Common Core Concerns

A friend recently told me about the Common Core standards that are being adopted by Utah.   I was surprised by what she said and a little worried, but I figured that once I got the full story - it wouldn't be as concerning at it sounded.  I asked some of my friends who send their kids to public school about it, but the response I kept getting from them was, "Yes, I heard they were doing something different than 'No Child Left Behind,' but I don't know too much about it."

My friend told me something that intrigued me because it sounded so much like something out of 1984.  She said that Alpine School District, around the same time they adopted the Common Core standards, changed their mission statement to: "Enculturating the young into a social and political democracy."  I wasn't sure if I believed that.  First of all, "enculturating" sounded an awful lot like teaching the young to follow the norms of culture and not necessarily the teachings of their families.  I looked it up: "The gradual acquisition of the characteristics and norms of a culture or group".  Yep.

It also didn't help that I had also just participated in a Constitution class in which we talked about how the United States in NOT a democracy and the importance of understanding why - pure democracies in every single case recorded in history - have evolved into despotism because the majority's interests always supersede everyone else's and chaos ensues and then a dictator takes charge.  I looked up "social democracy" online:  Definition: "a political movement advocating a gradual and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism by democratic means".  Interesting.
 
My mom is a teacher at Alpine School district so I asked her what she thought.  She was glad they were getting a waiver from No Child Left Behind and that they were getting money for adopting Common Core.  I asked her if there really was a mural on the wall that said, "Enculturating the young into a social and political democracy."  She said, "Yes, it's on their mission statement."

I thought it was strange that in a state as conservative as ours, parents would be okay with such a strange mission statement.  It turns out that they haven't been and have tried to argue with the board to change it, but the board refuses.  You can read about it here:

Daily Herald
Daily Herald 2

If you take the time to read them, the board seems to think that the mission statement is misunderstood and that the intent is different than what it actually says - that democracy is "a type of republic" and that people are making a big deal out of wording.  It reminded me of this passage in 1984 where they are getting rid of words in order to control thought:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten."

Here is a lengthy article about what the Alpine school district probably means by it's statement.  Hmm. So why don't they just say what they mean?  You can read a lot of the articles about it if you follow the links at the bottom of the articles under "related articles".  One that I found particularly disturbing was by a BYU professor who questioned why parents think they know more about education than these experts who have studied and worked hard to come up with this mission statement.  Doesn't that sound like something out of Animal Farm?

Anyway, back to Common Core.  Maybe the Alpine mission statement has nothing to do with their adoption of Common Core.  I don't know, but the rhetoric is eerily similar.  Here's a video about some concerns with Common Core:



Here is another one (not very well filmed) that explains how it has come to be accepted in Utah:


I have to say that one of my biggest concerns came from the Utah Common Core site itself.  It stated that there will be a move towards more informational texts and less "literature".  In the elementary years they want to have it be 50/50, in middle school 55/45, and in high school 70% of what students read will be informational texts.  In other words, schools will be teaching students what to know and not how to think. This is one of the reasons I took my children out of school in the first place. I thought it was already too much that way, and now they are doing more of it.   It is a great way to produce great followers and terrible leaders. In fact, it was the type of education they had in Germany at the time of Hitler.

Honestly, in our age of google - you can find any information you need with a push of a button - why all of this emphasis on knowing facts? It's kind of fishy if you ask me...

I found this blog (shown to me by a friend) to be very informative.  It's by an Alpine School Board member and she explains what is going on very clearly and fairly (she often posts "common core updates" in red, so scroll down and read what she has to say about the latest in implementing it):
http://wendy4asd.blogspot.com/

I particularly liked these posts by her:
 Alpine's implementation of common core - Interesting to see how it is being implemented (like the move from books to online texts) as well as other things we are seeing.

Common Core doesn't determine curriculum pay close attention to what she says about the teaching of English.

Common Core is not a federal program...technically  pay attention to the questions she asks towards the end of the post.  I think they are MAJOR questions that ought to be answered.

Common Core: from the governors: no feds allowed - notice who is behind the initiative and what they have to gain.  I also like that she points out at the end how this is a top-down way to fix a problem (how well does has that worked in the past?) instead of a bottom-up (I feel strongly that bottom-up promotes freedom and top-down destroys it).

This next one was kind of scary to me since it mentions the possible effects to homeschoolers and charter schools.  It also makes us think about the question of "who will be determining the assessments" (we don't even have them to judge them yet!) and what are their assumptions and agendas?  Where are we getting our assessments?

Anyway, if you are not aware of what is going on, I would encourage you to look into it.  One of my friends who has been following it from the beginning tells me that this is something that is being adopted because people are too busy or tired to be involved.  She said it's a step more than "No Child Left Behind" towards the nationalization of education and we are being led step by step into something we will look back on when it is too late and think, "Boy, that was really dumb..."

I may have to move to Texas :-)