the blumenfeld education letter march_1993

8/7/2019 The Blumenfeld Education Letter March_1993

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The BlurnenfeldEducation LetterVol 8 No 3 (Letter # 79) '''My People Are Destroyed For lack Of Knowledge" HOSEA 4:6 Ma rc h 1 993 : . 1 I _ : . 1 I

Thepurpose of this newsletter isto provide knowledge for parents and educators who want to save the children of Americafrom the destructive forces that endanger them. OUf children in the public schools are at grave riskin 4 ways; academically,

spiritually, morally, and physically - and only a well-informed public will be able to reduce these risks."Without vision, the people perish."

Outc ome Based Educ a tiono r

H ow to Turn : a D ino s aur into an O c to pusIn some of our past writings we havecalled public education a "sick dinosaur"being kept alive by a life-support systemknown as the education establishment. Thelatter, through considerable political power,has managed to keep this ailing, obsolete,nineteenth-century anachronism alive be-cause so many careers not only depend on itbut must continue to use it as their means towield power over society. We have pre-dicted the demise of this dinosaur because,like its extinct ances tor, public education has

a huge body, a voracious appetite, and a tinybrain. And the establishment knows this.And so, they have worked out a newplan, not merely for survival, but for a majorenhancement of their power which, if suc-cessful, will transform the doomed dinosaurinto a huge octopus with tentacles so large,so blood-sucking, that it will embrace theentire American people. The plan is called"Outcome Based Education" or nBE forshort. Itcan also be described as the last nailin the coffin of traditional education, not thatthere is much of it left by now.The most radical feature of aBE is that it

does away with the traditional requirementsfor graduation based on the Carnegie units.Under theCarnegie units, you were required,for example, to take 4 years of English, 2years of American history, 3 years of math,etc. Each unit was worth a number of credits,and when you obtained the necessary cred-its you were eligible for graduation with adiploma attesting to the fact that you hadcovered all of these subjects successfully.The success of the system was based onthe effective teaching of these subjects bycompetent teachers who knew what theywere doing, with the students passing anumber oftests to verify that they had learnedwhatever it was they were supposed to learn.All of us who went through the systemremember studying, or cramming, for themidterms or finals. You hoped to get an /IA"or a "B plus", or a "B." Ifyou got a "C' youpassed. Ifyou got a "0" or an "F," you wererequired to do some sort ofmakeup or repeatthe class.All in all, the system, with its compul-sory attendance laws requiring children toattend school from the age of 6 to 16 or 18,

The Blumenfeld Education Letter is published monthly. Sources of products and services described are not necessarily endorsedby this publication. They are intended to provide our readers with information on a rapidly expanding field ofeducation~l activity.Permission to quote isgranted provided proper credit isgiven. Original materialis copyrighted by The Blumenfeld Education Letter.Subscription Rate: 1 year $36.00. Address: Post Office Box 45161, Boise, Idaho 83711. Phone (208) 343-3790.


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Education Letter" Pg. 2" March 1993

seemed to work fairly well as long as theschools taught the subjects properly. Butwhen the schools started teaching look-sayin reading, and students began having seri-ous reading problems, the system began tobreak down. Itbecame impossible to expectthe ever-increasing number of nonreaders todo the kind of reading required to pass themore difficult subjects in the higher grades.The result was social promotion, grade infla-tion, and a general deterioration of academicstandards.What we have learned from all of this isthat the traditional system cannot work if itsacademic heart has been cut out and re-placed by teachers pretending to teach andstudents pretending to learn. In fact, it isnow quite possible to get through twelveyears of public schooling and emerge at theend of the process knowing virtually noth-ing. That's why there's been so much publicclamor for back-to-basics reform in the last30 years. But so far" there hasn't been anyreal improvement in the system" mainlybecause the educators don't want to get backto basics.And so the educators have had to comeup with a new idea to appease the public, anidea, however, that permits the educators tokeep their progressive revolution in ed uca-tion intact while making sweeping changes.The idea is: "Let's change the system. Let'sget rid of the whole traditional system andstart afresh."And what exactly is to replace the oldsystem? Outcome based education. I founda very good description of the new OBEprogram in a project manual which wasgiven to me during a recent trip to NorthCarolina" where the Gaston County schoolsare implementing an aBE program calledOdyssey. The program document reads:

The Odyssey Project describes a formal systemof basic schooling for students ages 3 to 18 with adevelopmental prenatal to age 3 component. The

project will use an outcome-based education modelthat focuses on the knowledge, skill, and attitudesthat students should possess when they graduatefrom Odyssey learning centers.

So first we learn that aBE begins withthe prenatal child and not only focuses onknowledge and skill, but also on attitudes.Will new compulsory attendance laws berequired to include prenatal children? Sincethe educators have so badly botched upteaching children from 5 to 18, what makesthem think they can do better with infantsfrom 0 to 5? And what kind of attitudes dothe educators think the students ought tohave when they leave the "learning center"?Humanistic ones" no doubt. The summarycontinues:

Five basic exit outcomes will provide the focusfor the instructional program proposed by the proj-ect: (1) Communicator; (2) Collaborator; (3) CreativeProducer; (4) Critical Thinker; (5) Concerned andConfident Citizen.Odyssey schools will subscribe to the theory ofmultiple intelligences and will seek to develop eachstudent's unique talents ....Performance outcomes set for each level ofOdyssey schooling will include substantive assess-ment of each student's mastery of English, socialstudies (including geography), science, and mathe-matics objectives .... Each Odyssey student will studya second language, music, art, drama, and kinesthet-ics at each level of schooling. The computer will beused as a basic tool for instruction and managementin all the disciplines. The curriculum will emphasizecritical thinking and problem solving, and studentswill examine relevant ethical issues and learn how tomake sound choices. In all curriculum areas anemphasis will be placed on understanding globalissues.

Notice that "critical thinking" is a veryimportant component in Outcome BasedEducation, not logical thinking, or clear think-ing, but critical thinking. Critical thinkingwas the primary method the philosophers ofthe Enlightenment used to destroy faith inChristianity in eighteenth-century Europe.Peter Gay, in an introduction to his anthol-

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Education Letter, Pg. 3, March 1993

ogy of Enlightenment writings, in which heused the French word "philosophe" to rep-resent the critically minded Enlightenmentphilosopher, writes:What united. [the philosophers] was the com-

mon experience of shedding their inheri ted.Christianbeliefs with the aid of classical philosophers and forthe sake of a modem philosophy .... And what unitedthe philosophes above all was confidence in the criti-cal method.Here we have reached the core of the eight-eenth-century Enlightenment as a movement. Thephilosophes of all countries and all persuasi.ons werelyrical in their single-minded praise of criticism ....For the philosophes, criticism ... was an act ofaggression. The Christian centuries through whichWestern civilization had passed, and the Christianfaith in whose grip the civilization still found itself,had erected protective walls around the most impor-tant areas of human activity, notably religion, poli-tics, and sexual morality. Now criticism impartiallyclaimed the right to criticize everything .... "Every-thing must be examined," Diderot wrote in the Ency-clopedia, "everything must be shaken up, withoutexception and without circumspection." (p. 18)The philosophes' passion for criticism h a s ledhistorians to charge them with a passion for destruc-tion, with equating negative criticism with good think-ing .... But the philosophes would have found thecharge incomprehensible .... The philosophes weredestructive because they thought one must clear theground before one can build; one cannot construct thecity of man under fire from the enemy, on rubbish, oron a swamp. The world that religion had shaped forso long was-in the philosophes' language-prey tothe wild beasts of fanaticism and enfeebled by thepoisonous fruits of the tree of superstition.

And so, to the Enlightenment philoso-phers, Christianity was nothing but super-stition which had to be wiped away by unre-lenting criticism so that a new atheist-hu-manist civilization could be buil t. The poll ti-cal results in Europe were the French Revo-lution with its reign of terror, the rise ofsocialism, Nazism, and Communism, twoworld wars, concentration camps, gulags,slave labor, and millions of corpses.The Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, who wasimprisoned for 14 years in Europe for his

outspoken views against communism, wrotea remarkable book, Marx & Satan (Cross-ways Books, 1986), in which he convincinglyshows the close relationship between Marx-ism and Satanism. On page 80, he writes:Just as Satan came to Jesus with Bible verses, soMarx used texts of Scripture, though with muchdistortion.Volume 2of T he W orks o f M arx an d E ng els openswith Jesus' words to His disciples (John 6:63), asquoted. by Marx in his book The Ho ly F am il y: "It is the

spirit which gives life." Then we read:Criticism [his criticism of aUthat exists I so loved themasses that it sent its only begotten son [i.e., Marxl, thatwhosoever believes in him should not perish but have a lifeofcriticism. Criticism became masses and lived among us,

and we saw its glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father.Criticism did not consider itrobbery to be equal with God,but made itself of no reputation, taking the fonn of abookbinder, and humbled itself up to nonsense-yes, criti-cal nonsense in foreign languages.

Those knowledgeable in Scripture will recog-nize thisasa parody ofBiblical verses (John 3:16;1:14;Philippians 2:6-8). Here again, Marx declares his ownworks to be "nonsense," as well as "swinish books."

And so, critical thinking has been at thecore of anti-Christian philosophy amongsocialists and Marxists. For example, onefinds the theme of critical thinking central inthe writings of Paulo Freire, the BrazilianMarxist educator-philosopher and exponentofLiberation Theology. His works are widelyread and admired by American radicaleducators. Radical professor Henry A. Gir-oux writes in his introduction to Freire'sbook, The Politics o f Educa tion (Bergin &Garvey, 1985):Central to Freire's politics and pedagogy is aphilosophical vision of a liberated. humanity. Thenature of this vision is rooted. in a respect for life andthe acknowledgment that the hope and vision of thefuture that inspire it are not meant to provide conso-lation for the oppressed as much as to promote ongo-ing forms of critique and a struggle against objectiveforces of oppression. By combining the dynamics ofcritique and collective struggle with a philosophy ofhope, Freire has created a language of possibility thatis rooted in what he calls a permanent prophetic

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Education Letter, Pg. 4, March 1993 ---

vision.Freire's book was reviewed by the Har-

va rd E du ca tio na l R evie w which commented:The Po li ti cs o f Education contributes to a radicalformulation of pedagogy through its revitalization oflanguage, utopianism, and revolutionary message.

...Freire not only heightens our awareness but invitesus to engage in the emancipatory process broughtabout by critique. His politics puts history back intoour hands. Beyond the power of the alphabet is thepower of knowledge and social action. This bookenlarges our vision with each reading, until the mean-ings become our own.

The reviewer in Contempo ra ry S oc io lo gywrote:

The Politics of Education is an affirmation ofFreire's prodigiously activist approach to populareducation and its capacity for securing transforma-tion change.

Paulo Freire himself writes: "There is noway to transformation; transformation is theway." And there is no greater transforma-tion taking place in American educationtoday than Outcome Based Education wherethe emphasis is on "critical thinking."OBE also radically changes the schoolcalendar. According to the project docu-ment:

All learning centers [schools] will have corn-mon characteristics. All will operate on a year-roundschedule. Four terms of ten-weeks each will comprisethe learning year. Learners will attend each of thefour terms for a total of 200 days each year. At the endof each term, a three-week mini-term will be pro-vided. Learners who accomplish all performanceoutcomes during the regular ten-week term mayattend enrichment or extension sessions or may takeleave time from their schooling. Learners who do notaccomplish all performance outcomes will attend afive to seven day mini-term that extends their learn-ing time.

Nowhere in the document are we givenmuch of a hint as to what the "performance

outcomes" are to be. The crucial question inall of this is: "What will the children betaught?" They say that the learners will berequired to master English, social studies,geography, science and mathematics. Theytell us that the DBE curriculum will conformwithintemational curriculum standards. Butthat still doesn't tell us what the contents ofthese courses will be. How will they teachreading: by whole language or intensivephonics? How will they teach writing: printfirst or cursive first? How will they teachspelling: invented spelling or correct spell-ing? How will they teach arithmetic: throughconcepts, calculators, and problem solvingor memorization and practice first? Whatwill they teach in social studies? That collec-tivism is superior to individualism? Thatsocialized medicine is better than privatemedicine? That abortion is a woman's rightand that the fetus is just a blob of proto-plasm? That the Enlightenment was moreimportant than the Reformation?And what will they teach in science?That evolution is truth and that creationismis based on myth and superstition? Andwhat happens if your performance outcomeis not what the educators want? Will youhave to proclaim evolution as truth beforeyou can pass? These are questions that par-ents must ask before they put their childrenunder OBE control.We are also told that grade levels are tobe replaced by anew system. Thedocumentstates:

In the five levels of schooling proposed by TheOdyssey Project, traditional designations of gradelevels will not be used, rather a Greek letter willdesignate an age range for learners who attend aparticular center. "Alpha" will designate the prefer-mal component of schooling for children ages 0 ~3;"Beta" will be the center for learners ages 3 ~ 6;"Gamma" for learners ages 7- 10; "Delta" for learnersages 11-14; and "Odyssey" for learners ages 15 -18.At all levels movement in and out of learning cadreswill be determined by accomplishment of perform-ance outcomes not by age, grade levels, or time frames.

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Note that OBE takes charge of yourchild's education from birth onward! Thatmeans the psycho-educators must get intoyour home even before the child is born.Does that mean that you will have to registerwith the government I I I earning center" whenyou become pregnant? The document states:Centers will contract with many different agen-cies to provide health care, social services, well nessand other essential support programs. Many of theagencies will be housed at the centers. This inter-

agency arrangement will provide holistic supportservices to learners and their families.

In other words, when you enroll yourchild in school you will actually be enrollingyour entire family. A "holistic" approach isa total approach. The psycho-educators willwant to know everything about YOllrchildand your family. The document spells itoutquite clearly:

Family involvement with their child's school-ing will be a primary goal of The Odyssey Project.Family members will provide service hours at eachOdyssey center and will attend a minimum numberof progress conferences with center professionalseach year their child attends the center.

Nor will the OBE program leave youalone after you "graduate." The ed.ucatorsintend to help you develop "life-long leisureactivities." The document states:IfOdyssey is developing individuals who canbalance themselves spiritually, intellectu.ally andphysically, then life-long leisure activities have to be

seen as a basic part of public schooling.

Note the psycho-educators' interest inthe learner's spiri tual well being. That's partof the holistic concept of education. Accord-ing to Ron Miller, who publishes the Holis t icEd uc a ti on Re vi ew :Holistic education seeks to nurture the develop-ment of the whole person. It is not enough to educatefor academic achievement and vocational skills alone;

the human personality is an integrated complex of in-tellectual, physical, social, moral, emotional, andspiritual possibilities. All of these must be taken intoaccount in the education of children ....Holistic education isa spiritual world view ratherthan a materialist one. It is abelief in, and a reverencefor, a self-directing life force that lies beyond ourrational, intellectual understanding. Itseeks to sup-port and nourish the natural unfolding of the humansoul within the lives of individuals .... The holisticperspective is an inclusive, phenomenological, eco-logical, global perspective that seeks to encompass allaspects of human experience ....[Hlolistic education is a radical break from tra-ditional ways ofunderstanding human development.. .. [T[he holistic approach represents a new para-digm. In essence, it is the educational approach of anew culture-an emerging postindustrial, post-tech-nocratic civilization, inwhich the whole human beingmay yet be nurtured. (Who le L a ng ua g C a ta lo g, p. 427)

In short, holistic education is the newhumane totalitarianism in which the psy-cho-educators involve themselves in thechild's intellectual, physical, social, moral,emotional and spiritual life. Obviously, allof this is quite revolutionary and representsa "new paradigm." According to Webster' sN ew W o rld D ic tio nary (Simon & Schuster,1988), a paradigm is "a pattern, example, ormodel; an overall concept accepted by mostpeople in an intellectual community, as ascience, because of its effectiveness in ex-plaining a complex process, idea, or set ofdata." The Odyssey document states:

The Odyssey Project not only breaks the mold oftraditional schooling. but it also breaks the mold oftraditional thinking about school governance.

A program as radical as this will requirethe considerable retraining of teachers whowill become known as "facilitators." Thedocument states:

The Odyssey Project requires teacher trainingprograms that are solution-centered, with theory andpractice integrated through classroom application.The training will be a joint effort ofuni versity instruc-tors, school unit specialists, and consultants from

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sign team, a 9-member support team, and aproject director. The description of the teamsin the project document reads like some-thing out of Star Trek:The support team is responsible for the plan-

ning, implementation and dissemination of the proj-ect during Phases I, II and III, and has been dividedinto three teams: Archimedes, Diogenes and Epsilon.Team Archimedes derives its name from the Greekscientist, mathematician and inventor, who is cred-ited for saying: "Give me a place to stand and a leverlong enough and I will move the earth." TeamArchimedes is responsible for project operations andprovides technological, research and communicationssupport services. Team Diogenes, named for theGreek cynic who was said to have carried around alantern looking for truth, is the direct link between theschool system and Odyssey. The team is responsiblefor curriculum and instruction development andtraining for both Odyssey team members and otherpersonnel from Gaston County schools. Team Epsi-lon was so named because it represents the missingGreek letter in Odyssey's five levels of bask school-ing. The team serves as the critical link in the organi-zation, providing the administrative and clericalsupport for the effective functioning of the OdysseyProject.The Odyssey Project team members are vision-aries who believe that a "New Generation of Ameri-can Schools" must be viewed, not as a final destina-tion, but as the beginning of a life-long pursuit forever-evolving standards of excellence. Their vision isto create a prototype of a world class system of basicpublic schooling that prepares America's children forlife-long learning in the global community of thefuture.

After reading that, you would expectthese "visionaries" to have pointed ears andwear space-cadet uniforms and cany laser-beam guns. This wholeOBE Odyssey plan isabout as divorced from reali ty as a picnic onMars. And this is being sold with a straightface to the American people who are ex-pected to believe that this absurd plan is thebest thing that's come down the pike sincesliced bread. Even the legislators of NorthCarolina bought the whole shooting matchwithout so much as asking the public what itthought of the idea. House Bill 1340 of the

1991 session reads:The General Assembly believes that all childrencan learn. Itisthe intent of the General Assembly thatthe mission of the public school community is tochallenge with high expectations each child to learn,to achieve, and to fulfill his or her potential. With thatmission as its guide, the State Board of Educationshall develop and implement an outcome-basededucation program. The State Board of Educationshall select four sites to participate in the program forfive fiscal years beginning with the 1992-93 fiscal

year. That's the same Board of Education thathas mandated the teaching of whole lan-guage in the primary schools which willproduce functional illiteracy on a scale hith-erto unimagined. But that's all part of thedumbing down process so that the elite spacecadets with their Greek letter names canbrainwash the Bible believing children ofNorth Carolina. It reminds me of a bookwritten by a Russian revolutionary in 1870entitled The Catechism of the Revolutionist.The author's plan smacks of what our psy-cho-educators are doing to the Americanpeople. He wrote:

Mankind must be divided into two unequalparts. One tenth receives personal liberty and unlim-ited rights over the other nine tenths. The latter mustlose their personality and become a kind of herd.

And that's what the public schools areproducing, a kind of illiterate herd that willbe ruled over by a pagan-humanist universi-tarian elite. Outcome-Based Education isjust the latest phase in the long-range plan todestroy Christianity in America by takingfull control of the children and the family. Itis presently in various stages of adoptionthroughout the United States. The entireeducation establishment seems to have beenmobilized to push this scheme through byhook or by crook. But opposition by parentsis growing, and there is more than enoughcompelling reason to see to it that the wholeidiotic scheme is derailed.

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Education Letter, Pg. 8 , March 1993

Student K i lls Se lfin Schoo l Ca feteria

Pandemonium erupted at Gloucester(Mass.) High School 2/26/93 as hundreds ofpanic-stricken students streamed out of thecafeteria after a student put a gun to his headand fatally shot himself. The 1S-year-oldsophomore died that night at MassachusettsGeneral Hospital.Itwas not known why the boy tried tokill himself and why he had the.22 calibergun. Police said the boy had asked a numberof friends to join him in the cafeteria becausehe wanted to make "an announcement."Police said the student had been sittingat a table bantering with about eight friendsduring the last of the school's three lunchperiods. ''They were joking around the waythey usually do, and he reached into hisknapsack and pulled out a gun," said Char-les Symonds, the school's principal.School Superintendent William J.Learysaid: "One of the students he was sitting withsaid he thought the gun was a toy. It wasself-inflicted, but what the motivation is, I

don't think anybody can say right now."After the shooting, school administra-tors set up counseling sessions with dis-traught students while making plans to helpthem cope with the tragedy over the week-end, Symonds said. Area psychologists havealso volunteered their services for the stu-dents. ( Bo sto n G lo be , 2/27/93)

Student Fa ta lly S tabbedIn N ew Y ork S cho olA IS-year-old student fatally stabbed aclassroom rival at a Manhattan junior highschool 2/24/93 after a long feud betweenthem flared into a deadly quarrel over a pairof sunglasses, authorities said. The killing

occurred between classes in a hallwaycrowded with students and teachers. Itwasthe second fatal stabbing inside a publicschool this year.The victim, 1S-year-old Angel Jimenez,and his attacker were both emotionallyhandicapped special education students atJunior High School2S, on Stanton Street, andschool officials and students said there hadbeen a series of altercations between theyouths.The superintendent of the school dis-trict said the killing was a symptom of theshortcomings of the city's special educationsystem. He noted that the school' s 30 specialeducation students were supervised by atleast 12staff professionals, a staff-to-studentratio that, in awell-coordinated system, oughtto have been sufficient to prevent a murder.The police arrested John Rodriguez, astudent at the school, and charged him withsecond-degree murder and criminal posses-sion of a weapon. The stabbing occurred ina second-floor hallway. According to wit-nesses, John Rodriguez, a slender youth,drew the 4-inch blade from his pants pocketafter Jimenez, a stockier teen-ager, corneredhim against a wall and began to punch himin a dispute over the ownership of a pair ofsunglasses. Rodriguez hid the knife behindhis leg, then thrust it forward into the vic-tim's chest.Junior High School 25 ranked near thebottom on last year's reading tests, with only24 percent of its students reading at or neargrade level."Onekid is dead, and another will spendhis life on Riker's Island. This is how oursystem isn't working," said the superinten-dent. "We have to ask ourselves, 'Do wehave the right structure?'" (New York Times,2/25/93)Comment: Why not try Outcome-BasedEducation?

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the blumenfeld education letter march_1993

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