Chapter 6 -- School
Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values
School Improvement Initiatives
Outcome-Based Education
This is the most popular target of attacks.
Traditional OBE involves identifying learning outcomes in traditional content areas.
Transitional OBE involves identifying learning outcomes both in traditional content areas and in nontraditional content areas (sometimes referred to as lifelong learning).
Transformational OBE focuses solely on lifelong learning outcomes.
A common criticism leveled at OBE is that it has no research to back up claims of its effectiveness.
The Whole Language Movement
based on the principle that reading should be taught as a general process with supporting skills.
Dome politically active fundamentalists have connected whole language to the New Age.
Thinking Skills
Thinking skills programs used in education are based on two learning principles:
| learning involves processing information at a deep level |
| Knowledge once learned should be applied |
Tactics for Thinking teaches twenty-two skills divided into three categories:
| Content thinking skills |
| Learning to learn skills- help students to remember facts and details and to develop their creative writing skills. |
| Reasoning skills |
Tactics has been assailed for its alleged "experimental" use of hypnosis, mind control, New Age meditation, and imagery.
Imagery Techniques
Grounded in the learning principle that information should be processed at a deep level.
Human beings quite naturally form mental images as they think about a topic.
Some fundamentalists maintain visualization activities used in the classroom are a tool to open students up to global or planetary consciousness.
Self-Esteem
Based on the learning principle that a learner must perceive himself or herself as competent and accepted by teachers and peers to perform most effectively in a learning situation.
Some Christians are concerned about self-esteem programs.
concerns self-esteem critics take particular exception to:
| Pumsy in Pursuit of Excellence- Designed to build self-esteem in
students Christian groups charge the program with promoting the occult, Eastern religion and hypnotic relaxation techniques. |
| Quest- Life skills program used in about twenty thousand schools
across the country. Has three separate programs for grades kindergarten through high school: Skills for growing, skills for adolescence, and skills for living. |
These programs have units that deal differently with the topics of feelings, self-concepts, communication skills, family relationships, decision making and goal setting, financial management and drug education.
Gaddy, B., Hall, T. & Marzano, R. (1996). School Wars: Resolving our Conflicts over Religion and Values. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.