CHAPTER 8: EDUCATION IN THE NEW AGE

The above quote from Professor Chester Finn was published in 1991, in his article, "Reinventing Local Control" ("Education Week", Jan.23, 1991, p.40) Under the Bush (Sr.) administration, Finn was given a mandate to "fix" American education; his efforts were seen as successful enough to earn him the title, "The Wizard of Education" (name of article by Thomas Toch, "US News and World Report", Jul.15, 1991, p.46) While the choice of a moniker associated with witchcraft may [or may not] have been unintentional, his call for "change agents" is both deliberate and prophetic regarding the U.S. Department of Education's endorsement of a major tool in laying the groundwork for the New Age. And if Finn leaves any doubt as to which "encrusted" or obsolete practices were slated for "change", we have only to survey the fruit of his efforts: "America 2000", later renamed "Goals 2000". [Or simply see below.] This is merely the U.S. version of an education being promoted worldwide. It is deeply religious in nature, as we will see - "separation of religion and state" in America notwithstanding. 

Alice Bailey wrote an entire volume on this subject: "Education in the New Age". "What is man; what is his intrinsic purpose in the scheme of things?" is the question she poses to launch the NA child on his/her educational journey. It is a question asked repeatedly throughout human history, yielding a rich variety of answers. Only now, there is to be one answer only - the Right Answer. The Hierarchy's Answer. As for the traditional "3 R's", the nuts and bolts of education, the Hierarchy named as one of the "goals" of the New Education: "to give true meaning to 'reading, writing and arithmetic'" - that is, to perceive the "higher realities" rather than to practice the basic academic skills; to recognize "the higher mind" rather than discipline one's own mind through scholarship. (p.16) [If anyone has been puzzled why OBE has adopted "creative literacy" (a spell-it as-you-feel system) and other subversive unlearning tools which are making a hash of American academic standards, they need search no farther for an answer. But this article is long enough without going into more detail. I leave that to the many others who are documenting the academic failures of "Goals 2000".] 

1. Education as "Rainbow Building" 
Alice Bailey saw global education as a "bridging work", referring to the Rainbow concept on a horizontal level, to prepare mankind for the vertical bridging with the Hierarchy. The goal is reduced to "the smooth functioning of the One Humanity". [A rather beaurocratic aim, but one worthy of a directorship that calls itself the "Hierarchy" - and a goal that closely echoes Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" in title, timing and content.] This functioning, she writes, necessitates removing any obstacles that cause "separation": racial, national, religious and economic class consciousness. ("Education" III, p.90) [Sounds great, until we encounter one notable multi-exception to all of these: Jewish identity, a blend of unique ethnicity, nationhood and religion producing the worst kind of "separation" there is. At least Jews are not guilty of "economic class" obstacles. But then again, economic separativeness clearly does not strike the same chord in NA hearts as other wars against "separation" - witness the financial elite attending the pivotal "State of the World Forum".] 

Bailey indicated four foundational concepts that must be absorbed by schoolchildren: simplicity (guaranteed to "kill" materialistic thinking), cooperative goodwill, loving understanding and world citizenship. The child is to be taught to harness his/her "energies" of life and knowledge in the service of "love". Love is defined here as "group relationship, in order that knowledge should be subordinated to the group need and interests." This is achieved by reorienting the educational goals themselves, in three specific ways: (1) The child is to be taught "from infancy that all that he... is being taught is with the view to the good of others more than of himself." History is no longer studied from the standpoint of "facts" or "achievement" but of "racial growth in consciousness". This leads to a consciousness of one's "responsibility". (2) All of life is qualitatively the same - not only all human life, animate life, or even all metabolic life, but "the total life pulsing throughout all forms, all kingdoms in nature, all planets, and the solar system". This leads to a consciousness of "relationship" and "blood Brotherhood". (3) Everyone is born to "service", a lesson to be reinforced continually from earliest years through vocational decisions. The end result will be to "link head, heart and throat into one unified and functioning agency," in individual and group imitation of the Planetary Logos. ("Education" III, p.92-94) 

But all of this is only the "primary step" to "the building of the antahkarana" on the horizontal level, also known as the "Science of Right Relations". ["Right human relations" for the Jews must take on a unique character; this now refers to the rest of Humanity] This is followed by the "Science of the Antahkarana", or the vertical rainbow-bridge building. The latter, recognized as a "new and true science of the mind", is a purely spiritual, that is religious, discipline. Its goals are to "end the fear of death", "negate all separateness", and open children up to "impressions from the higher spiritual realms. Thus he will more easily be initiated into the purposes and plans of the Creator." (p.95-96) Clearly "education in the New Age" is nothing more or less than preparation for the Planetary Initiation. 

Building this "second half of the antahkarana" will destroy old "misconceptions" which we now accept as reality: "the illusion of appearance, the illusion of evolutionary unfoldment [note that this is first taught as a basic principle; it will later be discarded], the illusion of separateness, and the illusion of distinctive identity - that illusion which makes us say 'I am.'" ("Education I, p.24-25) Other "illusions" to be destroyed through education: that war is an agony to be avoided (it is actually a "surgical operation"), that destruction and world suffering are evil (the "Custodians of the Plan" see it otherwise) ("Education" IV, p.111-112) 

Other "sciences" to be taught in the NA educational curriculum include: "the Science of Meditation", (skills for working "white magic") which should "dominate the new educational methods" in schools everywhere, and whose goal is to "build the first half of the antahkarana" and to "produce sensitivity to the higher impressions"; "the science of visualisation", preparing pupils for "the science of vision". This last "science" is the tool for building "the second half of the anthkarana", that is making contact "between the [human] soul and the spiritual triad [or Logos]". Last but not least: the "Science of Service", essentially driven by "identification with group purposes and plans" and ultimately by "knowledge of the Plan". (p.96-98) 

If there seems to be major redundancy in this NA curriculum (group service, receptivity to group-think, group-identity, group life) it may reflect some doubt as to just how easy it is to strip all children of all individual initiative, opinion and aspiration. In fact, "it will be only common sense to realize that this integration is not possible for every student". (p.89) No alternative is suggested for these kids, except a minimal attempt to train them in the Science of Right Human Relations. The success of this education ultimately depends on having access to the child "from infancy", [or even before] while it is still easy to establish "group control" [p.97, a rare slip in the Hierarchy's careful terminology]. Bailey's "Masters" are also hoping that the first graduates of New Age education who become parents themselves will make their control job easier, since "they themselves will have been brought up under this new and different regime". [Another interesting choice of terms: "regime" as defined in the dictionary is either a natural process or a domineering government in power. The reader - and the parent - can judge which more accurately describes what is being done to the NA child.] And, finally, Bailey hints at some deliberately orchestrated time, "when in late adolescence, a crisis, needed and planned, is precipitated" in the NA pupil's life [by human or spirit agent?], in order to make sure that each child chooses what his/her "destiny ordains". (p.89) [If NA education "ends the fear of death", and "destiny ordains" an early departure from the physical plane for 80% of earth's population, we shouldn't be surprised at an explosion of teen suicides and/or murders. Especially if the NA-educated kid happens to be carrying the weight of Jewish racial karma.] 

2. Bailey's Legacy: Today's Global Education 
Bailey counted on "the coming two generations" to build this bridge into the global educational system. She tellingly announced: "An international system of education, developed in joint conference by broadminded teachers and educational authorities in every country, is today a crying need and would provide a major asset in preserving world peace." (p.87, emphasis mine) This is what has taken place - verbatim - within exactly two generations. All of her educational principles are now the pillars of the "international system of education" called the World Core Curriculum. It was spearheaded by "broadminded" Bailey disciple, the Chancellor Emeritus of "the UN University for Peace" Robert Muller, in "joint conference" with representatives of 155 nations at the "World Conference of Education for All" (Thailand, 1990), where the Curriculum was further modified and expanded. The WCC was, Muller wrote, a response to "an outcry by educators expressing the need for a global curriculum." ("The Need for Global Education", "New Era", World Fellowship of Education, London, 1975) It is being vigorously distributed to "educational authorities in every country", with 1996 declared the International Year of Global Education by UNESCO. It was considered such an "asset in preserving world peace" that it won Muller the UN Peace Prize for Education in 1989. 

2a. Robert Muller's Contribution: Muller is best known for his decades of service as Assistant Secretary General of the UN (serving with U Thant, Kurt Waldheim and Javier Perez de Cuellar), but this report examines him as "the father of global education", a title given him for his compilation of the World Core Curriculum. The WCC was first used in the few "Robert Muller Schools" around the world, alternately known as "Schools of the Ageless Wisdom", to "enable the student to become true planetary citizens". Muller acknowledges that the WCC is based on the teachings of "Alice Bailey and Djwahl Kuhl" [sic], as well as "Master Morya" ("Preface", WCC Manual, Nov. 1986). He also called it "a product of the United Nations." ("A Letter to All Educators in the World") [The UN's role in the Plan is outlined elsewhere.] The "World Core Curriculum Journal" (published by the Robert Muller Schools, March 1989) proclaims, "Our task at this time is to develop a Global Curriculum Guide which will serve as a guide for the 'New Age Education'," (vol 1, p.32) liberally quotes from Bailey's "Education", and enshrines the goal of "group think". There is an entire section on a curriculum called the "Earth-Gaia Teaching Unit" (p.48-50) which promotes the personification of the Earth [capital "E"] as the pagan goddess Gaia. His WCC includes an outline, under the category of "Our Planetary Home", which quotes Bailey's description ("Education", p.126) of the manifestation of the Hierarchy in "every type of consciousness, from that of the infinitesimally small to that of the infinitely great." 

2b. Bill Clinton's Contribution: During his tenure as Governor of Arkansas, Clinton incorporated New Age teaching in his Governor's School, a summer school for gifted high-schoolers (est. 1979). It involved isolating the 17-year-olds from all contact with their parents and the outside world for six weeks, while introducing them to a new paradigm of relative morality determined by group consensus, and the technique of "divorcing yourselves from your bodies" in order to achieve contact with a Higher Guide. Although the program resulted in many negative reviews from graduates, and at least one documented suicide, it continued to be offered in Arkansas public schools. (See the documentary video, "The Guiding Hand", produced in 1992 by Geoffrey Botkin, a former student at the Governor's School and one of its most outspoken critics. He also includes footage of the School's own promotional video, showing the students practicing the "divorce" exercise, mentioned above, as part of their "Death Education" curriculum.) Bailey saw youthful rebellion against parents as a healthy trend enabling the "human family" to supplant them. ("Education" IV, p.131) This was reinforced by a guest speaker at Clinton's School, author Ellen Gilchrist: "Students, do me a favor. Totally ignore your parents. Listen to them, but then forget them." (from "Guiding Hand") 

2c. The Contribution of "Religious Humanism" and "Transcendentalism": An excellent article tracing the history of Outcome Based Education was written by Dr. William Coulson, a close colleague of prominent figures Carl Rodgers and Abraham Maslow, and co-editor with Rodgers of the groundbreaking series in humanistic education, "Studies of the Person". Among Coulson's revelations are his tracing of the familiar OBE concepts [the core of "Goals 2000" - see below] back to earlier "self-actualization" and "values clarification" experiments, which in turn find roots in the "religious humanism" of John Dewey and the Transcendentalist religious movement among 19th century New England intelligentsia. [My own brief survey of the latter revealed enough common ground with Theosophy to establish that we come full circle to NA doctrine again.] Equally noteworthy are Coulson's quotes from Abraham Maslow's journal expressing serious misgivings over Rodgers' experiments in "universal benevolence" and his own "self actualization" theories. [What a shame Barbara Marx Hubbard never heard; she cites Maslow and his SA concept as one of her guiding lights.] Maslow found himself criticizing the new education for "ignoring the distinction between who should teach and who should learn," and for a philosophy of trusting man's higher nature which lacked "a theory of right and wrong", a disabling element which promotes what he called "the 'value-free' disease." Coulson refers to one Rodgers-trained teacher who confessed that the phenomenon of students calling one another racist names and scribbling obscenities on school walls was a direct result of this new education: "The impression we got was that we were free to do our own thing and that the kids should be free to do their own thing. When the kids heard that, they were off." 

As a representative sample of OBE's heritage, Coulson quotes "a passage by a best-selling author in the Studies of the Person textbook series", whom he refuses to identify except as "a high-ranking official of the U.S. Department of Education." Coulson relates: "Later he went to jail for sex crimes, a result that was not unrelated to his beliefs, for in 1974 he'd written of his own personal growth as a kind of religious imperative: 'I have grown to the place where I now have what might be called "a religion of the self." I believe that most of the answers are within myself and that learning to tap the love and beauty and strength within myself is really a worshiping of the inner self. In essence, I believe in God. God is within each of us. We are all God.... I now meditate to the God within my own inner self; and each time I meditate, I discover new resources of boundless love and beauty within myself.'" [Bailey never said it better.] Coulson competently traces other OBE precepts back to this "self-worship". 

The only blind spot in Coulson's well-reasoned piece is his position that OBE "is so contrary to common sense and the protective instincts of parents that it demanded cosmic justification. Enter the New Age movement." The New Age movement, as we have seen, is not the tail on the OBE dog, but the driving force which gives OBE its vision, goals and methodology. Not only has OBE changed "brand names" repeatedly in American history, as Coulson shows; OBE under all its labels is only one of a hundred "brand names" disguising the infinitely older NA "Wisdom". 

3. Infiltration of NA Education into Public Schools - Easy Does It. 
Due to natural resistance in traditional educational institutions, introduction would have to be subtle and incremental. "The schools will make but small beginnings and will be launched in a way that will appear at first as too unimportant to be noticeable." ("Letters on Occult Meditation", p.309. Quote attributed not to Alice Bailey but to "the Tibetan Master", in "The Journal of Esoteric Psychology", Spring-Summer 1997.) [The success of the penetration is easily demonstrated: I will wager that virtually no reader of these pages has a clear idea of when New Age teachings first infiltrated into his/her school system.] 

Taking the cue from his spiritual mentor, Robert Muller was careful to introduce the "ageless wisdom" gradually into the U.S., the country which he called "the most powerful and stubborn obstacle to the further evolution of this planet." ("2000 Ideas for a Better World", Idea No. 1968. His "2000 Ideas" are easily found on the Internet.) The patience of Muller and other change agents was rewarded: Bailey's educational Plan was openly implemented in the "Outcome Based Education" (OBE) plan of the American educational project "Goals 2000", later renamed "Project Global 2000". Its "small beginnings, too unimportant to be noticeable" in the U.S. can be variously traced to 1974 (the first "School of Ageless Wisdom"), or 1980 (the pilot "Robert Muller School" in Arlington, VA with 16 students, operating quietly for five years before receiving full academic accreditation), or perhaps to 1979, when then-Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton introduced a prototype of the WCC in his prestigious Governor's School. By 1986, Muller's WCC was openly hailed as "a useful model" for Goals 2000 (George Cawelti, "Toward a World Core Curriculum", "Education Leadership", Dec. 86/Jan. 87). Certainly 1989 was a beginning (the first inclusion of the "Ageless Wisdom" in an experimental "Goals 2000" curriculum in Eugene, OR School District 4J), as was 1991 (the crafting of "America 2000" under the Bush administration) and 1992 (an experiment with "Outcome Based Education" launched in Cottage Grove High School, South Lane School District 45J3, Oregon Dept. of Education). The latter was declared a success on national TV by Marc Tucker, Executive Director of the "National Center on Education and Economy", a creation of the Carnegie Foundation which counts Hillary Clinton and David Rockefeller among its Board members. [Students and parents, on the other hand, called it an abysmal failure and an orchestrated fraud. By 1996, the controversy erupted in a group lawsuit, which of course received scant media attention.] From the obscure testing ground of the first NA school to the fully legislated NA education now operative in America, no more than 30 years had passed. 

3a. The NA principles of Alice Bailey are being progressively spread to all school children. They are already securely embedded in the system adopted by the U.S. Department of Education for public schools across the country. One of the schools which incorporated OBE in its experimental stage was Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado (Jefferson County), the site of a student-led massacre a decade later. [While no solid conclusions can be drawn here, just knowing this detail provides a horribly plausible explanation for what went wrong in that quiet "normal" community. Littleton, we should note, was only No. 6 in 8 incidents of "unexplained random shootings" of classmates within two years, committed by students aged 11-18. It is not hard to guess why the government and media, which publicly claim to be at a loss for a plausible cause in every one of these incidents, uniformly fail to mention an educational curriculum which includes both "death education" and the teaching that no personal values may be condemned by external authority.] 

Private schools are eventually to be included in OBE monitoring as well, under the auspices of the National Education Goals Panel, which declared in 1991 that the National Goals 2000 framework "must take into account those students who do not attend public elementary and secondary schools [in] our measure of progress." ("Potential Strategies for Long-Term Indicator Development", Report No. 91-08, p.37) Nor will home-schooling provide an escape. Iowa legislators have already authorized the Department of Education to dictate which tests home-schooled children will be required to take in order to be accepted as "educated"; if they should fail to pass an OBE-based exam favored by this federal body, state law will consider them "truant" and in need of child welfare intervention. On the national level, the National Education Association (NEA) has proposed that home-schooled children be required to use "a curriculum provided by the State Department of Education" and "meet all state requirements" to pass. (NEA 1992-93 Resolutions, pub. Sept. 1993) 

3b. An important tangent: Are "Goals 2000" and OBE being forced on Americans, or not? This is being hotly debated at the moment. Parents and local school authorities claim to have found evidence that the "voluntary" nature of OBE is a sham designed to deceive the public, a strategy which is sanctioned at the highest government levels. The federal "Goals 2000 Educate America Act" itself contains plans (S.1150) to eventually replace the high school diploma with the CIM (Certificate of Initial Mastery, awarded through OBE). However, the Education Department, in an effort to deflect growing opposition, gives high profile on its website to a 1996 "Amendment to the Goals 2000 Educate America Act", which "does not require [any Goals 2000 participant] to provide OBE." [Their case would be greatly strengthened if they could point to even one Goals 2000 participant who has been authorized to provide an alternate framework instead of OBE, but none appear anywhere on the site.] This amendment also states that Goals 2000 itself is a "completely voluntary" program; yet a clause in the "Elements of the State Goals 2000 Action Plan" requires participating states to "monitor... [and] improve schools that are not meeting the state content standards voluntarily adopted by the state," showing that the "voluntary" clause applies only at the state level. And the states which have already "voluntarily adopted" Goals 2000 currently total 49 or 50 (cited by different sources). [This situation confirms freedom in American education in the same way that the "election" of "President" Saddam Hussein by 99% of Iraqi citizens confirms democracy.] Plans to make CIMs a requirement for students to leave high school and/or enter college were presented years ago by the states of Oregon (House Bill 3565, 1991, p.10) and Iowa ("Policy Study 94-2", 1994, p.44), while bills in Oregon and Mississippi legislatures sought to link the CIM to "employability" (none passed as yet). 

Parents also charge that the U.S. Government is misleading the public in presenting OBE as "locally driven" when it is actually pre-determined from the federal level. The same Education Department webpage mentioned above reassures everyone that the Goals 2000 curriculum is truly subject to local input and control - all are invited to get involved. However, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development must not have been informed; they write: "Local control has been, and continues to be, the most durable myth, or operating principle, of educational governance in the United States." ("The Governance of Curriculum", 1994, p.3) 

4. OBE as a tool for NA "Change Agents" 
While Outcome Based Education is under attack both in the U.S. and Europe for promoting illiteracy and other scholastic deficiencies, there is only room here to note parallels with Bailey's radical NA agenda to prepare society to receive the Hierarchy. [For other avenues used by "change agents", see the previous section called "The Transformation of Society".] 

One of the most brilliant perceptions in Dr. Coulson's article [see above] relates to the published claim by OBE to be "a tool for change" in society. Coulson responds with: "Change, which is a fundamental theme of, and preferred justification for, Outcome Based Education, has long been an invariant in the quasi-therapeutic or 'religious' strand of American public-school education, the strand identified by historian Richard Hofstadter as anti-intellectual. In that sense, OBE is based on a contradiction. Today's OBE leaders may claim to be leading the way toward a future vastly different from the past; but in spite of frequent changes of name, the basis of the movement now called OBE hasn't varied in a hundred years. In other words, the necessity of change is a questionable assertion. It all depends on what is said to need changing." [Emphasis mine. Note also the ease with which Coulson repeatedly associates OBE with a "religious" movement.] 

What "needs changing", Coulson continues, is apparently "little... except the brand names under which they market their curricula and philosophies. In 1972, Rogers permitted me to quote him concerning how to deal with the many critics of his own version of the movement. He said, 'I'd change the name just as fast as needed to keep ahead of the critics.'" Coulson himself then reels off a whole list of generic titles which are all OBE in disguise: the child study movement, the mental hygiene movement, progressive education, life adjustment, classroom encounter, sensitivity training, humanistic education, values clarification, youth decision making, critical thinking, mastery learning and cooperative learning. [The variant names given by different states and districts for their "Goals 2000" programs follow a similar scatter-and-hide strategy, in their attempts to avoid tipping off critics with the telltale "OBE" label. Examples I found are "Outcome Developmental Driven" (Mason City, Iowa school), "The New Standards Project" (MacArthur Foundation and Pew Charitable Trust), "High Success Network" (by Spady, used in Oregon), "Affective Education" (widely used), and mysterious acronyms like "STW", "TQM" and "DAP". This is probably why a search in the on-line database of the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics with the keyword "OBE" yields nothing at all.] 

With this in mind, we proceed to "what is said to need changing" by OBE architects and promoters - which, not surprisingly, coincide with the things Alice Bailey and her NA change agents claim "need changing". 

4a. "Old Misconceptions" Eradicated by OBE: OBE's own creator, William Spady, confirmed its purpose in accordance with NA goals: "the complete transformation of our educational system [relating to] orientations - the attitudinal, affective, motivational and relational elements." [emphasis mine] The "transformation" is so "complete" that implementing OBE in the U.S. requires the repeal of hundreds of existing state laws involving education (in Washington State there are no less than 218 scheduled for cancellation - such as requirements to teach the federal and state constitutions, concepts of objective morality, truth, justice, patriotism and the principles of free government and citizenship; and also the observance of "traditional and religious" holidays). 

In other countries, the WCC is recognized as radical in even a more basic way: the Director of the Robert Muller School in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mrs. Gabrielle Roncoroni Christeller, commends this "new education" which teaches that the "human right of each individual [is to] be transcended" [superseded] by duties "to our total planetary home, to the total human family, to the universe, to the heavens [the Hierarchy] and to our role and fulfillment in the eternal stream of time". (Muller, "2000 Ideas for a Better World", Idea No. 1914) She is quoting here directly from the outline of the WCC teaching priorities: "I. Our planetary home and place in the universe; II. Our human family; III. Our place in time." Only at the end appears "IV. The miracle of individual human life." [Human rights activists, take note: All of these obligations take priority over what we used to regard as "basic human rights". Do not be shocked to find that when your favorite humanist group talks about "human rights", they actually mean "humanity's rights" and not individual rights. As Bailey taught, individual identity is an "illusion".] 

To fulfill Bailey's goals of removing the "illusion" of death, OBE offers a class in "Death, Dying and Suicide" for high-schoolers, which, in the words of one Oregon OBE student, "glamorizes death". The Ohio Board of Education's "Vision 21" OBE plan has added to this the goal of eliminating the "illusion" that intellectual development is a worthy investment; they have adopted the "theory of multiple intelligences" created by Harvard University's Howard Gardner, which claims that while racial genetics will determine or limit academic intelligence [sic!!], all pupils have "interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence" which must be developed. [Translating into Bailey terminology, we can see the NA transformation agenda more clearly: the only human potential ("intelligence") inherent in everyone is service to the group ("interpersonal"), the first half of the "antahkarana"; and surrender of inner self-determination to the Masters ("intrapersonal"), which is the second half of the "antahkarana".] 

4b. OBE Creates an Authority Vacuum: In order to meet the Hierarchy's demand for group-think, OBE (at least in Virginia, since 1986) requires teachers, under the guise of "guidance counseling", to create "cognitive dissonance" in children aged five and up. They are then to withhold adult input, in order to force reliance on "an answer acceptable to the peer group". Its purpose is "to remodel [the] entire political, economic and social structure [as well as individual] identity." ("Elementary School Guidance and Counseling Journal", April 1981). There is a section of OBE testing designed to find out what kind of social pressure is sufficient for the child to conform to group goals and surrender to group consensus, a concept known as "threshold testing". (See "Educating for the New World Order", Beverly Eakman, p.47) This method of creating an authority vacuum is directly out of Bailey's "Education in the New Age", which directs teachers to reject children's pleas for answers "that rest on the authority of the [teacher]", and "force" them to "an inward search" beginning at age five. (p.25) 

At the same time, children are urged to rely on another entity such as "Pumsy the dragon". "Pumsy" is mandatory curriculum in Virginia public elementary schools as of 1983, part of a course in which children must earn a Certificate of Mastery (CIM) in "Clear Mind". As 6-year-olds are introduced to "Pumsy" in a teacher-guided trance state, they are taught to resort to this "friend" to rid themselves of a "mud mind" and achieve a "Clear Mind" (and not to discuss it with parents). The child thus learns the first steps toward "an integrated personality", one in which his individual identity has merged "with the Whole" (the "spiritual triad" or Hierarchy). (Bailey, "Education" I, p.26) The goal is to permanently leave behind the world of "mud", that is, the concrete aspects of existence: "He lives first the life of dreams, and then the life of thought." (p.28) To summarize, the external authorities of the child's everyday world (teachers, parents, etc.) are delegitimized and replaced by the supreme authority of the "inner self", and eventually the (even more) supreme authority of the "group self". However, since these routinely prove inadequate for guidance in many of life's challenges, the resulting authority vacuum is filled by another external source, this one under the guise of another (unknown) side of the self. The fact that this entity is not really one's own self is revealed by Bailey's candid description of the actual "guides of humanity", whose desire is to merge with (and then submerge) the individual self. 

[In plain language, the ideal result of this "education" is a generation living in lifelong denial that there are aspects of life and authorities outside one's personal control. On the other hand, it is a lifelong dependency on a "higher" entity for guidance, due to the inevitable out-of-control circumstances of life - circumstances which they are taught don't really exist. Meanwhile, the reaction toward the few who maintain control over their lives, without the crutch of constant "entity contact", is nothing but pity for that poor unenlightened, unempowered soul. At the same time, this mindset roundly condemns those who depend on the G-d of the Jews for external input and guidance, calling them "automatons" and "unthinking" - in spite of the Biblical G-d allowing, and even requiring, far more initiative and personal autonomy than the NA "gods". Go figure.] 

4c. OBE's "No-Fail" Really Means "No-Pass": Instead of demonstrating mastery of academic material and/or analytical skills (reading, writing, math), the pupil is "graded" against a "Locus of Control", and is awarded a "Certificate of Mastery" if he/she has exhibited the desired behavioral and attitudinal "outcomes". No one can "fail" and there are "no 'right' answers"; but if appropriate "learning outcome" is not demonstrated, the child is "remediated", or re-taught, by "facilitators" using special material from the "National Diffusion Network". The material is taught over and over indefinitely, until the desired "outcome" appears. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Education is not shy about calling OBE a "behavior modification plan based on control theory", a system credited to psychiatrist William Glasser. And if teachers (in Washington State for example) do not demonstrate "accountability" in OBE teaching - that is, their classes are not satisfactorily "mastering" these concepts - they too are placed under "remediation" by "mentor teachers" in the classroom, until their record improves, or until they are fired. 

4d. OBE Allows No Parental Challenge: The same "technologies for expanding and transforming personal consciousness" which Marilyn Ferguson praised in her 1980 landmark book, "The Aquarian Conspiracy", are now being taught across the board to youth without the knowledge and permission of the parents, and even over parental objections. In many cases, students are encouraged not to discuss with their new studies with parents, and may be encouraged to jettison their parents' values across the board. [For an example, see the advice given to gifted students at Bill Clinton's Governor's School summer program.] Bailey viewed youthful rebellion against parents as "desirable" and even necessary, to break the family's "united front" and substitute "group life", ("Education" IV, p.130-131) which then becomes a "new form of family unit." (p.128) [It is important to read Robert Muller's many "Ideas" on the "family" with this specific definition in mind. See more below.] 

What is the proper role for parents in the New Age? To be educated to serve "the Law of Rebirth", by providing physical vehicles for "incarnating souls", and through psychic contact with "forces emanating from Shamballa" to create a "light body" for the baby before birth. In other words, the only reason to be parents is to produce "vehicles" for the cause of reincarnation, and to ensure that those "vehicles" will be born with a link to the Hierarchy. ("Education" IV, p.138, 140) Anything less is to be considered "unthinking procreation of children", a most unenlightened attitude which only contributes to the population problem. (So when, in a 1998 interview, NA leader Barbara Marx Hubbard laments those who "have babies without thinking", fellow initiates will necessarily see her as referring to more than simple family planning or population control.) 

4e. OBE Misleads Parents: Not surprisingly, NA educators expected that a bit of subterfuge and even lying to parents would be necessary to give such drastic subversion a chance to succeed. Alert parents in the Cottage Grove High School OBE experiment found instructions along these lines to their school administrators in the U.S. government-issued "Community Action Tool Kit" (from the office of the Secretary of Education) and "The Change Agents Manual". [Since this issues from the same office that assures us the OBE program is completely voluntary, a healthy skepticism is appropriate regarding any reassurances from that quarter.] 

This deception is necessary, as Harvard Professor of Education and Psychiatry, Dr. Chester Pierce pointed out in 1972, in his keynote address to the Association for Childhood Education International: "Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane, because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being [all learned at home]. It is up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international children of the future." (quoted in several sources; see Kathy Collins who quotes it with approval, "Children are Not Chattel," "Free Inquiry", pub. by the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, Fall 1987. Collins' premise: "Children are not 'owned' by their parents." p.11) Decades earlier, in 1946, psychiatrist Brock Chisholm (then head of the UN's World Health Organization) confessed, "We have swallowed all manner of poisonous certainties fed us by our parents.... Whatever the cost, we must [reject] the mistaken old ways of our elders.... If it cannot be done gently, it may have to be done roughly or even violently." (quoted favorably by Hillary Clinton, "It Takes a Village", p.15) American courts are backing this sentiment with legislation, as in the May 18, 1990 decision by the California Superior Court that a teacher's right to free speech in the classroom supersedes the personal convictions of parents. As Texas Federal District Judge Melinda Harmon succinctly put it: "Parents give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school." (quoted in "Schooling for a Global Age", James Becker ed., p.xiii) 

4f. The OBE War on the (Traditional) Family: Alice Bailey blamed the traditional family unit for promoting "separativeness, selfishness and individual, isolated exclusiveness". ("Education" IV, p.130) Her ideal of family life was that it serve the Hierarchy, viewing both the sexual relationship and childrearing with the sole motive of furthering human evolution (p.132). Following instructions to "deal with the whole problem of parenthood" (p.133) through education, parental training programs are offered under OBE to bring the entire family into NA education, under the label of "enlightened social engineering". This is not to produce family harmony so much as to eradicate conflicts with home-taught values - conflicts in which "the educational institution frequently comes under scrutiny and must pull back." (Professor John Goodlad, member of the Governing Board of UNESCO's Institute for Education. See "Guide to Getting Out Your Message," "National Education Goals Panel Community Action Toolkit: A Do-It-Yourself Kit for Education Renewal", p.6. Goodlad repeats this comment in Foreword, "Schooling for a Global Age", p.xiii.) Professor Goodlad, who also served with Bill Clinton in the 1980s on the UNESCO Commission on Global Education, warned colleagues that "most youth still hold the same values as their parents", a situation which may cause society to "decay". ("Report of Task Force C: Strategies for Change," "Schooling for the Future", no.9, 1971) As for older family members, Number Five of the Eight National Goals enshrined in "Goals 2000" not only specifies that OBE performance be used to determine job placement after graduation, but suggests that the adult workforce be required to undergo OBE training to continue to be employable. 

4g. OBE Foot in the Door at Home: By the mid-1990s, at least one state (Ohio) made the "parental educational or training program" compulsory in certain cases, with refusal to attend constituting "parental education neglect" - not only a "misdemeanor" but theoretically grounds for removing the children from the home. (See "Ohio Revised Code", 1996, Sec. 2919.222) Elsewhere, the PAT program (Parents As Teachers) was gradually introduced until it became federal law under Goals 2000 (1994): In this framework, parents have the "right" to teach their own children, provided that they fulfil the same "duties" expected of teachers. In such a framework, social service workers can be authorized to inspect homes and rate parental performance (not only in the context of home-schooling, but in general childraising and values education) - with the option of removing "poorly taught" children. Likewise, parents who refuse to accept social services in the PAT framework can be classified as having homes with children "at risk". (see "Revised Risk Factors Form", Parents As Teachers National Center, Inc.) The "Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act" of 1996, thought by many to provide balance to this issue, merely reinforced the PAT concept, conditioning those "rights" on the "responsibilities" redefined by the New Education. The National Assessment of Educational Process (NAEP) test given to students every four years (grades 4, 8, 12) includes both academic material and a survey about the child's home life and family habits, another way of pinpointing "problem" families. 

For the moment, privately run schools are still able to filter out a good bit of this indoctrination. The majority of these are under the auspices of Christian or Jewish religious institutions. But even parents of these children may not rest easy, especially the Jews. NA "change agents" have penetrated Jewish life in other ways, as we will see in the next section.