WHO SABOTAGED AMERICAN EDUCATION?

I am sixty six years old and completed primary school in Queensland in 1959. Our curriculum was strong on the basics of English and Mathematics.

I attended high school in Brisbane and continued with learning the basics together with English literature and poetry.

Students learned the poems of Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth. It was a rounded education if that is what we can call it.

We learned about the English kings , the Roundheads and Oliver Cromwell together with the execution of King Charles 2.

Then I completed grade 12 and went on the teacher training. By the time that was finished, there were no basics.

In 1967, new teachers were told that children do not need to learn the basics. They learned to write by writing and to read by reading. Education started to drop from that time.

I studied at the University of Queensland and completed Bachelors of Arts and Education.

We learned about Mastery Learning and Benjamin Bloom who designed the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives to set up Mastery Learning and Outcome Based Education.

But it took a further 30 years for me to smell a rat. Outcome Based Education was intended to bring back the basics and promote higher learning. Was it sabotaged by teachers?

Suddenly a new sense of professionalism was in. The focus was on intellectualization not memory. Chanting multiplication tables was out. Pupils were to "intellectualize" the tables.

That is why so many students do not know their tables. That would put students behind in any cohort of students. Besides chanting disturbs other classes.

Memorizing poetry was out. Now students do not learn the rhythm and modulation of language. Reciting poems as a class was definitely out.

Spelling and derivation of words was out. Students learned to spell by reading books. Learning the structure of sentences was out. Students learned by appreciating sentences in books.

Learning came about by the play-way method. If learning required effort, it was being presented wrongly. If it was not interesting, the students could switch off.

So many students went into higher level learning without having mastered the basics.

**************

We have to understand a completely different perspective. In 1917, there was the Russian Revolution and the world view of Stalin that communism was to take over the world. With World War 2 the industrial might of the USSR began to rise.

But the free world was confident that communism was an inferior ideology able only to produce inferior industry. The superior industrial giant in the world was the USA.

Then to the horror of all, the Russians began the space race in 1957 with the launching of Sputnik into outer space followed by the launching of space craft with astronauts Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereschkova. Please click:[PDF] 


Outcomes based education: Where has it come from and where is it ...

www.ied.edu.hk/obl/files/164890.pdfSimilar

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat by A Alderson - 2007 - Related articles

This paper examines some of the research for outcomes-based education in.
Australia. .... Americans were shocked by the Soviet Union's launching
of Sputnik in. 1957. ...... Benjamin Bloom's, Taxonomy ofEducational
Objectives (1956).

The Russians appeared to lead the world in industrial technology. This was only on the surface and not really true. Suddenly, the Americans saw that they have to catch up and pass the USSR.

The first step was to change the education system to be more focused on science, mathematics and language. No more was there the elitist norm referenced learning by which only a few went to high school and university.

The education system had to be opened to all young people through criterion referenced learning that gave all students the chance to pass.

But things changed in the US. With no fanfare and public debate, a new mode of learning started of removing the need for basics.

Was this an attempt by teachers to sabotage education and the Outcome Based Education? The education system rose and fell at the same time.

Or was there a communist fifth column in the teaching service of the USA? Modern education dropped from that time.

Was it the baby boomer teachers seeking to remove the World War 2 type discipline from education in response to LSD and making love not war?

It has never really picked up again. It seems that there may have been deliberate sabotage.There are those who call the process the Dumbing Down of Education.

Was it the churches, reacting against the new Godless curriculum. The US education system is poised to drop further with a gay and lesbian component in school curricula.

So let us look at the time line:

1917  Russian Revolution

1945  World War 2 ends

1953  Stalin dies

1956  Bloom starts strategy of Mastery Learning

1957  Sputnik launched

1958  Bloom has Government support for Outcome Based Education

1959  American industry builds up space race in a new mean and lean focus

1967  Removal of Basics in learning not by Bloom.

1978  The USSR is crumbling.

Why were the basics removed? Who was responsible? Did the communist countries stop teaching basics?

Australia certainly followed the US lead. It is all very fishy. When the US started to use education to promote national development, someone chopped its legs off. Hmmm.