also known as Performance Based
...
Who's Who in Outcome Based Education
The Players:
WHO IS BEHIND OBE?
Describing the character, theories and objectives of Outcome Based Education
provides a basic understanding of the system that the government and its schools
are foisting upon our children and families, like it or not. To obtain a deeper
insight into OBE, however, it is necessary to learn something about the agents
of change who are bringing OBE to you and your children. For that, we begin at
the beginning with:
B. F. Skinner, a psychologist and learning theorist who gained
prominence at mid-century. He developed the techniques of learning (operant
conditioning) based on conditioning phenomena first analyzed scientifically by
Pavlov. Skinner called his technique his "teaching machine." Like any machine,
it can be used for good or bad, for meeting the goals of traditional education
or for the goals espoused by OBE. Skinner thus developed the principles on which
"Mastery Learning" was developed by:
Benjamin Bloom. Mastery Learning was the original name for the process
known lately as Outcome Based Education, also known as Performance Based
Education, or Restructuring. Educational theories used in OBE are based on
Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. A curriculum, according to
Bloom, "...may be thought of as a plan for changing student behavior." (p 14 of
Ron Sunseri's book OBE: Understanding the Truth about Education Reform, Questar
Publishers,
P.O. Box 1720, Sisters, OR 97759) Bloom called it "Mastery
Learning." Techniques for his new style of education are based on Skinnerian
behavioral psychology. It focuses on stimulus-response conditioning, which lends
itself neatly to indoctrination. It is an approach which comes out of Pavlov's
experiments with a dog, which he conditioned to salivate when he rang a bell.
AIDS Holistics: This is not true. Bloom's Taxonomy provided a framework for knowledge, understanding and expressing in own words, analysing, extrapolating on ideas, putting ideas together and evaluating plans and theories.
There was no intention to indoctrinate and condition children like dogs. Thinking teachers will use Mastery Learning to produce thinking students.
He
said the mission of education is to change the thoughts, actions and feelings of
students. Bloom held that the desired outcome is "...formulating subjective
judgment as the end product resulting in personal values/opinions with no real
right or wrong answer." Bloom's theory thus denies that there are absolute
truths and it makes everything relative. One idea is as good as another. With no
absolutes, then the goal of good teaching is to modify the "thoughts, feelings
and actions" of the student to some replacement system supplied by the
educational system. Since that system is controlled by the government, the
change is specified by the government.
AIDS Holistics: The explanation above perverts what Bloom intended. It is intended to show that Bloom was in league with the gay and lesbian agenda that says there are no rules and no sin. It is all what people make it. Bloom did not promote an anti-faith and anti-family agenda. That came later.
William Spady. Based in Colorado, Spady is Director of the High
Success Network and Director of the International Center on Outcome-Based
Restructuring. He is the "father" of OBE. He works with the federal government,
foundations, states and school districts helping them implement OBE. He is a
sociologist with theories of "socialization" on global terms. OBE is designed to
prove his theories. When asked by an interviewer if the system would promote
patriotism or teach loyalty and allegiance to one's own country, he replied, "I
don't know what Patriotic means."
According to Spady, we are faced with "a fragile and vulnerable global
environment that requires altering economic consumption patterns and quality of
life standards, and taking collective responsibility for promoting health and
wellness." The goal of education, Spady says, has to be to prepare students for
that future.
Learning results are what is important, and his premise is that all
students can learn, and it is not important how long it takes, as long as the
desired learning takes place. Since all will learn, grades are irrelevant in the
new system. All get an "A". Competition in schools in his estimation is a
negative influence impairing learning. He also believes that textbooks will be
obsolete.
Spady's definition of an "outcome," found in the in-service training program
for OBE teachers, is "The acceptable culminating demonstration of a significant
learning behavior." Subject knowledge and concepts are not valid outcomes. In
1982 he observed that one of the four main goals of Mastery Learning is a
"system of supervision and control which restrains behavior of kids. The outcome
of the hidden agenda should be the fostering of social responsibility and
compliance." These goals "transcend academics," and deal with attitudes and
feelings.
However, Spady rejected the term "Mastery Learning" because of its
monumental failures, renaming it so that the system of OBE would not be rejected
out of hand. He found that the elite in the educational establishment supported
his ideas because they, like Spady, want education not to teach, but to revamp
society.
John Goodlad of the University of Washington and head of the Institute
for Educational Renewal, doing research on strategies for reaching OBE goals. He
is a one-worlder and globalist, who wrote, "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 educational institution...comes under scrutiny..." p 17-18 Elsewhere
Goodlad advises, ..."Most youth still hold the same values as their parents and
if we don't resocialize, our system will decay." p18
Sharon Robinson, appointed Asst. Secretary of Education for the Office
of Educational Research and Improvement in the Clinton administration. A
long-time staffer of The National Education Association, who sat with Hillary at
the NEA convention and helped facilitate OBE.
National Center on Education and the Economy. Its original mission was
to develop policies on education and human resources. It developed out of the
Carnegie organization. Its Board of Trustees in the early 1990s included Michael
Tucker (president), Mario Cuomo, Ira Magaziner, David Rockefeller, Hillary
Clinton and Very Katz. In 1990 this non-profit group published America's Choice:
High skills or low wages.
It described the workplace as one "managed by a small
group of educated planners and supervisors (utilizing) ....administrative
procedures (that) allow managers to keep control of a large number of workers.
Most employees under this model need not be educated. It is far more important
that they be reliable, steady and willing to follow directions." p 29-30 Why?
Because, the report states, "More than 70 percent of the jobs in America will
not require a college education by the year 2000." p 30 What is needed is
"Workers who do what they are told, with a good attitude," says Ron Sunseri. How
do you get them, Sunseri asks: "Start now teaching students, from the earliest
grades, the attitudes and social behaviors that will please business and avoid a
broad-based, high-quality, academic education."
Professor Anthony Oerringer of Harvard University contends: "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?" p28
So what are these changes to be? As implemented by education, based on
research conducted by the National Training Laboratory associated with the
National Education Association, the technique is to supplant skill training with
"sensitivity training."
The goal, according to David Jenkins of the NTL,
is "...to manipulate; (the teacher's) job is to plan and produce behavior in
order to create changes in other people." Relative to your children, they may
"appear to behave appropriately...(but) this appearance is deceptive... (They
are) 'pseudo-healthy' persons who can benefit from sensitivity training." p 17
The NTL warned, however, not to be too up front about what is being done. Massel
Smith of NTL advised educators: "Couch the language of change in the language of
the status quo." p 17
Bill Clinton in 1979 initiated the "restructuring" reform of Arkansas
schools and chose the bureaucracy to run it. After fifteen years of the system,
the schools are presently 45th in literacy and 44th in standard achievement
tests. He also started the "Governor's School" as a model for statewide school
reform.
The school takes the best and brightest students in the state and send
them to a special Summer school, six weeks long, with 350 to 400 students
attending each year. Mark Lowry, former director of publicity for the school,
says the goal is to identify the four or five exceptional students suited to
future political careers.
Lowery reports that the school does not deal in traditional academic
excellence, but political correctness. It uses thoroughly scripted
"brainwashing" techniques, including isolation from the outside world, to
instill moral relativity and disintegration of family values.
Students reported
that they were fed a curriculum that focused on gays and gay rights, radical
homosexuality, "all the things my parents said were wrong." Others reported, "We
were encouraged to do what we felt like doing, to be hostile to Western
Civilization and culture."
Lowery stated, "The greatest influence of the Governor's School is to promote
the thought with these students that to be considered an intellectual by your
peers...you have to be a liberal thinker." The school, he said, "invokes not
only philosophy, but political thought, and that is the underlying message that
permeates the whole six weeks. This is not teaching or learning, but
indoctrination."
A student reported that the main course at the school, two hours every day,
was "Views of Man." It dealt with radical feminist, leftist ideology, and other
radical thinking. The student said it was "warped," presenting one viewpoint
only. Its goal was to "Convince students that they are the intellectual and
cultural elite." It taught that it is OK to challenge authority because "you are
part of the elite, and your parents wouldn't understand all this. As the elite,
it doesn't matter what ordinary people believe or want. You know what is good
for them."
Parents reported that their children came back from the school "terribly
changed." One parent reported that it took two years of psychological
deprogramming to restore their child to normal. Another said that her son
committed suicide, and probably would not have but for the school. Another
student reported his repeated fantasies of committing suicide, even to the point
of writing a suicide note, because he loved the school so much he didn't want to
be back in the real world.
Unfortunately, the "real world" of tomorrow is the world of OBE, courtesy of
the Clintons and Katz, the Bushes and Bells, Paulus and Roberts, and most
recently John Kitzhaber and Brady Adams, all loyal Democrats and Republicans,
who cozied up to the elitists who understand better than you what you ought do
with your life and how to raise your children.
For your children it will be a life of lowered expectations and diminished
returns.
Data periodically gathered through invasive
testing within the affective domain has then, through the illegal demand for
students' social security numbers...been compiled on computer systems storing
vast amounts of intimate and private information on our children and youth, in
violation of their constitutional rights...
"The traditional interests and rights of parents have been trampled upon, as
educators have proceeded on the proposition that professionals know better than
parents how to raise children.... The results create a further attack upon the
already weakened family units in our sachet. Both the assessment tests and the
related curriculum increasingly reinforce the message that conformity to
government-established values and attitudes is the key to future success in
life...
"The public does not understand that the government is establishing criteria
to assess attitudes, values and opinions, nor do they understand that a 'planned
course' will be introduced to 'remediate' attitudes, values and opinions not
meeting government standards." p258-9
This is our future, compliments of the elite class of government bureaucrats
and multi-national corporate managers and bankers who have given us OBE for the
sake of the "Brave New World" they have in mind.
More On OBE
