Books
and Resources: Education
Leftist
Invasion of Reading Instruction
Phonics: Implicit or Explicit?
Phonics
Pilot program in Dothan, Alabama
Proposal made in 1993
Reading Scores on SAT for Dothan, Alabama
A Critique of
Reading Success with Whole Language (Groff) NZ
really #1?
A Conspiracy of the
Left?
Block
scheduling lie
The Giver
Words
to Remember
"A Slippery
Subject: Understanding the Debate Over Phonics and Whole
Language."
Investors Business Daily September 28, 1995
A
pictorial difference between the Whole Language Method and Phonics
Teacher
Colleges Shun Best Way to Teach Reading
It's
Coming: A Phonics Revolution
"Illiteracy:
An Incurable Disease or Education Malpractice?"
Who is Really learning
disabled?
What
experimental research shows works to teach children to read
Bibliography
of Educational Research
Boston
University President Speaks out on the Three R's
"Learning
to Read: Schooling's First Mission"
American Educator Magazine
"Resolving
the Great Debate," Dr. Marilyn Adams and Maggie Bruck
Reading
Recovery Suggested
Reading List from Marva Collins Clips
from the Whole Language Catalog CDC
Sex Education Girls
Inc. Sex Ed
"Texas
Can Change, Too"
Bill
to Prohibit Drill and Repetition
The
Middle School Association on Sexual Orientation
Conflict
Resolution
Delphi
Technique
OBE-TRAINED
EDUCATORS-ADVANCE
Transformational
Education
Rand
Reports Goals 2000 Failure
Print
out this Booklet. You will be glad you did
Help!
Someone Has Stolen My Child!
Appendix
to Someone Has Stolen My Child
Appendix Continued
Rudolph
Flesch on
"No One Method is Best" "English
Isn't Phonetic" "Word
Calling Isn't Reading" "Your
Child Isn't Ready to Read"
"Your
Child is Disabled" "We
Now Teach All Children"
Words
to Remember
Anything
to do with Math CONNECTED
MATH Big
Foundations' Trojan Horse Money Math
Wars
No
Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning |
A Story of Disillusionment
I have been concerned about the reading ability
of Dothan children since the practicum I did in the high school from which I
graduated. I was working on my Masters in History and created a
curriculum on Ethics. My students could discuss Plato, Aristotle,
Confucius, and Jesus, but many could not read a question off the page before
them. After reviewing the new reading books up for adoption and doing
research in the TSUD library on the books used to instruct teachers in
reading methodology, I realized
Dothan was using the Whole Language method. New books were up for
adoption so I took my concerns to the Director of Instruction for Dothan
City Schools. Why was Dothan City Schools using reading books
that used the Whole Language method rather than
the Phonics instruction I knew worked from my own children's experience in
learning to read?
"Dr. ____, I said, "At least 30% of our children
cannot read." He said, "Well that means 70 % can read."
Dr. ______," I replied. "That is just not enough. "You do know what a large minority
population we have," he responded.
There must be something here I didn't understand, some
validation of the Whole Language method I was unaware of. Surely the
school system we had always considered excellent would not be using
methods that were not tried and proven. I continued to search for
research that would confirm the determination of the education
establishment to use the Whole Language method. A Plus, supposedly a
Research Foundation supported by the Business Council and other special
interests, could provide me with no research supporting the success of
Whole Language, yet they endorsed it. Dean Kunkel of the Auburn University School of
Education when cornered at an APlus town meeting admitted that it was
"current wisdom." (See
also: Delphi Technique) As a mother I was shocked that that
the leaders in education in Alabama thought following the crowd made good
education policy and were chancing the future of my children who were then
attending public school with that attitude. As a teacher I was
appalled at my own profession. My father and sister are doctors.
They would be sued for malpractice if they applied this type of
non-scientific criteria to his medical care.
Note: Score 100 was the Back to Basics
alternative to the OBE agenda of APlus. While APlus was permitted to
use Northview for its meeting, Score 100 was denied the use of any Dothan
school facility. They said Score 100 was
"political." That was the epitome of the pot calling the
kettle black.
My own study into what research revealed about the two methods had led me to
discover Project Follow Through, the billion dollar study that was the most
expensive study into what works in education that had ever been conducted.
This study reviewed the Head Start Program funded with Title One money
directed toward disadvantaged (minority) students because there was concern
that there was at most a halo effect on children until the 2nd grade when
from thence forward there seemed to be no improvement in their academic
achievement compared to others who had not attended Head Start. The
results of Project Follow Through showed that Direct Instruction (systematic, intensive, direct and early
instruction for phonics and math) far surpassed any other method entered in
the competition. (Unfortunately, DISTAR was the ONLY direct
instructional program entered in the program.) However, the conclusion
was irrefutable superiority in every arena including one not directly
addressed...students' self-esteem.
I was shocked that no course at the
University of Alabama where I got my BS or at Troy State University in
Dothan, Alabama, where I got my Masters had even mentioned this mega-study or taken into account its
results. My hero, Alabama native, Marva Collins, also had results
similar to the results from DISTAR in her school in Chicago also dealing with minority
students with Professor Phonics Gives Sound Advice and Open Court
Readers.
It was apparent that it was not the children who were at fault, but the
methods their teachers were using to teach these children.
Later, working in a local county school, I discovered I had a large
percentage of students who had trouble reading their 7th and 8th grade
textbooks, yet when I looked at their permanent records, they had As and
Bs, which I am sure indicated proficiency in subject matter to their
parents. I recommended to their parents that they take them to
an independent evaluator, one not a part of the "team" of the public schools,
for an honest appraisal of their ability. Many were reading on the 1st
grade level. Apparently they had managed to memorize the rolodex of
words doled out through the fifth grade sufficiently well enough to satisfy
their Whole Language trained teachers, but not well enough to decode
unfamiliar words in their Middle School textbooks. Of course, the
usual excuse without looking beneath the surface at the students' skill
level is to blame hormones and adolescence as well as a lack of interest and
parental involvement in the sudden drop in grades for students in Middle
School. The official answer to the failure of the elementary teachers
to prepare students for higher level education came when the Assistant
Superintendent told me to read these students their tests because too many
of my students were failing. (Circle the
wagons and defend the system.) Some they managed to label LD (Learning
Disabled) in order to justify their failure. However, that never
explained to me their ability to make As and Bs in elementary school only to
be "identified" in 7th grade.
My own children's first grade teacher at the private Christian school that
used Phonics (the A BEKA program) said she had
never had a child she could not teach to read with phonics.
Yet, the public schools claim to use phonics.
However, there is a difference in what the teacher colleges teach as "phonics" and
what those who advocate phonics know it to be. The article Phonics: Implicit of Explicit? explains the
difference. (Please note the caveat on the Clips
from the Whole Language Catalog page where the author emphasizes that a WL
classroom will NOT teach sounds in isolation, but rather ALWAYS in
context. Clip 2.) The WL conclusions run directly opposite to
what Scientific
Experimental Research shows actually works in teaching children to
read!
How could such a drastic departure from the tried and true traditional
methods of education have occurred? Dr. Patrick Groff explains in the words of
the Whole Language philosophers
featured in the Whole Language Catalog how the foundations of educating children
shifted from academic to social engineering in the article
The Leftist
Invasion of Reading Instruction. While claims are being made
for the success of Whole Language instruction, SAT scores tell a different story. The
Reading Scores on the SAT for Dothan City Schools
tell the story of one school system that mandated Whole Language citywide.
Apparently the goals of Whole Language fits well in the "World Class"
agenda of the many international Non Governmental Agencies that have
enormous influence. A Conspiracy of the Left
might give
a bit of insight as to how these work together with the International
Reading Association and why the Whole Language agenda has such appeal to the
defrocked Marxist priests around the world, such as Paulo Frere, who once
advocated Liberation Theology in Nicaragua and is now named as a Whole
Language philosopher for Liberation Pedagogy in the Whole Language
Catalog by Ken Goodman, et al..
During the "reform" effort of 1992 when
"grassroots" input was requested, many Alabamians made their way
to testify before legislative committees about their viewpoints to revive
our Alabama education system. We were run through the motions while sub rosa
an education revolution was transmitted through faxes in the Alabama
State Department of Education and sent out through Chambers of Commerce
throughout the state. The already written "Reform Plan"
was written for Alabama by David Hornbeck, Carnegie consultant for the Business Roundtable
and later Superintendent for the city of Philadelphia. Michele Buck accompanied me to make my testimony
before one of these committees about what I had personally seen and
experienced in my classrooms and how our children were suffering from
school induced illiteracy. While in Montgomery, we ventured over to
the Department of Education to speak with Superintendent Teague. He
was unfortunately out of the office, but the Deputy Superintendent (former
superintendent of South Carolina) did identify and offer to introduce us
to David Hornbeck who was in his office receiving our Reform Plan over the
fax machine from Washington.
Apparently many others around the state
were experiencing the same thing and the testimonies at that panel meeting
were filled with
anecdotes of illiteracy exactly like mine. The Eagle Forum of Alabama took note
and began a concerted effort for change.
Ironically, those fighting for a real education for our
children had to battle the well-funded and politically well-aligned APlus, supposedly the "research" arm of the Reform
movement. Actually, it turned out to be the Public Relations entity
for the OBE
movement which endorsed and promoted every outrageous
"innovation" from the "think tanks" headed by David
Hornbeck, Marc
Tucker, and Hillary Clinton on their exalted seats on Carnegie
committees. Then Superintendent of Alabama Wayne Teague's and then
Governor Jim
Folsom's Education Reform Plan both were near carbon copies of the Kentucky
Plan, Oregon Plan and that of other states who had already been processed
through the big lie of "grassroots" reform. While we fought this on the state
level, the elements of the plan were adopted piecemeal at the
recommendation of our clueless superintendent and school board. All
we got for all we spent was more expensive more of the same.
Not
only that, but the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, puppets of the liberal NEA,
were considering outlawing drill and repetition.
Imagine telling Bear Bryant that drill and repetition could no longer be
used to mold, model and imprint basic skills. Imagine telling that
to any good teacher!
After I was "laid off " from the county schools due to proration
(I'll always believe it was the official results of the independent
evaluations I sent to the Superintendent of Schools that was the real
reason), friends who were as concerned as I was joined with my husband and
me in trying to get a Pilot Program Proposed in Dothan, Alabama in
1993 into the public schools to show that public school children
could benefit from the instruction private school parents must pay to get.
Black educator John Winston convinced my attorney husband sitting in my living room
that he took his first grade students (3 housing projects and 100% minority)
from the 25th to the 80th in their reading scores and that my observations
and conclusions were indeed accurate and the same as his own. Apparently the
Director of Instruction's bias toward the ability of minority children to
learn to read colored his choice of reading methods and led him to implement
social engineering instead of expectations of academic excellence.
Citizens, parents of children within the school system, at their own
cost, flew principals Madalyn Colby and John Winston from Louisiana to
testify as to the amazing results the phonics program had brought to their
schools, predominantly minority and low socioeconomic. Winston’s first
grade readers went from the 25th to the 80th
percentiles in reading; identified dyslexics fell from 40 to 1, and
discipline problems dramatically decreased. Colby saw similar results. So
effective was the reading program that children crossed school lines to
attend the schools. The concerned citizens offered to pay for the
instruction of Dothan teachers in the Spalding method.
The school administration had called its cadre of teachers to attend
the school board meeting. Superintendent Musselman waved an article
by Marie Carbo, then adjunct professor of statistics at Antioch College, that
claimed to dispute the scholarly work Reading: the Great Debate by Dr. Jean Chall
Harvard professor and director of the Harvard Reading Lab. Reading: the Great Debate
methodically, study by study, refuted claims made since the 1920s to support the Look/Say, Whole Word, Literacy Based/Whole
Language method. The Director of Instruction took the floor and
introduced teachers within the system and professors from Troy State
University Dothan who supported the Whole Language method. The major
reading instructor from TSUD called phonics "Hiss, Spit and
Sputter." When the Board (members of which had refused to shake
hands or be personally introduced to Madalyn Colby, the experienced
principal who brought testimony regarding the amazing effectiveness of the
Spalding method) voted unanimously to make Whole Language the reading
method for all Dothan City Schools, the auditorium erupted with hoots and
stomping feet from the teachers assembled, a regular Whole Language
hootenanny.
My disillusionment was complete. I could no longer believe that the
teachers had merely been deprived of critical information. Indeed,
the camp revival reception of the Board's decision made it quite evident
that from that point on they were complicit in the decision and very much
accountable for the results of their very vocal support of the Whole
Language method. From that point forward, this messenger was
effectively "killed" for the message with social snubs (former
friends crossing the street rather than speaking) and accusations of
profit motive, having an agenda, being a member of the Ku Klux Klan and
Flat Earth Society, and being a disgruntled seeker of employment with the
Dothan City Schools.
So much for recognizing good will and seeking
parental involvement. Christians who claimed to "love
unconditionally" gossiped and spread rumors none of which could be
countered or answered. Sharing the research for the benefit of the
children became impossible as even the civic organizations were
manipulated by the representatives of the school system who dominated the
education committees. Political campaigns were run (still are) on
city property paid for with taxpayers dollars to promote their candidates
and silence the "opposition." Trying to bring about change
within the system, I ran twice for the school board. The local
school system DEA/AEA/NEA managed to elect someone "with a
heart" for education...and manipulated more OBE without challenge
into the schools. The good old boy who brought this and other OBE components to our
schools continues to be the major advisor to the community professional
clubs and the Chamber of Commerce.
November, 1993, our daughter was now about to go to high
school and suddenly block
scheduling/4 period day appeared. Please take the time to
read the story of how another ridiculous innovation made its way into our
schools. (Now, 2003, cities around the state have headlines
announcing the return to traditional scheduling and rejection of block
scheduling. How much money was wasted there?) Needless to say
our daughter did not attend public high school. Who could have any
faith in a system that used children as guinea pigs for fads, fodder for
articles to professional journals, stepping stones for their own
careers?
Ten years later I now report the results of their decision to support the
teachers, administrators and instructors at TSUD (Troy State University
Dothan) with mandating Whole Language citywide in the article mentioned
above, Reading Scores on the SAT. In
spite of hundreds of thousands of dollars on reading specialists, computer
assisted instruction solely for reading remediation, and in-service
training in group learning, peer tutoring, and any number of other
gimmicks to make the failed method work they remain in the dismal swamps
of reading ability. (Now, 2004, 3rd grade reading scores have
dropped 10 points from last year's scores.)
June 7, 1993, Forbes published an article calling
entitled "The National
Extortion Association" yet the NEA/AEA under continues to direct
decisions based on their liberal ideology perfectly consistent with the
radicalism of Whole Language.
In 1995 it looked like the Business community might be
coming around to realizing that there was something very basic and very
wrong at the most fundamental component of education: Reading. Investors Business Daily addressed the issue in a September 28, 1995
article entitled: "Last
Rites of an Education Fad: California Blasts Progressive Reading
Fad." Volume 19, No. 2, Summer 1995 American
Educator, the Professional Journal of the American Federation of
Teachers dedicated almost its entire issue to reporting the benefits of
"phonemic instruction." They quoted one teacher
saying, "A Whole Language approach that does not incorporate sufficient
attention to decoding skills leaves in it wake countless numbers of
youngsters who, in the words of one teacher, are surrounded by
"beautiful pieces of literature that [they] can't read."
As Joanna Williams of Teachers College Columbia University, has
observed: "Today, without strong direct systematic decoding
instruction in regular first grade classrooms more and more children are
being shunted into remedial classes, and even special
education." Dr. Marilyn Adams published her scholarly research
on reading and her conclusions were reported in an article in that issue
of American Educator, "Resolving
the Great Debate."
Cal Thomas optimistically wrote "It's
Coming: A Phonics Revolution."
Boston
University president Dr. John Silber was led to speak out on our
schools' failure to teach the three R's.
Unfortunately, too much brainwashing and too
many careers and reputations had been made on that fad, however.
Resistance remained within the power structure of those who could have
brought about change. Instead they demanded
extension of their authority with pre-kindergarten. Getting them away from
their parents earlier would get them "ready to learn," they
claimed, ignoring the studies that showed even Head Start only produced the
"halo effect' until the 2nd grade. They blamed portable buildings, leaky roofs,
crack babies and
low teacher salaries. All of society was the
problem...not the methods of instruction into which they had invested
their careers and squandered our tax dollars and the opportunities of
generations.
But, by 1996 the education establishment could no longer
ignore the fact that the public was looking at the results of their reading
instruction and recognizing it was coming up lacking and along came
Education Week's grudging acknowledgement in "The
Best of Both Worlds." Thus was born the new
incarnation of the same failure under the sophisticated guise of an
"eclectic approach" combining the best of both, expressed in an August 1996 article
in the Alabama School Board Association journal entitled "A Slippery
Subject: Understanding the Debate Over Phonics and Whole
Language."
Still, the experimental
research was conclusively in favor of phonics. Pressure had to
be exerted on the complacent and recalcitrant education establishment to make them heed the
research and implement its conclusions. Toward the end of
the nineties, the reading disaster demanded that a Blue Ribbon Committee to
take a look at the issue. The result was the Alabama Reading
Initiative which has the potential to turn things around...unless those
teachers who take the training fall back on their WL roots and refuse to
give Phonics the emphasis it must have to be effective. Oil and
water do not mix. Neither do analysis and guessing. (WL philosopher
Ken Goodman wrote the definitive philosophy of WL in his article,
"Reading, a Psycholinguistic Guessing Game" in 1968.
He and a
coterie "reading specialists" have been the major
beneficiary of his philosophy by continuing to create their own demand.)
By the year 2000 optimism began to dim as even USA Today
recognized the major problem...colleges of education that refused to teach
phonics (Teacher
Colleges Shun Best Way to Teach Reading). The Alabama State
Board of Education passed a resolution requiring that the colleges of
education in Alabama teach phonics. Ironically those professors from the Piaget/Rousseau natural man
perspective on learning and education who
made their reputations despising "hiss, spit and sputter" are
now expected to be effective teachers of something they find so
philosophically repulsive . The discipline and structure
of the systematic, intensive, direct and early phonics instruction galls
their very nature. Indeed, it is in their best interest to
perpetuate their need by undermining the effectiveness of reading
instruction.
With the dismal scores and critics across the state
demanding accountability, the State Department of Education realized they
at least had to go through the motions of looking at reading
instruction. The Director of Instruction for the State of Alabama
called together a committee and was forced to include a member of Eagle
Forum who pushed for and got a respectable phonics component in the Alabama
Reading Initiative. All that was left was for schools to request
that they be allowed to participate and then to get the teachers re-educated.
But, did any school in Dothan even apply? Most
principals were intimidated. Their response when we asked if they
would try a phonics program was a sheepish, "..but we've already got
so much invested in this other method..." And so we went on with more
years trying to make a failed method work and wasting the opportunities of
more students.
At last one principal decided to step away from the
crowd and raise the appalling amount of money our state department of
education decided to complicate the issue with. (I think the colleges of
education throughout this state OWE their teachers education they
were denied when they paid their tuitions trusting the colleges of
education to
prepare them as competent teachers.) Principal Delois Potter and
the teachers at Faine Elementary School took the bull by the horns, raised
the money, and gave up time during their summer break to get the training for the Alabama Reading Initiative.
This program brings Phonics the recognition it deserves...unless the teacher
chooses to pick the Whole Language elements of this "eclectic" program out
and refuse to give the systematic, intensive, direct and early emphasis that
is so vital to an effective Phonics program (See: Phonics: Implicit or Explicit? ).
Another shocker came in 2003 when an amazing coalition
developed between a Republican governor who rejected the mandate of the
Conservatives who elected him and joined with AEA leader Paul Hubbard and
APlus to call for increasing taxes to establish two new entitlements for
education, Pre-K and Hope Scholarships for college, both unproven to
improve education. Sadly, someone (A Plus and the AEA?) has
told him North Carolina and Texas
have led the way. Amazingly those who voted for him who oppose the
increased taxes and call for accountability are being called
"unchristian." If the situation I have outlined above were
truly understood by Christians how could they possibly in good conscience
allow it to continue, much less reward those who resist the truth of
scientific research with more control of our children and increased
salaries?
I recently encountered a Georgia special education
teacher in the library in Abbeville. She was relating to the
librarian her experience in trying to get first grade students up to a 26
score on a test they required to pass before progressing to the next
grade. She used phonics. She was commenting upon her surprise
that a child who had never attended school would score in the 80th
percentile on the test when those others in her class were struggling to
reach the required score. I could not help but ask her if she did
not realize what an impediment three years of having been in a WL
classroom was to those children's ability to learn to decode. If
they start in 3 year old kindergarten teaching the child to guess from the
shape of the word, pictures and context what a word might be, think how
difficult it is to shift to analyzing letter sound correlation, blending
them into syllables and sounding out the words. It is a totally
different process. They do not mix. Children cannot learn to
play the violin by being immersed in music and neither can a child learn
to read by merely being immersed in words. The Music Man without the
magic of Hollywood really could not make an orchestra with fancy uniforms
and expensive instruments any more than educators can produce proficient
readers with fancy computers, eye-catching bulletin boards and
mobiles, and facilitators reading from big books with large words.
They must be taught directly and systematically with drill and repetition
until they are proficient. And then they can fly...
So when they can read what shall they read?
Sadly, teachers at Beverly Middle School continue requiring 7th and 8th
grade students (those who can read) to read
The Giver
by Lois Lowry, a Newberry Award winning book with graphic images of
euthanasia and infanticide. I do recommend Berit Kjos's book Brave
New Schools to find out just exactly what your Dothan City School board
has mandated...available on her website
http://www.crossroad.to.
I suggest you read every book your child does. My
tenth grader's reading list included The Chocolate Wars which had
m__t__b__ion throughout the book, not exactly elevating literature to
inspire a child to excellence. Compare these books to those on Marva
Collins reading list.
The conflict resolution
curriculum, a part of the values
clarification movement and closely associated with Robert
Mueller's World Core Curriculum, is chock full of guided imagery and
visualization. I suggest Like Lambs to the Slaughter
by Johanna
Michaelsen, Brave
New Schools by Berit Kjos and the novel Piercing
the Darkness by Frank E. Peretti to give you an understanding of
the immediacy of this spiritualism and the influx of the New
Age Movement into our schools. I have
photocopied a document entitled "Help! Someone has Stolen My
Child" along with the Appendix
1 and Appendix 2. I highly recommend you print out and study
this booklet that covers many of
the issues relating to the physical, psychological and spiritual cradle to grave
agenda of Progressive Education.
Equally disturbing are the sex ed materials. Diana
Fessler, Ohio State Representative, has put together materials on the Centers
for Disease Control sex ed materials. Be prepared for graphic,
disgusting stuff intended for your children. I have posted with
blips the sex ed information on the materials some on the Dothan City
School Board find acceptable, but has our representative on the Alabama
State School Board quite upset. Some on the Dothan City School Board
object to Abstinence Only which
is mandated by the state. One wonders just where the film advocated
by the Middle School
Association to help students determine their sexual orientation fits
with what most parents expect from schools.
The therapeutic classroom ultimately brought despair to
its creators, Abraham
Maslow and Carl Rogers. Their colleague William Coulson now
travels the country attempting to undo some of the damage.
Unfortunately the message has not reached the colleges of education...or
else it is being stifled because it doesn't not fit the current political
agenda. We continue to reap the whirlwind they have
wrought.
Matthew 18:6: "But whoever causes
one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better
for him (or her) to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and
to be drowned in the depth of the sea."
Mark 9:42: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who
believe in me to sin, it would be better for him (or her) if a great
millstone were hung around his (her) neck and he (she) were thrown
into the sea."
Luke 17:1: "And he said to his
disciples, temptations to sin are sure to come but woe to him (or her)
by whom they come. It would be better for him if a
millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea
than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin."
(or "to stumble" in the Greek).
I often wonder whether I should have
just shrugged my shoulders and gone along with the pretense that all was
well with our schools. The retirement I would have received would
have been nice. Perhaps you are a member of my church who ignored or
disregarded my sincere concerns about what is the responsibility of
Christian people to the questions below. Perhaps you are a
colleague, a fellow teacher that I sought to empower with the tools that
really work to educate children...the reason we went into education in the
first place. This was not personal when we endeavored to bring a
pilot program into our community to determine whether systematic,
intensive, direct and early phonics would give our students the same boost
that Marva Collins, John Winston, Thaddeus Lott, and Madalyn Colby had
gotten their students, but somehow someone made it personal.
Recently, in my Sunday School class, I
attempted to make a public apology, as I thought Christians were called to
do, if I had in any way made my issues oriented objections to public
school policy personal. It was a totally humiliating experience and
merely started more gossip and whispering. I came home and
hibernated until I started redoing this webpage. I now
remember. It is not I who owe anyone an apology. I was merely
doing what God led me to do. Nor was it I who made this
personal. It is they who owe an apology...to the children and
parents of this community.
I surely have new empathy for
Jonah. I understand Jesus' righteous anger when he upset the tables
of the moneychangers in the Temple. Perhaps I have been wrong in my approach, but I cannot help
but wonder what else I could have done. Ignore God's prodding?
- Aren’t
we responsible for the information God places in our hands and
doesn’t He expect us to act upon that information?
- If
we choose not to step out in Faith and stand against something that we
have evidence to be harmful to children, will He not hold us
accountable for this as a sin of omission?
- Doesn’t
God expect Christian teachers to “stand in the gap” for vulnerable
children when given evidence of curricula choices that might “cause
one of His little ones to stumble”: pro-homosexual education
(multiculturalism), faulty reading methodology, New Age techniques,
etc., even at cost of ridicule or loss of employment?
- At
what point does God expect the Church to act on what its clergy
recognizes and identifies from the pulpit as the student minister of
my church did with multiculturalism from the pulpit recently?
P.S.
What else can you do?
So Goals
2000 is a failure...according to its biggest promoters...and guess who
is now coming up with the answers for the failure? You guessed
it...those who caused the failure!
"When
principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day,
then battle is your calling and peace has become sin. You must at the
price of dearest peace lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy
with all the fire of your faith." Abraham Kuyper, 19th century Dutch
theologian and politician who fought against the liberalism that was
infiltrating the European seminaries.
"The only means of
establishing and perpetuating our republican form of government is the
universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by
means of the Bible." Benjamin Rush, youngest signer of the
Declaration of Independence and founding father
"The free public schools of
America are outgrowths of the parochial or pastoral schools of puritan New
England, which were established by our forefathers to prepare their
children for becoming useful members of society and the church. Nurtured
in the lap of the church, these schools soon became so necessary to
society at large that the church reluctantly relinquished her claim upon
the elementary schools, and turned them over to the care of the
commonwealths, retaining for herself the higher institutions of
learning--the academies and colleges. Whether this was wise or not, it is
not our purpose to discuss, further than to remark that, if the study of
the Bible is to be excluded from all the State schools, if the inculcation
of the principles of Christianity is to have no place in the daily
program, if the worship of God is to form no part of the general exercises
of these public elementary schools, then the good of the State would be
better served by restoring all schools to church control." Kansas
Teachers Union book summarizing the history of education in America, 1892
Once upon a time there was a group of women strolling
along the banks of a beautiful river.
Suddenly one gasped and pointed to a child caught up in the current
struggling helplessly toward the waterfall.
The women immediately formed a human chain to grab the child from
swiftly flowing river. As
soon as one child was brought to safety another child appeared, and then
two more, and then three…the women could barely keep up with rescuing
the little ones when one woman broke away and headed back up the river.
“Where are you going,” the others cried.
“Come back. We need
your support!”
“I am going back up the river to find out who
is throwing the children in,” she responded.
Those who claim to “support public
education” are like those women desperately pulling the children out of
the water. Those who are
seeking the answers as to why students graduate unable to read their
diplomas, fill out job applications, requiring remedial classes in our
institutions of higher education, and labeled in greater and greater
numbers as learning disabled, special education, ADHD, etc. are like the
woman going back up the river to find out “who is throwing them in.”
Until we analyze the education choices for the past
thirty years and make conclusions based on valid studies, we will continue
to throw money at a problem, and continue to use fancier, ever more
expensive methods of attempting to catch the children already caught in
the current. Can those
individuals who have been producing the situation where the children wound
up in the tragic current suddenly have an epiphany and know what to do to
fix the problem?
Perhaps the answer has always been there in the
secure schools, built on the solid foundation of traditional methods and
values, where those parents who broke away placed their own children out
of danger before going back to rescue the others.
Bob Riley is merely bowing to political
pressures by levying more taxes to enable the “supportive” group to
rig a more expensive net, woven with fragile strands of political
correctness, pop psychology, and social engineering, across the river.
A Plus, Riley’s favored education consultant, fought
traditionalists in the 1992 education debate, supports the “current
wisdom” now controlling public schools and continues to promote the NEA
agenda. Riley’s tax
“fix” will merely buy the education system more time before they have
to be accountable for why so many are falling into the dangerous currents.
These are Berit Kjos definitions
for education "innovations" in Dothan City Schools boasted of in the
Dothan Eagle
headlines during the 1990s so we know their entrance was applauded by our
administration. For an expanded glossary
visit Berit Kjos website and linger to learn.
MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: Teaching
tolerance, "respect and appreciation" for the world's diverse cultures,
beliefs systems, and lifestyles – especially those that clash with
traditional values and biblical truth --with the acknowledged goal of
producing public consciousness of the unity of all things. It shows little
tolerance for biblical Christianity.
MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVE: All are one, no matter what religion
or values a person chooses. (See preceding definition) A global world view,
a way of thinking or a way of understanding reality based on a new
politically correct "consciousness" or "awareness" that all things are
essentially interconnected through a pantheistic spirituality.
Dothan City Schools has also mandated:
INTEGRATIVE EDUCATION or CURRICULUM:
Organizing learning around broad themes, thus making it easy to infuse
global, new-paradigm suggestions and activities into standard lessons. See
note with practical explanation at the end.
INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES: blending
various subjects (math, art, language, etc.) in order to teach and
demonstrate the unity of all things. We reject the foundational concept of
teaching disciplines by building understanding of concepts from simple to
complex. See systems thinking.
SYSTEMS THINKING: The "new way of thinking," by which all things
are seen as part of "the whole." Old definitions and ways of reasoning must
be adapted to the new "holistic" or "wholistic" way of looking at nature,
people, education, social problems, and the "environmental crisis."
According to Education for Sustainability, page 5 (a publication
prepared in partnership with President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable
Development), systems thinking would "teach skills such as problem solving,
conflict resolution, consensus building, information management,
interpersonal expression, and critical and creative thinking." And,
according to Corinne McLaughlin, first task-force coordinator for the PCSD,
"The systems view sees the world in terms of relationships and integrated
wholes whose properties cannot be reduced to those of smaller units."1
(See Global Education and "World
Heritage 'Protection: UNESCO's War Against National Sovereignty'")
and
CONSENSUS BUILDING: The process by which students, schools,
communities or groups of people learn to compromise individual beliefs and
ideas in order to seek "common ground" and come to consensus.
This pre-planned consensus may be dictated from the top-down (national to
local), yet be promoted as grass roots ideologies. It changes beliefs
through pressure to conform to group-thinking. (See Synthesis
CONFLICT
RESOLUTION: A psychological technique for dealing with (often
hypothetical) conflicts. It manipulates a child's value system, trading old
absolutes and convictions for compromise positions. In a legal context, it
is used to avoid litigation. (See Consensus Building and Common
Ground)
GUIDED IMAGERY: A visualization
exercise directed by a teacher/facilitator to produce a relaxed or altered
state of consciousness. Since the facilitator often guides the students
toward pre-planned images, the exercise becomes ominously like a class in
witchcraft. As Starhawk, founder of the Covenant of the Goddess, wrote in
The Spiral Dance, spell casting and magic are based on a four-fold
formula: relaxation, concentration, visualization, and (mental
projection). See Star
Wars joins United Religions at the Presidio (Dothan parents saw guided
imagery in the Conflict Resolution Curriculum for Dothan City Schools).
HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS (HOTS): Psychological
manipulation using "application, analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation" (the higher level of Bloom's Taxonomy) without the
factual knowledge needed for rational and objective thinking. Students
base their "own" conclusions (to which they are led by a trained
teacher-facilitator) on biased, politically correct information and
disinformation. (See Lower Order Thinking Skills and Chapter 3 of Brave
New Schools.)
INCLUSION: Assigning all students to
regular classrooms, including those with severe disabilities, thus turning
each class into a special education class.
PHONICS:
Learning to read by decoding words. Students break words down into
component parts and relate letters and groups of letters to the sounds of
spoken language. (Contrast with Whole Language)
WHOLE
LANGUAGE: A
reading and learning method which trains students to focus on words,
sentences and paragraphs as a whole rather than letters. Sometimes called
the "look-say" method, it ignores the proven success of phonics,
and tells children to find meaning by guessing, by recognizing whole words
they have memorized, by looking at the pictures, and by creating a context
based on surrounding words. It emphasizes "rich content"
(multicultural stories that fit the global paradigm) and encourages
students to "construct their own meaning" (with guidance from
peers and facilitator of consensus process). Retrieving or comprehending
the traditional or intended meaning of the author is no longer important
-- that is, unless the author teaches the global worldview. It serves to
introduce children to the global worldview and context for learning before
children are set free to explore more traditional and possibly contrary
sources of information and values.
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