It seems to me that it is darn difficult to advocate for something that you don't have a full understanding of. When we're talking about saving the Republic, a clear understanding of the Republic's founding documents is important. So, I Googled "The Declaration of Independence". I read the entire thing, and then I went one step further. I made sure I understood what I read. When necessary, I did additional research to support an analysis. Now, I'm going to share what I am learning and what I think about it with you.
So, what is the Declaration of Independence? The last part of the first paragraph tells us very clearly what it is. "...a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation..." This isn't something our Founding Fathers took lightly. In simple terms, the Founding Fathers convened to put a stop to the long-standing tyranny, after years of attempts at redress had failed. Here, in this document, they made their case to the international community, knowing that doing so would brand them traitors to the British crown if the effort failed.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
A couple of things stand out to me about this sentence. But first, let's be clear that we understand a few terms.
Self-evident? What is it? According to Merriam-Webster, it is "evident without proof or reasoning". Since I don't think it's very clear to define a compound word using part of that compound, let's look at evident. "Clear to the sight or mind". I'll add "obvious".
Endowed? What is it? "To freely or naturally provide (someone or something) with something."
Unalienable? What is it? "Impossible to take away or give up."
Liberty? What is it? "The state or condition of people who are able to act and speak freely" and "The power to do or choose what you want to do."
Now let's put that all together in modern language. We state that these truths are obvious, that all men are created equal, that they are given by their Creator certain rights which are both impossible to take away and impossible to give up. The rights are life, the freedom to act and speak freely, and to seek their own happiness.
What's interesting here? The idea of truth has fallen out of fashion in our modern society. Truth begs the questions: What is truth? What makes them truth? These are truths according to whom? Our Founding Fathers believed that these rights were obvious. They didn't leave the existence of these rights open for debate. These rights are self-evident. Our Founding Fathers believed in a Creator. Our Founding Fathers believed that this Creator gave each of us life and liberty, and granted us the right to pursue happiness. Note there that our Founding Fathers said absolutely nothing about achieving happiness. None of us have a right to happiness. Moreover, unalienable means that government cannot take these rights away, nor can we give them up. These rights aren't owned by anyone, including the government. They are gifts, from our Creator. That leaves us with a conclusion that seems obvious to me. Truth isn't relative. Truth isn't "of man". Truth, like the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, comes from our Creator.
What happens when we remove our Creator from the equation? We must accept that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are privileges granted to us by our government. If those things can be given by men, they can be taken by men for any reason, at any time.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
A Quickie on P-20 Data Systems
Taken directly from the Achieve Inc, website....
States must collect, coordinate, and use K-12 and postsecondary data to track and improve the readiness of graduates to succeed in college and the workplace.
Longitudinal data systems should follow individual students from grade to grade and school to school, all the way from kindergarten through postsecondary education and into the workplace. Such systems would also provide more accurate measures of dropout and graduation rates, and provide the foundation for early warning systems.
For states to evaluate and understand the impact of particular policies around graduation requirements, assessments and preparedness for postsecondary, they must follow students through K–12 into postsecondary and the workforce and establish feedback loops to the relevant stakeholders to make informed decisions that improve policies and practices around increasing student preparedness.
Take that statement apart, and see if it raises any red flags.
"Longitudinal data systems should follow individual students from grade to grade and school to school, all the way from kindergarten through postsecondary education and into the workplace."
First, do you know what the "P" stands for here? It's preschool. These people want to begin tracking your children in preschool. Postsecondary education? Yeah, that's college - undergraduate and graduate. The workplace? You're supposedly an adult then, out of the institution of public education. Why does the government need to track you then? Does that raise eyebrows for anyone else? The idea of the government tracking my children from the time they are three until they leave the work force gives me the creeps. I cannot imagine what good will come of that, and I can easily come up with dozens of ways that can be abused.
This is a massive expansion of Big Brother. Do you even know what these longitudinal data systems will contain? Digging around a little, I haven't even been able to find out what exactly the Department of Education is mandating be in those systems. In my mind, that is something that should be fully exposed, plain as day, and readily available for anyone who wants to know what information the government is acquiring.
A father in Nevada wanted to see exactly what information was being gathered about his children and was told that the price for retrieval of such records was an astonishing $10,000.
"Such systems would also provide more accurate measures of dropout and graduation rates..."
It seems like simple enrollment - did the child attend school and was the child awarded a diploma - would be more than sufficient to provide that accurate measure of dropout and graduation rates.
"...provide the foundation for early warning systems."
One question: early warning systems for what? Notice that they don't say. Historically, what has happened when the government is able to amass large databases on its citizenry? This raises a huge red flag for me.
"For states to evaluate and understand the impact of particular policies around graduation requirements, assessments and preparedness for postsecondary, they must follow students through K–12 into postsecondary and the workforce..."
Why, exactly, must students be followed into postsecondary and the workforce in order for states to evaluate and understand the impact of particular policies around graduation requirements, assessments and preparedness for postsecondary? And, what particular policies are they talking about?
"...and establish feedback loops..."
Mmm-hmm...Anyone else have any concerns about the security of these feedback loops?
"...to the relevant stakeholders..."
One simple question: who are these relevant shareholders exactly? Notice that they don't say. Anyone else concerned? Let's sweeten the pot even more...since the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act was gutted in January 2012 by a stroke of the executive branch's pen without Congressional approval, your child's personally identifiable information is no longer secure.
"...to make informed decisions that improve policies and practices around increasing student preparedness."
What kind of information do these relevant stakeholders need in order to make informed decisions? Should American citizens have the right to control and approve of whatever information about themselves may be distributed? You have no control. Your approval doesn't matter.
This is sick, sick stuff. Orwellian, for sure. Call me a barbarian, but I will not be silent.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Introducing Self-Governance and a Civics Lesson for My Daughters (and Everyone Else), Part Three
We left off in the last post with a one-or-the-other choice to make. It really is one-or-the-other. These are two fundamentally incompatible worldviews. Do you accept the one that has your dog peeing on your floor, snarling at you, and mauling your children, or do you accept the one that has your dog sitting when you say, "SIT!", and protecting your home and your family from those who might wish to do you harm? You cannot have it both ways...and even my five year old is able to figure out that she wants to be the one to tell the dog to, "SIT!" rather than sitting by and letting the dog chew up all of her toys.
The problem is that many of us have never lived with a dog we controlled. Some of you may remember the cute puppy your dog used to be. Maybe you can look back and pinpoint the exact moment that your dog assumed the Alpha position in the family, but more likely your dog issued a series of seemingly inconsequential challenges to your authority that were never met with backbone that ultimately culminated in your surrender of power and authority to your dog, possibly without you even consciously realizing it. Many of us grew up in homes where our dog had always been the boss. Getting growled at and bitten is normal.
I am trying to change that perception in my house. I don't want my children growing up in an America where they are passively accepting getting growled at and bitten by the dog. That's why I started taking the classes from the Tennessee Center For Self-Governance in the first place. I've been staring at my growling dog, aware of the complete imbalance of power going on here, but because I grew up in an America where that was normal, I don't know how to tame that beast. I just know it needs to be done. I suspect there are a lot of people just like me, people who would do something about retraining that dog if they knew what to do and how to go about doing that. I know that standing by idly and letting the dog growl at me isn't going to improve the situation; it'll actually make it worse in the long run when the dog realizes I'm not going to do anything about it. I know that complaining about the dog's behavior to my friends, none of whom have dogs that behave any better, isn't going to improve the situation, either. So what will?
This is where I believe that the classes created and offered by Mark Herr and the Tennessee Center for Self-Governance are a stroke of brilliance. What will teach our dog to heal, sit, roll over, and stop barking is, metaphorically speaking, Mrs. Powel. The Constitutional Convention in 1787 was held behind closed doors, shrouded in secrecy. Meanwhile, anxious citizens gathered out front, waiting word from the delegates. When the doors opened, a woman named Mrs. Powel approached Benjamin Franklin and asked him whether we had a republic or a monarchy. He replied, "A republic if you can keep it (emphasis mine)."
So who exactly is Mrs. Powel? We're all Mrs. Powel. You, you, you, you, you, and me. All of us. The republic will survive if we can keep it. The key to keeping the republic is keeping Mrs. Powel aware of the power and the freedom that the Constitution grants her, and the confines and limitations it places on the government. When was the last time you actually read the Declaration of Independence or the American Constitution in full? Reading those magical, historical documents isn't like trying to wade through the Affordable Care Act; our founding documents are remarkable in their brevity. It took me less than an hour to read through both of them. Do you have at least a basic understanding of your rights as defined by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution? Do you have at least a basic understanding of how our federal and state governments are supposed to work? Do you know who your state's federal Senators and Representatives are? How about your district's state Senators and Representatives? How about your city's mayor and city planner? Do you know what your elected city council is doing? If you don't know, why don't you know? These people are making decisions and enacting legislation every day that shape our society and impact your life. How do you justify not knowing to yourself? I used to tell myself that I didn't have time. I used to tell myself that it was too complicated. I used to tell myself that my efforts would be wasted anyway because I can't do anything about what's going on. Those are all excuses, though. Excuses for abdicating my responsibility. Excuses for being lazy. I am now reaping the rewards of irresponsibility and laziness. Because not enough of us know, the dog is snarling at us and mauling our children. I guess I care more about my children than I do about myself because as soon as I figured out that the dog is mauling my children, enough was enough.
Thomas Jefferson said, "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."
That is the mission of the Tennessee Center for Self-Governance: informing our discretion so that we can save and preserve the republic. I have taken two of the five levels of classes from the Center for Self-Governance. Worth every dime I spent in tuition, and by the way, the tuition is minimal. Worth every second I sat there in class and listened. I have more questions than answers about how this all works, but right now I am trusting the process. I already think differently about the government and my role as a citizen than I did before I took level one. My son is taking the classes with me right now. I'm sharing what I am learning with my husband and our oldest daughter. Once I have completed all five levels, I will have Erica take the series too. I'm sharing the process of having my discretion informed with all of you, in the hopes that it create ripples in the pond, or so to speak.
The problem is that many of us have never lived with a dog we controlled. Some of you may remember the cute puppy your dog used to be. Maybe you can look back and pinpoint the exact moment that your dog assumed the Alpha position in the family, but more likely your dog issued a series of seemingly inconsequential challenges to your authority that were never met with backbone that ultimately culminated in your surrender of power and authority to your dog, possibly without you even consciously realizing it. Many of us grew up in homes where our dog had always been the boss. Getting growled at and bitten is normal.
I am trying to change that perception in my house. I don't want my children growing up in an America where they are passively accepting getting growled at and bitten by the dog. That's why I started taking the classes from the Tennessee Center For Self-Governance in the first place. I've been staring at my growling dog, aware of the complete imbalance of power going on here, but because I grew up in an America where that was normal, I don't know how to tame that beast. I just know it needs to be done. I suspect there are a lot of people just like me, people who would do something about retraining that dog if they knew what to do and how to go about doing that. I know that standing by idly and letting the dog growl at me isn't going to improve the situation; it'll actually make it worse in the long run when the dog realizes I'm not going to do anything about it. I know that complaining about the dog's behavior to my friends, none of whom have dogs that behave any better, isn't going to improve the situation, either. So what will?
This is where I believe that the classes created and offered by Mark Herr and the Tennessee Center for Self-Governance are a stroke of brilliance. What will teach our dog to heal, sit, roll over, and stop barking is, metaphorically speaking, Mrs. Powel. The Constitutional Convention in 1787 was held behind closed doors, shrouded in secrecy. Meanwhile, anxious citizens gathered out front, waiting word from the delegates. When the doors opened, a woman named Mrs. Powel approached Benjamin Franklin and asked him whether we had a republic or a monarchy. He replied, "A republic if you can keep it (emphasis mine)."
So who exactly is Mrs. Powel? We're all Mrs. Powel. You, you, you, you, you, and me. All of us. The republic will survive if we can keep it. The key to keeping the republic is keeping Mrs. Powel aware of the power and the freedom that the Constitution grants her, and the confines and limitations it places on the government. When was the last time you actually read the Declaration of Independence or the American Constitution in full? Reading those magical, historical documents isn't like trying to wade through the Affordable Care Act; our founding documents are remarkable in their brevity. It took me less than an hour to read through both of them. Do you have at least a basic understanding of your rights as defined by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution? Do you have at least a basic understanding of how our federal and state governments are supposed to work? Do you know who your state's federal Senators and Representatives are? How about your district's state Senators and Representatives? How about your city's mayor and city planner? Do you know what your elected city council is doing? If you don't know, why don't you know? These people are making decisions and enacting legislation every day that shape our society and impact your life. How do you justify not knowing to yourself? I used to tell myself that I didn't have time. I used to tell myself that it was too complicated. I used to tell myself that my efforts would be wasted anyway because I can't do anything about what's going on. Those are all excuses, though. Excuses for abdicating my responsibility. Excuses for being lazy. I am now reaping the rewards of irresponsibility and laziness. Because not enough of us know, the dog is snarling at us and mauling our children. I guess I care more about my children than I do about myself because as soon as I figured out that the dog is mauling my children, enough was enough.
Thomas Jefferson said, "I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."
That is the mission of the Tennessee Center for Self-Governance: informing our discretion so that we can save and preserve the republic. I have taken two of the five levels of classes from the Center for Self-Governance. Worth every dime I spent in tuition, and by the way, the tuition is minimal. Worth every second I sat there in class and listened. I have more questions than answers about how this all works, but right now I am trusting the process. I already think differently about the government and my role as a citizen than I did before I took level one. My son is taking the classes with me right now. I'm sharing what I am learning with my husband and our oldest daughter. Once I have completed all five levels, I will have Erica take the series too. I'm sharing the process of having my discretion informed with all of you, in the hopes that it create ripples in the pond, or so to speak.
Introducing the Idea of Self-Governance and a Civics Lesson for My Daughters (and Everyone Else), Part Two
I left off in my last post, asking my daughter (and you), "What would happen with an informed, engaged citizenry?"
Think about what the state of the union would be like if everyone were able to say, "They are one and the same" rather than giving the jaw dropping displays of ignorance everyone saw when Jimmy Kimmel asked whether they preferred Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. Think about what the state of the union would be like if everyone were able to answer, "John Boehner" (currently) when asked who the Speaker of the House is during a Man On The Street by Leno or one of those other late night hosts. Think about what the state of the union would be like if everyone were well-versed in our founding documents and had a full understanding of the proper roles of government and We The People in running our republic.
The most powerful thing about self-governance is that it is not a partisan issue. It isn't a black, white, Native American, or Hispanic issue. It isn't a rich or poor issue. It isn't a young or old issue. It isn't a secular or religious issue. It isn't a West Coast or an East Coast issue. It isn't a North or a South issue. It isn't an urban or a rural issue. The notion of self-governance, as I understand it, as put forth by Mark Herr and the Tennessee Center For Self-Governance doesn't mean that everyone will agree on everything. Issues and candidates are secondary; the forces of centralized governance will use those to divide and conquer.
The idea of self-governance can be boiled down to two very simple questions. Who knows best how to run your life - you or the government? And, are you the master, or are you the slave?
That brings us to the metaphor that made my Jillian laugh. I'll unfold it under two different scenarios: the way things are currently and the way things are supposed to be.
Think about what the state of the union would be like if everyone were able to say, "They are one and the same" rather than giving the jaw dropping displays of ignorance everyone saw when Jimmy Kimmel asked whether they preferred Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act. Think about what the state of the union would be like if everyone were able to answer, "John Boehner" (currently) when asked who the Speaker of the House is during a Man On The Street by Leno or one of those other late night hosts. Think about what the state of the union would be like if everyone were well-versed in our founding documents and had a full understanding of the proper roles of government and We The People in running our republic.
The most powerful thing about self-governance is that it is not a partisan issue. It isn't a black, white, Native American, or Hispanic issue. It isn't a rich or poor issue. It isn't a young or old issue. It isn't a secular or religious issue. It isn't a West Coast or an East Coast issue. It isn't a North or a South issue. It isn't an urban or a rural issue. The notion of self-governance, as I understand it, as put forth by Mark Herr and the Tennessee Center For Self-Governance doesn't mean that everyone will agree on everything. Issues and candidates are secondary; the forces of centralized governance will use those to divide and conquer.
The idea of self-governance can be boiled down to two very simple questions. Who knows best how to run your life - you or the government? And, are you the master, or are you the slave?
That brings us to the metaphor that made my Jillian laugh. I'll unfold it under two different scenarios: the way things are currently and the way things are supposed to be.
The Way Things Are Currently
We The People are the spineless, wimpy owners of a very aggressive dog that has assumed the Alpha role in the house. The government? Yup, it's the dog. We The People aren't informed or engaged enough, and we've lost control of the beast. Our dog is chewing up our furniture. Our dog is peeing on our floors. Our dog is stealing food right off our plates. Our dog is terrorizing our cats. Our dog is yanking our arms right out of the sockets when it takes us for a walk. Our dog is snarling at us when we get too close. If our dog could laugh at us when we say, "SIT!", it would. Oh, and our dog is mauling our children too. And we are letting it happen. All of it. What the heck is the matter with us?!
The Way Things Are Supposed to Be
We The People enjoy our family dog. We especially like having the dog around for protection. The government? Yup, it's still the dog. The difference here is that We The People are informed and engaged enough to nip our dog's bad behavior in the bud. In fact, we've gone through obedience training with our dog - and it isn't us doing the obeying! We The People take our dog for walks, and there is slack in the leash; our arms aren't getting yanked out of sockets by our unruly dog. When We The People say, "SIT!", our dog drops its butt to the floor.
Now, which scenario sounds more appealing to you? My five year old thinks she should be the one telling the dog to sit.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Introducing the Idea of Self-Governance and a Civics Lesson for My Daughters (and Everyone Else), Part One
I made my five year old daughter laugh tonight. Hard. For some reason, when I told my girls that We The People are the masters and the government is the family dog that needs to be properly trained, it tickled Jillian's funny bone. I'm not sure how much of my explanation she actually understood, but it made sense to my 12 year old. So, let me backtrack a bit, and I'll share it with you.
We don't have a DVD player in our car. My kids don't put earbuds in the second they get buckled in and tune out, either. Sometimes we'll leave the radio on or put in a CD, but mostly, we talk. And I'm glad we've made that choice as a family, because otherwise, we'd miss out on all sorts of incredible conversations. Tonight, was one of those discussions. I was driving my eldest daughter, Erica, to Sign Language Choir, and the conversation turned to personal strengths and weaknesses. Erica has a tendency to devalue the things that come easily to her. I told her that different things come easily to different people, which brought the conversation to academic subjects and school...and Common Core.
At that point, I said something I've said frequently. I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to education. (Incidentally, that is a big part of why my husband and I homeschool our children.) Human infants, toddlers, and preschoolers do not master physical, mental, emotional, or social milestones at the same time or to the same degree, nor does anyone (sane) expect them to. No one, regardless of whether they spent the last 12 years in a classroom run by standards-based education or not, arrives at adulthood with the same information and the same amount of information tucked away in their mental files. How do most adults and children (before they are shepherded into one-size-fits-all classrooms around the age of five or six) learn? They learn by recognizing a desire or a need to know something. With that need or desire in hand, they go about locating the resources to learn said material. With the resources located, they hunker down and learn it. They stick with the studying and/or practicing until they have reached a level of knowledge or a degree of mastery that is satisfying for them.
That was nothing new for either of my girls. That is how their educations have been directed their entire lives. My end goal for my children's education is threefold. One, I want to preserve my children's natural love of learning. Two, I want them to have the time, freedom, and flexibility to explore their interests as widely or as deeply as they desire. In other words, they know best what they "need" to know at any given time. Three, I want them to know how to learn so that learning is a natural extension of daily living throughout their entire lives. But, as I explained to them, that mode of education is not possible in a traditional classroom for a variety of reasons, nor does the institution of public education share my same goals.
Note there that I said the institution of public education; I have a tremendous amount of respect for most teachers in public schools. Most of them care very deeply for their students. Most of them want amazing things and have big dreams for their students. Most of them dig deep into their hearts, souls, and wallets to provide their students with the best they can offer. I have very little respect for the institution of public education, though. It long ago ceased to be about enriching the minds and lives of the children entrusted to it. I have long suspected, and what I am learning about Common Core is confirming those suspicions for me, that the institution of public education has two end goals that I am diametrically opposed to: undermining the family and indoctrinating "worker bees" whose allegiance is to the government.
The mission of centralized government, regardless of which political party is currently holding the reins, is to preserve the power it currently has and expand it from there. How does governmental power expand? It expands by swallowing the freedoms of the people it is supposed to serve. If you are seeking to control someone else, how do you do that? Can you control an informed, well-educated person who is able to evaluate things critically? Can you control someone who is able to think "outside the box" and examine issues from all sorts of perspectives? Can you control someone who fully understands how our government is supposed to work and what his or her role in that process is supposed to be? Of course not.
At that point, our conversation shifted to the idea of self-governance. I asked Erica, "What would happen with an informed, engaged citizenry?"
We don't have a DVD player in our car. My kids don't put earbuds in the second they get buckled in and tune out, either. Sometimes we'll leave the radio on or put in a CD, but mostly, we talk. And I'm glad we've made that choice as a family, because otherwise, we'd miss out on all sorts of incredible conversations. Tonight, was one of those discussions. I was driving my eldest daughter, Erica, to Sign Language Choir, and the conversation turned to personal strengths and weaknesses. Erica has a tendency to devalue the things that come easily to her. I told her that different things come easily to different people, which brought the conversation to academic subjects and school...and Common Core.
At that point, I said something I've said frequently. I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to education. (Incidentally, that is a big part of why my husband and I homeschool our children.) Human infants, toddlers, and preschoolers do not master physical, mental, emotional, or social milestones at the same time or to the same degree, nor does anyone (sane) expect them to. No one, regardless of whether they spent the last 12 years in a classroom run by standards-based education or not, arrives at adulthood with the same information and the same amount of information tucked away in their mental files. How do most adults and children (before they are shepherded into one-size-fits-all classrooms around the age of five or six) learn? They learn by recognizing a desire or a need to know something. With that need or desire in hand, they go about locating the resources to learn said material. With the resources located, they hunker down and learn it. They stick with the studying and/or practicing until they have reached a level of knowledge or a degree of mastery that is satisfying for them.
That was nothing new for either of my girls. That is how their educations have been directed their entire lives. My end goal for my children's education is threefold. One, I want to preserve my children's natural love of learning. Two, I want them to have the time, freedom, and flexibility to explore their interests as widely or as deeply as they desire. In other words, they know best what they "need" to know at any given time. Three, I want them to know how to learn so that learning is a natural extension of daily living throughout their entire lives. But, as I explained to them, that mode of education is not possible in a traditional classroom for a variety of reasons, nor does the institution of public education share my same goals.
Note there that I said the institution of public education; I have a tremendous amount of respect for most teachers in public schools. Most of them care very deeply for their students. Most of them want amazing things and have big dreams for their students. Most of them dig deep into their hearts, souls, and wallets to provide their students with the best they can offer. I have very little respect for the institution of public education, though. It long ago ceased to be about enriching the minds and lives of the children entrusted to it. I have long suspected, and what I am learning about Common Core is confirming those suspicions for me, that the institution of public education has two end goals that I am diametrically opposed to: undermining the family and indoctrinating "worker bees" whose allegiance is to the government.
The mission of centralized government, regardless of which political party is currently holding the reins, is to preserve the power it currently has and expand it from there. How does governmental power expand? It expands by swallowing the freedoms of the people it is supposed to serve. If you are seeking to control someone else, how do you do that? Can you control an informed, well-educated person who is able to evaluate things critically? Can you control someone who is able to think "outside the box" and examine issues from all sorts of perspectives? Can you control someone who fully understands how our government is supposed to work and what his or her role in that process is supposed to be? Of course not.
At that point, our conversation shifted to the idea of self-governance. I asked Erica, "What would happen with an informed, engaged citizenry?"
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Faces of Common Core
This video called "Faces of Common Core" just popped up in my newsfeed on Facebook. It's only five minutes long. I watched it...and my heart broke.
Is Common Core unconstitutional? Absolutely. Is our children's privacy being violated? For sure. Neither of those are seemingly compelling enough reasons for people to get involved and put a stop to this nonsense. How about those little faces then? Does seeing a child transform right before our eyes from a child excited about school, shining from the inside out, into a child who is so burdened by frustration and failure that he or she is broken inside do anything to you?
With Common Core left in place, flash forward a decade. Have those first graders who are already overwhelmed, already frustrated, and already feel like failures magically grown into eleventh graders with a solid grasp on their educations, only experiencing the sort of frustration that normal feel feel over the course of normal daily living, and feeling successful? Go forward another decade, then two, three, and four. What do those once tiny lives look like then? Setting aside all compassion for the children right now who are feeling overwhelmed and are learning that they are stupid failures, let's look for a moment at everyone's "skin in the game", regardless of whether or not you have children in the public school system: Remember, these are the people who will be running and shaping society then.
What kind of person do you want teaching your grandchildren? What kind of person do you want tending to your sick loved ones? What kind of person do you want making policy decisions with lasting repercussions for the whole of society? What kind of person do you want flying your airplanes and driving your taxis? What kind of person do you want growing your food or preparing it? What kind of person do you want ministering to your soul? What kind of people do we need to fill all of the roles we need filled in our modern society? What kind of people do we need in order to continue making advancements in the way we live and how we live? Broken people who believe that they are failures will never embrace their God-given destinies. They will never be able to encourage someone else. They will never take the risks that are necessary for transformative growth.
We must care about people. We must care about what is happening in the daily lives of children all over the country, in places parents parents have entrusted our most precious resources. When we are confronted with evil, and in my mind evil is what is transforming those faces from joy and hope to frustration and despair, we must act. Get connected with other people who are fighting Common Core on social media. Spend an hour or two to bring yourself fully up to speed on what isn't being said about Common Core by proponents. Find out if there is any legislation against Common Core in your state legislature, and start making phone calls and writing letters. Attend your local school board meetings.
Do everything you can possibly do, so that either Common Core is scrapped and children are saved from that madness, or you can look yourself, your children, and your grandchildren in the eye and tell them honestly that you did everything you could do to spare them from it.
Is Common Core unconstitutional? Absolutely. Is our children's privacy being violated? For sure. Neither of those are seemingly compelling enough reasons for people to get involved and put a stop to this nonsense. How about those little faces then? Does seeing a child transform right before our eyes from a child excited about school, shining from the inside out, into a child who is so burdened by frustration and failure that he or she is broken inside do anything to you?
With Common Core left in place, flash forward a decade. Have those first graders who are already overwhelmed, already frustrated, and already feel like failures magically grown into eleventh graders with a solid grasp on their educations, only experiencing the sort of frustration that normal feel feel over the course of normal daily living, and feeling successful? Go forward another decade, then two, three, and four. What do those once tiny lives look like then? Setting aside all compassion for the children right now who are feeling overwhelmed and are learning that they are stupid failures, let's look for a moment at everyone's "skin in the game", regardless of whether or not you have children in the public school system: Remember, these are the people who will be running and shaping society then.
What kind of person do you want teaching your grandchildren? What kind of person do you want tending to your sick loved ones? What kind of person do you want making policy decisions with lasting repercussions for the whole of society? What kind of person do you want flying your airplanes and driving your taxis? What kind of person do you want growing your food or preparing it? What kind of person do you want ministering to your soul? What kind of people do we need to fill all of the roles we need filled in our modern society? What kind of people do we need in order to continue making advancements in the way we live and how we live? Broken people who believe that they are failures will never embrace their God-given destinies. They will never be able to encourage someone else. They will never take the risks that are necessary for transformative growth.
We must care about people. We must care about what is happening in the daily lives of children all over the country, in places parents parents have entrusted our most precious resources. When we are confronted with evil, and in my mind evil is what is transforming those faces from joy and hope to frustration and despair, we must act. Get connected with other people who are fighting Common Core on social media. Spend an hour or two to bring yourself fully up to speed on what isn't being said about Common Core by proponents. Find out if there is any legislation against Common Core in your state legislature, and start making phone calls and writing letters. Attend your local school board meetings.
Do everything you can possibly do, so that either Common Core is scrapped and children are saved from that madness, or you can look yourself, your children, and your grandchildren in the eye and tell them honestly that you did everything you could do to spare them from it.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Education In My House
Taking a break here from all of the digging and researching, the sifting and sorting to make sense of buried facts and threads that unravel in chilling directions, to post an "off-the-top-of-my-head" opinion piece about the purpose of education, why I believe that standards-based, high-stakes testing assessed education violates what should be the purpose of education, and why, therefore, my children are not and never have been in a public school.
As a disclaimer, I'd like to say a few things first. I believe that any child can get a decent education anywhere - even at the worst school in the worst school district in the worst state for education - as long as his or her parents are involved. My way isn't the right way for everyone. I realize that not everyone can homeschool, wants to homeschool, or even should homeschool. I chose to homeschool my children because doing so was the path of least resistance toward providing my children with an education that matched my philosophy about the purpose of education. I probably could find some sort of charter school that would work, or I could have struggled to do so within the parameters of a traditional public school. I didn't want the uphill battle, though.
My goal as a homeschooler is not to teach my children everything. It's impossible anyway, no matter where your child gets his or her education. When my youngest child reaches adulthood in 13 years, I know I will have achieved success as a homeschooler if:
Notice that nowhere in there did I say anything about success looking like an A+ or a 100% on an exam. A test will tell you what a student is able to remember and retell at the moment the test is given. A test does not measure mastery of a subject, nor does it measure the intelligence of the test-taker.
As I see it, the purpose of education is to take a human being from dependent infancy to becoming an independent, competent, contributing, adult member of society who has garnered the knowledge and built the passion to fulfill his or her destiny. I find the idea that every person must learn the same things as everyone else, at the same time everyone else learns them, and to the same degree that everyone else learns them absolutely ludicrous. Not only is that destined to fail because people are not machines that can be programmed exactly the same way right down the assembly line and society actually does need people with different dreams and skill sets to perform all of the tasks it takes to run a modern community, it should fail because it's also immoral and cruel to strip someone's soul of his or her natural yearning to be who he or she is.
The primary goal of education in my house is to preserve my children's natural love of learning. Successful and happy adults never stop learning. If education fails to preserve that love of learning, education has failed. A child who grows to hate what was once a natural endowment will never truly learn anything. A child who learns that education and learning are frustrating and boring experiences will miss out on so much of life. A child whose natural love of learning has been squashed like a bug under the foot of "Big Education" is a victim, not a student. Does this look like a child who loves learning?
Preserving a child's natural love of learning means allowing them the freedom and the flexibility to explore what interests them. Since they are home and their days are, by and large, not broken up into arbitrary subjects that start and finish when someone else deems them to start and finish, education in my house looks like four people (because I too am constantly learning) during the day pursuing the information and skills to do what we want and need to do right now to be who we are right now and to prepare ourselves for who we want to be in the immediate future. My 15 year old will often be found with his nose in a book. My 12 year old will often be found with her pencil in her hand and a sketch pad in front of her. My 5 year old will often be found playing with numbers out loud, saying things like 2 + 2 + 2 - 1 is 5 (don't ask me how she knows that stuff cold like she does, because I have no explanation other than "it's her thing"). My point is that most of the time, they have the time to explore what's on their minds until their curiosity is sated. My children will know themselves. They will know what their strengths are and how to play to those. They will know what their weaknesses are and how to adjust for those. They will know what lights them up inside. They will know how to suffer through something unpleasant to achieve something that they want more than they want to avoid the unpleasant.
When children are in a traditional classroom for five or six hours a day, and they have an hour, two, or more of homework every night, when do they have the time to learn something of their choosing? When they've been told what to read, when to read it, and how to respond to it, when do they ever read for pleasure and to engage their imaginations? When the bell rings and science is "over", what does that do to the child who excels in science and who would rather be conducting experiments than just about anything else? When the unit on World War Two is over, what does that do to the child who wants to know more about Normandy or Hitler? What message does it send to the child who wants more information but is told that the lesson is over? When nearly every single thing that children will be taught in school gets boiled down to a high-stakes test, what does that do to the children who don't take tests well? What does it do to the joy that should be taking place in making new discoveries and connections?
In my house, my children have discovered that learning is fun and exciting, and each bit of information they master opens new doors for them. They learn that they have the power to mold and shape their own destinies. In my house, my children learn the same way adults do. They first identify a want or a need to learn something. Then, they seek out the resources and materials to learn what they want or need to learn. Finally, they do it. First, though, is the why. Why do I want to learn this? If the reason is compelling enough, the learning gets done. The learning gets done faster and better. There are no fights in my house about things like memorizing math facts or learning to write reports. I trust that life will prepare my children each and every day for the next, and I simply wait for my children to recognize for themselves a desire or a need to learn something. They then ask for the resources to do it, and I either provide them or I help my children find those resources themselves. My 15 year old, who hated to write just a few years ago, figured out that some of the merit badges he wanted to earn required written reports. He didn't know how to write a written report. Guess what? He does now...and he earned those merit badges...and our relationship wasn't damaged in the process by me demanding of him that he learn something he didn't see a need or a desire to learn. When the time came to learn to write reports, we were partners. I was a guide and a resource, helping him achieve what he wanted.
When children are told what to learn, when to learn it, and to which degree they must learn it, do those children learn that they have that power to mold and shape their own lives? Do they learn to think critically about things? Do they learn to question what is presented to them? When children are told that they must learn something but they fail to internalize a reason (what I call the why) for doing so, do they really learn the information, or do they "learn" it well enough to pass the test before they forget it? When children are given a set of standards that isn't developmentally appropriate and told that they must comply with those standards, do they feel empowered and smart?
I get a lot of "what if" questions from people who don't understand my philosophy of education. What if my children don't learn what they need to know in order to get into college? The short answer is either they don't go to college, or they get on with learning whatever it is that they need to know before they can go to college. Either way, it will be their choice, as it should be. What if my daughter never memorizes her math facts? Life will come to an end. Just kidding. It'll take her longer to do math problems. So what? When and if that is an issue for her, she'll figure out a way to either memorize those math facts or compensate for not knowing them cold. What if they don't get "enough" science? Enough science for what? I took three years of science in high school and I couldn't tell you a single thing that I supposedly learned, and clearly, it hasn't negatively impacted my life.
What will happen to my children is that they will learn how to take responsibility for what they want to learn, be, and do. What will happen is that my children will not ever measure their self-worth according to a test. What will happen is that my children will never be made to feel stupid because of confusing questions and developmentally inappropriate standards, like those imposed by the Common Core.
As a disclaimer, I'd like to say a few things first. I believe that any child can get a decent education anywhere - even at the worst school in the worst school district in the worst state for education - as long as his or her parents are involved. My way isn't the right way for everyone. I realize that not everyone can homeschool, wants to homeschool, or even should homeschool. I chose to homeschool my children because doing so was the path of least resistance toward providing my children with an education that matched my philosophy about the purpose of education. I probably could find some sort of charter school that would work, or I could have struggled to do so within the parameters of a traditional public school. I didn't want the uphill battle, though.
My goal as a homeschooler is not to teach my children everything. It's impossible anyway, no matter where your child gets his or her education. When my youngest child reaches adulthood in 13 years, I know I will have achieved success as a homeschooler if:
- I have preserved my children's natural love of learning
- I have honored my children's God-given talents by giving them the freedom and flexibility to explore as widely and deeply as they desire into their passions
- They each have ownership over the directions that their educations have taken, without interference from me
- I have taught them how to learn, so that when the times come that they must learn something new, they have the skills and know-how to figure out what it is that they need to know, which resources will best help them acquire that information, and the ability to learn it
Notice that nowhere in there did I say anything about success looking like an A+ or a 100% on an exam. A test will tell you what a student is able to remember and retell at the moment the test is given. A test does not measure mastery of a subject, nor does it measure the intelligence of the test-taker.
As I see it, the purpose of education is to take a human being from dependent infancy to becoming an independent, competent, contributing, adult member of society who has garnered the knowledge and built the passion to fulfill his or her destiny. I find the idea that every person must learn the same things as everyone else, at the same time everyone else learns them, and to the same degree that everyone else learns them absolutely ludicrous. Not only is that destined to fail because people are not machines that can be programmed exactly the same way right down the assembly line and society actually does need people with different dreams and skill sets to perform all of the tasks it takes to run a modern community, it should fail because it's also immoral and cruel to strip someone's soul of his or her natural yearning to be who he or she is.
The primary goal of education in my house is to preserve my children's natural love of learning. Successful and happy adults never stop learning. If education fails to preserve that love of learning, education has failed. A child who grows to hate what was once a natural endowment will never truly learn anything. A child who learns that education and learning are frustrating and boring experiences will miss out on so much of life. A child whose natural love of learning has been squashed like a bug under the foot of "Big Education" is a victim, not a student. Does this look like a child who loves learning?
Preserving a child's natural love of learning means allowing them the freedom and the flexibility to explore what interests them. Since they are home and their days are, by and large, not broken up into arbitrary subjects that start and finish when someone else deems them to start and finish, education in my house looks like four people (because I too am constantly learning) during the day pursuing the information and skills to do what we want and need to do right now to be who we are right now and to prepare ourselves for who we want to be in the immediate future. My 15 year old will often be found with his nose in a book. My 12 year old will often be found with her pencil in her hand and a sketch pad in front of her. My 5 year old will often be found playing with numbers out loud, saying things like 2 + 2 + 2 - 1 is 5 (don't ask me how she knows that stuff cold like she does, because I have no explanation other than "it's her thing"). My point is that most of the time, they have the time to explore what's on their minds until their curiosity is sated. My children will know themselves. They will know what their strengths are and how to play to those. They will know what their weaknesses are and how to adjust for those. They will know what lights them up inside. They will know how to suffer through something unpleasant to achieve something that they want more than they want to avoid the unpleasant.
When children are in a traditional classroom for five or six hours a day, and they have an hour, two, or more of homework every night, when do they have the time to learn something of their choosing? When they've been told what to read, when to read it, and how to respond to it, when do they ever read for pleasure and to engage their imaginations? When the bell rings and science is "over", what does that do to the child who excels in science and who would rather be conducting experiments than just about anything else? When the unit on World War Two is over, what does that do to the child who wants to know more about Normandy or Hitler? What message does it send to the child who wants more information but is told that the lesson is over? When nearly every single thing that children will be taught in school gets boiled down to a high-stakes test, what does that do to the children who don't take tests well? What does it do to the joy that should be taking place in making new discoveries and connections?
In my house, my children have discovered that learning is fun and exciting, and each bit of information they master opens new doors for them. They learn that they have the power to mold and shape their own destinies. In my house, my children learn the same way adults do. They first identify a want or a need to learn something. Then, they seek out the resources and materials to learn what they want or need to learn. Finally, they do it. First, though, is the why. Why do I want to learn this? If the reason is compelling enough, the learning gets done. The learning gets done faster and better. There are no fights in my house about things like memorizing math facts or learning to write reports. I trust that life will prepare my children each and every day for the next, and I simply wait for my children to recognize for themselves a desire or a need to learn something. They then ask for the resources to do it, and I either provide them or I help my children find those resources themselves. My 15 year old, who hated to write just a few years ago, figured out that some of the merit badges he wanted to earn required written reports. He didn't know how to write a written report. Guess what? He does now...and he earned those merit badges...and our relationship wasn't damaged in the process by me demanding of him that he learn something he didn't see a need or a desire to learn. When the time came to learn to write reports, we were partners. I was a guide and a resource, helping him achieve what he wanted.
When children are told what to learn, when to learn it, and to which degree they must learn it, do those children learn that they have that power to mold and shape their own lives? Do they learn to think critically about things? Do they learn to question what is presented to them? When children are told that they must learn something but they fail to internalize a reason (what I call the why) for doing so, do they really learn the information, or do they "learn" it well enough to pass the test before they forget it? When children are given a set of standards that isn't developmentally appropriate and told that they must comply with those standards, do they feel empowered and smart?
I get a lot of "what if" questions from people who don't understand my philosophy of education. What if my children don't learn what they need to know in order to get into college? The short answer is either they don't go to college, or they get on with learning whatever it is that they need to know before they can go to college. Either way, it will be their choice, as it should be. What if my daughter never memorizes her math facts? Life will come to an end. Just kidding. It'll take her longer to do math problems. So what? When and if that is an issue for her, she'll figure out a way to either memorize those math facts or compensate for not knowing them cold. What if they don't get "enough" science? Enough science for what? I took three years of science in high school and I couldn't tell you a single thing that I supposedly learned, and clearly, it hasn't negatively impacted my life.
What will happen to my children is that they will learn how to take responsibility for what they want to learn, be, and do. What will happen is that my children will not ever measure their self-worth according to a test. What will happen is that my children will never be made to feel stupid because of confusing questions and developmentally inappropriate standards, like those imposed by the Common Core.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Unmasking the Lie
In my last post, I shared what I consider to be chilling parallels between Common Core and education in Nazi Germany. If we are unable to get Common Core out of our nation's schools, I hope that in a few years, I am sheepishly donning my tinfoil hat and acknowledging the resounding success of the very thing I currently hold under deep suspicion and with great disdain. I am not holding my breath, though. That post just barely scratched the surface of why I believe that Common Core is bad for our free society. Here's another reason: Common Core is bad for our free society because the developers and proponents of Common Core cannot or will not tell the American public the truth about even the most basic piece of information about Common Core, which is who developed it in the first place and why states are adopting it. The truth is that Common Core is both unconstitutional and illegal. They know that. The truth is that if the American public knew about the unholy alliance between government and big business here, filled with crony capitalism and multi-million dollar bribes, the dissent we see now would pale in comparison to what we'd see then. They know that, too. And that is why the developers and proponents of Common Core are telling the American public a bald-faced lie about its origins. I'm sure you've heard it before.
Common Core State Standards is a voluntary, state-led initiative to improve the quality of education in the United States.
They are telling this lie often. As they are telling this lie, they sound like reasonable people. They are phrasing this lie in simple, easy-to-understand terms. By coincidence? I don't think so. Consider these directives for propaganda in Nazi Germany...
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
and
All propaganda has to be popular, and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of whom it seeks to reach.
I don't know about you, but the idea that they hold themselves above the rest of us, that they alone are smart enough to define and dictate what our children need to know, and that they think we can be duped by their snappy slogans and slick marketing phrases rubs me the wrong way. Their tactics are working, though. They are doing such a good job of perpetuating this lie that even folks who are critical of Common Core have accepted it and characterize it as a voluntary, state-led initiative before they go on to offer up whatever criticism they have of it.
Fortunately, this lie isn't difficult to debunk. It just takes some digging. There are lots of people, smarter than I am, who have spent untold hours researching Common Core and reached the same conclusions that I have. In the spirit of not reinventing the wheel, I'm going to share their words, and I'll start with the two most powerful statements to obliterate that lie. Then, I'll backtrack and explain why those two people said what they did.
One, in a video-taped lecture about Common Core, Dr. Peg Luksik insists that people, "...can only accept that this was state-led if you ignore the federal legislation (and I will add huge financial contributions toward development and implementation from big business) driving it."
Two, in an article written for American Educator, New York principal Tim Farley says, "What they call 'voluntary', I call 'extortion'."
So, let's backtrack to the federal legislation driving Common Core. Unless you've done some research or watched one of the many videos opponents of Common Core have delivered, you're probably wondering, "what federal legislation?" As I understand it, the unattainable standards of 100% proficiency in reading and math set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) enacted by the second Bush administration, were (are) set to go into full force in the 2013 - 2014 school year. There are stiff penalties for a failure to meet the standards laid out in NCLB, including the closure of schools and loss of federal Title I funding, which many states rely heavily on.
Moving forward from the second Bush administration to the Obama administration...In the "stabilization fund", the administration allocated $53.6 billion to the federal Department of Education, with $4.35 billion going to a grant program for states for education called Race to the Top. The states were all invited to compete for Race to the Top money, as though "winning" this grant money was some sort of badge of honor. Nothing is ever free, including money that, by my thinking anyway, should have been state money to begin with. Depending on whom you believe, agreeing to adopt Common Core was either a requirement for being just eligible to win Race to the Top grant money or the state making that agreement earned extra "points" for doing so. The way I see it, there's not much difference. The states making that agreement are going to be the ones awarded the money, and these days, every dollar counts. Furthermore, states agreeing to adopt Common Core are also granted waivers from those impossible standards laid out in NCLB, which, with huge Title I funding dollars on the line, is yet another "incentive" for states to do so. In her presentation, Dr. Peg Luksik referred to NCLB as the stick and Race to the Top as the carrot. In a nutshell, this is both the federal legislation driving Common Core and the reason Tim Farley calls the state adoption of Common Core "extortion".
To further debunk the ridiculous notion that Common Core is a state-led initiative, go to the 1:58 mark of the video titled Common Core Curriculum - A Trojan Horse for Education Reform, a very simple yes or no question sheet developed by Professor Dave Scanlon of Sacramento State University, about whether Common Core could possibly be a state-led initiative was shared.
Proponents of Common Core are also citing the National Governor's Association (NGA) and the Council for Chief School Officers (CCSO) as evidence of the initiative being state-led. Sounds reasonable, right? Governors and State Superintendents of Schools. Sounds like state stuff to me, too....until I found out that they are both non-profit organizations whose meetings are not public and whose members do not here represent the will or wishes of the people who elected them to their respective offices. They are trade groups. They are also each recipients of money from the Gates Foundation, but more on that in a future post about the unholy alliance in Common Core between government and big business. That's just as galling and even more despicable.
Common Core State Standards is a voluntary, state-led initiative to improve the quality of education in the United States.
They are telling this lie often. As they are telling this lie, they sound like reasonable people. They are phrasing this lie in simple, easy-to-understand terms. By coincidence? I don't think so. Consider these directives for propaganda in Nazi Germany...
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
and
All propaganda has to be popular, and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of whom it seeks to reach.
I don't know about you, but the idea that they hold themselves above the rest of us, that they alone are smart enough to define and dictate what our children need to know, and that they think we can be duped by their snappy slogans and slick marketing phrases rubs me the wrong way. Their tactics are working, though. They are doing such a good job of perpetuating this lie that even folks who are critical of Common Core have accepted it and characterize it as a voluntary, state-led initiative before they go on to offer up whatever criticism they have of it.
Fortunately, this lie isn't difficult to debunk. It just takes some digging. There are lots of people, smarter than I am, who have spent untold hours researching Common Core and reached the same conclusions that I have. In the spirit of not reinventing the wheel, I'm going to share their words, and I'll start with the two most powerful statements to obliterate that lie. Then, I'll backtrack and explain why those two people said what they did.
One, in a video-taped lecture about Common Core, Dr. Peg Luksik insists that people, "...can only accept that this was state-led if you ignore the federal legislation (and I will add huge financial contributions toward development and implementation from big business) driving it."
Two, in an article written for American Educator, New York principal Tim Farley says, "What they call 'voluntary', I call 'extortion'."
So, let's backtrack to the federal legislation driving Common Core. Unless you've done some research or watched one of the many videos opponents of Common Core have delivered, you're probably wondering, "what federal legislation?" As I understand it, the unattainable standards of 100% proficiency in reading and math set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) enacted by the second Bush administration, were (are) set to go into full force in the 2013 - 2014 school year. There are stiff penalties for a failure to meet the standards laid out in NCLB, including the closure of schools and loss of federal Title I funding, which many states rely heavily on.
Moving forward from the second Bush administration to the Obama administration...In the "stabilization fund", the administration allocated $53.6 billion to the federal Department of Education, with $4.35 billion going to a grant program for states for education called Race to the Top. The states were all invited to compete for Race to the Top money, as though "winning" this grant money was some sort of badge of honor. Nothing is ever free, including money that, by my thinking anyway, should have been state money to begin with. Depending on whom you believe, agreeing to adopt Common Core was either a requirement for being just eligible to win Race to the Top grant money or the state making that agreement earned extra "points" for doing so. The way I see it, there's not much difference. The states making that agreement are going to be the ones awarded the money, and these days, every dollar counts. Furthermore, states agreeing to adopt Common Core are also granted waivers from those impossible standards laid out in NCLB, which, with huge Title I funding dollars on the line, is yet another "incentive" for states to do so. In her presentation, Dr. Peg Luksik referred to NCLB as the stick and Race to the Top as the carrot. In a nutshell, this is both the federal legislation driving Common Core and the reason Tim Farley calls the state adoption of Common Core "extortion".
To further debunk the ridiculous notion that Common Core is a state-led initiative, go to the 1:58 mark of the video titled Common Core Curriculum - A Trojan Horse for Education Reform, a very simple yes or no question sheet developed by Professor Dave Scanlon of Sacramento State University, about whether Common Core could possibly be a state-led initiative was shared.
- Did state legislators have input and control over content, standards, tests, and costs?
- Did the state school boards have input and control over content, standards, tests, and costs?
- Did teachers have input and control over content, standards, and tests?
- Did local school boards have input and control over content, standards, tests, and costs?
- Did school boards convene general meetings for parents, to explain the Common Core curriculum and costs before adopting them?
- Did experimental research support the effectiveness of Common Core content, standards, and digital learning with computers?
The answer to each and every one of those questions is a resounding, "NO". If Common Core had truly been a state-led initiative, the answer to each and every one of those questions would have been affirmative.
Jim Stergios, PhD, who is the Executive Director of the Pioneer Institute agrees. "When we developed our standards in Massachusetts, it took us years because we debated texts, we debated what was going to go into US history standards. It was all publicly debated. Public testimony was taken," he said in the documentary Building the Machine. There was no secrecy involved. Everyone who had a stake in the children's education had a voice.
Not so with Common Core. David Coleman, the lead architect of Common Core, is not and never has been a classroom teacher. He's a businessman, and, as you'll learn in a future post, is benefiting from the crony capitalism that has pervaded Common Core since its inception. It's sick. Achieve. Student Achievement Partners. ACT. The College Board. America's Choice. Who the heck are these people? They're the folks behind Common Core, not state or local school boards and not classroom teachers and not even researchers with proven track records for studying K-12 education. Never heard of most of them before I started looking into Common Core. Once I did, finding information about them has proven frustrating at best, and for the record, I am the daughter of a librarian. Research is something I count as something I do very well, and even I have found myself stymied and at dead ends. Confirming what I am hearing and reading about them from other people, unearthing their agendas and what's-in-it-for-them has been so difficult that it has raised all sorts of red flags for me. Something stinks here...and nothing should be stinking so close to our children's educations.
Jim Stergios, PhD, who is the Executive Director of the Pioneer Institute agrees. "When we developed our standards in Massachusetts, it took us years because we debated texts, we debated what was going to go into US history standards. It was all publicly debated. Public testimony was taken," he said in the documentary Building the Machine. There was no secrecy involved. Everyone who had a stake in the children's education had a voice.
Not so with Common Core. David Coleman, the lead architect of Common Core, is not and never has been a classroom teacher. He's a businessman, and, as you'll learn in a future post, is benefiting from the crony capitalism that has pervaded Common Core since its inception. It's sick. Achieve. Student Achievement Partners. ACT. The College Board. America's Choice. Who the heck are these people? They're the folks behind Common Core, not state or local school boards and not classroom teachers and not even researchers with proven track records for studying K-12 education. Never heard of most of them before I started looking into Common Core. Once I did, finding information about them has proven frustrating at best, and for the record, I am the daughter of a librarian. Research is something I count as something I do very well, and even I have found myself stymied and at dead ends. Confirming what I am hearing and reading about them from other people, unearthing their agendas and what's-in-it-for-them has been so difficult that it has raised all sorts of red flags for me. Something stinks here...and nothing should be stinking so close to our children's educations.
Proponents of Common Core are also citing the National Governor's Association (NGA) and the Council for Chief School Officers (CCSO) as evidence of the initiative being state-led. Sounds reasonable, right? Governors and State Superintendents of Schools. Sounds like state stuff to me, too....until I found out that they are both non-profit organizations whose meetings are not public and whose members do not here represent the will or wishes of the people who elected them to their respective offices. They are trade groups. They are also each recipients of money from the Gates Foundation, but more on that in a future post about the unholy alliance in Common Core between government and big business. That's just as galling and even more despicable.
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
Common Core has Parallels to Education in Nazi Germany
The requirement was that
I write a 1500 word position paper on an issue I am passion about. I
wrote those 1500 words in my inaugural post here on this
blog. I found 1500 words to be wholly inadequate. My original
thesis statement was: "Common Core is bad for our kids, bad for the
quality of public education, bad for a free society, and must be eradicated
from our nation's schools." In my first post, I did 1500 words on
just the two most compelling reasons that Common Core is bad for our kids and
the two most compelling reasons why it is bad for the quality of education our
children will be getting. Now I am going to turn my attention to
identifying why everyone who cares about freedom should oppose Common Core.
Common Core is bad for a
free society. Like I said in my first post, Common Core is
unconstitutional and therefore, illegal. That fact - and
yes, it is a fact - should put an end to all debate about
Common Core in this country. It is unconstitutional and therefore
illegal, and here in Arizona, members of the Senate, who have all sworn an oath
to protect and uphold the Constitution, voted mostly along party lines (with a
few Republicans joining the Democrats) to kill a bill that would have forced Arizona to withdraw from Common Core. Unfortunately, the fact that it is
unconstitutional doesn't seem to even faze most politicians. I wonder if
the parallels to Nazi Germany - yeah, yeah, yeah, I know...I sound crazy...-
would bother folks. I might sound crazy, but the commonalities are too
striking and too numerous to just summarily ignore.
I sincerely hope that if people like me are unable to
remove Common Core from our schools, it is indeed fully implemented throughout
the country, and we have several years of students who have gone through the program,
that what we see in the end is what the proponents of Common Core are promising
us. I sincerely hope
that I am wrong. I sincerely hope that I
need to don my tinfoil hat and eat a big slice of humble pie. The implications of our ruling governing
class ignoring the law, especially where it concerns the education of our
children, are frightening. I cannot overlook those, and neither should
you.
Consider the following
quotes....
"He alone, who owns
the youth, owns the future."
"How fortunate for
leaders that men do not think."
Consider this recap of
education in Nazi Germany...
"The Nazi Party
motto regarding education stated: "The supreme task of the schools is the
education of youth for the service of Volk and State in the National Socialist
spirit." The teachers taught Nazi propaganda and the students
recited it verbatim. If there were errors, the students were punished
until they could recite the material correctly. There was no allowance
for discussion and certainly not disagreement. This is the essence of
thought control or brainwashing.
The school system became
substandard almost immediately. German students knew only what they had
memorized. They did not have the mental tools for original thought.
Even the German scientists, who worked in rocket development at
Penemunde, complained that their new assistants and workers were ignorant in
science and could not perform the most basic mathematical calculations."
When I take that apart, this is what I see...
The teachers taught Nazi propaganda and the students recited it verbatim.
The developers of the Common Core created the standards and the assessments, which means they are in control of the curriculum and what will be taught in public schools. What I am seeing in the research I have done so far is that Common Core English relies heavily on "non-fiction" texts and that the children will be required to use only the text provided to formulate their ideas and convey them. What that insures is twofold. First, that only the information that fits the ideology of the businesses and organizations putting forth Common Core will be provided to students, and second, that children will essentially be regurgitating the information they are provided, without doing much - if any - critical thinking.
If there were errors, the students were punished until they could recite the material correctly.
There are consequences to the schools and the students when students fail to comply and meet standards.
There is no allowance for discussion, and certainly not disagreement.
Like I indicated above, students will be required to use only the texts provided to formulate opinions and answer questions. Assessments will be looking for key words. Failure to comply will result in lower scores.
In addition, let's look at how Common Core came to be in the first place, and the battleground it has become. Is its origin reasonable? Believe it or not, this also warrants a post of its own, and I will get to that too. With as much dissent and controversy at surrounds Common Core right now, is it a good idea to keep moving forward at this pace, or would everyone - except those who are getting rich from the rampant crony capitalism pervading Common Core behind the scenes and providing the technology, textbooks, and assessments Common Core will require - benefit from slowing down and allowing a more careful examination of the facts?
In a new documentary about Common Core, titled Building the Machine, Dr. Jim Stergios, who is the Executive Director of the Pioneer Institute expresses similar thoughts. "When we developed our standards in Massachusetts, it took us years because we debated texts, we debated what was going to go into US history standards. It was all publicly debated. Public testimony was taken," he said.
It's worth asking: what are they hiding, and what is the rush?
The school system became substandard almost immediately. German students knew only what they had memorized. They did not have the mental tools for original thought.
What happens with high-stakes testing is that teachers will teach to the tests, and they will ignore anything that is not on the assessment; they have to, if they want to keep their jobs. Dr. Sandra Stotsky, who refused to sign off on Common Core English Language Arts standards, said much the same thing: "Common Core's ELA 'college readiness' standards weaken the base of literacy and cultural knowledge needed for authentic college level coursework, decreasing the capacity for analytical thinking (emphasis mine)." This too, is worthy of a post all on its own.
Even the German scientists, who worked in rocket development at Penemunde, complained that their new assistants and workers were ignorant in science and could not perform the most basic mathematical calculations.
Remember Dr. James Milgram from my previous post? He expressed concerns that the mathematical standards were inadequate, too.
There's more. In Nazi Germany, there were:
- A powerful teacher's union promoting the new system
- Non-compliant teachers were weeded out
- Curriculum was written to reflect political ideology,
and history was rewritten
- Standards were dumbed down
- "Master Teachers" were used to
"train" other teachers
- Massive amounts of data were collected on both students
and teachers
- Some students were trained to spy on their teachers and
their peers
- The belief that the children belonged to the state.
Let's examine some of
those, while we look at Common Core...
- The NEA and the AFT have sold out our students.
Their support has been bought and paid for by millions of dollars of
grants from the Gates Foundation.
- Teachers who do not support Common Core have no choice
but to resign.
A physics teacher in Utah resigns in disgust over Common Core.
and
Another teacher, also disgusted by Common Core, posted his letter of resignation on YouTube.
- The organizations that funded and developed Common Core
are all progressive, leftist organizations. This in and
of itself is an entire blog post, and I will get to it. It gets
worse than what I am sharing here. Don't take my word for it,
though. Phil Caro, the co-lead author of Common Core math, lays it
all out for anyone who is listening. Go to the 4:56 mark, and you
will hear him say, "The reason we have math standards is for the social
justice agenda..." Excuse me? The social justice
agenda? Whose idea of social justice? How do they define
social justice? Furthermore, I thought the reason we taught math to
children was so that they would grow up into adults with the competent
mastery of math that simply living a normal life requires!
Additionally, there is
this example of curriculum being written to suit a political agenda, and
history being rewritten:
- I think we've sufficiently covered enough, although
there is more for later posts, to note that Common Core standards are
indeed dumbed down.
- I've heard whispers of the idea of "Master Teachers"
in America, but I don't yet know enough about it to share anything on this
topic.
- Data systems in education are nothing new.
However, Common Core takes it to a whole new level. I am
currently researching this, so that I know I am getting and giving correct
information when I do share. Know, though, that what I am
discovering is enough to turn my stomach.
- I don't know anything yet about "student
spies", but it isn't a stretch to believe that, fully implemented, it
could happen.
- Progressive Americans are embracing the idea that your children belong to the state.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
1500 Word, Level 1 Position Paper on Common Core
Several of my friends on Facebook asked to read the 1500 word position paper I had to write for my Level I certification from the Tennessee Center for Self Governance about Common Core when I was done writing it. Initially, I said that I'd just post it as a note on Facebook. However, I changed my mind. I changed my mind because 1500 words wasn't nearly enough for me to convey to anyone else why Common Core is so evil and must be eradicated. I knew, whether I needed to for further levels of certification from the Tennessee Center for Self Governance or not, I would end up sharing what I learned while I did hours of research into Common Core. Since I will take this issue through all five levels of classes, although I'm not sure yet what I will be tasked to do with it, I know I will want to be able to share this journey with others. A blog seemed the perfect place. Without further ado, here is my position paper!
It’s unconstitutional….and therefore, illegal. That’s where the debate in this country about
Common Core, and every other educational program originating in or receiving
support from the federal government – beginning with the creation of the federal
Department of Education and continued in the years since by administrations of
both parties – should end.
Unfortunately, far too many Americans, including those who have sworn an
oath to support and defend the constitution, either don’t know what they ought
to know about enumerated powers or they simply don’t care about the supreme law
of our land. While I think I should be
able to write, “Common Core is an unconstitutional encroachment by the federal
government into what is supposed to be a state issue” enough times to equal the
1500 words I am supposed to write about the issue and call that good, the law
apparently isn’t compelling enough to convince every citizen and every local,
state, and federal politician to pay attention and do the right thing. Instead, we need a little pizzazz, some
slogan-worthy rhetoric, or some shock-and-awe to motivate people to action. So, here it is, in unambiguous, unapologetic
terms: Common Core is bad for our children, bad for the quality of education in
America, bad for our free society, and must be eradicated from our nation’s
schools. Since I can’t do it all in 1500
words, I’ll start with an emotional appeal, and I’ll save all of the truly
scary stuff for another time. Common Core is bad for our children.
It’s a heartbreaking photo, taken in black and white. A very little girl is sitting by herself at
what appears to be a dining room table.
A textbook is open in front of her.
Her head rests dejectedly in the palm of her hand. Her face is frozen for an eternity in utter
misery, tears captured right where they were as they rolled down her cheeks at
the moment the photo was snapped. Her
mother, the photographer, laments that this picture is the first one taken of
her daughter that she has ever hated.
The anecdotal evidence, like this photo, that Common Core is destroying
the spirits of our school-children, has flooded social media. Common Core is bad for our children for more
reasons than I could write about in this paper.
Let’s look at the two most compelling: the standards themselves are
impossible, and the standards are not developmentally appropriate.
The most obvious and significant reason to eradicate Common
Core from our nation’s schools is that the Common Core standards are impossible
for our children to achieve. These are
not standards for schools; they are standards for our children that they learn
exactly the same things at exactly the same time to exactly the same
degree. The federal government is
demanding that your child comply,
ignoring the inconvenient fact that children do not grow, learn, or develop at
the same time or rate. What will happen when that inconvenient fact
is ignored is that either the “lowest performing pupils” will be pushed far
beyond their capabilities and will fail, the “highest performing pupils” will
be restrained and subjected to dumbed down standards, or more likely, some
combination of the two. Standards-based
education has been a colossal failure in the United States because no matter
how much money is thrown at it, it doesn’t change the inevitable. There are no other options. How are any of those options good for our
children? Even assuming that the goal of
standardized education was realistic, do we really want to live in a society
where everyone is only allowed to learn the same things as everyone else does,
at the same time as everyone else learns it, to the same degree that everyone
else accomplishes? Think, for a moment,
about the far-reaching implications of that for society as a whole. Then, what will that do to the spirits of our
children who are being herded through the institution of “education”?
The next reason, closely tied to the first, to eradicate
Common Core from our nation’s schools is that the Common Core standards are
developmentally inappropriate, especially for our youngest students. The chief architect of Common Core, David
Coleman, is a businessman who is making a fortune via Common Core, not a
teacher. Of the 135 member committee who
wrote the K-3 standards, not a single one was a K-3 classroom teacher or an
early childhood development specialist. The
Joint Statement of Early Childhood Health and Education Professionals on the
Common Core Standards Initiative (can be viewed in its entirety here: http://www.edweek.org/media/joint_statement_on_core_standards.pdf)
opens with, “We have grave concerns about the core standards for young children
now being written by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council
of Chief State School Officers (CCSSC).”
The complete statement outlines their concerns, and yet has been
summarily dismissed by proponents of Common Core. What happens when children are asked to do
something that is developmentally inappropriate? Do they succeed? Now how about when they are mandated to comply with developmentally
inappropriate standards? When the stakes
are that high, what will become of tiny children who are ill-equipped to deal
with such pressure? Is Common Core
something we are doing for our
children, or is it actually something we are doing to our children?
It requires, in the famous words of Hillary Clinton as she
responded to General Petraeus’s testimony about the war in Iraq, “a willing
suspension of disbelief” to accept that Common Core will improve the quality of
education in America. When standards
that child development experts have grave concerns about are being foisted on
our youth, we must at least question whether or not Common Core will do what
its proponents are insisting that it will do: improve the quality of education
our children receive in our nation’s schools.
How can something that experts are condemning as harmful improve
education? Will mandating student achievement,
especially when some expectations are developmentally inappropriate to begin
with, somehow magically make kids smarter and make test scores rise? Let’s say, though, for the sake of argument,
that all of those early childhood education experts are wrong. The standards set forth by Common Core are
not harmful to young children. Are
opponents dead in the water then?
Not quite. We have to
go no further than the very forces behind Common Core State Standards for more
proof that Common Core is not going to improve the quality of education in
America. “With the exception of a few
standards in trigonometry, the math standards end after Algebra II,” said Dr. James
Milgram, a professor emeritus at Stanford University and one of only two
teachers to sit on the validation committee for Common Core. Milgram refused to sign off on the standards,
because “….they did not match up to international expectations. They are at least two years behind the
practices of high achieving countries by 7th grade, and, as a number
of people have observed, only require a partial understanding of what would be
the content of a normal, solid course in Algebra I or Geometry. Moreover, they cover very little content of
Algebra II, and none of any higher level course….They will not help our
children match up to students in the top foreign countries when it comes to
being hired to top level jobs.” The
College Board’s own Senior Vice President, Trevor Packer, concurs. “…Calculus sits outside of the Common Core…and
in fact, the Common Core asks that educators slow down the progression through math (emphasis mine) so that students learn college-ready
math very well,” Packer stated.
(Scroll to the 1:10 mark for his remarks about math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbgEo52DEqs)
Wait. What? The Common Core is going to improve the quality of education by slowing down the instruction of math and removing calculus, which at the last time I checked, was a requirement for admission into many state universities and all of the military academies, from its standards? So how exactly is that supposed to work?
(Scroll to the 1:10 mark for his remarks about math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbgEo52DEqs)
Wait. What? The Common Core is going to improve the quality of education by slowing down the instruction of math and removing calculus, which at the last time I checked, was a requirement for admission into many state universities and all of the military academies, from its standards? So how exactly is that supposed to work?
Apparently, I am not the only one confused by that. Dr. Sandra Stotsky, who is a professor
emeritus at Arkansas State University and also served on the validation
committee for Common Core (she too refused to sign off on the standards, by the
way), expressed a similar sentiment. “It’s
astonishing that 46 boards and departments of education adopted Common Core’s ‘college
and career ready standards’ without asking the faculty who teach math at their
own higher education institutions to do an analysis of Common Core’s definition
of college readiness,” she said. In a
scathing critique of the Common Core English standards (of which the full text
can be found at: http://www.uaedreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2000/01/Stotsky_Testimony_for_Colorado.pdf),
Stotsky calls these Common Core standards for English language arts and
reading, “empty skill sets”, and cites the Fordham Institute’s own review of
them for further evidence of their inadquecy.
Do we even need to go into the multitude of other ways
Common Core will damage the quality of education in American schools, or can we
allow the words of people in the inner-circle of Common Core development to run
with red ink all over the snappy slogans and empty rhetoric about academic
rigor offered by proponents?
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