Manipulations

Parents,

You will likely encounter terms such as stakeholder when chatting with your local school administrators at a community committee meeting. Of course, that seemingly innocuous term has a more sinister meaning -- it's a code word that should raise flags.

School district community committees are simply dog-and-pony shows where the administration creates an atmosphere of input and participation when, in fact, the conclusion has already been decided long before the meeting began. Sure, the community can paint some of the rough edges, but the structure -- the essence -- is a foregone conclusion.

Wes Walker has collected the following list of words that have more meaning than appears at first blush.

According to Wes:

local K-16 Council
"Stakeholders"
"consensus"
"collaborative environment"
Shared Decision Making
Shared Governance

These are some of the most dangerous concepts in any public body that represents constituents, especially school boards.

Some of the internal components of these are:
Facilitators are employed by the district
The Delphi Technique
Interest Based Negotiations
Consensus

All of this points to one thing - training school board members to willingly turn over their brains and votes to district employees, masquerading as a bunch of unelected volunteers. The stakeholder positions in the group are defined in such a way as to require professional employees from several areas of education within the district. The superintendent, of course, owns or runs the committees. Since all decisions are made by consensus (voting by a percentage that shuts down participation by constituents), the employees make every decision, which becomes the superintendent's recommendation.

I think this widespread practice is evil.

It's widespread in Olentangy anyway. Community committees and board meetings are simply the scripted show for what occurs in the closed rooms before the meetings begin.

The process is a form of Hegelian dialectics (or Fichtian dialectics) where the goal is to guide the meeting so that the community participants reach a "consensus" position (the administration's position going into the meeting). If the process works correctly, the community members leave the meeting thinking that they guided the process and that the end result was their consensus belief.

Consensus is an evil goal. Consensus is not compromise. One compromises and still holds onto his values. On the other hand, consensus is a process whereby the values of an individual are morphed into the synthesis position -- his values were changed and he doesn't even know it.

Simple example: A group goes out to lunch. You hate seafood but compromise and go to a seafood restaurant. Everyone knows you still don't like seafood, but you gave a little to keep the group together.

Under consensus, the same group meets to decide what it enjoys eating. Some folks say seafood, others steak, and the rest chicken. The chicken lovers invite a facilitator to guide the discussion. In the end, the group decides that it really likes chicken, with no one even considering seafood and steak any more. No one compromises; the group takes on a new value.

School districts use such techniques so that once the meeting ends, and the consensus position (the administration's position going into the meeting) is adopted, there is no opposition. All participant truly believe that they agree with the consensus opinion -- it's now part of their value system.

For additional evidence, consider these comments left on this blog:

I've made a point of attending some of those community meetings to see the game in action. During one, I sat around a table with others and when the facilitator/leader started doing her thing I pointed out to the others what was going on. She got quite upset and left our table. The electric co-op people in our area were pulled into the game also so I called management at their office and expressed my anger that they were involving themselves in this attempt to manipulate the public. Since we are "owners" of this electric co-op I felt quite justified in taking them on. Before that, I took part in another DIAPRAX session in our county when the Library was in trouble for making porno available to minors. The Library people and their cronies in the area, including government employees, pulled out all the stops. They held several public meetings, imported comrades from out of State, brought in ACLU people, hired professional facilitators from out of town, etc. During the facilitated meeting we were divided up into small groups and sent to different rooms of the school where we had gathered. The facilitators assigned to each room were paid by the Library (taxes) to get the job done. They did. Additionally, I signed on to an adult Great Books Discussion Group to see how this stuff works with adults. It was very educational. I saw how easy it is to control groups of people. I took part in another Diaprax session a decade ago in Columbus when the Rob Reiner I AM YOUR CHILD scam was introduced around the country. The guy put in charge of the local effort was a trained facilitator who worked for the State. The Columbus Dispatch was the organ used to collect the suckers. The facilitator (he now hires himself out to government and private entities as a facilitator) presented himself as just a private citizen inspired to do good for humanity. He held his Diaprax meetings at local libraries. When I attended the first library gathering I sat at a table with a man who I am quite sure was a "spotter" who worked with the facilitator. The three "experts" brought in that evening to help us "clarify" our views were: a woman from the OSU lab (rat) school for little children, a woman from the government PARENTS AS TEACHERS program (insidious) and an employee from Children's Hospital. They were there to wash our brains. I later learned that the I AM YOUR CHILD/BALANCED BEGINNINGS material came from the Robert Muller School in Arlington, Texas which is based on the writings of Theosophist Alice Bailey which were channeled to her by her invisible spirit guide Djwal Khul. I carried on an email correspondence with the head of the school, Gloria, for some weeks. It is a scary thing to know the people who are really behind all this stuff being used on us and our children.

and

I neglected to add that there is a term for the technique used to manipulate groups of people. It is called the Delphi Technique. The internet has articles describing the technique and ways to disrupt it when it's being used by government people or others to get people to go along with them.I was also a witness to its use in a State Board of Education meeting a few years ago. One member was refusing to go along with the group and she was being pressured by all the others. My spouse and I were the only witnesses to this. During a break a male board member came over to us and tried repeatedly to get me to identify myself. I did not.