Re-education in a Republic needed a more subtle design than that imposed by Soviet Narcompros (Institute of Enlightenment). A vast bureaucracy was designed to restructure the philosophy and processes in administration and teaching methods with no thought in informing parents.

“Restructuring requires that we rethink the way we go about changing and improving.”

“Restructuring is a process, not a product. An organization (school district or school) never reaches the final state of being restructured. The process is dynamic.”

Restructuring is the process of institutionalizing essential new beliefs and values in the school mission, structure, and process. “              

[ Developing Leaders for Restructuring Schools: New Habits of Mind and Heart, the Office Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), U.S. Dept. of Education, August 1991]

       There is no doubt that the cornerstones of our schools were to be completely transformed by the ‘intellectual community’ and the New Habits of Mind and Heart report, funded by taxpaying Americans, schooled future administrators towards that never- ending process. In all, 57 LEAD centers partnered to form the National LEADership Network to “recreate schools as learning communities” wherein LEAD partners enter the local educational scene,

      “The ends of restructuring are not necessarily given, nor are the means always evident. The discovery of suitable ends and the application of appropriate means are often simultaneous puzzles the restructuring leader solves in collaboration with colleagues and (the) community”.    

           By 1991, the LEAD networkers and their collaborators held the vision on a puzzle box, as they passed puzzle pieces needed to be put into practice, namely stretching the schools into the community, and the philosophical and teaching theories formulated in ivory towers and in psychology departments. Restructuring efforts were then legitimized and eventually were trickled down to the local districts. What is coined as ‘piecemeal engineering’ in social development was evidently too retarded for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

     “However, minor adjustments will not accomplish the required transformation. The problem is structural and will not be solved by episodic and piecemeal tinkering.”  (pg. 8, ibid)

     “The rapidly changing global society and economy require a very different worker and citizen than the schools are now graduating” (pg. 7)      

     The ‘dynamic process’ of restructuring was accelerated. Pieces of the puzzle had been carefully doled out during the interim to state-wide education departments, civic organizations and universities. It needed local leadership to embed Lifelong Learning designs into our schools. As early as 1989, Oregon sent 37 Model Design Teams into our counties with a mission to “attack high priority needs in any manner and at any level that makes sense to them.”(pg. 9, 1994 Status Report on Special Education and Student Services in Oregon.)

     Details of the Oregon Transition Systems Change Project covered a Youth Transition  and Early Intervention Programs, health services, talented and gifted support, a Child Development Specialist Program, homeschooling, and national teacher education, etc. Reading the table of contents alone clearly affirms that all children are special in Oregon. The report noted Oregon’s commitment to the National Goals set forth in Goals 2000. The State Board of Education, herein, pointed out –

“An increasing percentage of our future work force will come from those population groups currently least likely to succeed academically within the existing educational system.” (pg. 7)

      On this statement alone resides an unconscionable forfeit of a prosperous future for most children: a workforce of serfs perhaps, or service workers, or low pay green jobbers maybe? Children in Oregon are now learning ‘socially useful work’^‘ in Oregon City’s Service Learning Charter School – clearing forest slash, cleaning littered beaches and streams. Oregon held one of the nine state seats in setting the principles of restructuring our schools in the above mentioned New Habits of Mind and Heart report.

The OERI office generously refers to Theordore Sizer’s book, Horace’s Compromise, which is known conventionally now as School-to-Work. Administrators are to become “reflective practitioners . . . to cultivate individual and communitarian virtues of Western society.” (pg. 44). Discussion of communitarian ways is best covered in a separate article, however, half the discussion would be Engels ‘love of work’ and the systemization through the collective. In the past, labor trends were mainly determined academic achievement, career interests, affordability and the job market. Polytechnic systems plan labor needs in advance, dependent on what business and industry’s needs are – and if a greater percentage of our future jobs can be filled with those students who are “less likely to succeed today” they will have least have New Habits of Mind and Heart for the future. https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/TeachersGuide/oeri.html