Vol. 11, No. 5, 1994

Articles on the New Age

by Craig Branch

Parents around the country are becoming aware of the increasing role public schools (and some private) can have in undermining their family's Christian and traditional values. Liberal and New Age social engineers have strategically set their sights on the malleable minds of the younger generation.

As parents are beginning to confront certain programs, curricula, and reform movements such as Outcome Based Education (OBE), the use of meditation, hypnosis, psychotherapy in the classrooms, promotion of witchcraft and the Occult, some in the educational establishment are stiffening in their resistance. So is the deception.

Of course the educrats claim that these directions are not New Age, or that they are unethical or intrusive violations of family privacy, but instead are proven, established, valuable, and needed educational practices. Yet the precedent setting event of the Alabama State Board of Education's passing of a law/regulation prohibiting the use of hypnosis / meditation, yoga, guided imagery and the psychotherapeutic affective non- directive decision-making approaches in sex, drug/alcohol courses, demonstrates that this is not true.

After two days of hearings and much documentation, the vote sided with the parents and for sound educational approaches. Yet incredibly, the educrats are still saying that these approaches are neither promoting New Age, nor are they induction techniques ofhypnosis / meditation.

The book Thieves of Innocence, co-authored with John Ankerberg, Weldon, and Watchman's Craig Branch has given parents, educators, and school board members all the documentation needed to establish this point. In gathering research and proof, the educator's own professional journals often provide the best possible ammunition, as their own words expose their orientation, ideology and strategy.

For example, two recent education journal entries demonstrating the Christians' contention are "Ways of Knowing and the Curriculum", in The Educational Forum (Winter 1992), and "Guided Imagery: from mystical to practical" in Elementary School Guidance and Counseling (October 1993).

Occasionally, some educators when confronted with the documentation that progressive relaxation techniques and guided imagery are standard induction techniques for hypnosis and meditation, begrudgingly will admit that "they can be", but attempt to suggest that if the context is changed, then these techniques are not problematic.

This is the case in the recent article in the Elementary School and Counseling journal article. It acknowledges, "There are a few communities where parents and well-meaning citizens are skeptical about the use of fantasy, deep breathing exercises, relaxation training, introspective strategies, or anything that may be related to mind control."

They are worried that such an approach is too close to hypnosis, brainwashing, or mystical experience...has polarized some communities with a vocal minority of people claiming it creates an out-of-body experience and an intense intrapersonal experience that borders on New Age religion"" (p. 64).

The article presents a view that "such claims are ridiculous and unfounded" (Ibid.). The article admits that "The use of guided imagery is not a new concept to school counselors. The relaxation process has been taught to elementary school students", but because of various reasons "its use has been limited" (p. 63).

But the article recommends certain strategies to facilitate its conclusion that, "Guided imagery can be a valuable counseling tool. With appropriate guidelines and cautions, teachers and counselors can make greater use of imagery in their work" (p. 69).

What are these guidelines and cautions? Why has its use been limited?

The article admits that these techniques are normally associated with difficult therapeutic cases, which they are. The approach the article suggests to help gain acceptance is to state that these techniques are in line with proven educational theory and to recast its use "within the context of helping students to have more school success" (p. 65).

It states "guided imagery need not be cast in a mystical or intrapsychic light. Rather, it can be described accurately as a means of assisting children to use their imagination to learn more about themselves and others and to help achieve more in school: (p. 64).

Yet when the authors Robert and Linda Myrick (respectively an education professor at University of Florida and counseling therapist) state that guided imagery can be used as a tool to "assist children". They fall far short of distancing the mystical from the practical. They quote well known transpersonal (New Age) educators Beverly Galyean's and Gay Hendrick's works, as well as Jean Houston and Samuels and Samuels (p. 63).

All of these writers clearly identify their presupposition and strategies with eastern mystical (New Age) approaches, including hypnosis / meditation, and even spirit guides. The article states that relaxation techniques and imagery can be used for "accessing and assessing one's inner life...more aware of personal desires, goals, conflicts and spiritual yearnings" (p. 64). The article then describes these techniques' use for therapeutic intervention for "disruptive behaviors" (p. 67).

In either event, it is entirely inappropriate for this technique to be used with entire classrooms, or even individually without a parent's informed consent. In the second article "Ways of Knowing and the Curriculum", the authors, professors Kimpston and Williams (education professors at University of Minnesota) discuss what they see as the counter-productivity of what others perceive as competing models in curricula, based on differing goals.

The debate shifts between goals of "personal development, human resource development for a competitive world economy, and the development of citizens aware of a common cultural heritage" (p. 153).

The authors propose that all of these goals can be accomplished by integrating "four basic ways of knowing", which are association, correspondence, coherence, and recognition (p. 154). They distinguish these "ways of knowing" in three aspects: criterion for knowing, source or theory about this knowing, and nature of the knower and the known. (Ibid).

When one reads the descriptions of these categories, it becomes clear that these educators have bought into a New Age, eastern mystical cosmology, and promote it as valid and appropriate in curriculum development. For instance, that last and most sophisticated stage of knowing, recognition, is described as "unmediated apperception, direct knowing, superconscious".

The "source of the theory" is labeled the "perennial philosophy" [New Age mysticism], and the knower and known blends into a "unity of realities" (p. 155). This is New Age 101 describing knowledge as being self-actualization, intuitive omniscience and eastern monism/pantheism.

The authors describe recognition as an "egoless state...superconsciousness...esoteric vision...perceptual transformation sought by mystics and sages" such as "Buddhist Koans, the Sufis, and Meister Eckhart" (p. 158). They blatantly identify this approach to curriculum development as a "Transpersonal orientation to curriculum" (p. 164).

They summarize their description, "The perspectives identified here as 'recognition' approaches to knowing and education have a long history as esoteric teachings within most major cultural religious tradition. These powerful educational traditions can be recognized in a contemporary, popular, very limited expression in the 'New Age' subculture in the United States" (p. 167).

The recommendation is not only to design curriculum with New Age philosophical content, but example after example has been produced to demonstrate that the techniques of progressive relaxation and guided imagery (hypnosis / meditation,) are the typical strategies used to facilitate this experience.

This is another wake-up call for parents. Concerned citizens must become informed and active in the public schools. Parents must work together with educators and public officials to discontinue or prevent any faulty, illegal and harmful trend in educational circles.