Teachers' union leaders say the new curriculum in Ontario public schools is too tough. Critics say it's too vague, and some say it isn't a curriculum at all, but a mere guideline. Others say that it is the same old Outcome Based Education (OBE) curriculum with a few changed phrases to fool the parents. The fact of the matter is that students are still saddled with "Child Centred Learning," with Outcome Based Education, and vague curriculum guidelines without specified textbooks to learn from. Circular 14 still provides a cornucopia of irrelevant learning resources; teachers still feel "uncomfortable" teaching basic math and grammar, because they themselves don't know the subjects; teaching is still Outcome Based Education where the main emphasis is on teaching the unteachable topics such as self-esteem, sex education, living skills, and all about self and society, instead of learning to read, write and do math. Social promotion is still the norm, and remediation classes are proliferating out of control. Accountability is still an illusive dream, and "responsibility" is bashed back and forth like a ping pong ball. School boards remain politicized as always, and at their whim, they act for or against the ministry, the school principals, or the parents. By and large the teachers' unions still call the shots on what when and how our students learn. And the Ministry, the alleged agent for change, is staffed with reluctant bureaucrats who buck the Government at every turn, in an effort to maintain the status quo.

OBE is still used throughout our schools, and it is reflected in all the new curriculums from grade 1 - 12. So, what's so bad about OBE? Quite simply, students aren't learning the essentials. Instead, the emphasis is on "learning" self-esteem: how to feel good about oneself without accomplishment, because, according to OBE doctrine, attitude and what one thinks is more important than what one knows. Accordingly, school has become a place where attitudes are shaped and minds are trained in what to think . The school's role of inculcating knowledge has become incidental. Hence we have the dumbing down of a "feel good" generation. And our new curriculums have done nothing to change that fact.

Now who on earth would want to teach rubbish in a way that harms our future generations? If one examines the origin of "outcome based" education techniques and the academic elitists behind it all, it raises some frightening prospects and one has to question the underlying motives of modern education. In the first place, OBE was brought into existence and used in the East Bloc countries under the communist regimes in Russia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and East Germany. So why would our freedom loving society adopt such a philosophy of teaching? Names and organizations that are associated with and proponents of OBE in the West range from educators to CEOs of multinationals, to Presidents of the United States and UN organizations. Some notables are, Alfred Kinsey of the Kinsey Institute whose philosophy on sex gave rise to modern sex education through OBE devised programs put out by SIECUS (Sex Information and Education Council of the United States) and SIECCAN in Canada. Their record of "success" is well known. They have managed to "normalize" and sell homosexuality and other, more or less, perverted, harmful behaviours to our schools right across North America.

There is Robert Muller, one-time Assistant Secretary General of the UN. He concocted a "World Core Curriculum" (WCC) based on OBE techniques. His philosophy is based on the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey who was a leader in the Theosophical Society, a Freemason, and a disciple of the Russian born Helena P. Blavatsky, a medium and an alleged lesbian, and one of the founders of the Theosophical Society in the 1870s.

References to the occult is made by Alice A. Bailey in, "The Externalization of the Hierarchy," P.511 (Lucis Publishing Co.,1957). She states that the Masonic Movement is intended to be the training school for the coming advanced occultists. Some of Muller's suggestive teaching techniques are similar to ones used in occult ritual, seances, and hypnosis.

Muller's WCC is acclaimed by UNESCO and other UN organizations. The concept of Muller's teachings is to produce an egalitarian society, working cooperatively, in harmony, and without competition or strife--without individual thought or opinion. He fails to explain who will be the leaders of this strife-free Utopia. Could it be that he has the academic elitists in mind? Most significantly, Muller looks to take away the student's early childhood and family influence--replace it with a "global family." He suggests that education of a child should start from birth and be oriented to the "macrocosm" and that early family influences somehow promote "an egocentric mind set" that will result in a negative or undesirable outcome (in other words, the traditional family must be abolished for the good of society). Foreboding as this concept sounds, it has been heartily embraced by our very own Dr. Fraser Mustard, co-author of "Early Years Study," in which he urges the setting up of early years learning centres across the nation: a place for parents to drop off their infants for essential pre-school indoctrination at the hands of experts.

Shirley McCune, senior director of the Mid-Continent Regional Education Laboratory, in 1987, spoke of a plan for the "total transformation and total restructuring of our society" through OBE. The plan stipulates what is taught and how it is taught and establishes a "portfolio" or database file on every child, which will track (in addition to academic skills) the child's beliefs, values, attitudes, medical and health records (mostly mental health) as well as family history. The plan further calls for "parent training" classes and "Life Long Learning" programs. Horror of horrors! That is precisely what Ontario's education reformers have written into the new curriculum.

OBE techniques are based on work done by B. F. Skinner, behavioural psychology professor at Harvard. He proposed that the government institute a "technology of behaviour" to radically alter man and the environment. Skinner considered "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as outmoded and invalid goals, which have no place in the 20th century (much less the 21st century). According to an article in the "New American" August 23,1993, the National Science Foundation was apparently impressed with Skinner's work. It funded the development and marketing of his PACOS (People: A Course of Study) and MACOS (Man: A Course of Study). These courses were designed as elementary school courses that featured "promiscuity, cannibalism, murder, mayhem, adultery, extermination of the weak and elderly, and wife-swapping." "Taxonomy of Educational Objectives," by Benjamin Bloom, serves as guidelines for most OBE programs today. In one of his books, "All Our Children Learning" Bloom states that, "the purpose of education is to change the thoughts, feelings, and actions of students."

OBE, as concocted by these super heros of mind-bending socialism, is then assiduously peddled across the continent by adherents like William Spady and Shirley McCune.

The negative track record of OBE and the originators' objectives should be enough for any responsible government to ban the techniques and its aims from all classrooms forever, no matter what organizations within the UN underwrite the concept.

The purpose of elementary education as we once knew it has been lost--it is no longer to impart knowledge to our youth for their benefit, but it is to condition them to a way of thinking for someone else's benefit. It is reminiscent of the end of George Orwell's book, "1984," which says: "The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.... There is learning (to know), there is understanding (to do), and there is acceptance (to be like). After Winston's re-education in the Ministry of Love, without a pause he wrote. . . 2 + 2 = 5."

Jann Flury