Off-the-record history of the process whereby the California educational system became the model for imposing the ideology of private corporations on the teaching of oppressive economics in the nation's public schools.

A Book in Progress by

Glenn E. Burress, PhD
Social Systems Analyst
305 25th St.
Sacramento, Ca. 95816

Voice: 916-441-5305 Fax: 916-441-3032
GeBurress@aol.com
Website: http://members.aol.com/econjustic

January 8, 1998

THE 1966 TURNING POINT IN THE LOST WAR AGAINST ECONOMIC IDEOLOGY:

On November 15, 1964 the Kennedy-Johnson Administration's successful policy to reduce income inequality to foster racial justice was reversed. Since then (except for fourteen months during 1975-76), failed policy has increased income inequality which is a barrier to racial justice. A study of the Table and the Chart reveals the impact of that reversal. Successful policy is listed in Panel A of Table 1, and failed policy is listed in Panel B. The Chart shows that in both 1992 and 1993 the income of African American families relative to whites was less than in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law. (A similar Chart for Latinos is in draft.)

I discovered the planned policy reversal as a Business Week editor and tried to intervene. Those who made clear their racism insisted that policy had to be reversed in order to circumvent the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However it was all "strictly off-the-record" and these well-known facts were aggressively denied on-the-record. All that was admitted on-the-record was a planned minor procedural adjustment to make policy more successful by bringing it into compliance with widely accepted economic theory. Therefore the policy change was wisely supported by academic economists. Those who were aware that policy was being reversed argued that accelerating prosperity would cause inflationary pressures to explode and then there would be depression. But, as shown in the Table, we scientists responsible for JFK-LBJ policy offer proof that just the opposite was true.

It was clear that the reversal of successful economic policy could not be brought into accountability through either the universities or the press. However from BW I privately reported to corporate leaders, civil rights leaders and others that the U.S. economy, the soundness of banks, stock and bond prices, balanced budgets and the civil rights movement were all threatened by the late 1964 policy reversal.

Many of those to whom I reported were members of the American Bankers Association (ABA) and the Committee for Economic Development (CED). The CED was founded in 1947. It was and still is an extremely well funded group of about 200 CEOs of major U.S. corporations and numerous major universities with close affiliation with heads of religious organizations. CED and ABA members to whom I reported were unusually active in the process of shaping U.S. economic policy.

In 1949 the CED had created the Joint Council on Economic Education (JCEE) as its tax-exempt, non-profit agent to promote its ideology in schools, K-12, colleges and universities. The CED staff worked closely with leading economists and its JCEE worked closely with the Economic Education Committee of the American Economic Association (AEA).

The CED ideology called for a reversal of successful 1946-56 policy. The logic was that similar policies of 1921-29 had caused the Great Depression. They argued that prosperity would cause another depression. The CED led in the process by which 1929-41 policy was restored in 1956, and conditions like the Great Depression followed quickly.

The immediate and widespread demands for a return of 1946-56 policies produced a decision at CED to join with the AEA working through JCEE to bring together the finest talent on Madison Avenue at "selling soap" with the best Hollywood film makers. They would teach citizens why they must always oppose prosperity engineered with the Prescription for Success.

With full funding by the CED through its JCEE, members of the AEA prepared materials to be taught in the schools based on CED ideology in ECONOMIC EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS: A Report of the National Task Force on Economic Education in the Schools which was published by the CED in 1961. Robert A. Gordon, a well-known professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, was a member of that small Task Force. His influence was catalytic in the creation of a California model for the JCEE to impose the ideology of private business and academic economists on the nation's schools, K-12. That model is described at the end.

The multi-million dollar CED program to impose this private ideology in public education is described in ECONOMIC LITERACY FOR AMERICANS: A Programs for Schools and Citizens (CED, 1962). Madison Avenue and Hollywood were hired and produced 160 half-hour programs that were telecast on CBS-TV during 1962-63. Teachers received scholarships to watch in their homes and earned credit for professional advancement from economists in local universities (p. 15). My prediction that policy based on the ideology being imposed on our schools would produce conditions like those that have in fact been recorded since 1964 was reported in Letters to the Editor of The New York Times January 15, 1963.

Later thousands of teachers were often paid up to $350 weekly (in 1996 dollars) to attend summer workshops based on filmed copies of these telecasts. There were also special workshops for ministers. Finally the CED funded a national censorship board -- called the Materials Evaluation Committee -- to advise state boards of education and school districts on which materials should be used in the schools, K-12. They evaluated 7,000 publications. Ninety-three were approved and those 93 were sent to each of the 25,000 high schools in the United States (p. 18). None of the publications by scientists like me met the standards of the censorship board. After massive lobbying these corporate standards were adopted in all 50 states, led by California. The CED -- especially through JCEE -- had an unusually close relationship with leaders of religious organizations. The relationship with the National Conference of Christians and Jews is especially significant. This was due to the professional interests of its NCCJ President, Lewis Webster Jones. His opinions and aggressive social action have become progressively more significant over time in light of the fact that since 1978 religious leaders deny any responsibility for social action.

Jones held a 1928 PhD in "politics and economics" awarded by the Brookings Institution. I heard Jones explain in speeches that he had quit college presidencies (Bennington College and then the University of Arkansas) and had sought the Presidency of NCCJ due to the response of university social scientists and religious leaders in the 1930s to efforts of Keynes, Niebuhr and others "to reverse this nation's march into World War II to the tune of Onward Christian soldiers." With deep conviction, he often protested his "deep and abiding faith" that the defense of immoral policies advocated by President Wilson at the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919 and President Roosevelt in the 1930s taught a clear lesson:

The ideology of American social scientists relied upon for the prevailing theology of social justice and peace was a far greater threat to humanity than the nineteenth century ideology of social scientists and theologians in Germany and which finally emerged as Nazi Germany. Jones often told me he was certain that racism produced the 1964 policy reversal. Jones's rationale and social action is important because he intervened as a moral imperative in what he knew were racist economic policy, whereas religious leaders since 1978 have argued that their support for those same policies is a moral imperative.

Jones and some key CED members such as Fred Lazarus of Federated Department Stores, convinced me to leave Business Week to become the first Economist and Director of the College and University Programs at the JCEE. That proposed program would be generously funded equally by the Ford Foundation and The American Bankers Association (ABA) at $1.4-million annually (1996 dollars). A group of bankers called upon me at BW and told me my mandate was to free teaching in the nation's schools, K-12, from the Orwellian revision of U.S. economic history that was taught by historians and other social scientists, and is explained by the economic theory of leading economists.

I assumed that post in May, 1965. My mandate was to promote awareness in the press, K-12, colleges and universities of the generally unrecognized power of cybernetic controls that were developed at places like the Department of Engineering Economic Systems at the Graduate School of Industrial Engineering at Stanford University. On one hand, the nation could use this control mechanism to engineer the economic system for a progressively less racist society with the Prescription for Success, as it had during 1921-29, 1941-56 and 1961-64 in Panel A of Table 1. On the other hand, the nation could engineer the economic system for a progressively more Orwellian, racist society with the Prescription for Failure, as it had during 1929-41, 1957-60 and after November 15, 1964 as shown in Panel B of Table 1. This control mechanism is like the transmission in a car as explained in the text of Table 1. The footnote to that Table merits careful study.

The conflict over whether alternative readings of U.S. economic history should be taught in the schools was brought to a head by JCEE'S publication of my Economics of the Consumer in June, 1966. This was an alternative to the CED's 1961 Economic Education in the Schools. I provided teachers with a simple diagram or model to teach the econometric proofs that the Prescriptions for both Success and Failure are precise policy options. Teachers reported they could explain the impact of each option on the performance of the economy, productivity, social justice, class conflict and federal budgets reported in Table 1. Even junior high school students could explain my model.* Teachers reported that parents were thrilled.

=========================

*In contrast to social scientists, theologians and religious leaders who find this message incomprehensible, leaders in Congress, the printed press, radio and TV talk show hosts, teachers in the schools, K-12 and both junior and senior high school students received the message we presented with loud applause after finding it to be as clear as a bell. The invariant common denominator of those who understood was and is that their self-interest was not tied to the ideology for which social scientists and theologians award PhDs. Indeed unable to publish my own research, the first exposition of my alternative econometric model was published in 1964 in Economic Experiments of Enterprising Teachers (JCEE) which reproduced the explanation by a junior high school student whose teacher had heard my presentation at a workshop.

=========================

I had asked Jones to critique a draft of my little book. He then devoted his speech at the April, 1966 annual meeting of the Deans of the American Association of Graduate Schools of Business in San Diego to my forthcoming work. He told the Deans that for the first time he understood that John Maynard Keynes had done what he claimed: My book explained Keynes's remedy to the common economic origin of conflict between Christians and Jews, Blacks and whites, the rich and poor. In that speech he urged the deans to have their faculties use the book to teach how economic policy could be used either to increase or decrease all class conflict. Then in response to his personal efforts on June 16, 1966, The New York Times devoted an article on the front page of its Business' Section to my little book.

The Times editors urged citizens to study my report. "Thus informed he and his neighbors may press for such programs through their Parent-Teachers Associations, at public meetings, through their councilmen and other legislators and in all other public areas where their voices will be heard." Several similar reviews appeared throughout the media. Starting with an

unsolicited check for more than $400,000 (in 1996 dollars) from Household Finance Corporation in Chicago, there was immediate, major funding of a national program to create and distribute instructional materials based on my model. It appeared that future voters would learn an alternative to the prevailing oppressive ideology.

What happened? Given Jones's diagnosis that we were challenging the American version of the German theology of social justice for oppression of Jews, the following facts are instructive. First, my report to teachers was a version of the seminal research by my mentor, Walter P. Egle, who published Das Neutrale Geld (Neutral Money) in Nazi Germany in 1933. Second, Egle showed how Germany's economic policies could be neutral with respect to economic justice for all classes of citizens: the rich, the middle class and poor, both genders, Jews, African Americans and so on. Third, Egle nearly lost his life before escaping to the United States. His book was burned as containing "dangerous ideas." Fourth, the AEA-CED-JCEE Material's Evaluation Committee members told me informally that the model that I was urging teachers to use was "oversimplified and dangerously misleading" and therefore would not be approved for use by the schools. Working through Jones, as well as with editors at both The New York Times and Business Week, we demanded and won their official approval but with aggressive informal opposition.

Fifth, soon after the proposed JCEE program based on my little book was fully funded, it was no longer available! This was true even though JCEE described it as "our best seller ever," For a year, orders were placed on back-order to be filled after the next printing. Finally, I personally investigated. JCEE Associate Director George Fersh, a former JCEE colleague, started the strictly off-the-record explanation with the comment, "Remember, I am a Jew." He went on: "We engaged in a little Nazi bookburning. I now understand why those who challenged Hitler were powerless. In response to pressure from AEA members, Moe (Moe Frankel, JCEE President) ordered all copies in stock to be thrown into the building incinerator. I tried to get copies for you but I was too late." Fersh confirmed this to me at a 1985 annual meeting of the JCEE.*

=========================

*It was not until February, 1997 that my attempt to secure a copy of that little book was successful when former JCEE colleague Stowell Symmes located a copy and sent it to me.

=========================

The most obvious implication is that the burning of books that challenge conventional ideology has not been unique to Nazi Germany. Over the years numerous church leaders have been asked to call Fersh to confirm this history and investigate it. Each leader was told that investigation of why this little book was burned would initiate a process that would bring to light all important issues in common to U.S. and Nazi oppression. However not one church leader has been willing to make that call or to investigate this incident.

The more important implication is the unity of both American and Nazi theologians with respect to their capacity for evil. Indeed, there may never be world peace until western theologians realize that the difference between those who provide moral authority for political oppression in various nations is no more than a difference in what is politically correct.

One often hears from church leaders and theologians that this is an issue for economists and not religious leaders. The fact is that economists for forty years have been the first to recognize that their training in economic theory and policy is comparable to the training of Catholic priests in population policy. In particular, economists have reported to theologians and church leaders that they certify the validity of my econometric analyses, but that their professional training denies them the necessary objectivity to address the moral issues. Indeed, one leading economist filed an affidavit in a court of law certifying that I had conducted analyses and made successful predictions that are analytically impossible for him and other economists. In short, I know of no group of professionals (such as economists or scientists) outside of theology who are familiar with the issues who has not agreed that this is an issue for moral leaders and not for technicians. It has only been theologians and church leaders who have insisted that the issue is technical and that there is no moral issue.

California as a Model for National Ideology: Due to the integrated nature of the California educational system and the influence of the states's leading economics professor, Robert Gordon at UC Berkeley, JCEE in New York City selected California as a model for the nation. It would show how to impose the ideology required to earn a PhD in Economics at a major university like UC-Berkeley or Harvard on the nation's educational system down through kindergarten.

Working with the California Superintendent of Schools, the JCEE provided direct funding of $189,000 annually (in 1996 dollars) for one California school district as a model, with one-tenth of that annually for several other school districts. Major corporations in California provided additional funding for teachers in the schools through the Northern California Council on Economic Education, headquartered at San Francisco State College and directed by Dr. Vernon A. Ouellette; the Southern California Council on Economic Education headquartered in the County Education Building and directed by Mr. Hugh Sterling; and the San Diego County Council on Economic Education, headquartered at the Offices of the San Diego County Schools and directed by Mr. Werner E. Stickel.

The funded development of materials for the future teachers in the state colleges (now known as state universities) was formally headquartered in Centers for Education with line-item funding at California State College at Fullerton, directed by Dr. Norman Townshend-Zellner; San Francisco State College, directed by Dr. William Mason; and San Diego State College, directed by Dr. Joseph McClintic. The JCEE, the Councils on Education and the three Centers funded work of professors of education who were identified by State College Chancellor Glen Dumke, and professors of economics who were often identified by professor Gordon at UC-Berkeley.

In 1993, the Joint Council on Economic Education was renamed the National Council on Economic Education with headquarters at 1140 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York, 10016. It continues to be funded by a large number of major U.S. corporations with funding of Councils on Economic Education in all fifty states by smaller corporations. Recently it was reported that there were 237 Centers for Economic Education at various colleges and universities. In 1985 the JCEE program spread to Japan. The program was to teach Japanese citizens why they should support failed policies of G-7 nations. Successful Japanese policies were reversed in early 1991. In a December 18, 1991 letter I urged my Congressman, Rep. Robert Matsui, a Japanese-American, to help me brief Japan on why they should reject U.S. demands to adopt failed U.S and G-7 policies so that Japan would be on a level playing field created by failed policies. Rep. Matsui would not even acknowledge my letter. He remained silent even after my wife and I visited his Washington office in September, 1992 and requested that he help us network. The rising economic crises in Asia are now a matter of history.

It is proposed that parents with children in the schools K through twelve can have a direct role in the reversal of our failed economic and political system if they will accept the challenge of The New York Times in 1966 and demand an end to this private influence on public education with the consequent Orwellian revision of U.S. economic history that is being taught in the schools today.