Outcome Based Education
by Dr. Phil Stringer (Florida)
"Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath
made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his
pasture." (Psalms 100:3)
* * *
For 190 years (over 300 if you count the colonial period) education in the
United States had three primary purposes:
To teach basic academic knowledge (reading, writing, arithmetic, and science),
to teach our Christian heritage (history, Bible reading, and prayer),
to teach citizenship (application of our Christian culture to daily life).
"Religion, morality, and knowledge" was how the Northwest Ordinance
of 1789 phrased it. Roughly 30 years ago the concept of "secular
neutrality" was adopted in our schools, and, as a result, American history
has been rewritten, and prayer and Bible study have been banned. There has been
constant controversy over what principles of citizenship can still be taught.
The results of the last 30 years make it clear that there is a crisis of
values in public life, and this is reflected in our schools. It is also clear
that there is a decline in academic accomplishment in our schools.
Most of the professional education establishment wants to address these
problems with two profound changes:
Changing the basic method of education, and
Changing the basic purpose of education.
The professional educational establishment now has the full support of the
Clinton White House, the Department of Education, and many state Departments of
Education. New curriculum and a myriad of new programs have been developed to
institute these changes. However, the educational establishment and the various
government agencies involved have run into one major obstacle in implementing
these programs: the ultimate special interest group, parents.
The best known and most widespread of these new programs is called Outcome
Based Education (OBE). In fact, the term Outcome Based Education is often used
to refer to this whole approach of changing the method and purpose of education.
Other common programs with the same purpose include (among dozens of others):
Mastery Learning
Quest
Performance-based Curriculum
Competency-based Education
The new educational method involves focusing not on what is taught, but what
is learned. It is hard (if not impossible) to get any clear definition on how
this is done. The concept seems to involve constantly reworking the same
material until everyone masters it, "dumbing down" academic standards,
holding up bright students (Mastery Learning Reconsidered, Hopkins
University 1787), and revamping grading systems to remove competition and
failure (which dampens self-esteem).
Minnesota teacher, Cheri Yecke, taught in one of the first OBE programs in
Minnesota. She reported, "The prevailing attitude among many students is
Why study? They cannot fail me, so who cares?"
Though OBE proponents cannot point to successful programs to demonstrate how
these changes will help students, they are still willing to invest millions of
dollars of taxpayers money experimenting with young lives. This experimentation
takes place during the formative years which cannot be recovered.
In 1902, the literacy rate in the U.S. was 98%. Nevertheless, rather than
return to the successful methods of the past, the modern educational
establishment demands drastic new programs.
But as much concern as there is about the academic weaknesses of OBE style
education, there is even more concern about the new purpose for education. Many
OBE type educators (Anthony Oettinger of Harvard and Thomas B. Sticht of the
National Institute of Education, for example) have stated that producing the
desired social objectives in the lives of children is more important than
teaching them to read. Promoting these desired feelings is becoming more
important than communicating academic information.
And by whom are these feelings desired? Are the social objectives of the
professional educational establishment those of mainstream America? Do they
return to the success of the past? Do they promote the traditional values that
prevent teen pregnancies, AIDS, and the violent trends of the present?
The National Education Association is in the hands of the most extreme
liberal, anti-family, socialist leaning groups of activists in the country. This
is proven by looking at the resolutions passed during their annual conventions
during any of the last 20 years.
Every totalitarian government that has existed in the last 200 years has had
to control the education of the young. For totalitarianism to be implanted, the
young must be taught to feel "politically correct thoughts" and not to
think for themselves. The Nazi regime of Hitler, the fascist government of
Mussolini, and all communist governments depended upon a professional
educational establishment to serve as the "thought police" for the
nations children.
Today, kindergarten students are sometimes told that we must have big
government to prevent "global warming" from destroying our planet.
These same children are not taught the scientific facts which demonstrate that
the average temperature has remained constant though our century (less than
one-half degree variation over 93 years).
In the name of promoting cultural diversity, small children are taught the
normalcy of perversion and are lied to about the health consequences of
perverted behavior.
Of course, the average teacher has no such agenda. Many try to do the best
they can under adverse conditions. But, the more flawed the system becomes, the
harder it is for good teachers to rise above the system. And OBE-style education
is the most flawed American educational system yet.
How is OBE being received? The state legislatures of Oklahoma and
Pennsylvania have both voted to remove OBE from their states, only to find that
it is easier said than done.
Then-governor Bill Clinton adopted an OBE-style program in Arkansas (with
Hillary Clinton in charge of implementation). After four years, test achievement
scores in Arkansas tumbled.
The city of Chicago was the first to adopt a city-wide OBE type system in the
1970's. After ten years of decreased results, a group of parents sued the
educational administrators for malpractice, and the program was dropped.
The National Educational Association landed the OBE program in Littleton,
Colorado, as the national model for OBE. However, on November 3, 1993, the
voters (by a two-to-one margin) voted out the pro-OBE candidates and replaced
them with school board members who favored a traditional approach. OBE programs
have also been tried and rejected in school systems in Montana, Tennessee, and
New Mexico.
Anytime a school system has to hide what it is doing from parents, it is time
to be alarmed. Anytime school administrators cannot give clear answers to simple
questions, it is time to be suspicious. Anytime schools try to take over the
role of parents, it is time to demand a change.
As Thomas Sowell has so well said, the only real question in the new debate
about the method and purpose of education is this, "Whose children are
these?"
Outcome Based Education seems designed to strip away the last influence of
our historic Christian culture from the public school system.
Dr. Phil Stringer is Executive Vice President of Landmark
Baptist College, Haines City, Florida.
