Page 8. (in new window)   STOP PRESS Vol.18 No.1

PROFILE ON DR. W.R.COULSON, PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION

Dr.W.R.Coulson was founding director of the Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla, California. Until recently he was Professor of Psychology and Education at United States International University in San Diego. Holding doctorates in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and counselling psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, he served clinical internships with the U.S. Veterans Administration Hospital in Phoenix, the Psychotherapy Research Group of the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute, and the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, where he later directed programmes in social psychology and the philosophy of science.

In the late 1960s and early '70s, he served as series editor with psychologist Carl Rogers of a 15-volume textbook series in humanistic education. He counts his most dubious consulting achievement of that period to have been helping undermine a large system of parochial schools, which later collapsed from what Coulson suggests was TOO MUCH PSYCHOLOGY. Other failures followed from continuing attempts to make schooling "therapeutic."

Coulson now believes that society's fascination with psychotherapeutic modalities -- e.g., such programmes as Values Clarification -- helps account for the decline of literacy during that period and since.

***************

STOP, CARE & ACTS ARE ARRANGING FOR DR.COULSON TO VISIT AUSTRALIA

Research Council on Ethnopsychology 2054 Oriole Street San Diego, California 92114 (619) 527-0146 May 18, 1989 Mrs. Rona Joyner Cherry Lane Narangba 4504 Queensland, AUSTRALIA 07 -888-1450 Dear Mrs. Joyner: Thank you for your call. Please keep me posted by mail if funding develops for a consultation trip by my wife and me to Australia. We would need to have a fair amount of lead time because of other commitments. I hope something among the enclosures proves useful to you in the attempt to make schooling rational again. I gather that the Australian educational problem is some what parallel to our own. Here we have overdosed on the idea of classrooms as the nexus of universal psychotherapy. The scheme is unwarranted. What results is that children who need help because they lack a good upbringing prove to be beyond help in such a setting. But good children, conversely, are capable of being dragged down: It is as if what our parents always told us -- "Be careful to pick the right friends" -- was being demonstrated before our eyes. No one intends this unfortunate effect. But, empirically, it is what happens. Perhaps I can be of some assistance to your countrymen in clarifying the likely outcomes of therapeutic schooling, having been in on the American experiment now for 25 years. Sincerely, W. R. Coulson, Ph.D. Licensed Psychologist

NEW LIFE,November 20,1980 Sex Education 'Endangering America's Children' PASADENA, Calif, (EP) -- American Christian Cause, a California based national Christian morality organisation, called for observance by churches across the country of "National Decency in Education Sunday" on November 2. Dr Robert Grant, president of American Christian Cause, states, "America's children are in grave danger and their parents are often not even aware of what they are being taught in the classroom." American Christian Cause reports that, under the guise of sex education, children are being taught in some public school classrooms that: Homosexuality and lesbianism are a normal alternate lifestyle and are art equally valid. choice for young people to consider for future life patterns; the traditional family unit made up of mother, father, and children is no longer valid; birth control pills and contraceptive devices can be secured through state supported institutions and abortions can be obtained through tax supported clinics without the knowledge of parents; pornography contributes to better understanding of sex and of sexual relationships; and the traditional marriage relationship should be scrapped and trial marriage with a "renewable contract" should be put in its place.