Inside American Education (9 page)

Advocates of such programs have written about ways for teachers or administrators to deflect or counter objections by parents. For example, one “sex education” curriculum which uses explicit color slides of both homosexual and heterosexual acts, warns that students “should not be given extra copies of the form to show to their parents and friends.”
⁹²
It is one of a number of programs which warn against letting parents know the specifics of the material being used.
⁹³
Where parents nevertheless learn of what is happening and object, there are standard procedures used by boards of education to dismiss their complaints:

Board members quickly learn to tell parents they are too inexperienced to speak on the subject of education, that all the experts oppose their point of view, that scientific evidence proves them wrong, that they are trying to impose their morals on others, and that they are the only people in the community who have raised such complaints.
⁹⁴

Any or all of these assertions may be completely false, but most parents do not have the time or the resources to prove it—which makes such claims politically effective. However, the very fact that supporters of such programs have written tactical suggestions for dealing with parents and other critics hardly fits the claim that few people have objected.

In some cases, laws may require parental consent or notice for the use of these psychologically-oriented programs on their children, but this requirement can be rendered virtually meaningless in practice by concealing the specifics. An Oregon program labelled Talented and Gifted (TAG) was a typical antiparent, anti-values program, but it was very difficult to discover
cover this beforehand. One persistent parent, who endured insults and misdirection to find out what was happening, testified before the Department of Education:

Parents are notified before students participate in these programs, but it is not an informed permission. Most parents whose children are recommended for the TAG program think that they are going to be given advanced academic education. They don’t know that, in these workshops, attempts will be made to alienate their children from them and from moral values, or that their children will be taught to substitute the judgment and will of the group for that of individual judgment and responsibility.
⁹⁵

Such programs and such deception are not confined to the public schools. A private secondary school in Los Angeles, obtained parental permission for something called “senior seminar” by describing what was to be done in only the most vague and lofty words, while the actual specifics remained unknown until it was too late. (Yanking a student out of class in midsemester of the senior year is especially difficult in a school whose students are usually going on to college.) Any suggestion of indoctrination or emotional manipulation was wholly absent from the materials supplied to parents before this program began. Much of what was said in this material would in fact suggest the very opposite, that it was some kind of advanced academic training. The “objectives” listed when the “senior seminar” was instituted began:

1. develop the ability to analyze and synthesize ideas and information among disciplines
   
2. recognize and practice effective listening and speaking skills as well as critical thinking and effective writing techniques
   
3. make better decisions and contribute to their own personal growth
   

The list went on and on, accompanied by pages of other material containing an inundation of words on the mechanics and aspirations of the course—and nothing on the specific content. The list of objectives concluded:

10) improve research and library skills

11) write a Senior Thesis

Who could possibly object to such things? Yet, despite the intellectual emphasis of these statements, psychological manipulation began immediately. The first specific assignment involved betraying family confidences to strangers in an “autobiography” that included the student’s relationship with a family member. The student was to describe “what gives you satisfaction and dissatisfaction in your family.” Among later “units” in the course were “aging, death, and dying,” featuring movies about the terminally ill, visits to local hospices serving terminally ill patients, arranged visits to funeral homes and to cemeteries, and a speaker on euthanasia. This went on for weeks, culminating in oral presentations in class. None of this was revealed until
after
permission had been obtained through glowing generalities.

Peers as Guides

While parents are finessed aside in one way or another, and the values they have instilled are made to seem arbitrary or outmoded, students are repeatedly told that it is they
individually
who must determine the values on which to make decisions—and the guidance repeatedly held out to them is the example of their peers.

“It’s up to you alone”
⁹⁶
is the message repeated again and again. What you do “will have to be your decision.”
⁹⁷
It is not merely that the child or adolescent must choose—but must also choose the underlying set of values on which the particular decision is made. Right and wrong are banished from the scene early on. “Remember, there are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers—just
your
answers,” according to the textbook,
Learning About Sex
, which also says:

I cannot judge the “rightness” or “wrongness” of any of these behaviors. Instead, I hope that you can find the sexual lifestyle which is best for your own life …
⁹⁸

Concepts of “normal” or “healthy” sex are dismissed because “each of us has his or her own legitimate set of sexual attitudes and feelings.”
⁹⁹
Homosexuality is a matter of “preferences”
¹⁰⁰
“Sado-masochism may be very acceptable and safe” for some people.
¹⁰¹
Although it is illegal and “exploitation” for adults to “take advantage” of children sexually, “there may be no permanent emotional harm.”
¹⁰²

In the same book, a chapter entitled “Different Strokes for Different Folks” begins:

You have noticed how the kinds of food you like and dislike are different from some of those other people like and dislike…. It is much the same with the sexual appetites of human beings.
¹⁰³

Even parents’ views may be all right—in their place. “If you are interested in their ideas,” you may talk with your parents, but if “disagreement” occurs or “the discussion turns into an argument,” then parent and child alike should see the other’s point of view “as
different
, not wrong.”
¹⁰⁴
In short, all views are equal, though it turns out that some are more equal than others, for the examples offered in the psychological-conditioning literature and classroom programs emphasize the feelings, attitudes, and behavior of peers. For example, the textbook
Changing Bodies, Changing Lives
begins many sentences:

“Most of the teenagers we interviewed….”
¹⁰⁵

“Lots of people….”
¹⁰⁶

“Some people….”
¹⁰⁷

“Many people….”
¹⁰⁸

“Most teens….”
¹⁰⁹

“Almost everyone….”
¹¹⁰

Again and again, issues are posed in terms of what “many teenagers,”
¹¹¹
“teenagers we’ve interviewed,”
¹¹²
“many people,”
¹¹³
or “many teens”
¹¹⁴
feel, believe, or do. By adopting the “non-judgmental” attitude which pervades such books, courses, and programs, the values and behavior of peers are left as the only guides. Nor is there any way for the reader to know whether the particular teenagers quoted are typical, or merely typical of what the brainwashers wish to promote.

Risk as Adventure

A recurring pattern in the attitude-changing, psychological-conditioning literature is the depiction of risk-taking in a wholly positive light. Numerous examples of the benefits of risk-taking are to be found in this literature—and virtually no examples of its disadvantages. Nothing bad ever seems to have happened to anyone as a result of taking risks, and certainly nothing catastrophic. The “objective” specified in one part of a so-called “gifted and talented” curriculum is: “To be a
risk taker
by having the courage to expose oneself to failure or criticisms, to take a guess, to function under conditions devoid of structure or to defend one’s own ideas.”
¹¹⁵
The epigraph to this handbook is:

Better is one’s own path though imperfect than the path of another well made.

This motto is offered, not to seasoned and mature adults, but to children in grades 4 through 6.

Carl Rogers, one of the gurus of the attitude-changing movement, rhapsodized about teachers who were “risking themselves,
being
themselves,
trusting
their students, adventuring into the existential unknown, taking the subjective leap”
¹¹⁶
by abandoning traditional methods for his kind of program. The often-cited book
Values Clarification
, by Sidney Simon and others, gives as the purpose of its strategy number 20, “learning to build trust so that we can risk being open.”
¹¹⁷
Much of what is done in trust-building exercises—having classmates lead a blindfolded student, for example—may seem to be innocuous, and perhaps pointless, when viewed in isolation. It is, however, one of a number of aptly named “strategies” designed to induce a certain state of mind, including a relaxation of inhibitions against the unknown and reliance on peers. In short, youngsters are encouraged to extrapolate from these exercises in a highly controlled environment to the unpredictable dangers of real life.

Sometimes the step-by-step increase of riskiness can at some point reach serious levels of danger, even within the context of the trust-building exercises themselves. For example, in the
Values Clarification
handbook’s strategy number 45, children go riding in a police car, or go into a ghetto, among other
risk-taking activities. This handbook’s “note to the teacher” proclaims the philosophy behind such activities:

All new experiences are risk-taking experiences, because we never know how they might turn out. Generally, the more the student has to do, the newer the experience for him, the greater the risk he has to take, the deeper will be the sensitivity which results from it.
¹¹⁸

In short, there is a coherent—though unproven—structure of beliefs behind these psychological exercises. Individual teachers are not usually the source of these beliefs, which typically originate with psychologists or psychological gurus who package programs for use in schools. Educators simply carry out such “innovations” and experiments on a captive audience of school children, while promoting the whole philosophy of life which attitude-changing programs represent. Particular trust-building exercises are just part of a larger pattern of inducing attitude changes by psychological means.

In attitude-changing programs, trust and risk are repeatedly depicted in a positive light, as if there were no dangers—psychological, physical, or financial—in ill-advised trust. Like so much in this approach, it simply
assumes
what is crucial, namely trustworthiness in this case. Carl Rogers was sanguine enough to make this assumption explicit, when he referred to “a profound trust in the human organism”
¹¹⁹
as a prerequisite for the kind of education he advocated. More generally, such sweeping trust and corresponding willingness to risk are prerequisites for abandoning the values and inhibitions which have been distilled from the experience of previous generations. Unfortunately, the greatest risks are not taken by teachers or promoters of attitude-changing programs, but by vulnerable children and the parents who will be left to deal with the consequences.

SPONSORS AND PROMOTERS

Who is pushing psychological-conditioning or attitude-changing programs into the public schools? And why?

Some are doing so out of simple self-interest. When pharmaceutical companies provide material promoting birth-control
products for sex education courses, the financial self-interest is obvious. Similarly when an automobile manufacturer provides material for driver education. Moreover, the selling of curriculum materials of a more general nature is a substantial business in itself. A captive audience of more than 40 million school children is attractive to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. The susceptibility of educators to such fasionable “innovations” is what opens the floodgates to permit the intrusion of such programs into the public schools. This susceptibility is only partly spontaneous. Organizations pushing curriculum programs engage in massive and sustained promotional activities all across the country, sponsoring conferences, retreats, and traveling exhibits, to reach an audience of education officials with the power to choose curriculum materials for vast numbers of children.

Some idea of the amount of promotional activity that goes on, on behalf of attitude-changing programs, may be suggested by a schedule covering just six weeks of promotional meetings in 1990 by just one organization, Quest International: