Educating
for the New World Order
by Bev Eakman
From The Publisher
The primary issues raised
in Educating for the New World Order are:
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A large number of standardized
tests, administered annually to millions of school children throughout
the United States and Canada, have been found to contain a substantial
number of "affective" questions which have nothing to do with evaluating
those students' academic accomplishment or potential.
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The "correct" answers to these
questions, according to the test developers, have a common theme running
through them . . . that of subordination of self to group. This is clearly
contrary to the principles we are trying to convey to our children - such
as in anti-drug programs - that they shouldn't feel they must do
something just because their friends do.
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In some areas, such as Pennsylvania,
schools which administered such tests have later received "supplementary"
instructional materials to be used in short-term programs. Although Pennsylvania
Department of Education officials maintained that the tests did not contain
affective questions, the "supplementary" materials made no pretense of
the fact that their purpose was to "remediate student attitudes."
Pennsylvania mother-become-activist Anita Hoge discovered references which
tied the version of these supplementary materials to the way students in
a school or district responded to the affective questions on those tests.
Moreover, because these supplementary materials were delivered to schools
through the Intermediate Education Districts, they were not necessarily
put through any review at the local level as to their appropriateness.
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Recently, tests began requiring
students to supply their social security number, in direct contravention
to the federal Pupil Privacy Act (which President Clinton is rumored to
be considering eliminating). Why should the SSN be necessary? The tests
are primarily intended to assess the academic progress of groups
of students, not individuals. The results of those tests, however, are
often stored in non-secure computerized databases. Even if no abuse of
those data is intended, the potential exists for Johnny's
daddy to run for public office and be faced with questions about personal
or family beliefs based on how a 10-year-old answered vague questions on
a test 15 years before!
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When challenged, state education
officials deny that affective questions appear on the tests, but when claims
are proven, tests have been withdrawn. Similar tests reappear months or
years later under a new name.
Finally, it should also be noted
that, for the most part, local educators are just as ignorant of the issue
as parents. Standardized tests are prepared at the behest of state or even
federal educational agencies. The actual contracted authors of those tests
are often restricted to a small group of individuals or organizations which
specialize in that task. Tests are sent to schools, which are instructed
not to read the tests, and often not to even open the box until test day.
Completed tests are to be immediately sealed and returned for grading.
These steps are quite reasonable, as they minimize the potential for cheating
or "teaching for the test." But they also assure that local teachers and
administrators - unaware of the contents of the tests - are often in the
unenviable position of defending such tests merely on the assurance of
others that the tests are completely benign.
Nobody seriously doubts that
values are implicitly transmitted during normal everyday instruction in
school. But there is a huge moral gulf between that and explicitly
teaching values or attitudes. There is heated debate over how to teach
relatively straight forward subjects such as reading and mathematics; do
authors and promoters of these tests realistically expect there to be genuine
consensus about whose beliefs are to be taught in preference to
others? Unlikely, at best.
The continued abuse of the
standardized testing process documented in
Educating for the New World
Order and its sequel, Microchipped,
threatens the reliance and faith placed in those tests to help assess the
effectiveness of our school systems. And as long as politicians and educational
bureaucrats continue to try to "reform" or redefine education as a series
of fuzzy, amorphous "Outcomes" that defy any reasonable effort to quantify,
our schools are in danger of losing an already tenuous focus on their purpose.
The fundamental question surrounding
the issue must be: In whose vision of the future is a new world order to
be structured? In that of the government and the myriad special interests
that wield influence there? We hope not.
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