Once a people lose the ability to think for themselves, they can no longer be truly free.
"For more than two decades the nation has been involved in 'education reform,'" observes Thomas DeWeese of the American Policy Center in a recent issue of his monthly newsletter, The DeWeese Report. DeWeese insists that this so-called reform "is really nothing more than 'education restructuring,' with the results now becoming obvious as our children have steadily become illiterate, unable to read, add and subtract, or reason. These are the results," he says, "of the process called Outcome-Based Education (OBE)."
DeWeese contends that OBE "is not an education-al system or a new teaching method. It is a behavior modification process designed and implemented by psychologists. OBE evaluates each child's attitudes, values, and beliefs and sets out to eliminate and replace them with a set more to the liking of the education establishment."
DeWeese warns that OBE "is an anti-intellectual, highly politicized, psychological process designed to create a society that is accepting of, and susceptible to, manipulation and control. It has no other purpose," he insists, "and that is why it is veiled in secrecy and doublespeak."
DeWeese wonders how many parents "have noticed your children changing once they begin school? Do they remain the happy-go-lucky youngsters that first entered the school house? Or do they become sullen and frustrated?" he asks. "Have your children come home with questionnaires asking for personal family information? Have your children started to scold you for not recycling? Have your children suddenly announced that they are vegetarians? Have you noticed environmental questions or statements popping up in math tests or language and history textbooks?
"This is OBE at work," says Tom DeWeese, "probing and changing your children. OBE is being used to strip-search your children for attitudes, values, and beliefs that you have instilled. If you taught them to believe in God or respect their grandparents or love their nation, that must be changed. If you taught them that they are free, unique individuals who should stand up for their beliefs, then the system considers them to be at risk, in urgent need of help."
What's really putting our children at risk, of course, is OBE itself! Americans send their kids to school to be educated, not indoctrinated. The teachers and administrators work for us. We pay their salaries. We are, in effect, their employers, but somehow we've forgotten who's in charge. We've allowed ourselves to be cowed by our subordinates, and by suffering their insolence we've ceded control.
But hear this: We've had enough. We're tired of educators refusing to perform the job they've been assigned and presuming instead to take on a responsibility that does not belong to them. We'll instill in our own children the values we want them to have, and we will not tolerate some third party trying to "clarify," repress, or replace those values. We want teachers to teach our children, not brainwash them. We're taking charge again, and the educators will answer to us, not vice versa.
