The creepy aspect of long-term statistical-behavioral analysis lay in the temptation for dossier-building. Nothing provides a better observation post into that world than the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), an agency of the now-enormous U.S. Department of Education (whose organizational chart, in typeface large enough to be readable, takes up about 8 x 10 feet in floor space). The sheer scope of the information NCES collects via its well-funded federal and state bureaus and offices is breathtaking.

What is renowned (or vilified) today as “data-mining,” has state-based identifying mechanisms linked to federal identifiers, usually social security numbers. These are key to information collection and management. Psycho-behavioral assessments comb this computerized data for controversial opinions, unconventional attitudes, level of parent influence and general quirkiness, above and beyond issues involving what you own and how much money you have. The extent of such activity is revealed in documents such as “Data-Mining Journals and Books: Using the Science of Networks to Uncover the Structure of the Educational Research Community,” which is part of a much larger tome emanating from Teachers College, Columbia University (“Data-Mining Journals and Books: Using the Science of Networks to Uncover the Structure of the Educational Research Community, Research News and Comments, American Educational Research Association from April 2005, pp. 25-33), as well as from “The IEEE Seventh International Conference on Data Mining” in 2007.

Today, even toddlers are assessed for such things as individualistic tendencies in state-sponsored early-childhood programs. When (and, more to the point, if) you manage to get your hands on the professional interpretive literature to these assessments, you soon learn that being a “free-thinker” is not necessarily a plus. Teamwork, flexibility and amenability long since have replaced “principle” as virtues in the workplace — or, for that matter, in school and politics. If a child even appears to demonstrate inflexibility or dogmatism, these run counter to educational psychiatrists’ visions of mental health. The National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation funded a $1.2 million study in 2003 which was said to determine that adherents to traditional moral principles and limited government are sick. NIMH-NSF researchers from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford attributed the notions to “dogmatic” and “rigid” thinking in a paper entitled “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition” (Jost, J. T., J. Glaser, et al. (2003); Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 339-375). That is why “firm religious belief” now has a bad rap and ranks high as a “marker” for poor mental health.

Follow-up research at NCES’ website revealed how identification numbers are assigned to children — ostensibly by the state, but under the auspices of a federal mandate, leaving the states as “fall guys.” Apparently, each state is supposed to craft its “own” ID procedures using federal guidelines, then transmit all the gathered data to the federal government, where private information is cross-matched with other information already in hand from non-school sources. Clueless parents can spend years getting the runaround on that one.

When this columnist entered the State of Nebraska at random, it was discovered that its “Uniq-ID System” student numbers were linked to the youngsters’ federal Social Security numbers, according to a table. Another document explained what was described, step-by-step, as a “drill down” method for locating sensitive information about a student or his family. For example, educrats, who are not even supposed to mention religion or put up red-and-green paper at Christmastime, could select from 30 numerical codes such religious particulars such as “Nazarene,” “Calvinist” and “Pentacostal” (see: 2001 Updates to the 2000 NCES Student Data Handbook). Most regular classroom teachers would be hard put even to define the differences in these denominations.

All of which begs the question: Where is our government getting this stuff?

From questionnaires — not directly of course, but via what-would-you-do-if and how-do-you-feel-when queries that are staples of psychological surveying techniques, often inserted surreptitiously into bona fide academic tests and even health surveys, not to mention the “anonymous” and “voluntary” questionnaire. Responses are then cross-matched with other information the child has provided at one time or another — family magazine subscriptions, favorite TV shows, disciplinary measures, and so on.

Behavioral analysts (which can include school district psychiatrists) also appear to be looking for anything that might be interpreted as a “pervasive mood,” an “inappropriate behavior” or an “emotional disturbance,” especially as efforts escalate to identify the budding domestic terrorist. Data also is collected from mothers’ records at the doctor’s office, beginning in their pregnancies.

As for any perceived “right to privacy”: well, fuggedaboudit. Ralph Tyler, the famous behavioral testing pioneer (deceased 1994) who once headed the Educational Testing Service, served as Commissioner of Education when it was under the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and was tapped by the Carnegie Corporation (ETS was a spinoff) to chair the committee that would develop the useless (but invasive) National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and his esteemed colleague, Richard Wolf, put it this way: The “need for deception” in testing sometimes outweighs privacy considerations because there “are occasions in which the test constructor [finds it necessary] to outwit the subject so that he cannot guess what information he is revealing." This from Crucial Issues in Testing, co-edited by Ralph Tyler and Richard Wolf of Teachers College, Columbia University (p. 128). Tyler and Wolf essentially conceded back in 1969 that their then-new mission would amount to today’s “psychological profiling.”

Another colleague, Walcott Beatty, admonished around the same time that the effort to capture “noncognitive” details on students’ lives must “avoid the appearance of [being] a national initiative.” It was, of course, every bit a federal initiative — one that is now pervasive, not only in schools, but a staple of doctor’s offices, the criminal justice system, Child Protective Service agencies and linked anytime to the workplace and other government agencies, like Homeland Security, on demand.

Today, issues like waterboarding, indefinite detainment of suspects without a lawyer, and searches without probable cause are receiving the lion’s share of public attention when it comes to expressions of conscience and privacy. While all these are legitimate concerns, far more attention should be paid to the prospect — now upon us — of government getting to a point where it can profile and predict personal and public opinion with a perceived degree of accuracy.

Why? Because on that basis, such a government can also take kids away from parents, forcibly drug citizens who balk at government edicts, commit refuseniks to institutions, create eugenics programs in which those outside the mainstream of thought are discouraged from procreating or adopting children (better think Health Care bill here) and, in effect, enforce any political agenda it pleases.

Read part one of this two-part series:   Dossiers 'R' U.S. Part I

AP Images: Second grader Ivan Ramirez fills out a survey after sampling a plate of vegetables at the William V. Wright Elementary School in Las Vegas.

Beverly K. Eakman is a former speechwriter for the Voice of America (with a top-secret clearance under the U.S. Information Agency) as well as for the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger when he chaired the Commission of the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. She served as a writer for the U.S. Dept. of Justice before retiring from the federal government, since winning numerous awards and becoming a sought-after speaker and lecturer. She is the author of three best-selling books on education policy, mental-health issues and data-trafficking as well as a free-lance columnist with dozens of feature articles in hard-cover and online publications to her credit. She began her career as a teacher, where she first got wind, in the 1960’s and 70’s, of what was about to happen to classrooms nationwide. Her writings citing that period are considered historically important today and has earned her nationwide recognition. Her latest book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Creating a Nation of Sitting Ducks. She can be reached through her web site: www.BeverlyE.com .

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DDW

March 27, 2010

173.57.11.190

Votes: +4

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Remember when

The fedgov promised that social security numbers would never, never be used as identification? In fact, at one time, wasn't it actually against the law to use social security numbers as identification? The fedgov is now the biggest liar, thief and bully-thug in town. THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!!!

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