Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

Appendix XVII

Memos on Direct Instruction

January 10, 1997 Memo To: Researchers From: Charlotte Iserbyt Regarding: Direct Instruction

The Christian Conscience , September 1996, commenced the serialization on a monthly basis of my updated 1985 Back to Basics Reform or OBE… Skinnerian International Curriculum (Chronological History of OBE/ML: 1880s through 1990s). I urge those of you trying to educate opponents of OBE and School-to-Work programs WHO SUPPORT DIRECT INSTRUCTION, please go to The Christian Conscience website (http://www.christianconscience.com) and request the September–December 1996 back issues. These will take you through the important sixties and will explain with complete documentation that the Direct Instruction method is similar to the Skinnerian OBE/mastery learning method and should be rejected since animal training methods have nothing to do with education. For the life of me I cannot understand why Christian schools and home schoolers support ML/DI which uses animal training methods based on the theory of evolution (man is nothing but an animal) which they so vociferously oppose. Those ramming OBE/ML work force training down our throats ran into so much trouble, due unfortunately only to the nasty outcomes, not due to the Skinnerian method, that they rescued their OBE/ML restructuring by jumping from the mastery learning ship onto its sister ship, Direct Instruction. They figured, and it seems with good reason, that if they presented the same method with a different label and focused on academic, not affective, touchy-feely outcomes, they could capture the approval of the conservative opposition. Direct Instruction is on a roll—all over the country. California is looking at DI; parents were ready for “anything” after the whole language disaster. Chicago, which surely should know better after its ML catastrophe which resulted in half the freshman class not graduating,

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