THE RAINBOW SWASTIKA - Scattered Seed Ministries

y different sources). [This situation confirms freedom in American education in the same
way that the "election" of "President" Saddam Hussein by 99% of Iraqi citizens confirms
democracy.] Plans to make CIMs a requirement for students to leave high school and/or enter
college were presented years ago by the states of Oregon (House Bill 3565, 1991, p.10) and
Iowa ("Policy Study 94-2", 1994, p.44), while bills in Oregon and Mississippi legislatures
sought to link the CIM to "employability" (none passed as yet).
Parents also charge that the U.S. Government is misleading the public in presenting OBE as
"locally driven" when it is actually pre-determined from the federal level. The same
Education Department webpage mentioned above reassures everyone that the Goals 2000
curriculum is truly subject to local input and control - all are invited to get involved.
However, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development must not have been
informed; they write: "Local control has been, and continues to be, the most durable myth, or
operating principle, of educational governance in the United States." (_The Governance of
Curriculum_, 1994, p.3)
4. OBE as a tool for NA "Change Agents"
While Outcome Based Education is under attack both in the U.S. and Europe for promoting
illiteracy and other scholastic deficiencies, there is only room here to note parallels with
Bailey's radical NA agenda to prepare society to receive the Hierarchy. [For other avenues
used by "change agents", see the previous section called "The Transformation of Society".]
One of the most brilliant perceptions in Dr. Coulson's article [see above] relates to the
published claim by OBE to be "a tool for change" in society. Coulson responds with:
"Change, which is a fundamental theme of, and preferred justification for, Outcome Based
Education, has long been an invariant in the quasi-therapeutic or 'religious' strand of
American public-school education, the strand identified by historian Richard Hofstadter as
anti-intellectual. In that sense, OBE is based on a contradiction. Today's OBE leaders may
claim to be leading the way toward a future vastly different from the past; but in spite of
frequent changes of name, the basis of the movement now called OBE hasn't varied in a
hundred years. In other words, the necessity of change is a questionable assertion. It all
depends on what is said to need changing." [Emphasis mine. Note also the ease with which
Coulson repeatedly associates OBE with a "religious" movement.]
What "needs changing", Coulson continues, is apparently "little... except the brand names
under which they market their curricula and philosophies. In 1972, Rogers permitted me to
quote him concerning how to deal with the many critics of his own version of the movement.
He said, 'I'd change the name just as fast as needed to keep ahead of the critics.'" Coulson
himself then reels off a whole list of generic titles which are all OBE in disguise: the child
study movement, the mental hygiene movement, progressive education, life adjustment,
classroom encounter, sensitivity training, humanistic education, values clarification, youth
decision making, critical thinking, mastery learning and cooperative learning. [The variant
names given by different states and districts for their "Goals 2000" programs follow a similar
scatter-and-hide strategy, in their attempts to avoid tipping off critics with the telltale "OBE"
label. Examples I found are "Outcome Developmental Driven" (Mason City, Iowa school),
"The New Standards Project" (MacArthur Foundation and Pew Charitable Trust), "High
Success Network" (by Spady, used in Oregon), "Affective Education" (widely used), and
mysterious acronyms like "STW", "TQM" and "DAP". This is probably why a search in the
on-line database of the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics with the keyword "OBE"
yields nothing at all.]