Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

367 ...We are entering the Age of Aquarius.... The goal for all of humanity who will enter the new millenium is to become androgynous.... Educational systems, businesses, political structures, and governments all built on self-serving principles, for example, are crumbling, only to be re-born through tremendous pain into higher forms. Thus, we are witnessing “the end of the world” and we do not even recognize what we see. Standing on the threshold of the Aquarian Age... we can align our bodies and our behaviors to create harmony and consistency with the God within us. The Noxious Nineties : c. 1996 “U NDERSTANDING O UTCOME -B ASED E DUCATION ,” AN ARTICLE WRITTEN BY J ERRY L. H AD dock , Ed.D., regional director for Southern California/Southern Nevada and director of curriculum for the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), and Sharon R. Berry, Ph.D., a director of curriculum of ACSI, was published in 1996 and circulated throughout the ACSI network of Christian schools. 49 Excerpts follow: MASTERY LEARNING Developed from Skinnerian psychology, Mastery Learning proposes that students should be taught until they have learned a subject no matter how long it takes. Believing that all learning could be broken into minute, successive steps of behavior, thousands of objectives for each subject area were published in voluminous books. The difference in Outcome-Based Education is a specification of a smaller number of more general outcomes. For example, there are 36 outcomes specified for graduation in the Littleton, Colorado project.… On the last page of the article—as a part of a larger category entitled “Where Do We Stand?”—under the title “Mastery Learning” the authors assert: This [mastery] is also an important part of the Christian school. No, not in the sense that secular OBE proponents advocate, but with a Christ-honoring emphasis. One that says every student is important enough to have an appropriate instructional program and a teacher who is sensitive enough to do what is necessary to ensure that the student masters curriculum at his/her ability level. The distinction here is that we should not require all students to learn at the same rate. God has given each of us different talents and abilities. To the best of our ability we ensure that students achieve basic standards, with all students being challenged to reach their potential. As Dr. Bruce Wilkinson, author of “The 7 Laws of the Learner,” has emphasized, “If a student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.” [Ed. Note: It is difficult to understand ACSI’s support for a method of teaching which is clearly based on Darwin’s theory of evolution (that man is an animal), which uses Skinnerian stimulus-response-stimulus operant conditioning. How can Christian educators and parents oppose the teaching of evolution at school board meetings across the country and then return to their homes/schools the next day and use a method of teaching/learning which is based on the evolutionist theory which they oppose? Personally, this writer does not agree with Dr. Wilkinson’s statement concerning the student and teacher. Sometimes, no matter how well a teacher may teach, the student may not be interested in learning. 50 ]

A NITA H OGE DEVISED AND DISTRIBUTED WIDELY “F IVE M AGIC Q UESTIONS E NABLE P ARENTS to Debate the Issues” in 1996 as a tool for parents’ groups to use in testimony before state legislatures