Columbine High and New Age philosophy

Although Columbine High School is not in the Littleton school district, it is hard to believe that it completely escaped the influences of the OBE.

By Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

One of the reasons why the educrats have focused on guns as the chief cause of the Littleton massacre is because Columbine High School was supposed to be the kind of progressive school where such things could never happen. Columbine High, built in 1973 and renovated in 1995 at a cost of $13.4 million, was noted for its academic and athletic records. To many educators, it was a model of what an American high school should be. But perhaps we can better understand the moral permissiveness of the school if we review some recent history.

In 1990, the Mid-Continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McRel), based in Denver, Colo., received a $12.9 million grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education to help implement Outcome-Based Education (OBE) in Colorado. The plan was called Direction 2000 and adopted at Littleton High School. In the Direction 2000 newsletter of June 1, 1990, Littleton High principal Tim Westerberg stated:

"Littleton High School is proposing a system of schooling which will be driven by a new set of 'outcome-based' graduation requirements, will provide a Program Advisor to work with each student during his or her stay at LHS, and will award diplomas to students who have demonstrated mastery of the 'outcome-based' graduation requirements through portfolios and exhibitions before a graduation committee. Balanced assessment and attention to each student's intellectual, social, physical, ethical, artistic, and emotional development are central to the project."

Although Columbine High School is not in the Littleton school district, it is hard to believe that it completely escaped the influences of the OBE-oriented school restructuring movement. The fact that the two little Nazis, Harris and Klebord, were able to freely express themselves by dress and by a video advocating violence suggests that the school's educational philosophy is based on anything but biblical principles.

If the school's operating philosophy did not come from Judeo-Christian principles, where did it come from? The answer is to be found in the New Age philosophy that was the moving spirit behind OBE. Carol Belt, a former school board member in Englewood, Colo., was chairman of a Strategic Planning committee in charge of drawing up "vision statements" about the future. She writes: "As background material to help with the process I received materials on globalism and books by 'futurists.' One of those books was 'The Aquarian Conspiracy,' authored by Marilyn Ferguson. I was told that it was the 'best reference' to the 'new curriculum' that was coming into our school district. I read the book and decided if the 'future' that Marilyn Ferguson was predicting was in fact going to become a reality, I wanted no part of it. I discovered that this was the 'foundational book' of the 'New Age' movement."

To help the teachers in Littleton become effective change agents, they were required to attend training sessions given by the Strategic Options Initiative. The trainees were requested to read the second, third, and ninth chapters of "The Aquarian Conspiracy."

Marilyn Ferguson writes in Chapter Nine, "You can only have a new society, the visionaries have said, if you change the education of the younger generation. Yet the new society itself is the necessary force for change in education. ... Of the Aquarian conspirators surveyed, more were involved in education than in any other single category of work. ... Tens of thousands of classroom teachers, educational consultants and psychologists, counselors, administrators, researchers, and faculty members engaged in colleges of education have been among the millions engaged in personal transformation."

In other words, American schools like Columbine High have been completely paganized by educators who have adopted the occult philosophy of the Aquarian Conspiracy. It is a philosophy in conflict with Judeo-Christian teachings, and it is a philosophy that opens the door to satanism. It is impossible for a member of the Aquarian Conspiracy to be indifferent to Christianity. He or she must oppose it, for Christianity is based on absolute biblical principles that condemn pagans. And that is why the public educrats are so adamantly opposed to any acknowledgment of the biblical God in the schools.

What happened in Littleton, and what has happened in other schools and will happen in the future are the results of the rejection of biblical moral absolutes and the adoption of New Age moral relativism. Paganism is so morally permissive that it could not find a reason to interfere with the two Nazis planning to blow up the school and kill far more students than they actually managed to kill in their rampage. The fact that they also killed themselves as part of the process indicates how completely they had given their souls to Satan, the ultimate enemy of the God of the Bible.

It is obvious that no one will blame the schools for anything that happened. The New Age pagan philosophy permeates the public schools, and any child who believes in biblical religion will be at risk. Yet, it was interesting to see how totally bonded the kids at Columbine had become with their school, unable to understand how the school's permissive moral philosophy had made them vulnerable to such murderous attacks.

The two trench coat murderers would have never been able to get away with their behavior in the kind of public schools I attended as a youngster in the 1930s and '40s. In the first place, we had a dress code, which would have made such eccentric dress impossible. We had a principal who read the 23rd Psalm from the Bible at assemblies. Student behavior was far more regulated by the rules of discipline. Teachers stuck to their jobs as teachers. They were not interested in your feelings or self-esteem or sexuality. They were not change agents trying to get into your heads with pagan ideas. They respected your religion, your family's values, your individualism. They wanted to improve your life, not manipulate it. And that's why we loved our teachers and never vandalized our schools. Pity that today's kids can't enjoy the safety and security we had in those days.