In a 1973 address, psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce said, "Every child in America entering school at the age of 5 is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our Founding Fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well - by creating the international child of the future." And thus we see the downfall of our educational system.
Prior to the 1900s, before public education, children would graduate from the eighth grade with the equivalent of a college education of today. They would then go into a trade, a profession or just help Mom and Dad on the farm/ranch, with an adequate education to do whatever they wanted if they disliked their first choice of a job. What happened? We have allowed psychiatrists, sociologists and other therapists to take over education.Today we have in Utah a system currently named Competency Based Education (a k a Outcomes-Based Education; a k a Mastery Learning). The supporters of this system cannot point to a single success. Yet our teachers are taught how to teach it, our schools and districts are exploited monetarily to implement it over the objections of parents and educators who say it does not work. Everywhere this system has been used test scores plummet. The recognized father of this system is Bill Spady, not an educator but a sociologist.
William Coulsen is a psychologist who recommended this teaching system and then reversed himself as he realized the harm it could do to his own children. Of this system he states, "This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Units (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes."
What is the answer? Leave the teaching of values, behavior and beliefs in the home where they belong. Move the schools back to teaching basic educational skills such as reading, math, writing, etc. Since these skills can be measured, we can identify the effectiveness of the educational institutions and make corrections where they are needed.
Sam Sellers
Santaquin