“HE ALONE , WHO OWNS THE YOUTH, GAINS THE FUTURE!” ADOLF HITLER

Who are the real “movers and shakers” of the educational establishment? Who initiates and funds our educational studies? Who has all the solutions to our educational woes? Who stands at the schoolhouse door with check in hand waiting to lure us onto the educational-reform bandwagon? The answers to these questions may surprise you.

While the little taxpayer is scrimping and struggling to support his family and pay his taxes, the real power behind the reform movement is raking in the cash, tax free, and using that tax-free income to finance the destruction of our educational system. An elitist coterie of America’s tax-exempt foundations has designed and initiated every wave of educational reform since John Dewey and his progressive education. The goal of each and every reform movement has been the same–to eliminate knowledge in the classroom and to pilot the United States toward a one-world, socialist government.

You may find these accusations preposterous. After all, we have laws in this country; we have a Constitution that protects our rights. While this is true, we also have the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations. These tax-exempt institutions are above the laws of common man, they are the real power behind our government, and they answer to no one. Presidents, be they Democratic or Republican, may come and go, but the foundations never leave office!

Let us, then, turn our attention to the foundations and examine the effect they have had on education for almost a century. This monopoly on public education began with the creation of the Rockefeller General Education Board in 1903 (terminated in 1953); The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905; The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1910; The Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1911; and The Rockefeller Foundation in 1918. The impact of these foundations will become evident as we look at what has transpired since their inception.

As we begin our journey back in time, the first item worth noting is that the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations were staunch supporters of Dewey’s educational philosophy. Dewey in fact, taught four of the five Rockefeller brothers, including David and Nelson.

The Walsh Committee was created on August 23, 1912, to review industrial relations. During the tenure of this committee, tax-exempt foundations were also examined. The following was revealed: “A number of witnesses testified that colleges had surrendered their religious identifications in order to comply with foundation requirements to receive grants…” (William M. Bowen, Jr, Globalism America’s Demise, Huntington House Inc., 1984, p.40)

The foundations’ activities came under scrutiny again in the late 1940s and early 1950s due to several Congressional investigations. The first case involved Alger Hiss, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Hiss had worked for the State Department in 1936 and was an advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Hiss was elected president of this Carnegie Foundation in 1946.

In 1948 during the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hiss was accused of being a member of the Communist party and of passing State Department documents to a Soviet Agent, Whittaker Chambers, editor of Time magazine. These charges resulted in two trials, the first of which ended in a hung jury. Hiss was convicted on two counts of perjury in the second trial on January 21, 1950.

By the early ’50s, it had become obvious that someone was interfering with the educational system in the United States. Schools were no longer teaching the concepts associated with the economic and political structures inherent of our form of government.

A preliminary inquiry into the educational dilemma pointed to several tax-exempt foundations which had been funding the promotion of textbooks and methodologies that were socialistic and globalistic in nature. The three major foundations implicated in this inquiry were the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. (Michael Loyd Chadwick, The Freeman Digest, “Tax-Exempt Foundations Their Impact on the World,” Published by the Freemen Institute, Salt Lake City, UT, June 1978 issue, p.1)

These preliminary findings resulted in House Resolution 561, approved by the 82^nd Congress, demanding an investigation into the tax-exempt foundations to determine if any foundations had been “using their resources for un-American and subversive activities or for purposes not in the interest of the tradition of the United States.” (Ibid, p.2)

This committee became known as the Cox Committee. The Cox Committee was short lived due to time constraints and the death of the committee chairman; however, “In its final report, the Cox Committee reported that a Moscow-directed, Communist plot existed to infiltrate American foundations and to use their funds for Communist purposes. (See No. 2514, 82^nd Congress, 2^nd Session)

Congressman B. Carroll Reece introduced House Resolution 217 to continue the investigation into the tax-exempt foundations. This resolution passed on July 27, 1953. The actual hearings by the Reece Committee lasted only nineteen days before being canceled as a result of questionable political maneuvers. While the evidence uncovered as a result of this committee was substantial, the foundations have continued to “do business as usual”.

The Freemen Institute devoted its entire June, 1978 issue of The Freemen Digest to the finds of the Reece Committee. This publication contained an interview with Norman Dodd (Research Director for the Reece Committee), a summary of the investigation, and quoted excerpts of some of the testimonies given during the hearings. Some of the evidence disclosed by the Reece Committee included:

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was organized specifically to get the United States into the United Nations. With this task accomplished, the Endowment moved on to tackle education. The following information was revealed in the minute books of this foundation:

After the First World War, the foundation Trustees came to the conclusion that to continue moving the nation toward Carnegie’s objective, they must control education. Carnegie solicited the help of the Rockefeller Foundation for this task. Rockefeller was given the task of changing education as it pertained to domestic subjects, while Carnegie worked on subjects dealing with international relationships. The major changes focused on the teaching of American history, by discrediting the founders of the U.S. and demeaning the nation’s Constitutional structure of government. The Guggenheim Foundation facilitated the work of these two foundations by awarding fellowships to several “likely” students studying history and sending them to London where they were briefed in “what was expected of them.” These students returned to the U.S. where they became the most influential members of the American Historical Society.

Toward the end of the 1920s, Carnegie funded the American Historical Society to prepare a report detailing what the future of the U.S. should be. The seventh volume of this report specifies that “the future belongs to collectivism” (William M. Bowen, Jr., pp 35-36)

In the Reece Committee Staff Report on Relations Between Foundations and Education, Assistant Research Director, Thomas M. McNiece wrote:

What this investigation does seem to indicate is that many small grants have found their way into questionable hands and many large ones…have been devoted to purposes that are promoting a departure from the fundamental concepts of education and government under our Constitution… This is indicated by the frequent references in their own literature to the ‘age of transition’ through which we are passing, and the responsibility that must be assumed by educators in leading the way. (Thomas M. McNiece, “The Reece Committee Staff on Relations Between Foundations and Education”, The Freemen Digest, p.12.)

According to our compilations, the Carnegie Corp. has contributed to all educational purposes from 1911 to 1950, approximately $25,300,000. (Ibid, p.13)

…most of the information submitted (from various foundations’ annual reportsprofessional publications whose circulation is ) is available only in largely confined to those engaged in these professions (education and the behavioral sciences). This results naturally in two things: One, the coordinated effectiveness within the professional groups is increased; two, relatively few of the citizenry outside these professional circles have any means of knowing what is developing and therefore of organizing any protest against itbe obscure to . In fact much of the meaning of some articles would the average citizen because of the subtle approach and high technical vocabulary(Ibid. P. 15.).

Miss Kathryn Casey, legal analyst of the Reece Committee, filed a detailed report on the foundations’ activities in regard to education. This information was included in the Reece Committee’s Final Report on Relations Between Foundations and Education. Excerpts from the Final Report include:

The Carnegie Corporation of New York had contributed a total of $41,237,711 to the National Education Association, the Progressive Education Association, the American Council of Education, perhaps the major part of their sustenance in the early years…She (MS. Casey) concluded that these organizations have operated to the end of producing uniformity in teaching, teacher-training and administrative practices in education and that the Carnegie Corporation must have approved this work. (The Reece Committee Final Report on Relations Between Foundations and Education,” The Freeman Digest, p. 17.)

The Carnegie Foundation gave considerable attention to the place, relationship and function of the secondary and primary schools as well. This was done largely through the National Education Association and the Progressive Education Association, to which other foundations have also contributed heavily. Some of the strange things which have happened in the secondary and primary educational fields can be traced directly to the influence of these two organizations. (Ibid. P.18.)

From 1928 to 1933 the Carnegie Corporation of New York provided heavy aggregate financing ($340,000) to the American Historical Society…for the production of a study by its Commission on Social Studies whose final report- “Conclusions and Recommendations” includes the following:

As to the specific form which this ‘collectivism,’…is taking and will take in the future…it is by no means clear or unequivocal. It may involve the limiting…of private property by public property, extended and distributed among the masses…Almost certainly it will involve…compulsory as well as voluntary cooperation of citizens in the conduct of the complex national economy, an..enlargement of the functions of government, and an increasing state intervention in fundamental branches of economy previously left to the individual discretion and initiative–a state intervention that in some instances may be direct and mandatory and in others indirect and facilitative.

If historical knowledge is any guide, these tensions, accompanied by…popular opinion, public policy, and the fortunes of the struggle for power, will continue until some approximate adjustment is made between social thought, social practice, and economic realities, or until society, exhausted by the conflict and at the end of its spiritual and inventive resources, sinks back into a more primitive order of economy and life…” (Ibid. P.20)

Under the heading of “The Redistribution of Power” it continues:

…the teaching profession as a whole will have to organize, develop a theory of its social function and create certain instrumentalities indispensable to the realization of its aims.” (Ibid. P. 21.)

If the board of education is to support a school program conceived in terms of the general welfare and adjusted to the needs of an epoch marked by transition to some form of socialized economy, it should include in its membership adequate representation of points of view other than those of private business.” (Ibid.)

Under the heading “appendix A–Next Steps” the Report continues:

…The first step is to awaken and consolidate leadership around the philosophy and purpose of education herein expounded–leadership among administrators, teachers, boards of trustees, colleges and normal school presidents–thinkers and workers in every field of education and the social sciences. Signs of such an awakening..are already abundantly evident; in the resolutions on instruction in the social sciences adopted in 1933 by the department of superintendence of the National Education Association at Minneapolis and of the United States Commissioner of Education.. And in almost every local or national meeting of representatives of the teaching profession. (Ibid.)

The American Historical Society announces further that it has taken over a publication called The Historical Outlook, a journal for social science teachers, (it was then re-named The Social Sciences). Among the new purposes of the publication was to be ‘to furnish as rapidly as possible various programs of instruction organized within the frame of reference outlined by the Commission…’ Writers of textbooks, said the report, was ‘expected to revamp and rewrite their old works in accordance with this frame of reference and new writers in the field of social sciences will undoubtedly attack the central problem here conceived…’ (Ibid. P. 22.)

The President and Treasurer of the Carnegie Corporation of New York not only endorsed but lauded the call to socialism in the report described above. This was evidenced in their annual report for 1933-4.

Professor Harold J. Laski, philosopher of British socialism, made the following comment in his testimony about the Commission’s report: ‘At bottom, and stripped of its carefully neutral phrases, the report is an educational program for a socialist America’. (William M. Bowen, Jr., p. 38)

The Reece Committee had this to say about the report produced by the Commission on Social Studies: “This committee finds the document from which we have quoted an astounding piece of work. We cannot understand how a foundation, Carnegie in this instance, administering funds dedicated to a public trust and made free of taxation by the grace of the people, could justify..having supported such a program. Is this what foundation executives refer to when they assert the right of foundations to ‘experiment’ and to use ‘risk capital’ to reach ‘new horizons’? (The Freeman Digest, p.22.)

Carnegie has continued to endorse the American Historical Society’s “Conclusions and Recommendations” through the years. This will be evidenced in the next part of this report.

The commission on Higher Education appointed by the President produced a report…in 1947…The Report…contained this statement: ‘In speed of transportation and communication in economic interdependence, the nations of the globe are already one world; the task is to secure recognition and acceptance of this oneness in the thinking of the people..There is an urgent need for a program for world citizenship that can be made a part of every person’s general education.’ (Ibid. P.24)

Aaron M. Sargent, a lawyer specializing in anti-subversive work and investigations affecting American education, testified that a movement began in the U.S. shortly before the turn of the century, closely related to Fabian socialism. According to Mr. Sargent, a group of American radical intellectuals organized an attack upon patriotism, “challenging basic American Philosophy founded on the doctrine of natural law.” Sargent attributed the new revolutionary philosophy to the teachings of John Dewey. In fact, Sargent referred to Dewey as “a gift from the gods to the radicals”.

Mr. Sargent pointed out that the period under discussion was one of growing intellectual radicalism, citing the statement of Professor Von Mises that socialism does not spring from the people but is a program instigated by special types of intellectuals ‘that form themselves into a clique and bore from within and operate that way..It is not a people’s movement at all. It is a capitalizing on the people’s emotions and sympathies and skillfully directing those sympathies toward a point these people wish to reach’. (Ibid. 31)

Sargent’s testimony went on to include:

Educator Dr. George S. Counts, served a chairman on a committee sponsored by The Progressive Education Association which was funded by Carnegie. This committee produced the pamphlet, “A Call to the Teachers of the Nation.” The following quote appeared in this pamphlet: “The progressive minded teachers of the country must unite in a powerful organization militantly devoted to the building of a better social order, in the defense of its members against the ignorance of the masses and the malevolence of the privileged. Such an organization would have to be equipped with the material resources, the talent, the legal talent, and the trained intelligence to wage successful war in the press, the courts, and the legislative chambers of the nation.” (Ibid. P.33)

Dr. Counts also served as a member of the American Advisory Organization whose purpose was to “introduce American Teachers and students to the new education methods used in Soviet Russia”. Dr. Counts’ interest in Russia was apparent in his publications, one of which was entitled, “The Soviet Challenge to America”. Counts’ work was known and well received by the Russians, as is evidenced in a letter he received from a member of the State Scientific Council and Commissariat of Education of the Soviet Union: “May I be so bold as to hope that your profound and consistent attack on the social order in your country will eventually lead you to a complete emancipation from American exclusiveness and intellectual messiahship so aptly exposed in your pamphlet thus enabling you to consider all social progress from a universal proletarian point of view.” (Ibid. 34)

Dr. Counts was signatory of the “conclusions and Recommendations” report by the Commission on Social Studies described before. Counts was also a favorite student and disciple of John Dewey and claimed Columbia Teacher’s College as his headquarters. (W. Cleon Skousen, The Naked Capitalist, 1970)

Another interesting aside is that Dr. counts’ pamphlet, mentioned above, is listed in the Communist Leaders’ Handbook for recommended reading. Carnegie’s interest in things Russian will be discussed again later.

The Ford Foundation for the Advancement of Education and the Old Dominion Foundation jointly supported a project of the Institute for Philosophical Research. Mortimer J. Adler was the Director of this Institute. The project, implemented in 1952, is described as “undertaking a dialectical examination of Western humanistic thought with a view to providing assistance in the clarification of basic philosophical and educational issued in the modern world.” (The Freeman Digest, p.29)

That this project deserves attention is witnessed by the well-known radical opinions of Mr. Adler, its director. In the January, 1949 issue of Common Cause, Mr. Adler had an article entitled ‘The quiet Revolution,’ in which he said:

The basic trend toward socialism, which began with Wilson’s New Freedom, and which was greatly accelerated by Roosevelt’s New Deal, has been confirmed by Truman’s return to the presidency on a platform which does not yield an inch to the right and in many respects goes further to the left. That fact suggests the possibility that some form of socialism–may prove to be the middle ground between the free enterprise capitalism and the oligarchical politics of the “economic royalists” on the one hand, and the dictatorship of the proletariat and the despotism of the party on the other…It all adds up to a clear picture. It looks like a quiet but none the less effective revolution. If we still wish to be cautious we need say no more than that we have reached a turning point in American politics at which it has become evident that the general social process of the last 20 years is irreversible-except by force. By choice the American people are never going to fall back to the right again. That deserves to be called a revolution accomplished…

But it is also a revolution which will continue. Either the Democratic Party will move further to the left or a new political party will form to the left of the Democrats.” (Ibid.)

Mr. Adler is still around and very active in the field of education.

A portion of the concluding remarks of the Reece Committee stated:

Putting the evidence together, we conclude that the National Education Association has been an important element in the tax-exempt..world used to indoctrinate American youth with ‘internationalism’…referred to as ‘globalism.’ This point of view is closely related to the ‘new era’ which so many social scientists have envisioned as the ultimate goal of our society when they have gotten through ‘engineering’ us into it. (Ibid. P.66)

The evidence uncovered as a result of the Reece Committee was incontrovertible. What action was taken against the foundations? NONE!!! The committee was canceled due to the disruptive behavior of Congressman Wayne Hayes of Ohio, a member of the Committee, and the matter was more or less dropped.

The findings of the Reece Committee merely became a matter of public record, and as such, is stored in the archives in Washington, DC. The information was never picked up by the media. However, at least two books have been published in the years that followed exposing the influence and power that the major foundations have had on our government and educational institutions.

Rene Wormser, General Counsel for the Reece Committee, published Foundations: Their Power and Influence in 1958. Dr. Carroll Quigley, a professed “insider” among the foundations and money people, published the “tell all” book, Tragedy and Hope – a History of the World in Our Time in 1966. On page 955 of his book, Quigley explains why the press never jumped to cover the Senate investigation: “It soon became clear that people of immense wealth would be unhappy if the investigation went too far and that the ‘most respected’ newspapers in the country, closely allied with these men of wealth, would not get excited enough about any revelations to make the publicity worth while, in terms of votes or campaign contributions.” (W. Cleon Skousen, p. 58)

In an interview with Michael Loyd Chadwick, editor of The Freemen Digest, Norman Dodd, Chief Investigator and Director of Research for the Reece Committee, was quoted as saying that the foundations had succeeded in providing the United States with a “national system of education.” According to Dodd, through the efforts of “organizations and persons little known to the American public. The principles upon which this country was founded are now scorned as a result of the changes fostered by the foundations’ control of education. The foundations have been able to take the philosophy upon which American civilization was based and turn it into its opposite…” (The Freeman Digest, p.75)

To recap the evidence gathered by the Reece Committee, it appears that the elitist coterie of tax-exempt foundations used the tax dollars of American citizens to gain control of our colleges, elementary and secondary schools, the media, the legislatures and courts, the textbook industry, and any person or organization even remotely connected with the educational establishment. Thus establishing this control, the foundations then went to work to mold and indoctrinate the voters and leaders of the future. The goal of this indoctrination being to engineer society into a collectivist, socialist state as outlined in the “conclusions and Recommendations” report.

You see, the “new world order” can be achieved in a more timely and tidy manner when the equalized masses willingly follow the “pied piper of Planethood” than if they surrender through force. To paraphrase Ludwig von Mises, Austrian economist and international educator, collectivism is not something that springs naturally from a people, rather it is something that is contemplated by special types of intellectuals or power-mongers.

The key to collectivism, then, is to play to the emotions and sympathies of the individual in order to “skillfully” direct him toward the predetermined Global objective. Perhaps this explains the trend toward hypnosis and New Age techniques in the classroom today. If you will recall the new thinking skills techniques were designed primarily to play to the emotional and sensitive side of the brain!!!???

In his book, The Naked Capitalist, Cleon Skousen had this to say regarding the foundations’ role in education: “If these people had their way we would develop a prospective nightmare in our schools–schools without grades, without discipline, without prayers, without pledges of alliance, without Christmas, without Easter, without patriotism, without morals, without standards of speech or standards of dress.” (W. Cleon Skousen, p. 72) – HAS NOT ALL THIS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED???

Isn’t it amazing that everything Skousen forewarned in 1970 has come to pass in the ’90s???

Has the locus of control in education changed today….NO! Today, Carnegie controls not only the teachers’s unions (NEA and AFT), but also the educational studies, educational research, educational committees (including the Education Commission of the States, the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and the National Association of State Boards of Education), individual state reform efforts (including state assessment testing and reform task forces), national testing instruments (NAEP, SAT, ETS, and the National Teachers’ Examination), high school graduation requirements (Carnegie units), and most importantly, the development and dissemination of curriculum through the National Diffusion Network.

The list can go on and on. Carnegie’s stronghold on education doesn’t stop with organizations and testing, however. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching co-controls the national educational database (ESIDS along with federal and state governments. They also spearheaded and designed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act perhaps the most important piece of educational legislation of the century.

Some of Carnegie’s projects include The Task Force on Teaching as a Profession and The Task Force on Education of Young Adolescents. And, let’s not forget Carnegie’s American-Soviet educational agreement. This will be discussed in a future issue.

Don’t you find it odd that the people screaming the loudest about our public school nightmare are the very ones who delivered it to us in the first place????

Next issue: HOW THEY CREATED THE PROBLEM!!! AND WHY???

by John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year, 1991

Call me Mr. Gatto, please. Twenty-six years ago, having nothing better to do, I tried my hand at schoolteaching. My license certifies me as an instructor of English language and literature, but that isn’t what I do at all. What I teach is school, and I win awards doing it.

Teaching means many different things, but six lessons are common to schoolteaching from Harlem to Hollywood. You pay for these lessons in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what they are: The first lesson I teach is: “Stay in the class where you belong.” I don’t know who decides that my kids belong there but that’s not my business. The children are numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right class. Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being under the burden of the numbers each carries. Numbering children is a big and very profitable business, though what the business is designed to accomplish is elusive.

In any case, again, that’s not my business. My job is to make the kids like it being locked in together, I mean or at the minimum, endure it. If things go well, the kids can’t imagine themselves anywhere else; they envy and fear the better classes and have contempt for the dumber classes. So the class mostly keeps itself in good marching order. That’s the real lesson of any rigged competition like school. You come to know your place.

Nevertheless, in spite of the overall blueprint, I make an effort to urge children to higher levels of test success, promising eventual transfer from the lower-level class as a reward. I insinuate that the day will come when an employer will hire them on the basis of test scores, even though my own experience is that employers are (rightly) indifferent to such things. I never lie outright, but I’ve come to see that truth and [school]teaching are incompatible.

The lesson of numbered classes is that there is no way out of your class except by magic. Until that happens you must stay where you are put.

The second lesson I teach kids is to turn on and off like a light switch. I demand that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with each other for my favor. But when the bell rings I insist that they drop tne work at once and proceed quickly to the next work station. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of.

The lesson of bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their argument is inexorable; bells destroy past and future, converting every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living mountain and river the same even though they are not. Bells inoculate each undertaking with indifference.

The third lesson I teach you is to surrender your will to a predestined chain of command. Rights may be granted or withheld, by authority, without appeal. As a schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for behavior that threatens my control. My judgments come thick and fast, because individuality is trying constantly to assert itself in my classroom. Individuality is a curse to all systems of classification, a contradiction of class theory.

Here are some common ways it shows up: children sneak away for a private moment in the toilet on the pretext of moving their bowels; they trick me out of a private instant in the hallway on the grounds that they need water. Sometimes free will appears right in front of me in children angry, depressed or exhilarated by things outside my ken. Rights in such things cannot exist for schoolteachers; only privileges, which can be withdrawn, exist.

The fourth lesson I teach is that only I determine what. curriculum you will study (rather, I enforce decisions transmitted by the people who pay me). This power lets me separate good Kids from bad kids instantly. Good kids do the tasks I appoint with a minimum of conflict and decent show of enthusiasm. Of the millions of things of value to learn, I decide what few we have time for. The choices are mine. Curiosity has no important place in my work, only conformity.

Bad kids fight against this, of course, trying openly or covertly to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist.

This is another way I teach the lesson of dependency. Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. This is the most important lesson of all, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. It is no exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned. Think of what would fall apart if kids weren’t trained in the dependency lesson: The social-service businesses could hardly survive, including the fast-growing counseling industry; commercial entertainment of all sorts, along with television, would wither if people remembered how to make their own fun; the food services, restaurants and prepared-food warehouses would shrink if people returned to making their own meals rather than depending on strangers to cook for them. Much of modern law, medicine, and engineering would go too — the clothing business as well — unless a guaranteed supply of helpless people poured out of our schools each year. We’ve built a way of life that depends on people doing what they are told because they don’t know any other way. For God’s sake, let’s not rock that boat!

In lesson five I teach that your self-respect should depend on an observer’s measure of your worth. My kids are constantly evaluated and judged. A monthly report, impressive in its precision, is sent into students’ homes to spread approval or to mark exactly — down to a single percentage point — how dissatisfied with their children parents should be. Although some people might be surprised how little time or reflection goes into making up these records, the cumulative weight of the objective- seeming documents establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at a certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual judgment of strangers.

Self-evaluation — the staple of every major philosophical system that ever appeared on the planet — is never a factor in these things. The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should not trust themselves or their parents, but must rely on the evaluation of certified officials. People need to be told what they are worth.

In lesson six I teach children that they are being watched. I keep each student under constant surveillance and so do my colleagues. There are no private spaces for children; there is no private time. Class change lasts 300 seconds to keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels. Students are encouraged to tattle on each other, even to tattle on their parents. Of course I encourage parents to file their own child’s waywardness, too.

I assign “homework” so that this surveillance extends into the Household, where students might otherwise use the time to learn something unauthorized, perhaps from a father or mother, or by apprenticing to some wiser person in the neighborhood.

The lesson of constant surveillance is that no one can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate. Surveillance is an ancient urgency among certain influential thinkers; it was a central prescription set down by Calvin in the Institutes, by Plato in the Republic, by Hobbes, by Comte, by Francis Bacon. All these childless men discovered the same thing: Children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under central control.

It is the great triumph of schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best parents, there is only a small number who can imagine a different way to do things. Yet only a very few lifetimes ago things were different in the United States: originality and variety were common currency; our freedom from regimentation made us the miracle of the world; social class boundaries were relatively easy to cross; our citizenry was marvelously confident, inventive, and able to do many things independently, to think for themselves. We were something, all by ourselves, as individuals. It only takes about 50 contact hours to transmit basic literacy and math skills well enough that kids can be self-teachers from then on. The cry for “basic skills” practice is a smokescreen behind which schools pre-empt the time of children for twelve years and teach them the six lessons I’ve just taught you.

We’ve had a society increasingly under central control in the United States since just before the Civil War: the lives we lead, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, and the green highway signs we drive by from coast to coast are the products of this central control. So, too, I think, are the epidemics of drugs, suicide, divorce, violence, cruelty, and the hardening of class into caste in the U.S., products of the dehumanization of our lives, the lessening of individual and family importance that central control imposes.

Without a fully active role in community life you cannot develop into a complete human being. Aristotle taught that. Surely he was right; look around you or look in the mirror: that is the demonstration.

“School” is an essential support system for a vision of social engineering that condemns most people to be subordinate stones in a pyramid that narrows to a control point as it ascends. “School” is an artifice which makes such a pyramidal social order seem inevitable (although such a premise is a fundamental betrayal of the American Revolution). In colonial days and through the period of the early Republic we had no schools to speak of. And yet the promise of democracy was beginning to be realized. We turned our backs on this promise by bringing to life the ancient dream of Egypt: compulsory training in subordination for everybody. Compulsory schooling was the secret Plato reluctantly transmitted in the Republic when he laid down the plans for total state control of human life.

The current debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony; we already have one, locked up in the six lessons I’ve told you about and a few more Fve spared you. This curriculum produces moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its bad effects. What is under discussion is a great irrelevancy.

None of this is inevitable, you know. None of it is impregnable to change. We do have a choice in how we bring up young people; there is no right way. There is no international competition” that compels our existence, difficult as it is to even think about in the face of a constant media barrage of myth to the contrary. In every important material respect our nation is self-sufficient. If we gained a non-material philosophy that found meaning where it is genuinely located in families, friends, the passage of seasons, in nature, in simple ceremonies and rituals, in curiosity, generosity, compassion, and service to others, in a decent independence and privacy then we would be truly self-sufficient.

How did these awful places, these “schools”, come about? As we know them, they are a product of the two “Red Scares” of 1848 and 1919, when powerful interests feared a revolution among our industrial poor, and partly they are the result of the revulsion with which old-line families regarded the waves of Celtic, Slavic, and Latin immigration and the Catholic religion after 1845. And certainly a third contributing cause can be found in the revulsion with which these same families regarded the free movement of Africans through the society after the Civil War.

Look again at the six lessons of school. This is training for permanent under-classes, people who are to be deprived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And it is training shaken loose from its original logic: to regulate the poor. Since the 1920s the growth of the well- articulated school bureaucracy, and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling exactly as it is, have enlarged schooling’s original grasp to seize the sons and daughters of the middle class. Is it any wonder Socrates was outraged at the accusation that he took money to teach? Even then philosophers saw clearly the inevitable direction the professionalization of teaching would take, pre-empting the teaching function that belongs to all in a healthy community belongs, indeed, most clearly to yourself, since nobody else care as much about your destiny.

Professional teaching tends to another serious error. It make things that are inherently easy to learn, like reading, writing and arithmetic, difficult -by insisting they be taught by pedagogical procedures.

With lessons like the ones teach day after day, is it any wonder we have the nations crisis we face today? Young people indifferent to the adult world and to the future indifferent to almost everything except the diversions of toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.

All the peripheral tendencies of childhood are magnified to a grotesque extent by schooling, whose hidden curriculum prevents effective personality development. Indeed, without exploiting the fearfulness, selfishness, and inexperience of children our schools could not survive at all, nor could I as a certified schoolteacher.

“Critical thinking” is a term we hear frequently these days as a form of training which will herald a new day in mass schooling. It certainly will, if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the use of dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a year without being torn to pieces.

Institutional schoolteachers are destructive to children’s development. Nobody survives the Six-Lesson Curriculum unscathed, not even the instructors. The method is deeply and profoundly anti-educational. No tinkering will fix it. In one of the great ironies of human affairs, the massive rethinking that schools require would cost so much less than we are spending now that it is not likely to happen. First and foremost, the business I am in is a jobs project and a contract-letting agency. We cannot afford to save money, not even to help children.

At the pass we’ve come to historically, and after 26 years of teaching, I must conclude that one of the only alternatives on the horizon for most families is to teach their own children at home. Small, de- institutionalized schools are another. Some form of free-market system for public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers. But the near impossibility of these things for the shattered families of the poor, and for too many on the fringes of the economic middle class, foretell that the disaster of Six-Lesson Schools is likely to continue.

After an adult lifetime spent in teaching school I believe the method of schooling is the only real content it has. Don’t be fooled into thinking that good curricula or good equipment or good teachers are the critical determinants of your son and daughter’s school-time. All the pathologies we’ve considered come about in large measure because the lessons of school prevent children from keeping important appointments with themselves and their families, to learn lesson in self-motivation, perseverance, self-reliance courage, dignity and love and, of course lessons in service to others, which are among the key lessons of home life.

Thirty years ago these things could still be learned in the time left after school. But television has eaten most of that time, and a combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families have swallowed up most of what used to be family time. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human, and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in. A future is rushing down upon our culture which will insist that all of us learn the wisdom of non-material experience; this future will demand, as the price of survival, that we follow a pace of natural life economical in material cost. These lessons cannot be learned in schools as they are. School is like starting life with a 12-year jail sentence in which bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned. I teach school and win awards doing it. I should know.

TALENT DEVELOPMENT

God gives every child undeveloped gifts and talents to be used to serve Him. (Matt. 24: 14-29)

Square Pegs deserve square holes. Not every child learns in the “normal” instructional method. God has created each child to be an individual with a specific learning style. It is the job of home schooling and Christian school parents to discover each child’s learning technique, what his/her gifts are, where their talents lie, and how to best choose curriculum to meet their needs. FCM offers diagnostic educational testing, documentation, remediation and enrichment curriculum recommendations. Let us help you to understand your child and their specific needs. Then let us provide you with an Individualized Educational Plan and schedule to allow your child to develop their talents to the fullest potential.

Scope & Sequence: General Overview
Language Arts: K-3

Reading/Literature

Word Analysis

PHONICS/VOCABULARY

learn consonant sounds
know letter/sound vowels, blends, digraphs, diphthongs, phonograms
recognize sight words
learn compound words
recognize synonyms, antonyms, homonyms
write contractions
decode words
use root words: prefixes, suffixes
use words with multiple meanings
use of descriptive words
integrate use of words of all subject areas
demonstrate variety and growth in word knowledge

LITERARY ELEMENTS

COMPREHENSION
expose to variety of literary forms
answer literal fact questions
recall main ideas from characters in story
read simple stories
understand sequence
follow simple directions
find main idea in story
understand cause/effect
make inferences
draw conclusions
identify reading for a specific purpose
compare and contrast
identify character traits and motives
learn setting
introduce topic
use word referents
look for author’s purpose

CRITICAL THINKING

predict outcomes
expose to inferential questions
distinguish between real/fantasy
distinguish between fact/opinion
answer why/how questions

LISTENING

skills in listening to others
becoming aware of purposes of listening
listen for clear speech patterns
apply skills for listening in a group discussion
learn how to adjust volume control in various situations
listen for directions
listen with respect
learn to understand audience response
teach purposes of listening: to gather and recall factual and
implied information
listen critically
listen for sequence of ideas
recognize main idea and details in listening response
experience listening to various media
write and respond from teacher dictation

SPEAKING

enjoy expressing self
encourage impromptu speaking
establish eye contact
learn to express ideas clearly
learn and apply different purposes for speaking:

giving information
persuading
entertaining
expressing feelings
group discussions
conversations
choral readings
use of complete sentences
enunciation/pronunciation
phrasing; pace; pitch; tone; expression
recite poetry
oral reports/speeches

The children who will benefit from a Talent Development ministry are usually easy to recognize. After two weeks of school, most teachers know which students are going to have difficulty, or need additional materials to be challenged. There is a need for teacher and parent observation in the screening process and valuable information can be obtained in this manner. The observations tell what the child is or is not doing, but does not give reasons for the performance level.

It is, therefore, necessary that complete evaluative and diagnostic testing be provided for each child entering the Talent Development program. This battery of tests should provide a reasonable estimate of the child’s I.Q. an achievement level in the basic subject areas, and diagnostic tests to pinpoint specific areas for remediation. These tests also will serve as a reference point when testing is done later in the school year to help determine progress.

The first test given is usually a standard group achievement test. If the child being tested is new to the school and achieves stanines of four or lower, further testing should be recommended. If any of the following information is supplied to your Christian school about the child, this will indicate a SPECIAL NEED ON THE PART OF THE STUDENT:

• Two years or more below academic grade level in any academic area;
• I.Q. below 90
• Variance on WISC (Individual Intelligence Test) between verbal and performance scores of over 15 points; and/or
• Scatter on the WISC of over three points in the subtests.

Additional testing should always be done by trained, competent, dedicated, born-again Christians. Never go to the world for the educational planning of your children’s future. The world’s ways are not God’s ways.

A service available to help you in student screening and testing is:

Visit/Message us on Contact Page.

The services of Faith Christian Ministries include:

1. The child will be brought to a pre-determined location where he/she is to be tested. At this time, the boy or girl will be administered a very thorough battery of examinations which will supply the parents and school with a very detailed account of the child’s competence in all educational areas.

2. Once work on the evaluation is completed it is time for the parent conference. Whenever the circumstances permit, the school administrator and the child’s teacher should be present during the parent conference. At this time the findings of the testing are shared. Also, all are informed of what materials can aid the child to make the greatest gains in achievement. The recommendations and guidelines provided in the educational plan are devised to promote success and maximum academic progress. At the close of the conference, the school administrator is given the completed folder which is to be placed in the student’s confidential file so that the child’s teacher can refer to it whenever necessary.

If this is the first indication the parents have had that their child has a problem, they may not accept the test results as being valid. It is their right to seek further opinions; it is after all, their child’s future which is involved. Always try to leave the lines of communication open so that if after further testing the results are the same, the parents will feel comfortable returning their child to your school.

Proper and thorough screening will save many instructional hours. A complete academic picture is a valuable tool and benefits both teacher and child. Children in need of a Talent Development program have already wasted much valuable time. They cannot afford to fall further behind due to insufficient or inaccurate diagnosis. This could negatively affect a child’s achievement level by as much as one to two years overall.

Once a child is in the program, he/she should be tested regularly using an achievement test, and once a year using a partial diagnostic testing. Yearly evaluation to update curriculum according to the child’s needs is essential.

As your program develops, a test at the beginning of the year serves as a comparison of the child’s progress during the school year. Much information is lost during the summer and comparison between test levels is not accurate when trying to ascertain progress made over the school year. Summer school is extremely important for the learning disabled child, slow learner, and retarded, for up to a year’s loss can occur over the summer due to some children’s severe auditory or visual memory problems.

In the case of our hypothetical “Mikey”, a complete evaluation would have helped not only Mikey, but also his parents and teacher. It is much easier to deal with a problem once it has been clearly defined. Many of the behavior problems that Mikey was experiencing were a direct result of the impossible school situation he had to face every day. With complete information concerning Mikey’s abilities and performance levels, his teacher would have been able to adjust some of the demands made upon Mikey and remove some of the pressure within the classroom. A complete physical examination could have revealed any root causes for both the bed-wetting and the academic difficulties. These efforts on Mikey’s behalf would also have helped improve his self-image as he saw the adults in his life concerned for him as a person.

Let’s Teach It — “Rite”???
contributed by Susan Foster

What approach to teaching should we use as we undertake the education of our children? Many parents and teachers want to know, “Just how do I present these new and wonderful materials which I have purchased for my child?”

A year ago, I was given a coffee mug by a dear friend who knew my heart for teaching. On it there is a German Proverb which I believe is pertinent to this question. It says. “A teacher is better than two books.” No matter how wonderful the books are, children need teachers. It is essential that we who are charged with the education of children, either our own or for others, do the teaching. We cannot sit our children in front of a workbook and expect the book to do our job.

With that firmly in mind, how do we teach the various subjects our children need? If we look to the Bible for our guidance, as we should in all matters, we will find that God gives us wonderful examples to follow in our teaching methods.

God has given us the answers to all the “tests” in life, if we will but read and study the Bible. As God gives us teachers in our Pastors and Bible teachers, and as we read and study the text book, our Bible, we find the answers are all there, ready for us to learn ahead of time for the test.

When you begin to think about your childs studies, ask yourself what is important on this page, in this chapter, or in this unit. Jot these ideas down. These are the concepts you must teach. Frequently, you will find these concepts at the beginning of new lessons. Write these concepts out in the form of questions and present them to your child as a study guide when you begin the lesson. Never test over anything that has not been put on that study sheet. You may add to this sheet as you work through your lessons and find important new concepts.

Next be sure that all the concepts are in the correct format. This is especially important for language arts. Unfortunately many books present concepts by showing the child the incorrect form. If one of your books presents concepts in the incorrect format, please DO NOT give this book to the child when teaching the concept.

Rewrite the exercise in the corrected format, and highlight, circle, or underline the specific things you are teaching. Teach this to the child, explaining why each item is the way it is, and then use the workbook or text questions only as a quiz or check point to check for mastery of the concept.

Before you begin to test, ask the child to tell you why something is correct. Show him correct items many times, asking him for explanations as daily review.

Be aware that the child remembers the last thing he sees when learning a new concept. This is why it is so essential that the child see only the correct format during the instructional period. Experts who teach bankers how to identify counterfeit money use this concept. A student is never exposed to the counterfeit bills while he is learning. He handles and studies only the real (correct) thing. By the time the student is finished with the program, he knows the real bills so well, he can spot a counterfeit immediately. It should be the same with our childs education. He should know the correct concept so well, that there is no question in his mind when he sees it in incorrect format.

Our children need to see the correct format over and over. They need to see it, handle it, speak it, and hear it. Be sure the exposure has been adequate to compensate for any memory weakness they may experience. Then you may need to reteach, again. Oral questioning will help you to know when the chid has mastered the new concept.

Once you feel confident the child understands the concepts, then and only then present the text book exercises, which need to be corrected, as a quiz, test or check point. When grading the tests, erase any wrong answers (do not let him see the incorrect format again) and then go back and reteach, showing him the same question in the correct form. Give him the quiz again and accept the final effort as his grade. After all, he did finally master the concept! When you baked your first cakes, or mowed your first lawn, did you want credit for the burnt sacrifice or for the crooked lines? You probably preferred that people remember the one that was perfect. Your child deserves the same encouragement.

When you have applied these strategies, you can say that you have taught it the right way! Congratulations on a job well done.

Note: Susan Foster is the Director of the Faith Christian Academy Satellite School, a service available to all Home Schoolers working with Dr. Paul Cates and Faith Christian Ministries.

The philosophy of Talent Development is based on principles found in the Bible. We believe that the Word of God has the answer to all of life’s problems and thus should be the basis for all education. To learn how to test for your child’s talents and develop a program to assist them in their homeschool education, contact us today at 828-435-0670, or you may live chat with us, just click on the orange button on your screen.

As Christian parents we must see that our children have the benefit of a Christian education. If our children have special educational needs, they still should have access to a Christian education. Until recently, there has been very little available within the Christian school movement for the child with special needs. It is for that reason we are writing this booklet. We hope to share with you, the reader, the necessary steps for building a truly effective Talent Development program within your Christian school.

Isaiah 54:13 contains this command: “And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord and great shall be the peace of thy children.” This verse includes every child and thus, so should our school ministry. Developing a Talent Development division takes time and though our final goal is to minister to all children, it may take several years to reach that goal.

Concerning how and when our children should begin instruction, Isaiah 28:9-10 is quite clear.

“Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept; precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little.”

According to this Scripture, instruction should begin between the ages of two and five. The subjects covered should be knowledge (academics) and doctrine (God’s precepts). The method of instruction is that of logical sequential lessons. These same principles are applicable with the Talent Development student, but more time is required for the mastery of basic skills.

The school is the secondary educational influence in the child’s life. Scripturally, parents are the primary educators, the father being held accountable for the major portion of the instruction. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 and 11:18-20 are clear concerning the continuity of instruction necessary in educating children.

“And thou shalt teach them [God’s laws] diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way and when thou liest down and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thy eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house and on thy gates.”

As familial education has for the most part, in our society, been appropriated to the school, it is evident that the Christian school plays a key role in helping parents (fathers) fulfill their Biblical mandate. Based upon Scripture, every child deserves a Christian education if his parents desire it. It then becomes critical that Christian schools prepare themselves to serve parents and children with special needs. Can we expect them to violate their God-given mandate and go to the world system to get this needed help?

By establishing and maintaining strong ties with the home, optimum improvement can be expected in each child within our ministry. The threefold cord of home, church, and school is one not easily broken. As we cooperate to ensure each child’s spiritual, physical, and academic growth, we become a team, building each child to be all that God intends for him to be. (Ecclesiastes 4:12b)

How could this philosophy have helped our hypothetical Mikey described earlier? The primary place that this would have helped Mikey is in his home. Preparation for the day should have included spiritual preparation in the form of prayer and family devotions. Extra time should have been provided by rising earlier to establish a more relaxed routine for the morning. An atmosphere of acceptance and support in matters of dress and hygiene would also have benefited Mikey. Attention to these areas would have avoided the difficulties on the bus, the forgotten lunch, and the fight before school.

The other place that his philosophy would have been helpful to Mikey is in his classroom. The teacher should have shown more consideration for Mikey’s academic difficulties by selecting a paragraph prior to the reading class and then letting Mikey practice reading it before he had to read it in front of the class. In regard for the spiritual worth of others, laughing at the difficulties of another should never have been tolerated. Thoughtful placement within the classroom also helps eliminate disturbances; this can be accomplished by placing the distractible child near the front of the class and near the teacher. Punishment should be administered fairly but should never attempt to diminish or restrict a talent given by God from being developed in that child. The wasting of time should never be allowed. Children with special needs must make use of every available moment if they are to progress in a manner pleasing to God.

To be meaningful, evaluation must be based on understanding of children as learners, reading as a learning process, and learning to read as a long-term developmental process.

Principles:

1. Learning to read is a complicated process and is sensitive to a variety of pressures. Too much pressure, or the wrong kind of pressure may result in non- learning. Sources of pressures on children experiencing difficulty in reading: Pressure from home and parents. Parents are ego- involved in their child’s success. Pressure from the child himself (stems from ego-needs and concept of self). Pressure from school. Children’s attitudes result from the competitive atmosphere fostered by adults (parents,school, teacher) and from the conformity pattern imposed by society.

2. Learning to read is an individual process. Grouping children is of negligible value unless the teacher adjusts learning situations to each child’s need for instruction.

3. Pupil differences must be a primary consideration in reading instruction. It is hypothesized that any home/school will house children/pupils whose present achievement and instructional needs vary greatly.

4. Reading instruction should be thought of as an organized, systematic, growth- producing activity. Sound instruction will start from the premise that the environment is an integral part of instruction.

5. Proper reading instruction depends on the diagnosis of each child’s weaknesses and needs. Diagnosis has become associated too often with cure or remedy rather than with preventing the development of poor reading. To establish the fact that a child is reading below what might be expected is not diagnosis. It is an invitation to diagnosis.

6. The best diagnosis is useless unless it is used as a blueprint for instruction. When test results are not used for instructional purposes, the educational objectives of the testing program are defeated. Any skill not mastered, or only partially mastered, may be instrumental in producing other reading problems. Intelligent instruction must be based on accurate information regarding the children s present accomplishments and weaknesses. In this sense, a thorough diagnosis is a blueprint for instruction.

7. No child should be expected or forced to attempt to read material which, at the moment, he is incapable of reading. All curriculum study and the placing of learning tasks at different points on the educational continuum are related to this principle. The principle should be followed in all areas of child growth and development \emdash physical, social, emotional, intellectual. The principle amounts to a rejection of the myth that \ldblquote the child is a miniature adult.

This principle is also related to the fact that different children develop at different rates and that the growth pattern of an individual child is not uniform. It is not conducive to social, emotional, or educational growth to subject a child to failure experiences, because he is physically present in a home school environment/classroom where arbitrary achievement goals are set.

8. Reading is a process of getting meaning from printed word symbols. It is not merely a process of making conventionalized noises associated with these symbols. Reading is more than a mechanical process, even though mechanics are an essential part of the process. Creativity and versatility are basic requirements for successful teaching.

9. Any given technique, practice, or procedure is likely to work better with some children than with others. Hence, the teacher of reading must have a variety of approaches. “There is no one best method of teaching.” When a parent/teacher becomes enamored of one method to the exclusion of others, she shuts out the possibility of adjusting the method to the individual child’s needs. Although such a parent/teacher may be highly successful with some children, she will inevitably produce a number of frustrated, unhappy misfits. Some of her children/pupils will develop behaviors which result in such labels as “bad”, “dull”, “dreamers”, “lazy”, and “anti-social.” These behaviors, instead of being interpreted as the logical outcomes of failure, frustration, and tension evolving from the reading situation, become in turn, the explanations of why the child failed in reading.

10. Learning to read is a long-term developmental process extending over a period of years. This rests on two promises. First, every aspect of the instructional program is related to the ultimate goal of producing efficient readers. The second, that the child’s early attitude towards reading is important from the educational standpoint. It can influence a student’s habits for life.

11. This concept of readiness should be extended upward to all grades. There should be as much concern with readiness at all levels as there is at the first grade level.

12. Early in the learning process the child must acquire ways of gaining independence in identifying words whose meanings are known to him, but which are unknown to him as sight words. Pronouncing words is not reading, but sounding out words not known as sight words is essential to independent reading.

13. Children should not be in a formal learning situation if they have emotional problems sufficiently serious to make them uneducable at the moment, or if they interfere with or disrupt the learning process. Just as the practice of “beating the devil” out of the “obsessed” came to an end, so, I pray, will we stop trying to beat learning into a child who is at the moment uneducable.

14. Emphasis should be on prevention rather than cure. Reading problems should be detected early and corrected before they deteriorate into failure -frustration – reaction cases. Sound principles of reading instruction should apply with equal validity to any instructional approach; and by definition such principles cannot reflect what might be called an either-or bias as to particular methodologies.

Parents Certainly Are Misunderstood!

By Steven C. Staats

You thought you were happily smiling at your child from a hard stadium seat or a hot packed auditorium, But your child looked at your face and saw approval of him and joy in what he was doing.

You thought that you were just patting him on the back or on the head, or just ruffling his hair, But your child cherished the warm loving touch and his heart was brightened.

You thought you were reading a bedtime story with all the funny and scary voices, But your child enjoyed the fact you read every word even though he had heard them a hundred times before.

You thought you were letting your child help paint the house even though the paint got kind of runny and drippy in places, But your child knew that you were working together as a family and felt a sense of accomplishment as a family.

You thought you were singing silly songs or counting the cows on a long boring trip, But your child learned that it was fun being together no matter where you were.

You thought you were spending a few minutes of your time by throwing a ball n the back yard or baking some cookies, But your child, who realized that your time’ is precious, knew you were investing it in him.

You thought that you asked your child’s opinion about something that wasn’t too important, But your child thought you asked because his opinions and thoughts were important.

You thought you were being a good host by inviting your child’s friends in for a cool snack on a warm summer day, But your child knew that his friends were important to you and always welcome in your home.

You thought the tears in you eyes went unnoticed when your child accomplished an important goal in his life, But your child knew that he was deeply imbedded in your heart and you sensed his accomplishment.

You thought that the refrigerator was as good of a place as any for hanging all the art work and “well done” papers that came home from school, But your child felt important when he came home from school each day with something to show you and tack up in his personal hall of fame.

You thought you gave your child some simple chore or job to do and told him, “Well done.”, with a smile when he did it, But your child learned responsibility and began to realize he could tackle even tougher things.

You thought you were helping a troubled restless child get some sleep by fixing a cup of hot cocoa, But your child felt that you were opening your heart around a kitchen table and making all the problems a lot smaller.

You thought the vacation wasn’t much of a success because the fish didn’t bite and the sun didn’t shine, But your child still remembers everything that happened and he still laughs at all of the funny parts.

You thought you were just pointing out the words in the church hymn book with your child’s finger as he tried to sing along, But your child learned that singing praises to God in worship was important.

You thought you were just giving him a quick hug at a special moment or “just because”. But your child carried it with him for a long time, Because what you really said was, “I’m proud of you!”, or “I love you!”

You thought you were just giving him a little kiss on the cheek to tell him good bye as he left for school, But your child felt warm and loved because he knew there would be another one waiting for him when he got home.

Come to think of it, there are a lot of times when parents really are misunderstood!

(This may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all non profit purposes without consent of author as long author’s name remains attached.)

By Dr. Paul Cates

The prophet Hosea warned, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge because thou has rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. Deuteronomy 6:7

Education is defined as the task of changing someone’s behavior. It has also been called “brain washing.” There is nothing neutral about education. Everyone involved in education has an agenda and a purpose. That purpose can be for good or evil. Moreover, God said, learn not the way of the heathen. Jeremiah 10:2

In 1964, our Supreme Court took prayer out of the public schools. It removed the moral fiber of our country by replacing the Ten Commandments with “situational ethics.” It made a liar out of our Savior who said, I am the way, the truth and the light (John 14:6). He could no longer be presented as He presented Himself. He now became just a teacher and maybe a prophet, a religious leader.

How did all this come about? Instead of teaching our children as instructed in Deuteronomy, we allowed others, those with alien doctrines, to teach them. Instead of our children knowing right and wrong, everything became “relative.” We did what Ephraim did, … he hath mixed himself among the people. We lost our identity. We allowed what Ephraim allowed, strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not… Hosea 7:9.

The Romans did the same thing. When the empire was at its height, they were too busy to train their children. So, what did they do? They hired Greek teachers and philosophers to teach their children. In less than two generations, the Roman children no longer thought as Roman citizens; they thought like their Greek teachers and philosophers. The Greek teacher and philosophers did not set out to destroy Rome. They simply taught what they believed, and the Roman children became like their Greek teachers. Rome fell.

American people want education, but they want someone else to do it: some Greek teacher or philosopher.

American education has been on a decline since 1963. “A Nation at Risk” says, “…the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” “Some 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate…” “About 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be considered functionally illiterate…” “International comparisons of student achievement…reveal that on 19 academic tests American students were never first or second and … were last seven times.” [A Nation at Risk, 1983 report of the National commission on excellence in Education.]

American people want an end to pedagogical fads and experimentation and a return to educational basics. They want to strengthen the “Five New Basics”: English, mathematics, science, social studies and computer science. They want more homework, a longer school day and school year, stricter discipline, tougher standards for teachers, more challenging curricula, and better textbooks.

What are the American people getting? Not the above; rather, they are getting OBE (Outcome Based Education).

Total transformation: Educational reform through OBE (Greek teacher and philosopher) is a major part of a sweeping Orwellian plan to radically restructure all of American society along revolutionary, socialist lines from top to bottom. Shirley McCure says, “what we’re into is the total restructuring of society.” [Address: 1988, National Governor’s Conference, Wichita, Kansas.]

Education is not simply a chance situation in the usual sense of change. It is a total transformation of society. Our society is in a crisis of restructuring, and you can not get away from it. You can not go into the churches, you can not go into government or into our courts or into business and hide form the fact that what we are facing is the total restructuring of our society.

The OBE transformationists envision their role as one of completely redesigning society. The OBE plan calls not only for radically changing what is taught in the schools and how it is taught, but for tying every child into a master computer system that will continuously track not only his academic progress but his beliefs, values, attitudes, medical and health records, and family history.

Under OBE, schools are scheduled for expansion not only to include day care, but to be merged with health, employment, and other social service agencies.

Parents will be drawn into OBE through mandatory “parent training” classes and a “life long learning” program that will require continuous retraining and recertification for every job.

OBE is operating in its various forms: Outcome Based Instruction – Outcome Driven Development Mode, Performance – Based Curriculum, Competency – Based Education, PACOS (People, A Course of Study), MACOS (Man, A Course of Study), and at one level or another in most of the state school systems of this country. What is amazing is that this revolutionary plan has progressed so far with so little opposition.

This educational revolution has radically altered our former republic. The thing that is impressive is that it has been peacefully accomplished by a technique that has included rewriting the English Language and altering operational definitions. Thus a delusion has been created so that the American public thinks they are talking about the same things as the educators because they are using the same words. By altering the operational definitions of words, opposite and violently hostile ideas have been presented by the same word signs. This has been America’s first experience with dialectic language used by Hitler, Marx and Lenin.

OBE is one of the latest American experiences with the Marxian dialectic. “OBE means focusing and organizing all of the school’s programs and instructional efforts around clearly defined outcomes we want tall students to demonstrate when they leave school.” [Address by William Spady, Director of the International Center on Outcome-Based restructuring (widely acknowledged as the architect of O.B.E.), 1992.]

Sounds Good?! Watch their interpretation of the above statement. Words take on meanings entirely divorced from those traditionally associated with them. Orwell’s “Newspeak” is alive and flourishing in OBE.

Defining outcomes: Most of us would “assume” it refers to the demonstration of discreet knowledge. For instance, first grade, the ability to recite, recognize and write the letters of the alphabet or numbers from 1 to 100. Not OBE. OBE is an agent of change. “The purpose of education and schools,” “…is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students.” School is a change agent – and the specific focus is on changing people. “The goal is to develop a new kind of elementary school teacher who…engages in teaching as clinical practice…and functions as a responsible agent of social change.” [B-Step (Behavioral Teacher Education project, 1967, U.S. office of Education, Contract # OEC-0-9-320424-4042) states in the project’s goals, “The primary goal of this influential program is stated as:”]

Rather than being taught facts, as mentioned under 1st grade, information, concepts, and essential skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, children are engaged in supposed “higher order thinking skills,” ignoring the self-evident truth that it is impossible to employ “higher order thinking” without a base of factual knowledge. This has been forced on education by a group of pseudo-science and passing it off on society as a “higher science” when in fact it is a false religion with atheistic beliefs, doctrines and premises. Psychology was established along with sociology, to replace Christianity and by using the vehicle of education, is doing the job.

OBE curriculum is tilted heavily to the affective domain in order to manipulate and change feelings, attitudes and values.

An OBE objective for grades 9-12 states, “The student will develop communication skills, including being able to talk with one’s actual or potential partner about sexual behavior.” In the first grade, “The student will identify different types of family structures, so that no single type is seen as the only possible one.” “Write a new U.S. Constitution.” (They don’t even understand the present one.) [Oklahoma’s OBE State Guidelines.]

In OBE, “All students understand and appreciate their worth as unique and capable individuals, and exhibit self esteem.” [Statement from Pennsylvania State OBE.] What” wrong with that you say! Our leading “Christian” psychologists write and expound the same philosophy. So they do. But scripture says He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:30. The scriptures say the opposite, but through the false religion of psychology, a lie is made into an acceptable truth.

In teaching reading, phonics is excluded. The “whole language” and “look-say” method are accepted. These methods are responsible for our pandemic illiterate society today.

“Cooperative learning” is stressed by organizing virtually all learning activities in group activities. Individual excellence is discouraged as the group is allowed to progress only as a unit. When every child has mastered the stated behavioral goals, they can move on. “Group think” is in, individuality, competition, personal striving is out.

A permanent computer file or “portfolio” is established for each child, complete with detailed school, health, medical and family records. The student is trapped in a computer-driven behavior modification curriculum. This is just like Dr. Skinner’s pigeons. This is just like Hitler’s, Stalin’s, Lenin’s and others’ Marxian philosophy.

Teachers are likewise trapped in this computer-driven, behavior modification curriculum. If their students don’t “successfully” achieve or “regurgitate” the “correct” response, the teachers will lose their teaching credentials and be weeded out of the “teaching,” “brain washing,” “behavioral modification,” “false-religion” profession.

In OBE, parents are required to take “effective parenting” classes. “Community service” is required for both children and parents. Training for “global citizenship” is established as the primary purpose.

As Rome saw her country destroyed and her children turn against her, so will “outcome based education’s” objective be achieved in American education, or should I say formally American education.

They are now training and producing the citizen of the new “one world order”!

[Dr. Paul Cates holds a B.A.-Psychology, M.A.-Special Education: Teaching the Child with Learning Disabilities, and a Ph.D.-Curriculum & Instruction.