The following was
published in February 1996 and circulated in the Nine Mile Falls/Suncrest
community. Since that time, juvenile
crime has spiked—school shootings, guns on campus, bomb threats, and
random killings and crime among the juvenile populace. The media is quick to blame
parents. The state Legislatures
look the other way. State and
federal departments of education call for more "conflict resolution"
and "peer mediation" exercises in schools;
"character building" curriculums; and "equity" curriculums
that, primarily, promote alternative lifestyles. What everyone is careful not to look at
is what kids are being taught in the classrooms under the guise of
"education reform".
Education Reform and Juvenile Violence
There are several
books that I would recommend the people of this community read. They all have to do with education
reform; what is happening in the school your child attends:
i.
Stirring the Head, Heart, and
Soul; Redefining Curriculum and
Instruction; Erickson, H. Lynn; Thousand Oaks,
Corwin Press; 1995. Lynn Erickson
sits on the Commission on Student Learning's Subject Advisory Committee on
social studies and lists herself as affiliated with Gonzaga
University (in Spokane, Washington).
ii.
Toward a Coherent Curriculum; The 1995 ASCD
Yearbook; Beane,
James, and others; Alexandria, Virginia: ASCD; 1995. [1]
iii.
Democratic Schools; Apple, Michael and James A Beane;
Alexandria, Virginia; ASCD; 1995.
iv.
Schooling for "Good Rebels;" Socialism, American Education, and the Search for
Radical Curriculum; Teitelbaum,
Kenneth; New York; Teachers College Pres, Columbia University; 1995.
v.
The Ominous Parallels Peikoff, Leonard; New York; Meridian
Printing, 1993.
What do these books have in
common? The first three advocate
education reform as it is being implemented in not only our school district but
nationwide; all five speak to progressive education.
Toward a Coherent Curriculum quotes Ralph Tyler from his book Basic Principles of
Curriculum and Instruction (1949):
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. (p 44)
Tyler was a disciple of Hilda Taba spoken of in Stirring the Head, Heart and Soul. Taba
immigrated to this country in the mid-1930's from
Estonia. She worked in the field of
behavioral psychology. At one point
she was investigated by the state of California for her mind altering
techniques used on children.
Further in Toward a Coherent
Curriculum is enumerated the influence of John Dewey, Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers on teachers like A.S.
Neill, John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, Sylvia
Ashton-Warner, and Herb Kohl, further stating, "Few books on education
have reached as many teachers as those by these authors." John Dewey was the disciples of Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel,
Leonard Tolstoy, Immanual Kant, and ultimately,
Plato. He is known in the United
States as the father of progressive education. Dewey's progressive followers include
William H Kilpatrick, Harold Rugg, George S Counts, Boyd H Bode, Caroline
Pratt, L Thomas Hopkins, and Harold and Elise Alberty. In 1930, Dewey became co-vice president
of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and the forerunner of the Students for
a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1933, he signed the Humanist
Manifesto I. Dewey did not
believe in the individual man, only in the collective group. Dewey believed that literacy was the
greatest obstacle to socialism and was an early advocate of whole language
instruction. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers were among the founders and
proponents of Third Force psychology.
Before he died, Abraham Maslow renounced Third
Force psychology, stating its basis in theory was flawed. Before he died, Rogers pointed out the
psychological havoc that twelve years of
experimentation with Third Force practices had played on his emotional
stability. To those who knew him, Carl Rogers was a very emotionally stable
man. Herbert Kohl, mentioned above,
wrote the forward to Schooling for "Good Rebels". There is no
mistaking Kohl's socialist proclivities.
In The Ominous Parallels
Leonard Peikoff parallels the pre-Hitler German
education system with the American education system; more especially since the
American education system began to move away from core knowledge to a feelings based, affective system. This shift debuted quietly in the mid-1960's, being officially recognized under education
reform. The German system was, the
American system is progressive education, both having the exact same
tenets: the cooperative,
collaborative learner; child centered, non-directive education denouncing the
authoritarian (teacher teaches, child learns) model; the less is more theory
of teaching less but teaching it as it is used and applied in addressing social
or life-related issues; Socratic thinking (critical thinking/problem
solving/decision making — what Dr William Coulson,
associate of Carl Rogers, refers to as values clarification); equity of
outcome instead of equity of opportunity; learning being constant and time
flexible, and so on. The book
details how, in Germany, this system created a dialectic, transformational
society in which there were no absolutes, no morals, no right and wrong,
everything in flux — exactly what we are seeing in American schools and
American society today; how that society became increasingly violent,
culturally fragmented, totalitarian, and intolerant of diverse views —
the exact opposite of what the proponents of this system claimed it would do. Pre-Hitler Germany also spawned the
barbarous Nazi SS troops that slaughtered so many in the concentration camps.
People are bewildered by the increasing
violence and crime among the young, the loss of moral values, etc. The trend has only begun and, like
pre-Hitler Germany, will become increasingly worse despite attempts to
"fix" it. In Germany,
Hitler talked the people into giving up their guns as a measure to stem the
tide of violence. With the
increasing violence here, people are beginning to accept this as a plausible
solution. This is the Hegelian
Principle (Georg Hegel) of 1) creating the problem,
2) generating opposition to the problem (fear, panic, hysteria); and 3)
offering the solution to the problem created in step one. Change, which would have been impossible
to impose on the people without the proper conditioning (steps 1 and 2), is
achieved.
There is an answer to all this —
return to a traditional education system that focuses on core knowledge,
ridding our schools of the affective, feelings based curriculums and pedagogies
that are at the root of the problems.
The books listed here are available to
any and all through the public library or college or university curriculum
library. When you read the books of
the people behind education reform and advocating education reform, then you know
what education reform is about. I
challenge the people of this community to read and learn.
__________________________
[1] ASCD: Association for the Supervision of
Curriculum Development; established by the National Education Association. back
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