict with the established values, traditions and culture of the family, the community, of American Government and of Christian culture.
There are two principal reasons why there has been so little resistance to the introduction of PPBS in the public school systems of the Nation. First, the parents themselves have been effectively brainwashed into acceptance of security as the greatest of blessings and, as in the case of forced busing, for example, they are afraid to rock the boat, lest they be punished for non-conformity and independent action and initiative. People are afraid to resist any change which the so-called experts call a change for the good.
Secondly; and aside from the brainwish, the self-appointed creators of this New Society in a New World have been extremely careful in their presentations and in their public utterances regarding PPBS. Their camouflage has been most effective. Like the wolf in sheep's clothing, it is only when one is able to get beneath the surface of their word-coating that the dangers of PPBS become manifest.
Complicated and confusing titles (like the one used by educationist Grayson in the Science article from which we quote) are a part of the technique of deception. Olaf Helmer came out with this one in December, 1966:
"The Use of the Delphi Technique in Problems of Educational Innovations."
A "flashback" is required: In Part Six of this series we described the "Delphi Technique" which is used by the Planners to determine their goals and objectives (after which they fashion their programmes, then apply the performance budgeting techniques). This Delphi Technique was developed by Olaf Helmer and Theodore Gordon in 1963 and 1964 under the auspices of the Rand Corporation. Then, in 1966, in an alleged scientific treatise, Helmer explained how his Delphi system of technological forecasting was to be applied to the task of remaking the American educational system so that the educational system would, in turn, remake the American citizenry.
Just to furnish a glimpse at the jargon employed by these egghead re-makers of man, in seeming attempt to prevent any layman from understanding what they're really talking about, we quote from Helmer's paper:
"Since the educational innovations planned today will probably not be introduced for several years, and since the effects of such innovations -- in terms of increased ability among new graduates to cope with the vicissitudes of life -- may not be noticed for many years thereafter, decisions regarding such innovations cannot really be made rationally without a reasonably clear image of what the socioeconomic and technological environment of the next few decades will be. . . . In view of the projected character of our future environment and the effect we wish to exert on it through educational endeavor, it is necessary to establish appropriate educational goals. This is largely a matter of preference judgments, to be obtained through the Delphi method. . . .
"After these preparatory steps, a wide survey of suggestions for potential educational innovations should be made; . . . Then an estimate of the dollar cost of each item in the resulting list of contemplated innovations should be made . . . . And finally, on the basis of these cost-benefit estimates a program of educational innovations can be constructed by allocating a given budget among the items on the list of innovative proposals." (End of quotations.)
The "scientific paper" from which we have quoted in the two preceding paragraphs, was prepared, in 1966, for publication in The American Behavioral Scientist. Let us now skip forward five years, to April 1971, and to an article which appeared in The Futurist -- a publication of the World Future Society; An Association for the Study of Alternate Futures.
A preliminary word about these Futurists: this is an association of social, behavioral and other professors of the inexact sciences who actually believe that it is their duty to predict the shape of the world of tomorrow, and then set down to the task of making their predictions come true. They believe that it is within the power of man to control his future "evolution," and that they have been specially trained and delegated to the responsibilities of directing that control. In short, they are playing at being gods, and the new humanity will be their creation! Francois Hetman, a French Futurist, has expressed the goal in the following words:
"To the extent that man fulfills himself by 'projecting' himself into the future, the future becomes the realm where he has true freedom to act, the reservoir of his potentialities. By increasing his mastery of the environment, he sees it with new and more perceptive eyes; the increasing multiplicity of technical choices implies a permanent reappraisal of his social and ecological heritage. It is therefore necessary for him to develop new 'sciences of man' which will permit him to make informed choices as to options for the future and to defend his estate against all forms of depradation. The future is therefore our most precious resource. Its methodological exploration becomes a new dimension of our society. Concern for its implications must therefore increase rapidly." (From The Language of Forecasting, Paris, 1969).
These Futurists who are dedicated to the tasks of remaking the world and all that's in it according to the instructions printed out by their computer (which has replaced the Oracle at Delphi even as they seem to have replaced the God of our fathers), these "men of great wisdom" are not crackpots in the usual sense of the term. They are, perhaps, endued with the fanaticism that often accompanies the worshipping of idols, but many are men of renown in their own fields of endeavor. These world reshapers include:
Glenn T. Seaborg, once chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,
president of the Americas Association for the Advancement of Science, and
member of the
Board of Directors of the World Future Society.
Carl H. Madden, chief economist with the Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.
Arnold Barach, senior editor of Changing Times magazine.
Orville L. Freeman, presently president of Business International Corporation.
Barbara Hubbard, organizing director of the Committee for the Future.
Michael Michaelis, Washington manager of Arthur D. Little, Inc.
Rowan A. Wakefield, executive vice president of Aspen Institute for Humanistic
Studies.
Ian H. Wilson, consultant on Business Environment, General Electric Co.
Herman Kahn, director, Hudson Institute.
Charles Levinson, secretary general, International Chemical Federation.
Earl C. Joseph, staff scientist in the Univac Division of Sperry Rand Corporation.
William W. Simmons, director exploratory planning for the International
Business Machines Corporation.
Louis H. Mayo, George Washington University; served on the White House Task
Force on Disarmament in 1956; was executive secretary to the network study
staff of the FCC in 1956-57.
Issac Asimov, writer of science fiction.
Anthony J. Wiener, associated with Herman Kahn at the Hudson Institute.
Alvin C. Eurich, president of the Academy for Educational Development in New
York City, author of Reforming American Education, Campus 1980, High School
1980.
John Dixon, "a widely known consultant in planning, futures research, and
the role of voluntary associations in reshaping public policy."
Peter House, president of Environmetrics, Inc.
Sylvan J. Kaplan, chief of the National Park Service's Division of Plans and
Objectives.
The above is but a partial list of Futurists who participated as speakers and panelists in the First General Assembly of the World Future Society, May 12-15, 1971, in which "people from all over the world" joined in an "exploration of what mankind can and should do in the years ahead."
Sufficient introduction to these "shapers of tomorrow's world" who insist that "the world we live in is increasingly the world we ourselves make, and we cannot do the job wisely without foresight."
Their means of "gaining foresight" has now become an improvement on the Delphi technique which is called the Delphi Conference. Beginning on page 55 of the April 1971 issue of The Futurist, is an article about the Delphi Conference, written by Murray Turoff, of the U.S. Office of Emergency Preparedness. This is an adjunct to the Office of Management and Budget, also is situated in the President's Executive Office Building, and is the "executive head" that runs the entire Nation if and when those standby Emergency Executive Orders are ever declared to be in effect because of a "national emergency."
There is this picture of Emergency Chief Turoff seated at his Teletype keyboard, to which there is attached an active Computer. The caption under the picture reads:
"Will future committee meetings look like this? Murray Turoff is conferring with 20 other persons, some of whom are located thousands of miles away. Sitting in his office at the U.S. Office of Emergency Preparedness in Washington D.C., he types out his ideas and questions. A computer adds his thoughts to its running record of the conference proceedings. When any other participant has free time, he goes to a teletype similar to this and asks to be connected (by ordinary telephone lines) to the computer keeping track of the conference. The computer prints out the record of the conference; he then types in his comments, which immediately become part of the conference proceedings. When this picture was taken, the conference had been going on for several weeks without a break, but the participants were still living their normal lives."
Excerpts from Turoff's article follow:
* * * * * * * * * * *
The Delphi technique, often used in forecasting future developments, can be combined with computers to create a new procedure called the Delphi Conference. This new method enables a large group of individuals to communicate meaningfully and rapidly with each other both in generating group forecasts and in making policy decisions. . . .
Computers have long promised to bring about a revolution comparable in scope with the industrial revolution. Just as the steam engine brought about a great extension of man's physical powers, the computer offers a large extension of his mental power, specifically, his memory and ability to process information logically. By remembering and manipulating data, computers have offered society the hope of being able to cope with an increasingly complex civilization. . . .
The Delphi technique has been defined as a method for systematically soliciting and collating informed judgments on a particular topic.Under this procedure, participants respond to a series of questionnaires interspersed with summaries of the responses by group members to earlier questionnaires. With the introduction of computers the emphasis begins to change from communications between the group and an outside party to communication within the group.
. . . In the Delphi Conference, the computer operates as a real-time accounting system. Instead of the usual accounting functions (sales, stock, shipping records, etc.), the computer stores discussion items entered by members of the group and accumulates votes on these items. . . . With the computer constantly at his disposal, a participant in the conference can interact with the others in the conference at any time of day or night. . . . Participants can be thousands of miles apart. Their commands can be transmitted to the computer by ordinary telephone lines from the terminals (which can simply be a teletype keyboard) . . . At the Office of Emergency Preparedness (part of the Executive Offices of the President) in Washington, D.C., the Delphi Conference has been used to explore its own potentialities.
The 20 respondents in the initial experiment were located at government agencies, businesses, non-profit organizations, and univerisities at widely separated locations. . . .
The incorporation of Delphi techniques into computer systems appears to be a first step in making the computer a true extension of man's intellectual capability.
(End of quotations from article)
* * * * * * * * * * *
Talk of the cold, remote, inhuman aspects of government when it is removed from the community level and centralized at the State, Regional, National or even World level; here is a form of government that is the ultimate in the impersonal and the inhuman; it is a faceless, even voiceless, composite Dictator that prints out our future from a Computer, and then prints out the programme which will achieve that future, and budgets the operation with taxpayers' money, and with nary a taxpayer ever knowing who gave the orders that he must obey in order to become a part of the world tomorrow!
Think of this manner of ruling a world and a people: A group of unidentified and unseen men who may never even have seen each other, seated in their figurative ivory towered think-tanks perhaps half a continent apart; each of them seated at a teletype keyboard which is attached to a Central Computer, feeding their isolated and impractical theories and conjectures onto a piece of tape; from which a Central Executive Head arrives at decisions and issues orders concerning any and every facet of life from conception to cremation.
This, for example, is the manner in which the American child is to be prepared for a life of usefulness in the world of tomorrow. From some of these conferences, we have a few of the conclusions that have been published in papers and journals not ordinarily made available to the public at large. We are going to quote directly from a few of these sources. The special cant employed by bureaucrats, plus the odd jargon of the educationalists, make the following difficult to interpret; but the message will be clear once you become accustomed to the cant and jargon:
"Today's educational planning can claim an unbroken ancestry back to ancient times . . . The Spartans, some 2,500 years ago, planned their education to fit their well defined military, social and economic objectives. Plato in his 'Republic' offered an educational plan to serve the leadership needs and political purposes of Athens . . . . These early examples . . . linking a society's educational system to its goals . . . show how educational planning has been resorted to in periods of great social change and intellectual ferment to help change a society to fit new goals." (Philip Coombs, "The World Educational Crisis -- A Systems Analysis," Oxford University Press, N.Y., 1968).
'Behavioral objectives, written in the affective domain, will be applied to all persons in the educational institution, e.g., students, teachers, principals and administrators, educational specialists, families, community groups." (EPIC, "Educational Innovators Press, "Developing Observation Systems.")
". . . an observation system must focus on small bits of activity or behavior that is to be categorized . . . teacher-student verbal interaction . . . what people do . . . Individual students are observed and coded . . . an IBM 1230 form is utilized for data processing purposes. . . . The most commonly utilized method of observation is the use of audio tape recording . . . . After observations are recorded, they are transformed to a matrix for interpretation." (EPIC, Ibid.)
"By its very purpose, a program budgeting system is a gigantic consumer of data. . . . The sources of data and the means of collections and analysis are, of course, obvious concerns. Not so obvious, but just as real, are the fears of the individuals supplying the data about the intended uses of the data." (Rand Corporation, "Developing a Program Budgeting System as an Aid in Planning Higher Education," S.A. Haggart).
(To Be Continued)
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