Common Core: Another Johnny-come-lately, one-size-fits-all
national standard that
attempts to fix a problem created by the original
national standard; our public school
system. Rotten to the Common Core By Matt
Shipley Thursday, May 2, 2013
Common Core, an education program developed with funding
from the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation to improve academic standards in
public schools,
will fall far short of its stated objective.
Its promoters tout it to be a “state-led effort to
establish a single set of clear
educational standards for English-language
arts and mathematics…”to provide
teachers, parents and students with a set of
well defined expectations and
“high standards that are consistent across
states…”
Underlying these statements is the proposition public
schools are not performing
very well or completely failing to educate
students to a necessary standard. Based
on the fact SAT scores, since 1962,
have twice been adjusted downward to
artificially depict higher scores among
students taking the exam but have continued
to decline and national literacy
scores
continue to decline as a percentage of the United States
population it is difficult to
refute the dysfunctional public school
proposition. Their solution to this very real
problem, however, is like
putting a gang green infected band aid on a gangrenous
open wound.
Common Core is just another Johnny-come-lately,
one-size-fits-all national
standard that attempts to fix a problem created by
the original national standard;
our public school system.
America’s modern public school system is the manifestation
of its founder’s vision,
the father of American public education, Horace
Mann. Horace Mann, a Unitarian Massachusetts school board member in the
1840s, wrote twelve annual reports
on public education that was to become the
foundation of every public school in
America. Mann prototyped his “Common
Schools” in his reports on the Prussian
school system.
Prussia was the first European state to institute public
schools, from which every
other country in Europe modeled their public
schools. So it is no coincidence Mann
modeled his “Common Schools” off the
ones he observe in Prussia while visiting
schools in Europe. Neither is it a
coincidence Prussia, known for its autocratic and
dictatorial society that
ultimately unified the other German states under its control,
would impose an uncompromising uniform standard upon its population.
In his seventh report, Mann ironically claimed, “we do not
desire to copy or to study
the systems of foreign nations, usually so
different from our own,” but then he went
on to say “surely we may copy his
[the Prussian school system’s] modes of teaching these elements, without
adopting his notions of passive obedience to the government.
” Evidence of
Mann’s lack of success in adopting the Prussian model without
instituting its
passive obedience to the government is found in America’s modern
myopic
obedience to the national government.
That America has become passively obedient to the national
government can be
seen throughout the 20th and the 21st Century in that
Americans sit passively by
or actively cheer when: Congress passes laws
violating the Constitution, Presidents
exceed their limited authority by
issuing orders not supported by any law passed by Congress and the
Supreme Court, when asked to interpose on behalf of we the
people, uphold
these things through the most ridiculous, convoluted, humanistic
and
illogical arguments a human mind can conjure. One only need compare the
grievances
listed in the Declaration of Independence to similar modern occurrences
to
see contemporary American society does not have the political will of its
forefathers.
For America, that was founded on and has celebrated its
diversity of ideas,
extensive government control and standardization of any
kind seems counter
intuitive. The framers of the Constitution were careful to
preserve the
independence of the States by only delegating finite
powers to the national
government. This allowed the citizens of each State to
preserve their cultural
diversity and pursue their own happiness.
Now, control over students in what and how they learn has
been institutionalized
in America by Mann via public schools. Mann, through
his Common School
system, was able to undo what so many sacrificed in the War
of Independence
to acquire and the founders carefully guarded in both the Articles
of Confederation
and the Constitution. This centralized control over public school students continues
to grow and its
latest adaptation is the voluntarily imposed Common Core
curriculum. Strips parental oversight of what children should be
taught
Common Core is rotten to the core, because no one can
justify its expense by any
potential gains in scholastic improvement, it
strips parental oversight of what
children should be taught, and it is a
one-size-fits-all program that will not serve
any child to their maximum
potential.
First, according to the Pioneer Institute and the American
Principles Project, which conducted a state by state comprehensive cost
analysis[1] of implementing
Common Core, in Pennsylvania alone the extra cost
of implementation was
estimated to be $645 million. As of January 2012, Pennsylvania was set to receive
only $40 million in Obama’s
Race to the Top funds, which were contingent upon
adoption of Common Core
standards, student Longitudinal data collection, and a
teacher evaluation
program.
Adding this up, for the adoption of a national standard,
Pennsylvania might receive
up to 6% of the extra costs from the government,
but will have to foot the bill for
over a half a billion dollars on their
own. None of this makes fiscal sense when
considering if Pennsylvania did not
adopt any other new program their education
costs would remain relatively
constant.
Second, if parents allow the government or any other
entity to dictate how their
children must be educated or what they must
learn, the parents might as well just
give their children to the government
or entity to raise. Even now, parents have
limited control over what children
are taught in public schools and everyone has
to pay for public schools
whether they have children or not. Common Core will
add more of the same to
an already burdensome tax system through another layer
of bureaucracy whose
standards, if history is any indication, have limited hope of
being achieved.
Third, children are not ginger bread men to be cut out of
common dough; they are
unique individuals with unique learning talents,
interests and needs. A common
standard may fit everyone, but it will not fit
anyone very well and its results will be
as disappointing as the results from
the public schools system, which the program
is intended to fix.
Furthermore, children in America do not belong to any
government, community,
business, or labor consortium. They belong to their
parents and to them alone.
Parents, therefore, must decide the values, morals
and information from which
their children will most benefit to live in
society. To abdicate this responsibility is
to allow someone else to make
decisions that will not always be to the benefit of
the children or
the parents.
Like every other aspect of life, the Bible provides
guidance on whose responsibility
it is to teach children. Any government;
national, State, or local that dictates what
children must be taught and
extorts money through taxation to pay for their vision
has overstepped the
bounds of their biblical jurisdiction. Romans 13:3-5 describes
the purpose of
government: to wield the sword of justice against evil doers, but
nowhere in the Bible will you find education as one of its functions.
In Proverbs 22:6, one will find the Bible giving
responsibility of a
child’s education to parents. The Bible also states in
Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of knowledge,” and since
public schools have completely
pushed Christ out of the classroom it is no
wonder their academic performance
has gone with Him.
Mann’s utopian pursuit of standardized universal “free
education” was the European totalitarian bridgehead into America and it has
turned into the coercive failed public
school system America has today. Like
all utopias, the only way to achieve them is
through coercion.
This coercion is nearly absent from non-publicly funded
schools and these schools
most always cost less to operate and produce better
educational results in nearly
every measurable way than their publicly funded
counterparts. A 1997 study[2]
found home schooled children, on the average, outperformed
their public school counterparts by 30 to 37 percentile points on all subjects. These findings were
further supported by
Dr. Lawrence Rudner who found children that were
homeschooled all their
school aged years had the highest academic achievement.
Since uniformity and top down imposed standards have not
worked, the solution to deteriorating performance in America’s public schools
is simple, return responsibility for education to parents by defunding public
schools and restoring parents’ right to
decide where and how to educate their
children.
Some may argue defunding public schools would deprive many
“under privileged”
children of an education, but considering what they
receive now, it might actually
be an improvement. Besides, violation of
property rights, through taxation for public
schools, or any other violation
of the rights specifically mentioned in the Declaration
of Independence is
never justified, no matter how noble the cause. Additionally,
it is an individual’s
responsibility to be charitable to the under privileged, because
when a
government does it through taxation it is called theft or extortion, not
charity.
Much of the resistance to defunding public schools comes
from the fact most people living today, who grew up in America, are a product
of a public school, have known no
other system of education, and cannot
imagine how another system would work.
Those who think this way are oblivious
to the fact that prior to 1840, all American
schools were non-public,
biblically based, and produced the founding culture, which
in turn
established the most successful nation in the history of the world. The
secularized standardization of Common Core, by contrast, is rotten to the
core just like the seed
of “Common Schools” from which it was germinated that
produced the culture who
voted for the politicians America has today. If people were to take the time to
compare the results of the
two systems they too would see for themselves what
Mann has done to
education.
Source: Canada Free
Press, 5/2/13, Rotten to the Common Core by Matt Shipley http://canadafreepress.com
[1] Pioneer Institute and American Principles Project,
National Costs to Aligning
States and Localities to the Common Core
Standards, No 82, February 2012.
[2] Dr. Brian Ray, Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers
Across America.
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