Our Schools Are Becoming CIA Torture Chambers

Everyone has heard of KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools. They are one of the largest charter school chains in the country. Their top people are considered "experts" in "education reform". Their donors include the Waltons, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and many Wall Street firms--a veritable Who's Who of the enemies of public education.

One of the things they pride themselves on is their "character education" program--or their classroom management and discipline program:

KIPP’s innovative approach is grounded in the research of Dr. Martin Seligman and the late Dr. Chris Peterson (the “fathers“ of Positive Psychology). Building off a partnership with KIPP NYC, Dr. Angela Duckworth and the Riverdale Country School, KIPP’s character work focuses on seven highly predictive character strengths that are correlated to leading engaged, happy and successful lives: zest, grit, optimism, self-control, gratitude, social intelligence, and curiosity.

We’ve integrated our own experience as educators with this research, and developed a road map to help teachers, students, and parents foster behaviors that strengthen character.

KIPP schools have been held up as "models" for discipline and their techniques have been used in public and charter schools across the country. We see it in programs like PBIS and other "zero tolerance" disciplinary programs.

So who is this Dr. Marty Seligman who is such a big influence in school discipline?

Dr. Martin Seligman is the man to see if you have questions about how to turn human beings into compliant automatons with persistent positivity.  His experiments torturing dogs in the late 1960s was seminal to the development of "learned helplessness," whereby subjects are pacified by repeated and unpredictable electric shocks that cannot be avoided.  Google "learned helplessness" for the readily accessible history of the research.

The subsequent "learned helplessness" exhibited by torture victims is countered by another Seligman invention, "learned optimism," which turns compliant human subjects into persistent, self-controlled, and gritty go-getters who will not let any amount of abuse or degradation interfere with beliefs in self-heroic capabilities.  

The Seligman treatment has been used by David Levin at KIPP to behaviorally neuter children and then to have the same children self-administer heavy doses of No Excuses positivity in order to maintain high test scores regardless of children's home life marked by pathological economic conditions.

So this is what they're doing in many charter schools. And in some public schools. When our kids are turned into mindless "positive" blobs of jelly, teachers won't be needed. Because teachers are professionals. All they'll need are minimum wage workers to babysit and read scripted "lessons" geared to standardized tests and not to real learning or thinking. And if our kids graduate, survive the police and gangs, and not wind up in prison, they are "rewarded" with being an "obedient" and pliant worker.

But it's worse than it looks. Much much worse--In the recent report released by the CIA in which psychologists of the APA were implicated as complicit in the Bush/Cheney CIA torture program at Guantanamo Bay, Dr. Martin Seligman is listed as a primary architect of the techniques adopted by the torturers.

Although he denies it, the report has this to say (Bold text highlighted by diarist):

APA’s critics have hypothesized that Seligman took a far more active role in supporting the CIA’s interrogation program than the relatively tangential interactions described above. They point to the December 2001 meeting at Seligman’s home and an email from Hubbard in March 2004 expressing gratitude for Seligman’s help “over the past four years” as evidence that Seligman was an active participant in supporting the CIA’s interrogation program. Seligman and Hubbard had similar, though not identical, explanations for Hubbard’s comment. Seligman explained that he had previously asked Hubbard about the email and that Hubbard had explained that he was referring to the pro bono lecture Seligman had given to the Navy SERE school in May 2002.

Hubbard said that he was “basically” thanking Seligman for hosting the meetings in his home in 2001. Thus, both Hubbard and Seligman explained that Hubbard was thanking Seligman only for his involvement in the meetings that have become public knowledge.

Critics also allege that the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, founded by Seligman, received a $31 million sole source contract from DoD in 2010 because of assistance Seligman provided to the government with its counter-terrorism efforts. Seligman said that this contract was awarded because there were no competing entities who had the same experience in training and research on the topic of positive psychology, and there was an urgent need for a program in positive psychology to help returning troops. Seligman clarified that during negotiations on this contract, there was never any mention that the contract related to past work he might have done for DoD or other intelligence agencies. Sidley has not uncovered evidence that Seligman had interactions with the CIA beyond the isolated meetings and lectures in the year after 9/11 that are a matter of public record. It is possible that more interactions occurred, particularly given Hubbard’s comment that Seligman had provided assistance over the course of four years, but no evidence suggests that interrogations were ever directly discussed at these meetings, despite the fact that the scientific theories that Mitchell and Jessen later adapted to construct the CIA’s interrogation program clearly were. On balance, it seems difficult to believe that Seligman did not at least suspect that the CIA was interested in his theories, at least inpart, to consider how they could be used in interrogations.

It has come to this.

Public education is being destroyed and privatized to send the kids that can't afford private school into these torture chambers, which turn our kids into good little robots. Or, through the use of "zero tolerance", send them back to public school or prison. Meanwhile, the public schools are slowly being starved of funds, resources, music, art, PE, recess, and life. And our kids are being tested to death. And the alternative for these kids is right outside the door--the armed guards, the streets, prison, and death.

And with the refusal to pay living wages; The reluctance to rebuild infrastructure; The unwillingness of Manufacturing to return; The excessive sentencing from the so-called "war on drugs"; The rise in private prisons, where states must keep the cells full at all times; And finally, with companies beginning to "outsource" their jobs to the unpaid prison labor because they don't want to pay living wages, we are seeing a slow and steady attempt to render meaningless the 13th, 14th, and 15 Amendments and to return people to slavery.

Which has been the plan all along.