1818: From Thomas Jefferson’s commissioner’s report for the University of Virginia:
The objects of this primary education determine its character and limits. These objects would be:
- To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business.
- To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts, and accounts in writing.
- To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties.
- To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either.
- To know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment.
- And, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.
2012: From the education platform of the Republican Party of Texas
- Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.