POSITION STATEMENT

B. K. EAKMAN

Author, Columnist, Lecturer/Speaker

I support an academic-based education for the Information Age and the Twenty-first Century, undiluted by psycho-behavioral conditioning and psychotherapeutic experimentation. I take issue with teaching methodologies whose purpose is primarily to target the emotions rather than to challenge the intellect. My position is that parents, not the state, are typically in the best position to make educational (and other) decisions for their children.

Statistics show that only about one-half of one percent of American school-age children has no responsible adult to care for them. The overwhelming majority of American parents are neither abusive, nor negligent, nor irresponsible. State and federal education policy should not proceed on the assumption that they are.

I oppose the surreptitious use by both government and special-interest agencies of psychographic techniques to collect private and traceable information on children and their families for dissemination among non-secure data systems. I oppose the creation of non-cognitive curriculums aimed at altering personal and political beliefs, especially when these are passed off as substantive, cognitive learning programs. I reject the use of uncontrolled experimentation on minors.

Moreover, I view parents as more than breeders and feeders, children as more than "human capital," and teachers as more than "facilitators of learning" and glorified entertainers. I feel that schools do youngsters and society a disservice by attempting to teach too much; that schools need instead to concentrate on their proper academic and literacy functions.

A good start would be for prospective teachers to be trained in the universities in real learning diagnostics and their remediation instead of being immersed in psychobabble. Specifically, this means educators should have a teaching specialty and a minor in one of the following: spatial and abstract reasoning, visual identification, visual and auditory memory, perceptual speed, mental stamina, hand-eye coordination and thought-expression synchronization. These are the nine make-or-break learning elements, the building blocks of learning. Pupils should be directed to the teacher trained to handle each child’s weakest element, not his strongest. These elements are not mere learning styles; presently, we’re approaching learning exactly backwards.

If the United States, and especially Congress, is really committed to reforming education here in America, our leaders are going to have to re-think the goals of “school” as a uniquely American institution instead of a United Nations construct or global enterprise. I believe that educational priorities should be built around just three things:

creating a literate citizenry, capable of self-government;
ensuring financial independence for that free citizenry (because that helps ensure political stability); and
bolstering moral standards that are consistent with the Founders’ unique — and Judeo-Christian — concept of democracy (life, pursuit of happiness, property rights, and free speech).

This means focusing on those nine make-or-break elements cited above, because what we have now, at best, are “normed” tests that are so dumbed down, so as to conform to UNESCO concepts about fairness, anyone can pass.

If government is going to provide funding for education, it needs to be directed toward the university departments of teacher education, not at local schools. Federal monies should not be used to fund “prevention” programs and other curriculums that rely on psychological snooping and so-called “socialization” activities. Teachers do not exist to strip away a parent’s belief system from the children in their classrooms, and to then transmit “new” values. Teachers who teach best are those who back up parental standards and the ideals of the Founding Fathers.

A second effort, on the part of legislators, would be to remove the red tape from starting a private school. Tuition is high because there are not enough private schools to satisfy the demand; the demand cannot be satisfied so long as bureaucratic red tape and unnecessary regulations complicate the process.

Finally, teaching methodology must focus on tried and true techniques, not fads. Experimental methods are for private, experimental classrooms that parents agree to and pay for. Experimental methods should not be thrust on an unsuspecting populace.

BASIC SITUATION

As soon as parents, the public, and thoughtful legislators recognize that education today is not about proficiency at anything, or literacy, or "basics"; that what education is about is "mental hygiene", then all the odd goings-on in the nation's classrooms start to make sense. Prospective educators are trained in colleges of education primarily to be mental health workers and social workers, not teachers as most adults remember that term.

Most of the course work teachers take in college, including that of this author, consists of "ed psych"—behavioral sciences such as psychology, psychiatry, and sociology. Schooling is geared to the group ("cooperative learning"), not to the individual, thereby undermining personal responsibility and principle. Very few educators today, including test and curriculum development specialists, have an academic major. Those classroom teachers who do, are frequently teaching a subject other than the one they majored in. This results not only in "dumbing down" the population, but necessarily causes disciplinary problems to become exacerbated. Then behavioral psychologists come along and seek to change children's values to a different worldview from the ones their parents and grandparents knew. Juvenile crime is linked directly to school environment, and Department of Justice statistics; police department statistics, and Department of Education statistics all confirm it.

The results of this folly have been devastating:

brutal popularity contests leading to school violence.
intransigent peer pressure trumping teacher authority.
lack of respect for school and for learning.
inability to get or keep good teachers.
waning parental interest, patience and support.
continuous parent-teacher-administrator confrontations.
mixed messages to kids.
delinquency, cynicism, unemployability, and alienation.

United States 8th graders ranked 19th according to the results of the highly credible Third International Mathematics and Science Study, released Feb. 24, 1998. This put US students far behind Singapore, Korea, Japan, and even war-torn Bosnia. In physics, the US came in dead last. In advanced math, for high school seniors, we came in next to last.

Our country has joined the socialist nations in using such curricular atrocities as “transformational” grammar, “constructivist" science and “creative” math (or “Guess-and-Check” math). The International Baccalaureate, which used to center on a classical education some 40 years ago, is now jumping on the same bandwagon. The rationale for relinquishing factual knowledge is that, with the Internet, youngsters can always “look it up.” But one cannot spend ones life “looking up” basic things. There must be a certain level of proficiency and a common base of factual knowledge that is based on straight recall. Otherwise, students are cannot be expected to draw logical conclusions or sort out disparate facts. They will be swayed simply by emotions.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Can you give a list of viable improvements that states or school districts could implement?

Return academic soundness to education — i.e., classroom educators and school principals must demonstrate proficiency in a solid academic specialty and learning diagnostics, not merely a bunch of “education” i.e., social work/psychology) courses.
Fight all psychologized curriculums, through class action suits if necessary. These must show a "pattern and practice" of using behavior modification and other therapeutic strategies (psychodrama, sociograms, etc.).
Dissolve state education agencies or re-staff them with individuals who will place scholarship over politics and maintain their independence from any federal agency. States should introduce legislation that categorizes schools as captive settings, then ban psychographic instruments from educational institutions.
Expose testing fraud — i.e., purported academic assessments which are 30% or more psychological.
Protect parents' rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children — i.e., parents' wishes come first & cannot be bypassed by local educators.
Re-affirm the individual's (student's) constitutional right to freedom of conscience — i.e., there cannot be a scoring mechanism that gives points for "preferred answers" to psychological (worldview-oriented) questions.
Work to have educational institutions legally categorized as "captive settings" in order to put the brakes on illicit psychological questionnaires and other psychological calisthenics presently engaged in by school staff.
Change the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) so that youngsters who continually disrupt the education process of other pupils can be expelled, not merely suspended.
Phase out the hiring of school psychologists. Guidance counselors should be academic and career specialists.
Work to encourage (i.e. remove red tape from) alternative school arrangements.

2. Should the public support vouchers?

Yes and no. It is better than nothing at this time, but carries with it the problems connected with federal funds. It is a way of roping parochial and private schools, eventually, into federal education mandates. Eventually, schools so entangled will not be able to get rid of disruptive students, because of these federal mandates like IDEA and Americans With Disabilities Act, which carry caveats that label "hyperactive" kids and others as "disabled," and therefore will require incredible amounts of documentation and court costs to have them removed. If public schools kick them out, they will end up in private ones that parents have paid big bucks to send their children to in order to avoid the chaos and lax standards of the public school.

Vouchers, tuition tax credits, and charter schools: All these provide some stop-gap relief for some children. But they don’t stop the nation’s declining knowledge base, because the flaws in our education system are systemic, especially in teacher preparation. They don’t stop, for example, a culture of institutionalized child violence that has been produced due to a focus on psychobabble instead of true cognitive learning.

3. Should every child have an equal opportunity to a first-rate education?

As things stand today, no, every child does not have that opportunity. One could even say that no public school child has that opportunity, given the chaos and academic environment of today's public school.

Does every child have a "right" to a first-class education? No, again. Every child should have the privilege of access to a first-class education. A "right" in this instance implies something for nothing: a lack of responsibility on the part of the student.

4. What are the major problems facing school districts and steps the take to remedy them?

Problems, in addition to those stated above, they include:

sincere educators (i.e., scholars) working in deplorable conditions—an environment of drugs, misbehavior and crime, with no disciplinary backup by principals and superintendents.
kids getting by with any type of behavior.
lack of public respect for education.
educators too busy with paperwork and trivia to teach. substantive material.
teachers facing physical attacks by students.
teachers working in a politically correct environment where their conscience doesn’t matter—i.e., an environment of forced unionization that is politically motivated.

5. Just what beliefs are behaviorist educators trying to instill in today's youth?

The new belief system—i.e., beliefs/values/worldviews—roughly consists of the following:

Consensus is more important than principle (thus today's courses in conflict resolution and social science);
Amenability (i.e., likeability, popularity, being a “team player,”) is more important than hard knowledge or expertise;
Nothing is permanent except change (thus situation ethics courses);
The collective is more important than the individual (i.e., group lessons instead of individual excellence and the emphasis on free-market socialism over true economic competition);
There are no perpetrators, only victims (thus lack of personal accountability; it's nobody's fault); and
Ethics are entirely situational, there are no moral absolutes or something called "common sense").

6. What is “psychographics”?

Webster’s New World Communication and Media Dictionary defines psychographics as “the study of social class based upon the demographics … income, race, color, religion, and personality traits.” These are characteristics, says the dictionary, which “can be measured to predict behavior.”

The psychological questions and self-reports with which schools today inundate pupils comprise a specialized area known in the world of advertising as "psychographic data-gathering." Psychographics is closely related to mass mental health screening, a highly controversial new initiative coming down the pike, as well as to “risk” analysis, which is turning into a dangerous political weapon.

In schools, personal information is collected from children about themselves and their family, as part of standardized tests or “health” surveys — some of it, right on the covers. These instruments are self-reports in a true-false format or else what-would-you do-if, and how-do-you-feel-when queries, usually in a multiple-choice format. There is a “preferred” answer, which often would not be a parent-preferred response. It is a concerted effort to snoop into a family’s belief system, track the child versus the family’s values, and if “necessary,” to indoctrinate children into adopting a different set of values via a curriculum designed for that purpose. The tracking is usually done en masse, for a school district, but a particular student’s responses are not anonymous, they are “confidential,” which means they can be located. It is possible for children with a “non-preferred” opinion to be screened out of a university, job, or a position of public trust years down the road from when he/she took the “assessment.”