Education

| Progressive or Humanist Paradigm | Traditional or Christian Paradigm |

Progressive or Humanist Paradigm

I would think the brand new American school would be open year round - open from 6am until 6pm. A second characterization might be that these schools would serve children from age three months to eighteen years of age. A shocking thought to you - but if you were to do an inventory of every baby in your community and think about the needs of those babies for the next four or five years you might see that those needs might not be served in any way - they have to be served in some way - and maybe around the school. Or if you study a little more you might go back to think the school might need to serve the pregnant mother of the baby in terms of pre-natal care.

— Lamar Alexander, US Sectary of Education under President George H. W. Bush (the father), and later US Senator

Choice: If standards, tests and report cards tell parents and voters how their schools are doing, choice gives them the leverage to act. Such choices should include all schools that serve the public and are accountable to public authority, regardless of who runs them. New incentives will be provided to states and localities to adopt comprehensive choice policies, and the largest federal school aid program (Chapter 1) will be revised to ensure that federal dollars follow the child, to whatever extent state and local policies permit.

— America 2000: An Education Strategy Sourcebook; page 22

Q. Will choice apply to private schools as well as public? Will it apply to religiously affiliated schools?

A. It will apply to all schools except where the courts find a constitutional bar. The power of choice is in the parents' leverage both to change schools and to make change in the schools. The definition of "public school" should be broadened to include any school that serves the public and is held accountable by a public authority.

— America 2000: An Education Strategy Sourcebook; page 41

Q. What do you say to those who argue that school choice mainly benefits the well-to-do and the white?

A. Rich parents, white and non-white, already have school choice. They can move, or pay for private schooling. The biggest beneficiaries for new choice policies will be those who now have no alternatives. With choice they can find a better school for their children or use that leverage to improve the school their children now attend.

— America 2000: An Education Strategy Sourcebook; page 41

... despite political and education 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. (Apple 1989).

— Michael Apple and James Beane; "Lessons from Democratic Schools;" Democratic Schools; 1995

What we are classifying is the intended behavior of students—the ways in which individuals are to act, think, or feel as the result of participating in some unit of instruction.

— Benjamin Bloom, editor; Taxonomy of Educational Objectives; Book 1: Cognitive Domain; New York: Longman; 1956.

... a large part of what we call "good teaching" is the teacher's ability to attain affective objectives through challenging the students' fixed beliefs and getting them to discuss issues.

... our concern is to indicate two things: (a) the generalization of this control to so much of the individual's behavior that he is described and characterized as a person by these pervasive controlling tendencies, and (b) the integration of these beliefs, ideas, and attitudes into a total philosophy or world view.

— Benjamin Bloom, David Krathwohl and Bertram B Masia; Taxonomy of Educational Objectives; Book 2: Affective Domain; New York: Longman; 1964.

A school district is an ecological system. Its parts are interconnected and interdependent. Systems theory makes it very clear that alterations of changes in one part of the system will have reciprocal impact on the balance of the total system.

— John Champlin; ODDM: Background and Foundation; Fountain Hills, Arizona: National Center for Outcome-Based Education; brief paper.

This community effort should be designed both to reeducate and to renorm parents and the general public ... Think of renorming the community the same way you conduct similar efforts in the school environment. Don't challenge the community, co-opt them.

— John Champlin; "Four Phases in Creating and Managing an Outcome-Based Program"; Outcomes; 1983.

Our guiding principle in the design of a choice system is this: public authority must be put to use in creating a system that is almost entirely beyond the reach of public authority.

— John Chubb and Terry Moe; Politics, Markets and America's Schools, p 218

But in a broad survey of employment needs across America, we found little evidence of a far-reaching desire for a more educated workforce.

— Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, National Center on Education and the Economy; America's Choice: high skills or low wages!; Rochester: National Center on Education and the Economy; 1990.

We must remove the children from the crude influence of their families. We must take them over and, to speak frankly, nationalize them. From the first days of their lives they will be under the healthy influence of Communist children's nurseries and schools. There they will grow up to be real Communists.

— Congress of Communist Party educators, 1918

... education, as now conceived, leads to demonstrable changes in student behaviors, changes that can be assessed using agreed-upon standards.

— David T Conley; Roadmap to Restructuring; Eugene: ERIC Clearinghouse on Educational Management, University of Oregon; 1993

The argument for transformational outcomes is that specific content is only marginally relevant, that it is merely a means to an end, that students can demonstrate mastery through many different types of content knowledge, and that student learning skills and attitudes are more important.

— David T Conley; Roadmap to Restructuring; Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon, ERIC; 1993

The children who know how to think for themselves, spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone would be interdependent.

Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations.

— John Dewey, 1896, educational philosopher, proponent of modern public schools.

The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom...between the rotting corpse of Christianity...and the new faith of humanism. Humanism will emerge triumphant.

—John Dunphy; The Humanist; January/February, 1983

Our challenge is to be bound not by traditions of the past but by our vision of the future as shaped by our purpose and beliefs.

— Employing Our Resources; A Policy Paper of the National Association of State Workforce Investment Policy Council Chairs; National Governors Association; 1996

The more the ignorance, the better the slave ...

— Edmund Fairfield; President, Hillsdale College; July 4, 1853

Someone is always trying to summon us back to a dead allegiance: Back to God, the simple-minded religion of an earlier day. "Back to the basics," simple-minded education. Back to simple-minded patriotism. And now we are being called back to a simple-minded "rationality" contradicted by personal experience and frontier science.

— Marilyn Ferguson; The Aquarian Conspiracy; p 128

You can only have a new society, the visionaries have said, if you change the education of the younger generation. ... Of the Aquarian Conspirators surveyed, more were involved in education than in any other single category of work. ... "The psychology of becoming has to be smuggled into the schools." ...

— Marilyn Ferguson; The Aquarian Conspiracy; p. 280-281

It may take collaborative effort between legislatures, local boards of education, and school administrators to design programs for parents who send their children to public schools. Building quality in at home is a personal social responsibility of pro-creating persons to all other Americans. ... Teachers could identify reasonable specification for parents relative to the home learning environment and certify parents who will cooperate.

— Joseph Fields; Total Quality for Schools; A Suggestion for American Education Milwaukee: ASQC Quality Press; 1993 (ASQC became ASQ)

Consider too the parent as "vendor" of a precious resource, the child. In the internal customer concept, the parent is serving the teacher. Teachers could identify reasonable specifications for parents relative to the home learning environment and certify parents who will cooperate.

— Joseph Fields; Total Quality for Schools; A Suggestion for American Education Milwaukee: ASQC Quality Press; 1993

Citizens would no more be allowed to put obstacles in the way of public educators than to interfere with public medical, police, or fire protection personnel who are doing their duty.

— Joseph Fields; Total Quality for Schools; A Suggestion for American Education Milwaukee: ASQC Quality Press; 1993

Some to be sure, like to think they can have it both ways; i.e., can obtain aid without saddling themselves with unacceptable forms of regulation. But most acknowledge the general applicability of the old adage that he who pays the piper calls the tune, and are more or less resigned to amalgamating or choosing between assistance and autonomy.

— Chester E Finn, Jr; NASSP Bulletin, March, 1982, "Public Service, Public Support, Public Accountability", p 69

Ultimately, the educational plans that are pursued need to be orchestrated across various interest groups of the society so that they can, taken together, help the society to achieve its larger goals. Individual profiles must be considered in the light of goals pursued by the wider society; and sometimes, in fact, individuals with gifts in certain directions must nonetheless be guided along other, less favored paths, simply because the needs of the culture are particularly urgent in that realm at that time.

— Howard Gardner; Frames of Mind; The Theory of Multiple Intelligences; page 392

Parents and the general public must be reached ... Otherwise, children and youth enrolled in globally oriented programs may find themselves in conflict with values assumed in the home. And then the education system ... comes under scrutiny ...

— John Goodlad; preface to Schooling in a Global Age; James Becker

... the computer has the capability to act as if it were the ten top psychologists working with one student ... Won't it be wonderful when ... no one can get between that child and that curriculum?

— Dustin Heuston; World Institute for Computer-Assisted Teaching (WICAT); Utah

To succeed in high performance work organizations, today's students must master the new basic skills — teamwork, critical thinking, making decisions, communication, adapting to change and understanding whole systems.

— High Skills, High Wages; Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board; Washington State; 1994; p 65

Give me the children, I will give you a nation.

— Adolf Hitler, 1939

...employer beliefs about the superior capabilities of educated people turned out not to be confirmed in practice: educated employees have higher turn-over rates, lower job satisfaction, and poorer promotion records than less educated employees.

— David Hornbeck and Lester Salomon; Human Capital and America's Future; 1991

The very magnitude of the power over men's minds that a highly centralized and government dominated system of education places in the hands of authorities ought to make one hesitate before accepting it too readily...the more highly one rates the power that education can have over men's minds, the more convinced one should be of the danger of placing this power in the hands of any single authority.

— F.A. Hayek; The Constitution of Liberty; 1960

When you walk in the building, there's a row of offices. In one are drug counselors. One is for social security. Another, family and child psychologists. Yet another has a doctor and nurse who do well-child exams ...

... There's a child-care center, and tied into it are classes for teenagers where they learn the importance of child nurturing skills ...

... These are "community learning centers" not just schools ...

... Schools are no longer in the "schooling business," but rather in "human resource development" ...

— Dr Shirley McCune; "Blueprint given for schools of the future"; Terry Minteer, Bremerton Sun; October 14, 1989

The synthesis of technology with educational tasks opens new possibilities for more humanistic schools and educational system.

— Dr Shirley McCune; Guide to Strategic Planning for Educators; p 23

Children belong to everyone. Society must make a commitment and assume the responsibility of preparing children for the future.

— Dr Shirley McCune; Guide to Strategic Planning for Educators; p 63

We no longer see the teaching of facts and information as the primary function of education... Building a new kind of people must be a part of the curriculum... More and more schools are the center of all human resource development... The earlier we can intervene in the lives of people the more effective we can be.

Some people say we are spending more on schools and getting less. I disagree - what we are doing is taking on more and more in schools and that will continue. We are not only feeding kids at lunch, we are supplying more psychological services. We are providing special ed services. More and more school is the cog or center of all human resource development.

— Dr. Shirley McCune; Governor’s Conference on Education; Wichita, Kansas; 1989

The present "traditional" concept of literacy has to do with the ability to read and write. But ... do we really want to teach people to do a lot of sums or write ... when they have a five-dollar hand-held calculator or a word processor? ... Do we really have to have everybody literate—writing and reading in the traditional sense ... ?

— Anthony Oettinger; Professor; Harvard University; as quoted in Chronology of Education

Every child in America entering school at the age of five is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our Founding Fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well - by creating the international child of the future.

— Chester M. Pierce; Professor of Education and Psychiatry; Harvard

The primary purpose of education is to prepare students to flourish in a democratic society and to work successfully in a global economy.

— Policy Statement; National Education Summit; Palisades, NY; 1996

The school-to-work transition programs are a first stop in redefining our education paradigm.

— Program Guide, Planning to Meet Career Development Needs; School-to-Work Transition Programs; Washington State Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (SOICC), and the National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC)

Most youth still hold the same values of their parents and if we don't resocialize, our system will decay.

— Schooling for the Future; published by John Goodlad; a report to the President's Commission on School Finance; Issue 9, Education Innovation; October 15, 1971

Rather than adding my voice to those who urge us to go 'back to basics' I would argue that we need to move ahead to the new basics...the arts of compromise and reconciliation, of consensus building, and of planning for interdependence, a command of these talents becomes 'basic'...As young people mature, we must help them develop the global servant concept in which we will educate our young for planetary service and eventually, for some form of world citizenship.

— Harold Shane; American's Next 25 Years: Some Implications for Education; Phi Delta Kappa; September 1976. At this time, Shane was Project Director for the NEA Bicentennial Committee.

We do not need any more preaching about right or wrong. The old "thou shall nots" simply are not relevant. Values clarification is a method for teachers to change the values of children without getting caught.

— Dr. Sidney Simon, Lecturer, Educator

Teachers must guide students toward a new morality. The strict adherence to a code - a moral code - is out of date.

— Theodore Sizer

Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poorly educated labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it can be managed and trained—not its general educational level, although a small cadre of highly educated creative people is essential to innovation and growth. Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading and moving low-income families into the middle class.

— Thomas B Sticht, president and senior scientist, Applied Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Inc; member of SCANS; Oct 23, 1989

In a slave state, vocational training may be education enough. For the education of free men, much more is required.

— William Pearson Tolley, Chancelor of Syracuse University; 1943

Since the real purpose of education is not to have the instructor perform certain activities but to bring about significant changes in the students' patterns of behavior, it becomes important to recognize that any statement of the objectives … should be a statement of changes to take place in the student.

— Ralph Tyler; Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction; Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1949

Our education system must provide intellectual, emotional, and job skills that prepare students to face the ambiguities of constant change in an evolving democracy.

— Washington State Comprehensive Plan for the Improvement of Student Learning; Washington Goals 2000; April, 1996 Draft; Page 2

Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government will adopt to further the Cultural Revolution are...[a] National Department of Education...the studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and the general ethics of the new Socialist society.

— William Z. Foster, Toward Soviet American, 1932

Traditional or Christian Paradigm

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

— Henry Brooks Adams, (1838-1918), Pulitzer prize-winning historian, 1919

To educate a man is to unfit him to be a slave.

— Frederick Douglass; [Frederick Baily] (1818-1895), escaped slave, Abolitionist, author, editor of the North Star and later the New National Era

The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate ... the minds of the people at large, and more especially, to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that they may ... know ambition under all it shapes, and ... exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.

— Thomas Jefferson; 1779

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

— Thomas Jefferson, 1816

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

— James Madison, (1751-1836), in a letter to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822

Some of these days they are going to remove so much of the 'hooey' and the thousands of things the schools have become clogged up with, and we will find that we can educate our broods for about one-tenth of the price and learn 'em something that they might accidentally use after they escape.

— Will Rogers, (1879 - 1935), American humorist

Nothing will more quickly destroy independent Christian schools than state aid; their freedom and independence will soon be compromised, and before long their faith.

— George Bernard Shaw of The Socialist Fabian Society of England

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