Monday, March 27, 2000
Speaker: Parents should control local education
BY SARA J. BENNETT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Classes that glorified death and taught students whatever they felt was OK may have contributed to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's killing rampage at Columbine High School last year, a member of the Colorado Board of Education said Sunday.
Patti Johnson spoke at the Sharonville Convention Center about nationwide education trends that she thinks create a culture of violence among youth.
Presented by local radio talk show host Tina Hall's Speak Up America Club, Mrs. Johnson's “town hall meeting” drew about 200 people. Most came with this message: Parents and teachers must seize more control of local education from the state and federal government.
“I believe the local baker, the local doctor, the local engineer, and the local mother know what's best for their children,” Mrs. Hall said.
Mrs. Johnson said classes dealing with death and programs that teach students to come up with their own ideas of right and wrong are prevalent across the country. Such classes, she said, helped encourage Mr. Harris and Mr. Klebold to gun down 12 students and a teacher last April before killing themselves.
“Kids spend 30 hours a week in the classroom, and then they sit in front of the TV, so who's influencing them?” Mrs. Johnson asked. “When you're sending kids through a system that says there's no wrong or right, kids are going to develop their own turf.”
Mrs. Johnson opposes a teaching philosophy commonly referred to as “outcome-based” education. While definitions vary, Mrs. Johnson said outcome-based education promotes teaching values and higher thinking skills over traditional lesson material.
Outcome-based education, combined with sex education courses, school-to-work programs and school-based health clinics take away parents' rights to raise children according to their own beliefs, Mrs. Johnson said.
Ohio has grappled with at least one of these issues in the past few months. In January, the state Department of Education failed to vote on spending $90,000 in grant money on a health model that included HIV and AIDS prevention programs stressing the use of contraceptives as much as abstinence.
Groups such as the Ohio Family Alliance say the grant is part of an overall federal agenda to make schools adopt sex-ed programs encouraging use of contraceptives and premarital sex.
Reached after Sunday's gathering, Tom Mooney, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, said local schools does not mean “mushy values over straight academics.”
“Here in Ohio, the outcomes we're expecting are very specific — they are traditional core academic subjects, and we've now instituted a higher standard for what students are expected to learn,” he said. “I don't know what the curriculum at Columbine is, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to have kids being in some sort of little quasi-Nazi cult based on the school curriculum.
“These are just trumped-up issues (the right wing) use to undermine public support for public education,” Mr. Mooney added.
Cy Richardson of Bethel, a member of the Ohio Board of Education, also rebutted the idea that schools are permissive.
“I don't know of any schools teaching that way,” he said. “I don't know if schools are teaching values, but I do think they should teach right and wrong.”
Mrs. Johnson on Sunday also raised concern about classes that teach students about death and dying.
In Littleton, Mrs. Johnson said, Mr. Harris and Mr. Klebold wrote their own obituaries, wills and suicide notes in “feelings journals” that were assigned in a class.
Mrs. Johnson showed a video of Columbine High School graduate Tara Becker, who claims she tried to kill herself after a teacher told her death was a natural, even positive experience.
If parents and community leaders are concerned about the effect schools are having on their children, they need to get involved, Mrs. Johnson said.
Parents should ask their children what they're learning in school and question anything that raises concern.
Gary Waits, a Loveland Board of Education member, encouraged parents to campaign against things with which they disagree. Too often, he said, people don't follow through on their initial complaints, so decision makers don't get their message.
To educate more people about issues raised by Mrs. Johnson, Tina Hall has been organizing coffee gatherings at homes in Madeira, West Chester and Mason.
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