International Baccalaureate Org Proud Parents Whose Children Participate
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ March 18, 2006
The International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) held very little interest for me until a letter to the editor from an enrolled student appeared in our newspaper.
The IBO was founded in Geneva, Switzerland in 1968 to provide “a common curriculum and university entry credential for geographically mobile students”. It is a chartered foundation under the Swiss civil code and is associated with the United Nations through UNESCO. Bradley W. Richardson, director of International Baccalaureate North America in New York City, said the program's "ties to the United Nations and UNESCO are both historic and collegial."
Alec Peterson, the organizations first Director-General and a key developer of the program was Professor of Educational Studies at the University of Oxford in England. Peterson, who died in 1988, was a humanist with a liberal pedagogical philosophy. He favored a broader system with less emphasis on memorization and more on analytical and communication skills Three of the core portions in the IBO program are Creativity, Action, Service (CAS); Extended Essay (EE); and Theory of Knowledge (TOK).
The CAS is a fairly complex system involving the allocation of 150 supervised hours in developing the student creatively, physically, and socially by engaging in a wide selection of activities some, but not all, of which might be considered social service. The student is expected to select three different activities and devote 50 hours to each. The projects, the affect they have on the student, and the ideas the student contributed are all to be recorded in a CAS diary.
Forty hours must be allocated to the EE which is to be 4000 words written on a chosen topic and supported by research. This project is conducted with the help of an advisory supervisor.
TOK is a high school course in epistemology. “The student is described as a "knower" who attempts to find knowledge, where knowledge, as defined by Plato, is ‘justified true belief‘". Nine justifications are taught: logic, sensory perception, revelation, faith, memory, consensus, authority, intuition and self-awareness. Completion of the course involves a ten minute oral presentation and a 1,200 to 1,600 word essay.
The CAS is confirmed by the supervisor and the EE and the TOK are sent away to be evaluated externally by the IBO itself. All three are mandatory requirements for graduation.
The IBO has participating schools in 122 different nations. United States is the largest participant with 622 schools, Canada is second with 217, and Australia third with only 86. For some unacknowledged reason the United States accounts for over one third of the total participation in the program.
Globalists have long culled the best and brightest from around the world and provided them with educational opportunities that correspond with their agenda. The IBO makes this process considerably easier by providing a process of identifying the intellectually gifted earlier.
Pride generated in parents of bright children selected to participate in the IBO classes precludes a critical evaluation of the program itself. Internationalism in America is largely an elitist phenomenon. Properly informed, many Americans would come down on the side of national independence. The inherent bias involved in a blatantly globalist program like the IBO would undoubtedly generate sizeable opposition.
Although there is no measurable relationship between intellectual brilliance (ability to reason and understand) and wisdom (judging rightly and following that course), gifted students are treated with the same unmerited awe that tends to make monsters of professional athletes. In Florida where the IBO program is financed at the State level often with Federal funds, the state has encoded laws for this special class of students. They also have their own national and state advocacy organizations.
The IBO as well as other international educational programs are cultivating a multicultural, scholastically elite generation that will have unanimous humanistic opinions concerning the world and its government. It fosters a haughty arrogance designed to meet critics with baneful scorn. Individualism is being superseded by group think that will quash all individual dissent. One need go no farther than any university campus where an assembly of contemporary students will regularly attempt to shout down and terminate the speech of an individual with whom they disagree. Group think kills free speech!
Included in the description of the IBO program in our local high school are these words, “This program requires many group projects, including group orals in foreign languages, science labs and the group 4 projects, to name examples. What you learn from peers is extremely valuable.”
The flap that initiated the letter starting my research began with a missive from a teacher in the IBO program decrying a contention by columnist Cal Thomas that God is missing in our classrooms. The teacher declared that God is present in the moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance as well as the Pledge itself. He went on to recall the discussion of Biblical characters as they relate to literature and made a rather sloppy distinction between discussing religion and proselytizing; praising the former and condemning the latter. He contended that discussions about God were tantamount to God being allowed in the classroom but strongly eschewed allowing the involvement of the church. A pervasive multi-cultural concern was clearly apparent.
These references to God aroused the chutzpah of an articulate, outspoken, god-fearing (self appointed to protect American society from The Deity), pagan. His scoffing prolixity against Biblical doctrines and the IBO teacher who dared to mention the subject was rebutted first by one of the instructor’s students and then with an anomalous letter from the Principal of the High School.
The teacher wrote, “But for people to claim that God or religion is not welcome is simply not true. And the contentious tone and the decibel level at which this charge is made seems contrary to the calmness that religion offers.”
The scoffer wrote, “As I understand it, God sent his beloved son to be cruelly tortured to atone for my sins. Would you send your son on such a mission? I wouldn’t. If God wants me pardoned for some sin I didn’t commit , why doesn’t he just pardon me? Is he all-powerful or isn’t he? I don’t understand how this is supposed to work.”
The student wrote, “(the teacher) is our mentor, not our superior. We learn from each other. It is important to note the environment in which (the teacher) teaches. It is vastly different from your average high school classroom”.
Following a claim that everything the teacher was doing was within the law the Principal wrote, “I take great offense to (the scoffer’s) other assertions. He implies that (the teacher) bases grades on students religious beliefs, indoctrinates students, and uses literature to ‘slip religion in’.” (The scoffer) clearly does not know (the teacher) nor has he apparently spoken to any of (the teacher’s) students or parents”.
This conflict is significant beyond the obvious disagreements involved.
First, the IBO program itself is a veiled attempt to manipulate America’s most talented young persons into accepting an international agenda that is intent on destroying Constitutional government and American sovereignty by entangling the nation in various aspects of world government. In the Washington Times, George Archibald wrote “George Walker, IB's director-general in Geneva, said in June that the program remains committed to changing children's values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms...." Alec Peterson who was instrumental in formulating the program was a humanist and as the student wrote, the IBO program is “a world school. As a result it is only appropriate to discuss religion in the context of the literature, translated and otherwise, that we cover.”
Second, the scoffer’s chutzpah far exceeds his wisdom. The IBO program is his philosophical ally. Globalists have a determined resolve to destroy the Christian base of our nation. All religions with the exception of their own humanism are considered divisive and detrimental to world peace. The extensive denigration of the Bible and the stories it contains is a direct affront to the Christian religion. The scoffer has a host of other allies; this same battle is being carried out by the press, the media, by Hollywood, by the ACLU and several other organizations.
Third, the cunning use of pride to deflect criticism of the IBO program is clearly evident in the student’s haughty contention that theirs is “vastly different than the average high school classroom” and the principal’s confident referral to prideful “students” and “parents”.
Fourth, the teacher’s vaunted references to God and the Bible may create gratitude in America’s naïve Christians but they are worthless in support of the robust Reformed Christianity that formed the platform of our nation. The word “God” has been so badly abused that it no longer applies to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to His Son Jesus, the Christ, whom He crowned King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The god of the IBO is a universal, morally challenged, man-made deity of no more account than Aaron’s Golden Calf.
The King of Kings and Lord of Lords created the world and everything in it. He seeks dominion over it all. Globalists and the IBO that supports them are an abomination to Him and the ramblings of scoffers a dissonance in His creation.