Planning, Programming, Budgeting, System
This is a speech that was written in 1972 by Mary Thompson, who was alert and conscious about the transformation occurring in every aspect of our lives. She researched the root elements of this transformation and prepared this important speech to assist others in identifying what government restructuring meant. Although her field of expertise is education this extremely informative paper has wide-reaching significance. At the end of the speech I have included some comments to me by Mrs. Thompson regarding how this was received.
PPBS
Planning, Programming, Budgeting, System
Speech by Mrs. Mary Thompson
January 11, 1972, California
When I first asked to speak to you about PPBS, I inquired whether it was to be addressed in
its broad application, or whether it was to be addressed to PPBS, as applied to education. I shall
deal with it at the education level today, however, you should remember that PPBS is a tool for
implementing the very restructuring of government at all levels, in every area of governmental
institutions. What is involved is the use of government agencies to accomplish mass behavioral
change in every area.
The first agency of government to fully implement PPBS was the Defense Department when
Robert McNamara invited Rand Corporation to help him reorganize planning and budget
procedures at the Department of Defense. In August of 1965 the president introduced the PPBS
approach throughout the vast federal government. So, as I develop my remarks about PPBS
as pertaining to education, keep in mind that the “process” involved is simultaneously being
employed to restructure every agency of government.
PPBS is a plan being pushed by the Federal and State governments to completely
change education. Now, what is it? The initials stand for PLANNING, PROGRAMMING,
BUDGETING, and SYSTEM. Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public hears that and they think in terms of
accounting. Budgeting conjures up concepts of orderly, identifiable expenditures for commonly
understood expense items within a designated time span. “Accountability” is the key slogan
word to sell the idea of PPBS to the public and the educators. This isn’t accidental, of course,
because the idea of public officials being accountable for public money is universally desired.
What isn’t universally understood however, is that PPBS is more than an accounting term using
modern computer hardware.
The accountability involved in PPBS to the state’s predetermined education goals. To
understand PPBS, it must be understood at the outset that PPBS is total system. It’s component
parts, PLANNING, PROGRAMMING and BUDGETING cannot be isolated from the SYSTEM.
In other words, you do not have PPB, or PBS, or BS, or PS...PLANNING, PROGRAMMING,
BUDGETING constitutes a SYSTEM of management. One leader of educational innovation
has called it “ a systematic design for education revolution.” (Shelly Umans-Management of
Education.)
In a systems management of the education process, the child himself is the product. Note ...the
child...his feelings, his values, his behavior, as well as his intellectual development.
PPBS is the culmination of the “people planners” dreams. The seeds have been alive for a
long time. There have always been the Utopians, those who envisioned a perfectible controlled
society. Those who envisioned the creation of a “new mankind”, in the image of whatever the
prevailing philosophical elite envisioned at any given time. In contemporary history there have
been the Huxleys, the John Deweys, the Bertrand Russells...right on down to current behavioral science educationists who control education today. The germination for Federal control has
been going on for a long time too. For instance in 1933 a government spokesman said, “the
individualism of Americanism must go, because it is contrary to the purpose of the New Deal,
which is remaking America. Russia and Germany are attempting to compel a new social order
by means typical of their nationalism compulsion. The United States will do it by moral suasion.
We expect to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion
and force...the general public is not informed on all the parts of the program, and the schools are
the places to reach the future builders of the nation.”
Monroe Evening News, Monroe, Michigan, Sept., 13, 1933
Until recently the people planners were frustrated by the resistance of the American public to
Federal planning and Federal financing for education.
(Change Agents)
Meanwhile, back at Bethel Maine...The National Training Laboratory was established
under the auspices of NEA (National Education Association) about twenty years ago. The
establishment of NTL was a “milestone” in the development of the restructuring of the very
concept of education. The active training of the agents to affect the change started there and
NTL has continued to train “change agents” (their term) to facilitate predetermined changes in
education as well as every walk of life...religious institutions, government, industry and service
organizations. NTL is most often associated with the role sensitivity training plays in the process
of planned change. Out of NTL we also find such “how-to-do-it” manuals such as CONCEPTS
FOR SOCIAL CHANGE, published through a contract with HEW.
So, for a quarter century NTL and various similar centers throughout the country have been
systematically training leaders to affect the changes we see coming to fruition all around us and
especially in our local schools. These change agents know how to facilitate people, using the
group process and other techniques to change the attitudes and behavior of school personnel,
the community, and in turn to effect the indoctrination of the children. Individuals who refuse
to compromise their principles by allowing themselves to be neutralized by entering into the
process (I’ll explain that further, later on) are systematically isolated by the process.
It is regrettable that straight thinking people who operate on the basis of principle become
worn out in six months time battling one phase or another, of the restructured education,
never realizing that they are dealing with a totally different entity from what they have known
traditional education to be.
Until recently, the agents of planned change have had fragmented success in introducing
innovative programs which the general public regarded with skepticism. Until 1965, there
was the situation where responsive channels of representative government, at the local level,
existed in the form of elected school boards and state heads of education who made direct
decisions, regarding education programs, which were funded at local or state levels. That was
accountability in the traditional sense accountability to parents and taxpayers. (The Role of
Elementary and Secondary Education Act) Then in 1965 the means for accomplishing the
actual restructuring of education was provided in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). President Johnson has said that he considered ESEA the most significant single
legislation of his administration.
Recall that it was also 1965 when the presidential order was given to introduce PPBS
throughout the entire federal government. 1965 was the year which unleashed the actual
restructuring of governmental processes and formally included education as a legitimate Federal
government function.
Since then we have seen the national administration institute Federal Offices of Human
Resources, Office of Child Development, Early Learning Program, a National Institute of
Education, a Committee of School Finance, a National Office of Child Development, etc. All of
these are national offices leading to total development of the coming generations of children by
the state.
PPBS is the systems management tool made possible by the technology of computer hardware
to affect the planned change. As Assemblyman Robert Burke expressed it, “If you know what
you have to start with and you know what you want to end up with, it is possible to design a
system that will make the precise changes required.”
With the continuous training of change agents through various levels of on going-in service
training, from NTL down to the local teacher in-service training, and with federal money to
finance the continuous on going process, designed to remake a population in the image of a
“new mankind”, all that’s missing is the tool to implement the process, and uninformed and
unsuspecting public and teachers who are too busy teaching to sort out all the pieces.
REDEFINING EDUCATION
In order to make an explanation of PPBS intelligible you must also know that the education
itself has been redefined. Simply put, it has become the objective of education to measure and
diagnose the child in order to prescribe a program to develop his feelings and emotions, values
and loyalties toward predetermined behavioral objectives. Contrast that with the traditionally
understood function of education of being that of acquiring knowledge and developing skills.
How you feel and react becomes more important than what you know.
Conditioning people to behave according to predetermined behavior patterns becomes the
objective of education institutions. Drawing it right to basics, we are talking about conditioned
responses in human terms. Pavlov experimented on dogs! This is not fantasy of futuristic
prophets. The “new education” is in effect RIGHT NOW. A reading of teacher guides, that
education no longer means development of the intellect in order to equip the student to make
independent decisions which will determine his behavior as a free man. PPBS incorporates the
machinery to accomplish the restructuring of a system ...specifically education ...and then locks
in the process. The term the educationists use for this is “unfreezing and freezing of a system.”
Once the process is locked in, it is to become self generating.
Taking each element of PPBS will show how the process is accomplished.PLANNING
Planning phase (please note that the process involved with a systems approach is described in
terms of “phases”) always includes the establishment of goals, committees...these are referred to
as “community involvement.”
The committees are always either self appointed or chosen , never elected. They always include
guidance from some “change agents” who may be administrators, curriculum personnel or local
citizens. Questionnaires and surveys are used to gather data on how the community “feels” and
to test community attitudes.
The ingeniousness of the process is that everybody thinks he is having a voice in the direction
of public schools. Not so...for federal change agencies, specifically, regional education centers
established by ESEA influence and essentially determine terminology used in questionnaires and
surveys.
Federal Regional Centers are the instruments for much of the training of local administrators
and teachers, and often analyze and compute the data collected in surveys for local school
districts. The change agents, at the district level, then function to “identify” needs and problems
for change as they have been programmed to identify at the training sessions sponsored by
Federal offices such as our Center Planning and Evaluation in Santa Clara County.
This is why the goals are essentially the same across the country. It also explains why three
years ago every school district was confronted with the Family Life Education issue at the same
time. It was not coincidental. In fact, FLE was the first national application of the process made
possible by ESEA money and using the techniques of PPBS on a national scale.
Anyone who became involved in that issue knew that they were dealing with a different ball
game from previous school controversies. So, whether the issue is FLE, district unification,
alternative schools, flexible scheduling, multicultural curriculum, what have you-the process
remains the same.
Now, unknowing citizens committees are used by the process to generate acceptance of goals
already determined. What they don’t realize is that professional change agents are operating
in the behaviorists framework of thought and Mr. or Mrs. Citizen Parent is operating in his
traditional education framework of thought. So the local change agents are able to facilitate a
group to consensus in support of determined goals by using familiar traditional terms which
carry the new behaviorists meanings.
If you doubt this, a Joint Committee Report on Education Goals and Evaluations was
established in 1969 by our state legislature. Two of those committee conclusions read as follows:
“the value of setting goals is as much in the process of participation as the final outcome”...then
the report continues further on, “those with authority for educational policy should take a role
of leadership in identifying goals of education”. Participants in citizen committees may feel good
about participating, but they had no real decision making powers. Identification of opposition to a program or goal is a necessary part of the process of PPBS
and planned change. Any opposition to a concept that might be brought up in one of the citizens
committees and which cannot be allowed to be brought into the preordained consensus, must be
identified.
Any ideas expressed within citizens committees or answers on surveys is considered systems
data. Data gathering is not to find out what you want, it is so they can more quickly get you
where they want you.
Reports from these citizens committees are eventually presented to school boards, who...are the
elected officials who rightfully have decision making power, in a true democratic republic.
However, these school board members are now asked to assess committee reports and material
which emanates from a central source. These same school boards, with a few exceptions, have
been conditioned by constant exposure to school administrators who operate in the behaviorists
framework, by School Board Association dinners and conferences where they hear speakers such
as William Glasser and Richard Farson, telling them about all the needs they then receive from
the citizens committee constituents!
A paperback book, Management of Education by Shelley Umans says it very well: “If people
are involved, then whole new strategies must be developed to engineer people into accepting
change. Projects that do not take into account the need to involve the people affected, are not
likely to succeed”...in discussing strategies for affecting change. We are talking about broad
plans, the overall design for acceptance. How will the person out there be convinced that he
wants to adopt the change?” They call it “people technology” further on in that same book. So,
involving the potential adopter in the development of innovation is the strategy for overcoming
resistance both within the academic community and the general public.
Another name for this process is PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY- a term...which was
coined by SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in their Port Huron Manifesto-to identify the
process for citizen participation in construction of their own political institutions. Participatory
Democracy is not to be confused with participation in representative government. A subject for
a speech in itself would be the historical development of enabling a key legislative act which set
the process in motion, in California schools must be mentioned. That is the much touted SB-1
which required the setting up of goals committees in the name of local control.
PROGRAMMING
Since I am not trained in the technology or computer programming, I shall not attempt to get
into illustrations and terminology of the application of the operation of computer hardware/
software...the computers themselves. But to continue with an explanation of political process
involved, let’s remember that through the charade of adopting policy or a pilot project on
the basis or citizen committee consensus reports, the PROGRAMMING operation before a
“predictable” school board decision is made. Once in awhile a school board’s predictability is misjudged and there is temporary embarrassment for the facilitators of change when alert citizens
point out that implementation is preceding legislative mandate. If PPBS is fully implemented,
legislative mandates to authorize government action may only be a memory anyway, for
programmed phases become impossible to identify except for the top level programmers.
Programming involves curriculum writing (remember the redefined education) textbook
adoption (textbooks also planned and programmed to conformed to the “new education”
objectives), teacher training, etc. Constant evaluation is going on as a part of this process...as
feedback is collected from all segments involved in the process. Data on community acceptance,
data on teacher response, data on student response is fed into data banks to provide a continuous
picture of how effective the process is and just how and where to adjust the programming to
make the program effective. We are receiving many inquiries from teachers who are in the
position know firsthand the pressures from the constant demands for in-service training and
evaluation procedures. Actually, teachers are the only ones in a position at this point who could
halt the process by protecting their professional integrity, internally.
THE “BUDGET” of PPBS
PPBS uses “on going” five to seven year projections of programs which are constantly
reassessed and altered along the way. You do not have line item budgets which are based on the
concept of estimating the costs, of a program until designated time, then reassessing the program
to see if the results of a program warrant the re budgeting of the cost of a given program. The
yearly budget concept won’t work with PPBS because it is impossible to project costs for five
to seven years’ programming because of the nature of continuous evaluation and self generating
change process during the five to seven years. Remember, constant re-evaluation means
assessing teaching personnel, students and community to determine the degree of effectiveness
of the planned-changed behavioral objective. Translate that: continuous data collection. Until
PPBS is fully implemented, and the system frozen or locked into operation, this can be a wide
variable of unknown dimensions. There may still be unexpected straight thinking resistance in
the community, in the classroom or in the faculty lounge, which will slow the process and make
human recycling costs more than the planners anticipate in any five to seven year projection. It
is only during the interim--between the introduction of PPBS and the full implementation of it
however, that the resistance will be much of a variable. The resistance will be isolated and the
products of PPBS education have no “memory” of anything other than this dialectical process
called PLANNED CHANGE. Richard Farson of Western Behavioral Science Institute made a
report to the Office of Education in Sacramento in 1967. He said it this way: “The application of
systems analysis is aided by several phenomena that would be of help in almost any situation of
organizational change. First, it is relatively easier to make big changes than to make small ones
and systems changes are almost always big ones. Because they are big, it is difficult for people
to mount resistance to them, for they go beyond the ordinary decision-making, policy-making
activities of individual members of an organization”. It is far easier to muster argument against
a $100 expenditure for partisans than against a complete reorganization of the work flow.” In
order to do away with these difficulties it is necessary to do away with traditional concepts of
accounting by which specific plans and costs can be identified and financing for programs can be
defeated at local level. The process of planned change needs a fluid central source of funding to orchestrate the national thought control. People planners or “engineers of humanity” must have
central controlling factors--money being the enabling element.
1. They cannot have local property tax payers with the power to vote “no” on tax increases,
which is a limiting factor to the planners. Note recent court decisions declaring local property tax
for education unconstitutional.
2. Note the push for statewide property tax (you don’t vote on those rates).
3. Note the increase in Federal Funding for education. Now we have just been introduced to
the idea of a Value Added Tax (VAT) to finance education. Once that becomes fact no one will
be able to afford property anyway. Think about it. So you see, budgeting of PPBS cannot be
considered apart from the whole concept of PPBS.
THE SYSTEM
You will be told that the state has already legislated the budgeting portions of PPBS but not the
rest of it. If pressed on the point however, proponents at the local level will usually admit that
budgeting of PPBS cannot really be implemented as an independent component. The “S” of
PPBS is what makes PPB a System. And When a school district adopts PPBS it locks itself into a
national system.
What Can We Do?
1 Stop thinking of education innovations as separate, isolated, individual programs. All of
education today is part of the total concept of programming the product, the student. Such
seemingly unrelated things such as unification of school districts, that everything must be divided
into equal computer-sized chunks with K-12 continuum.
2 Stop participating in citizens committees and goals committees or answering questionnaires
for data purposes. Your answers are analyzed with a view to identifying the nature and scope
of resistance to programs and how best to circumvent resistance. If you choose to be on a
committee, do so for the purpose of obtaining information and issuing your own statements
publicly as long as you are allowed to, from within the committee in order to educate the general
public as to the nature of the process.
3 Instruct your children not to supply personal information or answer personal questionnaires in
school, or discuss subjective or introspective matters in school. Teach them how to recognize
data collection techniques.
4 Teachers, you have professional organizations to protect your personal interests. Use them to
protect your personal privacy and professional integrity. Encourage organizations of teachers to
take positions publicly in opposition to PPBS.
5 We believe the time has come to establish private schools to keep our children from falling
victim to behaviorists, while there is still opportunity to do so. Be aware of the fact that the
Voucher system is lurking in the wings to bring the private schools into national control.
-------
Documents used during presentation (partial list):
- Clipping, Monroe Evening News, Monroe Michigan, 1933
- Concepts for Social Change, edited by Goodwin Watson, Published by NTL Institute for
Applied Behavioral Science, Washington, 1967.
- Unfreezing the System, Orange County Schools Office Supplementary Educational Center.
- PREP Manual - Behavior Modification, Putting Research Into Educational Practice
- FLE San Mateo County Teacher’s Resource Guide
- Education of Jeremy Farson, Western Behavioral Sciences Inst.
---------
The speech “PPBS,” was originally prepared by Mrs. Mary Thompson of Campbell, California,
(Secretary and member of speaker’s bureau for presentation to Santa Clara Republican Women
Federated. Subsequently Mrs. Thompson has addressed several other groups and organizations
on the subject of PPBS including political organizations, parent organizations and teachers.
---
Excerpts of this speech may be found in Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt’s the deliberate dumbing
down of america...A Chronological Paper Trail, Conscience Press. www.deliberatedumbingdown.com
Regarding Remarks to Mary Thompson’s PPBS Speech 1972
On Wednesday, February 6, 2013, Mary Thompson wrote: Thank you for the kind remarks
about the old speech. Whenever I gave that speech, with very few exceptions, people could
just not wrap their heads around what I was explaining. I gave it first at a Republican Women
Federated group in Santa Clara County, CA. I was challenged by a wife of a behavioral
psychologist who thought I didn’t understand what behaviorism was. I was never asked to speak
again, at any Republican Womens’ organizations.
In 1972, we had only mimeograph machines, snail mail and land line phones, but things got
distributed around the country. I did receive some favorable feedback, from people I’d never
heard of, in other states who recognized what I was talking about. I don’t know how the speech
came into Charlotte’s possession. No one was more surprised than I, to see an abridged version
of it in her 1999 big book, for I’d not heard of Charlotte until someone called my attention to the
book.
There was one episode I learned of when I received a phone call one day, probably in 1973,
from a facilitator in Wisconsin. He was a Federal Change Agent charged with implementing
PPBS in the schools there. Wisconsin was designated as a pilot state. He asked whether I was
the person who wrote the speech he had in hand about PPBS, with my name on it. I told him I
couldn’t verify since I wasn’t looking at what he had in his hand. He read parts of it and I told
him what he quoted were my words. He was angry, for he said he had spent two years readying
the district to adopt PPBS, then a prominent community member and PTA leader then read the
speech to a large PTA gathering many of whom had served on the needs assessment committees.
Apparently, they had been uncomfortable with process, and the speech enlightened them to
recognize that they had been used. His efforts had been disrupted and the citizens committee
participants revolted. He asked me who was behind my efforts. He didn’t want to accept that I
was a home maker and mother operating on my own, with a couple of other like-minded mothers.
He persisted in asking “what’s in it for you?” I learned later that the grant funding he had for
two years was withdrawn and given to another state. At the end of the conversation, he told me
that one day, one way or the other one of our efforts would prevail, and that he intended to be the
one who wins.
Only one other time did I have a similar conversation about resisting the system in question.
My daughter was in a wonderful youth symphony band of talented musicians. They were
accepted by audition from around the south bay peninsula. Parents paid $50 a year, per selected
musician, and the board of directors was comprised of parents. The director was a genius with
the band performing at professional levels. He was associated with a community college, where
the band rehearsed. I was on the board. After a once in a lifetime concert tour overseas, the
board elected a parent who was an international economist for the Stanford Hoover Institute.
At the first general meeting of all the parents he announced he was going to “Humanize” the
organization. My heart sank, for I knew what that meant. At the next meeting, the chairs were
arranged in a circle. I refused to sit in the circle and sat in a chair outside the circle. He noticed
at another board meeting there were the first chairs of the student musicians in attendance. He
asked them to identify any faults they found in the Band Director (who had put them on the map). The director was not present. I objected to the process orchestrated for the group criticism
session. He knew I was furious, and he called me at which time I let him know that I knew what
the process was and opposed it across the board. Then the meeting locations would be changed
without notifying me.
I had a connection to find out where they had been changed and would show up anyway...
late, but show up. Then I heard announcements being made by him, directly to the band which
the board had never discussed or approved. I resigned and sent my explanation to the board
members, and a copy of the PPBS speech to him only. He called me, and the conversation was
chillingly similar to the one from the Wisconsin change agent.
“Why was I doing what I was doing? What was in it for me?" All the cat and mouse stuff fell
away when each of the callers realized I knew what they were doing, and then the conversation
changed to saying that one of us was right, and one day we will both know who was right and
who will win.
They asked me where I got the PPBS speech, and didn’t really want to accept that I’d figured it
out myself, from research and experience.
The subject is the issue of the half century, perhaps the century, and the general public has still
not caught on. It transcends political parties. Left and right, while they swat at gnats. I hope you
are correct in your anticipation of awakening in 2013.
PPBS
Planning, Programming, Budgeting, System
Speech by Mrs. Mary Thompson
January 11, 1972, California
When I first asked to speak to you about PPBS, I inquired whether it was to be addressed in
its broad application, or whether it was to be addressed to PPBS, as applied to education. I shall
deal with it at the education level today, however, you should remember that PPBS is a tool for
implementing the very restructuring of government at all levels, in every area of governmental
institutions. What is involved is the use of government agencies to accomplish mass behavioral
change in every area.
The first agency of government to fully implement PPBS was the Defense Department when
Robert McNamara invited Rand Corporation to help him reorganize planning and budget
procedures at the Department of Defense. In August of 1965 the president introduced the PPBS
approach throughout the vast federal government. So, as I develop my remarks about PPBS
as pertaining to education, keep in mind that the “process” involved is simultaneously being
employed to restructure every agency of government.
PPBS is a plan being pushed by the Federal and State governments to completely
change education. Now, what is it? The initials stand for PLANNING, PROGRAMMING,
BUDGETING, and SYSTEM. Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public hears that and they think in terms of
accounting. Budgeting conjures up concepts of orderly, identifiable expenditures for commonly
understood expense items within a designated time span. “Accountability” is the key slogan
word to sell the idea of PPBS to the public and the educators. This isn’t accidental, of course,
because the idea of public officials being accountable for public money is universally desired.
What isn’t universally understood however, is that PPBS is more than an accounting term using
modern computer hardware.
The accountability involved in PPBS to the state’s predetermined education goals. To
understand PPBS, it must be understood at the outset that PPBS is total system. It’s component
parts, PLANNING, PROGRAMMING and BUDGETING cannot be isolated from the SYSTEM.
In other words, you do not have PPB, or PBS, or BS, or PS...PLANNING, PROGRAMMING,
BUDGETING constitutes a SYSTEM of management. One leader of educational innovation
has called it “ a systematic design for education revolution.” (Shelly Umans-Management of
Education.)
In a systems management of the education process, the child himself is the product. Note ...the
child...his feelings, his values, his behavior, as well as his intellectual development.
PPBS is the culmination of the “people planners” dreams. The seeds have been alive for a
long time. There have always been the Utopians, those who envisioned a perfectible controlled
society. Those who envisioned the creation of a “new mankind”, in the image of whatever the
prevailing philosophical elite envisioned at any given time. In contemporary history there have
been the Huxleys, the John Deweys, the Bertrand Russells...right on down to current behavioral science educationists who control education today. The germination for Federal control has
been going on for a long time too. For instance in 1933 a government spokesman said, “the
individualism of Americanism must go, because it is contrary to the purpose of the New Deal,
which is remaking America. Russia and Germany are attempting to compel a new social order
by means typical of their nationalism compulsion. The United States will do it by moral suasion.
We expect to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion
and force...the general public is not informed on all the parts of the program, and the schools are
the places to reach the future builders of the nation.”
Monroe Evening News, Monroe, Michigan, Sept., 13, 1933
Until recently the people planners were frustrated by the resistance of the American public to
Federal planning and Federal financing for education.
(Change Agents)
Meanwhile, back at Bethel Maine...The National Training Laboratory was established
under the auspices of NEA (National Education Association) about twenty years ago. The
establishment of NTL was a “milestone” in the development of the restructuring of the very
concept of education. The active training of the agents to affect the change started there and
NTL has continued to train “change agents” (their term) to facilitate predetermined changes in
education as well as every walk of life...religious institutions, government, industry and service
organizations. NTL is most often associated with the role sensitivity training plays in the process
of planned change. Out of NTL we also find such “how-to-do-it” manuals such as CONCEPTS
FOR SOCIAL CHANGE, published through a contract with HEW.
So, for a quarter century NTL and various similar centers throughout the country have been
systematically training leaders to affect the changes we see coming to fruition all around us and
especially in our local schools. These change agents know how to facilitate people, using the
group process and other techniques to change the attitudes and behavior of school personnel,
the community, and in turn to effect the indoctrination of the children. Individuals who refuse
to compromise their principles by allowing themselves to be neutralized by entering into the
process (I’ll explain that further, later on) are systematically isolated by the process.
It is regrettable that straight thinking people who operate on the basis of principle become
worn out in six months time battling one phase or another, of the restructured education,
never realizing that they are dealing with a totally different entity from what they have known
traditional education to be.
Until recently, the agents of planned change have had fragmented success in introducing
innovative programs which the general public regarded with skepticism. Until 1965, there
was the situation where responsive channels of representative government, at the local level,
existed in the form of elected school boards and state heads of education who made direct
decisions, regarding education programs, which were funded at local or state levels. That was
accountability in the traditional sense accountability to parents and taxpayers. (The Role of
Elementary and Secondary Education Act) Then in 1965 the means for accomplishing the
actual restructuring of education was provided in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). President Johnson has said that he considered ESEA the most significant single
legislation of his administration.
Recall that it was also 1965 when the presidential order was given to introduce PPBS
throughout the entire federal government. 1965 was the year which unleashed the actual
restructuring of governmental processes and formally included education as a legitimate Federal
government function.
Since then we have seen the national administration institute Federal Offices of Human
Resources, Office of Child Development, Early Learning Program, a National Institute of
Education, a Committee of School Finance, a National Office of Child Development, etc. All of
these are national offices leading to total development of the coming generations of children by
the state.
PPBS is the systems management tool made possible by the technology of computer hardware
to affect the planned change. As Assemblyman Robert Burke expressed it, “If you know what
you have to start with and you know what you want to end up with, it is possible to design a
system that will make the precise changes required.”
With the continuous training of change agents through various levels of on going-in service
training, from NTL down to the local teacher in-service training, and with federal money to
finance the continuous on going process, designed to remake a population in the image of a
“new mankind”, all that’s missing is the tool to implement the process, and uninformed and
unsuspecting public and teachers who are too busy teaching to sort out all the pieces.
REDEFINING EDUCATION
In order to make an explanation of PPBS intelligible you must also know that the education
itself has been redefined. Simply put, it has become the objective of education to measure and
diagnose the child in order to prescribe a program to develop his feelings and emotions, values
and loyalties toward predetermined behavioral objectives. Contrast that with the traditionally
understood function of education of being that of acquiring knowledge and developing skills.
How you feel and react becomes more important than what you know.
Conditioning people to behave according to predetermined behavior patterns becomes the
objective of education institutions. Drawing it right to basics, we are talking about conditioned
responses in human terms. Pavlov experimented on dogs! This is not fantasy of futuristic
prophets. The “new education” is in effect RIGHT NOW. A reading of teacher guides, that
education no longer means development of the intellect in order to equip the student to make
independent decisions which will determine his behavior as a free man. PPBS incorporates the
machinery to accomplish the restructuring of a system ...specifically education ...and then locks
in the process. The term the educationists use for this is “unfreezing and freezing of a system.”
Once the process is locked in, it is to become self generating.
Taking each element of PPBS will show how the process is accomplished.PLANNING
Planning phase (please note that the process involved with a systems approach is described in
terms of “phases”) always includes the establishment of goals, committees...these are referred to
as “community involvement.”
The committees are always either self appointed or chosen , never elected. They always include
guidance from some “change agents” who may be administrators, curriculum personnel or local
citizens. Questionnaires and surveys are used to gather data on how the community “feels” and
to test community attitudes.
The ingeniousness of the process is that everybody thinks he is having a voice in the direction
of public schools. Not so...for federal change agencies, specifically, regional education centers
established by ESEA influence and essentially determine terminology used in questionnaires and
surveys.
Federal Regional Centers are the instruments for much of the training of local administrators
and teachers, and often analyze and compute the data collected in surveys for local school
districts. The change agents, at the district level, then function to “identify” needs and problems
for change as they have been programmed to identify at the training sessions sponsored by
Federal offices such as our Center Planning and Evaluation in Santa Clara County.
This is why the goals are essentially the same across the country. It also explains why three
years ago every school district was confronted with the Family Life Education issue at the same
time. It was not coincidental. In fact, FLE was the first national application of the process made
possible by ESEA money and using the techniques of PPBS on a national scale.
Anyone who became involved in that issue knew that they were dealing with a different ball
game from previous school controversies. So, whether the issue is FLE, district unification,
alternative schools, flexible scheduling, multicultural curriculum, what have you-the process
remains the same.
Now, unknowing citizens committees are used by the process to generate acceptance of goals
already determined. What they don’t realize is that professional change agents are operating
in the behaviorists framework of thought and Mr. or Mrs. Citizen Parent is operating in his
traditional education framework of thought. So the local change agents are able to facilitate a
group to consensus in support of determined goals by using familiar traditional terms which
carry the new behaviorists meanings.
If you doubt this, a Joint Committee Report on Education Goals and Evaluations was
established in 1969 by our state legislature. Two of those committee conclusions read as follows:
“the value of setting goals is as much in the process of participation as the final outcome”...then
the report continues further on, “those with authority for educational policy should take a role
of leadership in identifying goals of education”. Participants in citizen committees may feel good
about participating, but they had no real decision making powers. Identification of opposition to a program or goal is a necessary part of the process of PPBS
and planned change. Any opposition to a concept that might be brought up in one of the citizens
committees and which cannot be allowed to be brought into the preordained consensus, must be
identified.
Any ideas expressed within citizens committees or answers on surveys is considered systems
data. Data gathering is not to find out what you want, it is so they can more quickly get you
where they want you.
Reports from these citizens committees are eventually presented to school boards, who...are the
elected officials who rightfully have decision making power, in a true democratic republic.
However, these school board members are now asked to assess committee reports and material
which emanates from a central source. These same school boards, with a few exceptions, have
been conditioned by constant exposure to school administrators who operate in the behaviorists
framework, by School Board Association dinners and conferences where they hear speakers such
as William Glasser and Richard Farson, telling them about all the needs they then receive from
the citizens committee constituents!
A paperback book, Management of Education by Shelley Umans says it very well: “If people
are involved, then whole new strategies must be developed to engineer people into accepting
change. Projects that do not take into account the need to involve the people affected, are not
likely to succeed”...in discussing strategies for affecting change. We are talking about broad
plans, the overall design for acceptance. How will the person out there be convinced that he
wants to adopt the change?” They call it “people technology” further on in that same book. So,
involving the potential adopter in the development of innovation is the strategy for overcoming
resistance both within the academic community and the general public.
Another name for this process is PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY- a term...which was
coined by SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in their Port Huron Manifesto-to identify the
process for citizen participation in construction of their own political institutions. Participatory
Democracy is not to be confused with participation in representative government. A subject for
a speech in itself would be the historical development of enabling a key legislative act which set
the process in motion, in California schools must be mentioned. That is the much touted SB-1
which required the setting up of goals committees in the name of local control.
PROGRAMMING
Since I am not trained in the technology or computer programming, I shall not attempt to get
into illustrations and terminology of the application of the operation of computer hardware/
software...the computers themselves. But to continue with an explanation of political process
involved, let’s remember that through the charade of adopting policy or a pilot project on
the basis or citizen committee consensus reports, the PROGRAMMING operation before a
“predictable” school board decision is made. Once in awhile a school board’s predictability is misjudged and there is temporary embarrassment for the facilitators of change when alert citizens
point out that implementation is preceding legislative mandate. If PPBS is fully implemented,
legislative mandates to authorize government action may only be a memory anyway, for
programmed phases become impossible to identify except for the top level programmers.
Programming involves curriculum writing (remember the redefined education) textbook
adoption (textbooks also planned and programmed to conformed to the “new education”
objectives), teacher training, etc. Constant evaluation is going on as a part of this process...as
feedback is collected from all segments involved in the process. Data on community acceptance,
data on teacher response, data on student response is fed into data banks to provide a continuous
picture of how effective the process is and just how and where to adjust the programming to
make the program effective. We are receiving many inquiries from teachers who are in the
position know firsthand the pressures from the constant demands for in-service training and
evaluation procedures. Actually, teachers are the only ones in a position at this point who could
halt the process by protecting their professional integrity, internally.
THE “BUDGET” of PPBS
PPBS uses “on going” five to seven year projections of programs which are constantly
reassessed and altered along the way. You do not have line item budgets which are based on the
concept of estimating the costs, of a program until designated time, then reassessing the program
to see if the results of a program warrant the re budgeting of the cost of a given program. The
yearly budget concept won’t work with PPBS because it is impossible to project costs for five
to seven years’ programming because of the nature of continuous evaluation and self generating
change process during the five to seven years. Remember, constant re-evaluation means
assessing teaching personnel, students and community to determine the degree of effectiveness
of the planned-changed behavioral objective. Translate that: continuous data collection. Until
PPBS is fully implemented, and the system frozen or locked into operation, this can be a wide
variable of unknown dimensions. There may still be unexpected straight thinking resistance in
the community, in the classroom or in the faculty lounge, which will slow the process and make
human recycling costs more than the planners anticipate in any five to seven year projection. It
is only during the interim--between the introduction of PPBS and the full implementation of it
however, that the resistance will be much of a variable. The resistance will be isolated and the
products of PPBS education have no “memory” of anything other than this dialectical process
called PLANNED CHANGE. Richard Farson of Western Behavioral Science Institute made a
report to the Office of Education in Sacramento in 1967. He said it this way: “The application of
systems analysis is aided by several phenomena that would be of help in almost any situation of
organizational change. First, it is relatively easier to make big changes than to make small ones
and systems changes are almost always big ones. Because they are big, it is difficult for people
to mount resistance to them, for they go beyond the ordinary decision-making, policy-making
activities of individual members of an organization”. It is far easier to muster argument against
a $100 expenditure for partisans than against a complete reorganization of the work flow.” In
order to do away with these difficulties it is necessary to do away with traditional concepts of
accounting by which specific plans and costs can be identified and financing for programs can be
defeated at local level. The process of planned change needs a fluid central source of funding to orchestrate the national thought control. People planners or “engineers of humanity” must have
central controlling factors--money being the enabling element.
1. They cannot have local property tax payers with the power to vote “no” on tax increases,
which is a limiting factor to the planners. Note recent court decisions declaring local property tax
for education unconstitutional.
2. Note the push for statewide property tax (you don’t vote on those rates).
3. Note the increase in Federal Funding for education. Now we have just been introduced to
the idea of a Value Added Tax (VAT) to finance education. Once that becomes fact no one will
be able to afford property anyway. Think about it. So you see, budgeting of PPBS cannot be
considered apart from the whole concept of PPBS.
THE SYSTEM
You will be told that the state has already legislated the budgeting portions of PPBS but not the
rest of it. If pressed on the point however, proponents at the local level will usually admit that
budgeting of PPBS cannot really be implemented as an independent component. The “S” of
PPBS is what makes PPB a System. And When a school district adopts PPBS it locks itself into a
national system.
What Can We Do?
1 Stop thinking of education innovations as separate, isolated, individual programs. All of
education today is part of the total concept of programming the product, the student. Such
seemingly unrelated things such as unification of school districts, that everything must be divided
into equal computer-sized chunks with K-12 continuum.
2 Stop participating in citizens committees and goals committees or answering questionnaires
for data purposes. Your answers are analyzed with a view to identifying the nature and scope
of resistance to programs and how best to circumvent resistance. If you choose to be on a
committee, do so for the purpose of obtaining information and issuing your own statements
publicly as long as you are allowed to, from within the committee in order to educate the general
public as to the nature of the process.
3 Instruct your children not to supply personal information or answer personal questionnaires in
school, or discuss subjective or introspective matters in school. Teach them how to recognize
data collection techniques.
4 Teachers, you have professional organizations to protect your personal interests. Use them to
protect your personal privacy and professional integrity. Encourage organizations of teachers to
take positions publicly in opposition to PPBS.
5 We believe the time has come to establish private schools to keep our children from falling
victim to behaviorists, while there is still opportunity to do so. Be aware of the fact that the
Voucher system is lurking in the wings to bring the private schools into national control.
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Documents used during presentation (partial list):
- Clipping, Monroe Evening News, Monroe Michigan, 1933
- Concepts for Social Change, edited by Goodwin Watson, Published by NTL Institute for
Applied Behavioral Science, Washington, 1967.
- Unfreezing the System, Orange County Schools Office Supplementary Educational Center.
- PREP Manual - Behavior Modification, Putting Research Into Educational Practice
- FLE San Mateo County Teacher’s Resource Guide
- Education of Jeremy Farson, Western Behavioral Sciences Inst.
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The speech “PPBS,” was originally prepared by Mrs. Mary Thompson of Campbell, California,
(Secretary and member of speaker’s bureau for presentation to Santa Clara Republican Women
Federated. Subsequently Mrs. Thompson has addressed several other groups and organizations
on the subject of PPBS including political organizations, parent organizations and teachers.
---
Excerpts of this speech may be found in Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt’s the deliberate dumbing
down of america...A Chronological Paper Trail, Conscience Press. www.deliberatedumbingdown.com
Regarding Remarks to Mary Thompson’s PPBS Speech 1972
On Wednesday, February 6, 2013, Mary Thompson wrote: Thank you for the kind remarks
about the old speech. Whenever I gave that speech, with very few exceptions, people could
just not wrap their heads around what I was explaining. I gave it first at a Republican Women
Federated group in Santa Clara County, CA. I was challenged by a wife of a behavioral
psychologist who thought I didn’t understand what behaviorism was. I was never asked to speak
again, at any Republican Womens’ organizations.
In 1972, we had only mimeograph machines, snail mail and land line phones, but things got
distributed around the country. I did receive some favorable feedback, from people I’d never
heard of, in other states who recognized what I was talking about. I don’t know how the speech
came into Charlotte’s possession. No one was more surprised than I, to see an abridged version
of it in her 1999 big book, for I’d not heard of Charlotte until someone called my attention to the
book.
There was one episode I learned of when I received a phone call one day, probably in 1973,
from a facilitator in Wisconsin. He was a Federal Change Agent charged with implementing
PPBS in the schools there. Wisconsin was designated as a pilot state. He asked whether I was
the person who wrote the speech he had in hand about PPBS, with my name on it. I told him I
couldn’t verify since I wasn’t looking at what he had in his hand. He read parts of it and I told
him what he quoted were my words. He was angry, for he said he had spent two years readying
the district to adopt PPBS, then a prominent community member and PTA leader then read the
speech to a large PTA gathering many of whom had served on the needs assessment committees.
Apparently, they had been uncomfortable with process, and the speech enlightened them to
recognize that they had been used. His efforts had been disrupted and the citizens committee
participants revolted. He asked me who was behind my efforts. He didn’t want to accept that I
was a home maker and mother operating on my own, with a couple of other like-minded mothers.
He persisted in asking “what’s in it for you?” I learned later that the grant funding he had for
two years was withdrawn and given to another state. At the end of the conversation, he told me
that one day, one way or the other one of our efforts would prevail, and that he intended to be the
one who wins.
Only one other time did I have a similar conversation about resisting the system in question.
My daughter was in a wonderful youth symphony band of talented musicians. They were
accepted by audition from around the south bay peninsula. Parents paid $50 a year, per selected
musician, and the board of directors was comprised of parents. The director was a genius with
the band performing at professional levels. He was associated with a community college, where
the band rehearsed. I was on the board. After a once in a lifetime concert tour overseas, the
board elected a parent who was an international economist for the Stanford Hoover Institute.
At the first general meeting of all the parents he announced he was going to “Humanize” the
organization. My heart sank, for I knew what that meant. At the next meeting, the chairs were
arranged in a circle. I refused to sit in the circle and sat in a chair outside the circle. He noticed
at another board meeting there were the first chairs of the student musicians in attendance. He
asked them to identify any faults they found in the Band Director (who had put them on the map). The director was not present. I objected to the process orchestrated for the group criticism
session. He knew I was furious, and he called me at which time I let him know that I knew what
the process was and opposed it across the board. Then the meeting locations would be changed
without notifying me.
I had a connection to find out where they had been changed and would show up anyway...
late, but show up. Then I heard announcements being made by him, directly to the band which
the board had never discussed or approved. I resigned and sent my explanation to the board
members, and a copy of the PPBS speech to him only. He called me, and the conversation was
chillingly similar to the one from the Wisconsin change agent.
“Why was I doing what I was doing? What was in it for me?" All the cat and mouse stuff fell
away when each of the callers realized I knew what they were doing, and then the conversation
changed to saying that one of us was right, and one day we will both know who was right and
who will win.
They asked me where I got the PPBS speech, and didn’t really want to accept that I’d figured it
out myself, from research and experience.
The subject is the issue of the half century, perhaps the century, and the general public has still
not caught on. It transcends political parties. Left and right, while they swat at gnats. I hope you
are correct in your anticipation of awakening in 2013.