file: /pub/resources/text/breakpoint: bpt.94.07.20.txt ------------------------------------------------------ Note: Prison Fellowship is actively working toward offering BreakPoint on the Internet themselves. However, until that's in place, I have been given permission to email special noncommentary items like fact sheets and urgent announcements. This is an UNOFFICIAL transcript made from the radio broadcast. Mistakes in it are mine, not Mr Colson's nor Prison Fellowship's. Send comments, corrections, questions, subscription changes to David S McMeans at . * Wednesday, July 20, 1994 BREAKPOINT with Chuck Colson Thomas Sowell [sp] was an economics professor at UCLA when he noticed a disturbing trend among his students. They began answering economics questions starting with the phrase "I feel." "They seemed shocked," Sowell writes, "when I cut them short and told them economics is not about how you feel. It's about logical analysis and empirical evidence. This seemed to be a new idea to many of them." Sowell came to realize that the students were products of California's experiment with outcome-based education. OBE has become one of the most fiercely debated issues in education today, but the debate is about to be abruptly cut short. There's a bill before the US Senate right now that would mandate outcome-based education throughout America. In effect, the bill would place all public schools under direct federal control reeking havoc with the time-honored principles of local control and parental rights. What makes OBE so controversial? Well, like many bad ideas it began with good intentions. The failure of contemporary education led to a search for more astringent standards. It's clear students need to master basic skills before they go on to higher levels, so OBE first came on the scene as an attempt to help kids master the basics. But somewhere along the line these ideas for reform were overtaken by therapeutic definitions of education. Instead of establishing learning goals based on the mastery on content, many of the learning goals in OBE focus on students attitudes and psychological development. Instead of requiring students to master reading, writing, history, and arithmetic, OBE requires students to demonstrate self-esteem and multi-cultural sensitivity. Another innovation is that in OBE classrooms there are no grades. Students simply take a subject again and again until they can demonstrate the approved response. No one ever really fails. But, of course, no one ever really succeeds either, so there's little incentive for excellence. It's like playing football with no score. This is so far removed from normal teaching methodology that it makes one wonder why educators find it attractive. Well, the answer is that OBE fits well with the intellectual climate of our post-modern times. If truth is relative, then there really isn't any factual content to learn. The important thing is students' emotional adjustment. And if truth is relative, there really isn't any basis for objective evaluation, so how can you have grades. Today, even the federal government is getting into the act of promoting post-modern methods of education. The administration has developed what it calls Goals 2000 which establishes outcomes for a national curriculum. Now, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will require all schools that receive federal aid to adopt curriculum standards and tests that conform to the federal mandates in Goals 2000. The House has already passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Senate is poised to pass it any day now. Please, call your senators and urge them, "Vote no on Senate Bill 15-13." Those of us who believe that there is absolute truth cannot sit by and watch as the post-modernists take over our schools. For BreakPoint, this is Chuck Colson in Washington. * BreakPoint is copyright (c) 1994 by Prison Fellowship. BreakPoint with Chuck Colson is a daily radio commentary on news and trends from a Christian perspective. Its purpose is to equip listeners with a biblical world view that enables them to contend for truth in modern society. Carried on 250 stations nationwide, it is a ministry of Prison Fellowship. Founded by Chuck Colson in 1976, Prison Fellowship organizes and trains volunteers for a variety of ministries to prisoners, ex-prisoners, their families, and the victims of crime. It also works through volunteer citizen task forces to promote biblical standards of justice in the criminal justice system. BreakPoint is supported by audience donations and by readers who purchase subscriptions to the monthly BreakPoint magazine which contains transcripts of the daily broadcast plus occasional guest commentaries. A one-year subscription of 12 monthly issues costs $35. To subscribe, call BreakPoint at 1-800-995-8777. For information on stations in your area that carry BreakPoint, call Prison Fellowship at 1-800-497-0122 or write them at the address below. Prison Fellowship, PO Box 17500, Washington, D.C. 20041-0500 Prison Fellowship (800) 497-0122 PO Box 17500 (703) 478-0100 Washington, DC 20041 (703) 834-3658 fax The unofficial BreakPoint FTP site is ftp.cs.albany.edu:/pub/ault/bp A list of phone numbers for our federal legislators can be found at URL ftp://ftp.cs.albany.edu/pub/ault/bp/congress_ph.txt ----------- David S McMeans dmcmeans@iclnet93.iclnet.org