-Caveat Lector-
Outcomes Based Education - Is the medium the message?
Professor S. Pinker, Professor of Psychology at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology(MIT) and director of the centre for cognitive neuro-science,
in his recent book, comments that the Outcomes Based system(constructivism)
as being inappropiate for teching mathematics and with this philosophy
formal education is unlikely to succeed .
In a recent survey of maths and science around the world(TMSS), the USA came
third from the bottom. Our system of OBE is derived from the USA. If the
USA with vastly superior resources fails, how can a much poorer country with
classes 2-3X bigger than the USA succeed. How are we superior to the USA?
The literacy rates in the USA, when being defined as being able to read
medicine prescription instructions has fallen from by between 20-30% since
the advent of progressive education. This occurs particularly when OBE is
tied in with whole language method instruction.
Given the above, why is the SA educational establishment in such a hurry to
implement a system that does not provide basic literacy and numeracy for all
its pupils?
It appears to me that the reason that OBE is promoted is not that it
empowers people but because it is a system to promote radical egalitarian
attitudes (politically correctness). In the past, the more open American
educationalists were quite honest about it. In the May 1949 issue of
Progressive Education, Kenneth Bene, president of the American Education
Fellowship declared "teachers and school administrators should come to see
themselves as social engineers. They must equip themselves as change
agents". In the March 1951 of the Bulletin of the National Association of
Secondary School principles "when we come to the realisation that not every
child has to read, figure, write and spell, then we shall be on the road to
improving junior high curriculum". Dr Thomas Sticht from the US Department
of Labor said in the Washington Post August 17, 1987, "changing values is
probably more important than moving low-income families into the middle
class".
>From now on ,academic education will be downgraded and the buzzwords will be
"self esteem", "tolerance", "higher order thinking eg emotional training",
", "communication" "environmentalism", and "creativity in reading". But
the reality will be that measurable standards will be dropped for
psychobabble.
The method included in the OBE sytem of changing values is based on the
psycho behavioural modification techniques of Maslow and Rogers. These
developed in to change attitudes of older people who have volunteered for
psycho therapy. These group work technique are totally inappropriate for
children. The child is asked to talk and reveal his feelings so that he
learns that he should not have any sense of privacy or individuality. By
such techniques of value clarification, death education, and educating into
evironmentalism, deconstuctivism, egalitarianism, subtly but surely the
child's value system is moved from those of their parents, their culture and
their religion. The facilitator (teacher) through the peer group defines
what is acceptable and the facilitator's agenda is determined by the state.
Truth, common sense and reality become subordinate to the self esteem of the
group members. Facts are removed from OBE with the consequence that the
child loses his sense of history and finds it difficult to discriminate
what is real from that which are feelings.
The new OBE has some nice facets such nice communication techniques and who
can argue against a good self esteem, and also the old SA system was too
narrow and pedantic, but to use these problems to completely revolutionise
the education system is nonsense, it is like saying that because spinach is
not as nice as ice cream all vegetables should be banned and only ice cream
served. The curriculum is being introduced without a meaningful debate as to
its consequences. The political force behind OBE is sufficient to silence
dissenters as most people in education are dependent on the government for
their income. The new establishment promote its new curriculum as a source
of creativity and freedom, but what chance of creativity does an illiterate
have ? Even when the schools resources are sufficient to fulfil the academic
requirements, the nature of the methods and curriculum are sufficient to
fulfil its other agendas.
Oh and if you think that by sending your child to a private school you can
avoid this, the government is so convinced of " benefits" of OBE that they
have made it compulsory even in private schools.
Freedom and Democracy!- who voted for OBE? What freedom of choice do we have
in education?
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"In our dreams we have unlimited resources and the people yield themselves
with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational
conventions fade from our minds and unhampered by tradition, we work our
good our own good will upon a grateful and and responsive rural folk.... The
task we set before ourselves is a beautiful one , to train these people as
we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will
organise our children into a little community and teach them to do in a
perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect
way, in the home, in the shop , on the farm."
Th objectives of Rockerfeller "philanthropies" stated by him and gates in
Occaisional letters No 1 of the G.E.B.
The rockerfellers control the carnegie foundation , which dominates
education
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