The so-called reforms of our sys­tem of edu­ca­tion and the redesign of our schools to build an inte­grat­ed school-workforce devel­op­ment sys­tem with a cradle-to-grave track­ing sys­tem for nation­al ‘human resource man­age­ment’ began in 1965 with Lyn­don Johnson’s Great Soci­ety and the pas­sage of the Ele­men­tary and Sec­ondary Edu­ca­tion Act (ESEA) of 1965. But that was just the begin­ning of nation­al­iza­tion of the admin­is­tra­tion of the schools. The changes to the mis­sion of the edu­ca­tion sys­tem actu­al­ly goes back to the turn of the pri­or century.

In 1985 William Brock was the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive. He ini­ti­at­ed the Uruguay Round of trade talks which cul­mi­nat­ed in the cre­ation of the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion with the sen­ate rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Mar­rakesh Agree­ment in 1994. The WTO rules call for the free move­ment of goods and ser­vices across bor­ders. A “ser­vice” boils down to be a per­son or a job so in effect, the U.S. Sen­ate vot­ed to dis­solve our bor­ders for com­merce – the free move­ment of goods and “ser­vices” across bor­ders and to put us under a glob­al reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem man­aged by inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions – effec­tive­ly trans­fer­ring eco­nom­ic sov­er­eign­ty over to them.

How this relates to the redesign of the edu­ca­tion sys­tem is that after leav­ing the U.S.T.R. posi­tion, Brock was appoint­ed to be the Sec­re­tary of Labor where he com­mis­sioned the Hud­son Insti­tute to study the impact on our domes­tic busi­ness­es and domes­tic labor force of glob­al­iz­ing our econ­o­my. Work­force 2000, Work and Work­ers for the 21st Century1 was the title of the report the Insti­tute pro­duced. It was pub­lished in June of 1987. He then left gov­ern­ment ser­vice to start his own con­sult­ing com­pa­ny where he worked with the Nation­al Cen­ter on Edu­ca­tion and the Econ­o­my (NCEE) to pro­duce reports that pro­vid­ed the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for a new edu­ca­tion sys­tem. The first report they pub­lished as the Com­mis­sion on the Skills of the Amer­i­can Work­force was America’s Choice: High Skills or Low Wages2 (1990) – pro­mot­ing the idea that reform was need­ed because the Amer­i­can school sys­tem was based on Tay­lorism and we need­ed a high­er qual­i­ty pro­gram to “com­pete” glob­al­ly. Since the imple­men­ta­tion of the redesigned sys­tem is voca­tion­al edu­ca­tion, in effect, they were sell­ing one idea in pub­lic while design­ing and ulti­mate­ly build­ing the oppo­site. The rea­son they did that was because of what was going to hap­pen to our econ­o­my and our coun­try under the WTO sys­tem of world trade as it was pre­dict­ed in the Hud­son Insti­tute study.

When Brock left the Labor Depart­ment, Eliz­a­beth Dole was appoint­ed to replace him as the Sec­re­tary of Labor. Eliz­a­beth Dole ini­ti­at­ed a Labor Depart­ment ini­tia­tive called the Secretary’s Com­mis­sion on Achiev­ing Nec­es­sary Skills (SCANS)3 which was the ini­ti­a­tion of the project to trans­form our sys­tem of edu­ca­tion into a train­ing sys­tem for work­ers. This project was business-led with busi­ness lead­ers becom­ing “the cus­tomers” of the schools and the chil­dren demot­ed to “prod­ucts” – mere­ly fac­tors of pro­duc­tion in a sup­ply chain man­age­ment sys­tem for labor.

A lit­tle more his­to­ry is in order to under­stand why the Labor Depart­ment would get involved in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem. Around the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, a group of busi­ness­men decid­ed that there should be a world sys­tem of inter­na­tion­al law and unre­strict­ed trade across bor­ders. These busi­ness­men ulti­mate­ly formed the Inter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce and the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce. The Ver­sailles Treaty that end­ed World War I includ­ed lan­guage to begin the process of build­ing those inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions. The result was the League of Nations. The League of Nations failed but was replaced by the Unit­ed Nations in 1945.

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