So much of the contemporary support for socialism, statism, and communism can be traced to the 1960’s leftists entering the education system and giving their left-ward slant to everything both as teachers and administrators. ? Those leftists were not content in just having an abundance of fellow leftists amongst educational personnel, they were determined to codify their subversion through implementing new national standards for the teaching of all subjects. ?Enter the Common Core education standards.
Phyllis Schlafly breaks-down the situation:
Under the guise of reforming the nation?s failing public schools, President Obama?s Department of Education offered states $4.35 billion in stimulus funds in a grant competition called Race to the Top in 2010.? In order to compete for the funds, let alone receive them, states had to agree to adhere to the only set of national academic standards then under development by a private organization funded largely by Bill Gates.
Governors of cash-strapped states were only too eager for the opportunity to supplement their budgets regardless of the quality of the standards.? In fact, the standards were not even completed until after the grant applications were due.? As a further inducement to apply for the funds, states were offered waivers of the Bush era No Child Left Behind law and were also warned that failure to adopt the new standards could cost poor districts their Title 1 funds.? One must wonder why allegedly superior academic standards necessitated such underhanded tactics.
The new national standards for Mathematics and English Language Arts, called Common Core, were adopted by forty-five states giving an appearance of national unanimity.? This facade crumbles once you know the standards were approved not by the people of these 45 states or their elected representatives but by governors and state boards of education officials.? Neither the state legislatures nor the voters ever knew about this radical change in their children?s education until this spring (more than two years after they were adopted).
As the standards began to be implemented during the 2012-2013 school year parents noticed disturbing changes in homework, textbooks, and tests.? Suddenly, Euclidian geometry was displaced, children were instructed to add in columns from left to right, and ?conceptual? math replaced fundamentals.? In language arts, ?close reading? strategies forced students to read texts ?in a vacuum? or without the encumbrance of what was deemed ?privileged information.? Furthermore, classical literature was dramatically reduced in favor of reading ?informational texts? like computer manuals.? The stated goal of the new standards, in both Math and English, is to make students ?college and career ready? by focusing on ?21st century skills.?
Glenn Beck has multiple programs on?The Blaze explaining the Common Core standards.
America?s downfall doesn?t begin with the ?low-information voter.? It starts with the no-knowledge student.
For decades, collectivist agitators in our schools have chipped away at academic excellence in the name of fairness, diversity and social justice. ?Progressive? reformers denounced Western civilization requirements, the Founding Fathers and the Great Books as racist. They attacked traditional grammar classes as irrelevant in modern life. They deemed ability grouping of students (tracking) bad for self-esteem. They replaced time-tested rote techniques and standard algorithms with fuzzy math, inventive spelling and multicultural claptrap.
Under President Obama, these top-down mal-formers ? empowered by Washington education bureaucrats and backed by misguided liberal philanthropists led by billionaire Bill Gates ? are now presiding over a radical makeover of your children?s school curriculum. It?s being done in the name of federal??Common Core? standards?that do anything but raise achievement standards.
All of this nationalizing of the education process is detrimental to the health of our country. ? Our Founding Fathers were men of incredible intellects. ? Their “formal” education pales in comparison to the years and dollars devoted to public education today. ? Yet our founders had an intellectual depth and capacity that is all but non-existent today.
Mike Myatt offers a good closing thought:
The only way for our nation to survive the trying times of the present, and what will likely be the difficult times ahead, is to replace the commoditization of education with a passion for developing our greatest national treasure ? the rich intellect of our people.
Our educational solution is three-fold:
1) Stop the implementation of Common Core educational standards. ? Stop the nationalization of education. ? Repeal and roll-back the implementations of Common Core that have occurred, as well as their derivatives in private school.
2) Advocate for maximum local control of education according to the principle of subsidiarity. ? Our seventh liberty principle is “Let parents apply their children?s share of state public education money to the schools they choose for their children.”
3) Promote an effort to educate people authentically in liberty with a respect toward our founding and our founding principles.