Books like The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America: A Chronological Paper Trail

I read (or started to read) the Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt because a homeschooling association emailed me the free pdf (which is available on the interwebs). I gotta stop reading these books that homeschoolers love. It’s like they are trying to talk me out of homeschooling.I decided to read this one only because I thought she couldn’t really mean that the decline of America’s education system was deliberate. That would be crazy, right? Well, it is crazy. It is chalk full of crazy.My first clue that I probably wasn’t going to finish this book was in the foreward: “American social engineers have systematically gone about destroying the intellect of millions of American children for the purpose of leading the American people into a socialist world government controlled by behavioral and social scientist.” Really? If only this could be satirical, that sentence would be okay. But since it was intentional, it is just sad.And then in her preface, the author goes on and on about the socialist/fascist agenda, and their intentions to create a global workforce… blah, blah, blah. It is basically comes off as the ramblings of an incredibly paranoid person. I’m not saying that Iserbyt is that person, just that it this book doesn’t rule that out.The worst part about this book, and the reason that I didn’t finish, is that it actually contains more fiction than it does fact. Each chapter takes on a decade of “history” where she lists her evidence. It is almost completely uncited (there is a whole lot of “this person said blah, blah, blah” without any proof that anyone said anything like it), and what is cited is often clearly taken out of context. This kind of “source material” just makes me angry. I won’t go so far as to say its all a bunch of lies, because I think she believes the case she is making. But, there is no proof any of it is true.Look, I think there is plenty wrong with the public school system in America. That is the reason I’m considering homeschooling my children. But this? This conspiracy business just makes homeschoolers look like a bunch of wackadoodles. Other people have said this was a terrifying read because of what it revealed. The only scary thing about this book, to me, is that there are people who believe it.Reading With My Eyes Shut