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Show The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand Page 6 The Utah Independent November 13, 1975 college, adult, and A CORNER ON EDUCATION By ErmaJ. Christensen, Education Councilor, Fed. Safety Society Education Councilor, Federation American Utah Party Women) The following letter to Dr. Thomas, Superintendent of Salt Lake City Schools, will take the place of the reviews this writer promised last week. This has been done because of the importance of the meeting we had with Dr. Thomas, and the fact that MACOS: MAN: A COURSE OF STUDY is being used in 5th and 6th grades in Salt Lake City Schools. The study of the various booklets and evaluations from the course itself that we have done will be of value to all of us in our position to keep this insidious and behavior-modificatio- n brainwashing medium out of our schools. The Webster School, 429 South 8th East is the only Salt Lake City school as yet using this program that we have visited. However, plans are being made to use this same kind of curriculum all through the grades, as stated in one of the quotes from one of the We must be manuals. knowledgeable about this curriculum, because it will come into the schoolswhether we like it or not, unless we PROTEST LOUDLY! (Next week will continue with further reviews of dangerous precepts in the other books being introduced into Utah Schools.) Dear Doctor Thomas: Enclosed you will find three River of booklets, namely. L. Pollution by Joe Bean, M.D., Humanist Manifesto II, and copies of a few pages with most pertinent from "Focus on information Children and Youth", a report to Governor Calvin L. Rampton and the Citizens of the State of Utah, printed by the State Board of Education. If you will study these carefully you will find a thread of Humanism running all through these studies. Compare them with the quotes which follow from Macos: Man: A course of Study. A promotional booklet says the following: "The student materials have been created from ethnographic film studies and field research, heretofore the PROVINCE OF COLLEGE AND GRADUATE STUDENTS. Much of the data represents the most recent findings in the behavioral sciences. Using these sources, classroom teachers and students explore together the MAN'S SOCIAL BEHAVIOR THROUGH THE STUDY OF SELECTED ANIMAL GROUPS..." (Evolution?) "...This format enables teachers and students to consider CONCEPTS with greater insight and information throughout the roots of course (10 year olds?)... .Students the simulate anthropologists' methods of observation, data collecting, hypothesizing, problem finding and problem solving.... A unit on the life cycle of the salmon, for example, explores the behavior of a species in which, WITHOUT PARENTAL PROTECTION, enough offspring survive for the species to endure. Thus, children encounter questions about the NEED FOR PARENTAL CARE IN HUMAN BEINGS. If salmon can live without PARENTS, why are human beings born so helpless? "...The second unit. ..focuses on the behavior patterns of herring gulls. This unit extends the discussion of parenthood by looking at a species' whose family structure is strikingly similar to that found in human society.. .the young, born relatively helpless, must STILL CARE FOR THEMSELVES by pecking on their parents' beaks to get regurgitated food. ...The herring gull study helps children examine behavior, including that of humans, by seeing how learning relates to adaptation, how the structure of an organism reflects its how ALL BEHAVIOR must be understood in terms of requirements for function, and survival. baboons, man's CLOSE PRIMATE RELATIVES, are the subject of the third "...Free-rangin- g unit. ...As the only other PRIMATES, ground-adapte- d baboons offer an unusually provocative contrast for examining the child-rearin- g practices and social behavior of man.... "...The Netsilik Eskimos, the purest surviving examples of traditional Eskimo culture.. ..Here children begin to discover the meaning of man's HUMAN NESS by examining the similarities and differences between themselves and a group whose lives appear very different from our own. Subsistence activities (role playing) g practices, the structure of a family and the behavior of its members, the cooperative (communal) activities of a society, its VALUES AND BELIEFS are studied in an attempt to understand the cohesiveness of culture and its universal aspects. By the end of this course the students have developed a vocabulary for thinking about the distinctness of man and increased sensitivity (acceptance) to the child-rearin- world humanity that ALL CULTURES SHARE." (World Government?) The aims of Man: A course of Study "To impart an understanding of the capacities of man as a species in contrast to other ANIMALS. 'To instill concern for the human condition in all its forms, whatever race or culture. (Humanism?) "...The Curriculum of Man: A Course of Study allows teachers and scholars to bring their own scholarship and style to the course. (Ed. I found the teachers did not have a clear idea of just what they were trying to teach the children). .."Si nee the content is drawn from the frontiers of knowledge in the behavioral sciences, Inservice training of teachers is a PREREQUISITE FOR IMPLEMENTING THE COURSE. (Sensitivity Training? When asked if the teachers and he had had Sensitivity Training for the implementation of thie course, Mr. Borovac (Principal of Webster School) stated that he and the teachers had had Sensitivity Training.) does an entire "...Why generation always miss new knowledge or learning experience of age or grade by virtue placement? Thus Man: A Course of Study has become "ungraded." In addition, curriculum adaptation studies of Man for secondary, cross-cultur- al education are under way. is the intellectual "...It framework and design of the curriculum expressed by Jerome Irven Bruner, Asen Balikei. DeVore and others that led to the creation of the MOST SOPH1S-TICATED multi-medi- a curriculum yet produced in the world... .It is from teachers and learners who work with the intellectual and HUMANIZING ideas and problems which the course poses that we continue to uncover the beauty and dimensions of discovery and INQUIRY learning. (No absolutes, the children become expert problem solvers without teacher giving facts! Ed.) far-reachi- ng OTHER FINDINGS: "Interviews with youngsters revealed a growing sense of INTERDEPENDENCE (ingroupness?) of special members, particularly among primates, and a greater appreciation of human needs, particularly in the areas of cooperation, nurturance, protection and the sharing of res(One world componsibilities. munity preparation?-Ed.- ) "...Teachers become less the focus of the classroom as students grew in ability to express ideas and to share and discuss the material with one another." This course in NOT appropriate for Sth grade children. need They less behavior modification, more traditional curriculum. This to us, as a simile, is as though a doctor gives a group of children a dangerous, unresearched medicine that just might ruin their health. Then after a short time has elapsed, the doctor takes tests to determine whether the medicine had healed the children or killed them. We have warnings from Americans all over our country that this is a DANGEROUS COURSE. We are aware of the danger. We are asking that you take the course out of Webster school before it is too late, the children become little HUMANIST ZOMBIES, uneducated citizens of our great country. One more quote from "An Evaluation" which solidifies our contention that this is not appropriate is as follows: "...One of the problems, of course, is that later school work does not always provide continuing opportunities for using these methods. When children return to traditional classrooms, or to situations where the quality of is curriculum materials far different from MAN: A COURSE OF STUDY, the half-lif- e of this un-creati- ve, experience may not be we did undertake long.. ..What shows that most youngsters did NOT address a newly posed problem with the methods they had learned in MAN: A COURSE OF We need further STUDY. followup research, but one an- ticipates particularly return to dominated disappointments, for children who THE SCOTT REPORT NEW CITY'S YORK "TIMEBOMBS" Bv Paul Scott New York City, N.Y.: With public default now a virtual certainty, two new and highly explosive elements in the New York City financial crisis are being here carefully examined government security officials. The first of by these training in Cuba. The announced objective of the FALN is "independence for Government Rico". Puerto security officials, however, say this is a cover for a much wider The real objective of purpose. these terrorists, they say, is to create chaos in the nation's largest cities and to set up a Communist base in Puerto Rico. If conditions in New York City were normal, neither the "timebombs", as they are referred to. is the secret directive to U.S. Communist leaders from Moscow to take full advantage of the confused and potential chaotic conditions that could develop from the terrorist bombings or the Moscow directive for a series of general city's coming default. FBI sources here say the strikes would be considered as a Kremlin's order calls for the serious threat to U.S. internal initiating, organizing, and sup- security. But this isn't the situation porting of a series of general strikes involving persons affected by the today. The new danger is that the default and the coming cutbacks in two red operations could turn the uncertainty and unrest expected city services and spending. The second explosive element from a default into violence. CHANCE OF CHAOS -is the new terrorist bombings of the militant Puerto Rican Once the city goes into underground group known as the "receivership", there have been Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion predictions of social chaos as Nacional Puertorriquena(FALN). welfare recipients failed to get their As forecasted in an earlier checks, police, firemen and column, the Puerto Rican garbage collectors laid off, and terrorists launched what its leaders schools and hospitals were closed. called attack Until the two new elements "a coordinated against Yanki government and appeared on the horizon, all of this monopoly capitalist institutions" was believed manageable by city with a series of night bombings in authorities since even President New York, Washington, and Ford, despite his opposition to federal default, Chicago. help before With Moscow directing and promised to see that the city's vital Havana supporting the Puerto services are maintained. Rican terrorist activities here, there Now there is growing doubt. is growing concern among these Security officials are concerned security officials that the bombings these "timebombs" will help trigger will be stepped up and orchestrated a chain of events that could turn with the general strike strategy to New York City into a towering take advantage of the city's inferno. Some even believe a growing economic crisis. The objective will be to try to foreshadowing of this appeared in trigger the expected protests and the New York Times a few days demonstrations over the slashing before the fall of Saigon. On that of payrolls and serv ices into violent paper's second editorial page confrontations with local and appeared a large picture of Comfederal authorities. munist guerrillas armed with sub-- " Evidence of this linkage is inmachine guns taking over the New dicated by the timing of Moscow's York subway system. directive for the general strike The headline over the picture strategy. It came on the heels of a was "As Saigon Goes So Goes New September conference in Havana York". where the planning for the new We all know what happened Puerto Rican terrorist bombings to Saigon. As one in the early took 'place. morning of October 26 heard a Significantly, a number of bomb go off less than five blocks militant U.S. Communist party of- away, it became very clear that the ficials from this area took part in nation's largest city has become the the Cuban meeting which was new urban battle ground. attended by revolutionary and The question is whether we as terrorist leaders from all over the a people will recognize this and world. take the necessary steps to save FALN IS DANGEROUS -- New York City without destroying Although believed to be made up it and the rest of the country. of only several hundred persons, NOTE. The FALN is now the FALN is now considered to be believed responsible for 25 bomthe most dangerous terrorist group bings in the U.S. in little more than in the U.S. because of its members one year. pro-Castr- o, "I agree that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are viture and talents." -- Thomas Jefferson school career by more traditional a styles of learning to which they MUST ADAPT OR OPT OUT." Need I say more about this course of study? Thank you for reading this material. Dr. Thomas. We appreciate your concern for the children, and listening to our concern for them. May I hear from you soon? Sincerely yours, Erma J. Christensen (Mrs.) Support Our Advertisers Mention the UTAH INDEPENDENT |