Education Reform: The Rhetoric, The Reality

Outcome-based education, we are told, will raise the standards, make education relevant, require that children demonstrate what they know and can do. Outcome-based education will produce life-long learners (which is an oxymoron in itself as everyone is a life-long learner unless brain dead). Outcome-based education will make every child a winner. And so on.

That is the rhetoric. But what is the reality? Parents look at the new education system and wonder how it is going to produce children who are more literate "than the old education system." First, let us establish that "the old education system" ended in the early 60's. The education system under which children have been educated for the past thirty years can not, under definition, be called "the old education system" — the Traditional education system or Traditional paradigm. Under the Traditional paradigm, education was the acquisition of knowledge with the child being challenged to use the scope of that knowledge to formulate a reasoned conclusion — to cultivate and discipline the mind. This has not been the goal of schools for thirty years — which has been the cause of the decline in education and the increase in juvenile crime.

The situation has been created bringing about the frustration needed to make people willing to let down their guard and take a chance on the future. This is the Hegelian Principle — creating the crisis, and opposition to the crisis, to effect the wanted solution — the fastest and most effective way to change a society without revolution. Creating the crisis and opposition to the crisis has been the aim of the education system of the past thirty years.

Outcome-based education has another name — progressive education. Socialist John Dewey is the "father of progressive education" in America. John Dewey stated that literacy was the greatest obstacle to socialism. Is it any wonder that he was an early advocate of whole language instruction? Progressive education is for the express purpose of "socializing the child" — producing the cooperative, collaborative, team player willing to work for minimal compensation for the good of the collective whole — in final analogy, the State. This is the very essence of socialism.

Under outcome-based education, knowledge is incorporated as it is used and applied in addressing social or life related-issues taught in the classroom in the context of unit themes. This is the basis of the less is more theory — teaching less but teaching it as it is used and applied. While reformers claim they are teaching children how to think, they are actually only teaching children what to think.

The new school runs on feelings. Logic is out. It is not important what the child knows, just how the child feels about a particular social issue like religion, prejudice, discrimination, gender equity, life styles, the environment, homelessness, welfare, poverty, violence, crime, disease, etc, or life-related issues such as work, family, economics…

Outcome-based education is a process expressly intended to produce children whose belief system has been altered (or modified) so they can only think in one way. According to H Lynn Erickson in her book Stirring the Head, Heart, and Soul; Redefining Curriculum and Instruction, in the process of Socratic thinking (critical thinking/problem solving/decision making), the teacher is to lead the student, inductively, to the wanted conclusion — to the wanted way of thinking, to the wanted outcome. This is echoed by David Conley in his book Roadmap to Restructuring. So much for individuality. But then, the "socialized" child is part of the collective, the community, experiencing Oneness of Mind (the theory of dialectical materialism — Karl Marx). Outcome-based education is operant conditioning — the Skinnerian Rat Box, employing Third Force psychology and practices, effecting behavior modification.

If a child does not demonstrate the wanted outcome, the child will be remediated until he/she does. This is done through creating cognitive dissonance in the child. Cognitive dissonance is when conflict is created between what the child knows (cognitive) and what the child believes (affective) to effect a change in how the child acts/behaves (psychomotor). This is done through exercises such as fairytale trials — like putting Hansel and Gretel on trial for murdering the witch. Fairytales are intended to impart a standard of right and wrong. By putting the good (Hansel and Gretel) on trial for "murdering" the evil (the witch), conflict is created between what the child knows (right and wrong) and what the child believes (the witch is evil). Children exit the fairytale trial believing that Hansel and Gretel were evil, the witch good; their belief system altered to believe that right and wrong are a matter of perception — no absolutes. They have just achieved higher order thinking skills.

Children are being systematically taught in drug/alcohol, sex education, and conflict resolution programs (those based on Glasser) that there is no right and wrong, just bad choices. It's a bad choice to kill someone just like it's a bad choice to buy a cheap suit. As well, those conflict resolution programs based on Glasser teach that competition is bad, grades are bad, that children should look to their peers for their attitudes, values, and beliefs (as opposed to the tribal truths of their elders, values clarification), and so on. One curriculum states that conflict resolution "is not about right and wrong but about unifying perceptions." Schools are rife with values clarification, cognitive dissonance, operant conditioning, and sensitivity training. And parents blame themselves when their children go astray!!! When children are taught in the DARE program that taking Daddy's handgun to school is a "possible choice" and asked "what good things could happen," can we wonder at guns showing up at school and being turned on teachers and other students?

Parents are told that this new education system is a "return to the basics". One need ask, "how do they define 'basics'?" In document after document, the "basics" are defined as anything but academic. In High Skills, High Wages, put out by the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, the "basics" are defined as "teamwork, critical thinking, making decisions, communication, adapting to change and understanding whole systems." Core knowledge seems to be missing!!!

Parents are told that this new education system will raise the standards – we will have world class standards. America had the best education system in the world. That's why there were/are more foreigners found on American campuses then there are American's found on foreign campuses. No other country is our equal. For us to move to world class standards means that we must lower our standards, not raise them.

Parents are told that this new education system will produce world class workers of the 21st century. World class like the world class standards? Note the word "workers." Only in socialist/communist countries are people referred to as workers. In America, people are referred to as employees. Quite obviously, with education reform, we are talking about a socialist society in America.

Parents are told how this new education system will provide school-to-work transition. This will occur after the child has demonstrated that he has mastered the wanted process — the wanted attitudes, values, and beliefs — the wanted behaviors, with a few foundational skills thrown in. This will occur at or about the age of sixteen. For the next two years, the child will be put on a college pathway or a school-to-work pathway. There are not too many children who, at the age of sixteen, know what they want to do when they get out of school. The reality of this is that children will be tracked into jobs just like they do in socialist countries; low paying jobs at that. According to Apple and Beane (ASCD, 1995) in Democratic Schools,

despite political and educational rhetoric to the contrary, most economic forecasts show that a large proportion of the jobs the modern economy is creating are low-skilled, part-time, and poorly paid.

With NAFTA and GATT taking high paying jobs out of this country and those jobs being created being low paying, America can look forward to the third world living conditions that is the backlash of too many people, not enough jobs. Of course, with an education system more interested in "socializing the child" then cultivating and disciplining the mind of the child, theoretically children will be quite happy with low paying jobs. Theory, however, is not reality. The reality is that illiteracy breeds violence and the criminal element. This is a prescription for disaster. The same conditions are being fostered in this country that predicated Hitler Germany.

School districts are moving to site-based management, an exercise in "participatory democracy" in a "democratic society." Moving authority to site-based councils, a body appointed to represent the people but which is not accountable to the people, removes accountability from the elected school board. A "democratic society" holds to the tenets of socialism — representation by appointment.

In the new school, children will have ready access to social services. Suzie has been taught that promiscuity is a matter of choice and Suzie ends up pregnant. She goes to the counselor instead of Mom and Dad because "Mom and Dad just wouldn't understand," and the counselor arranges for Suzie to have an abortion. The very essence of it takes a whole village to raise a child. No longer will it be that one realizes that Suzie has a Mom and Dad and we ask Mom and Dad first. Now society is the primary stakeholder in the "welfare of the child" and Mom and Dad mere silent partners in the education and upbringing of the "human capital" they produced. No need to ask Mom and Dad's permission, no need that they even know that Suzie was pregnant. If the school deems that Suzie needs glasses, glasses will be provided; if the school deems that Suzie needs dental work or a hearing aid, those will be provided too, not to mention mental health services if the school deems that Suzie needs those too — all will be provided Suzie on campus if the school deems she needs them. What the school deems Suzie doesn't need, Suzie won't get unless Mom and Dad can provide it out of their low-paying jobs.

All information relevant to Suzie (and Mom and Dad, too) will be kept in a computer bank and transmitted to state and federal computer banks where it will be accessible to employers. This includes all demographic information on Suzie and her family, information relative to assessments of Suzie, certificate of mastery, school to work, employment, mental, physical, and dental health records, and so on. This will be a record from birth to death — from womb to tomb.

Every child will, as a requirement to receive their Certificate of Mastery, be required to perform so many hours of "community service" to help them realize they are part of the "community," part of the "collective;" to get them used to doing for "community;" to help them learn empathy and understanding for the collective of man.

Beyond the rhetoric to the reality, education reform is truly the Trojan Horse. Wrapped in fancy phrases and parent friendly jargon, it is being fed to parents as the "ultimate solution." Parents, not realizing that all the jargon doesn't mean what they think it does, and being frustrated with an education system that wasn't educating children, are swallowing the rhetoric hook, line and sinker; and, in the process, are being led right down the road to socialism.

Will parents and public wake up to this great deception before it is too late to turn back? We will only know in retrospect.

© March 1996; Lynn M Stuter

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