Common Core Likes Unions

New Common Core for 6th Graders: Unions Good Employers Bad

According to Kyle Olson of Education Action Group (EAG) a non-partisan organization that looks to promote education reform, new Common Core Materials are biased against business owners but support unions. Could this have anything to do with NEA biases?

Olson says that schools in more than 40 states have begun teaching students according to the new Common Core math and English standards.
 A scale depicted in the books shows landowners living well, and having it easy, while worker slave away poorly compensated by greedy owners.

Because of the new standards, thousands of school districts have replaced their previous curriculum with new, Common Core-ready textbooks and teaching materials. Common Core, however did not begin the bias against business and the free markets. Mnay textbook over the years have a litany of complaints against capitalism and the free markets.

A textbook company contracted to produce materials under the Common Core State Standards is trying to teach students as young as second grade about economic fairness by praising unions, protests and labor leader Cesar Chavez, according to an education watchdog group.

Zaner-Bloser, which is based in Columbus, Ohio, is distributing a lesson plan aimed at teaching second-graders about “equality” by highlighting labor issues, according to EAG. As part of the plan, students spend a week reading “Harvesting Hope,” a book about Chavez written by children’s author Kathleen Krull, and then discuss what the lesson plan calls “scales of fairness,” which compare the living conditions of farm workers to that of land owners.

“Fairness and equality exist when the scales are balanced,” teachers are prompted to instruct the students. They are then supposed to ask the students whether both sides, as presented in the plan, are equal, providing a correct answer of “no” in the teachers’ guides.

“Why are we teaching organized labor lessons to young children?” asked Kyle Olson, the publisher of the group’s website. “Isn’t there a simpler way to teach about fairness, like saying it’s not fair if Johnny works all day and gets one piece of candy while Jimmy plays video games all day and gets the same piece of candy?”

It was not immediately clear how many districts are using Zaner-Bloser’s materials. But the company on Wednesday evening defended the Common Core standards and said Education Action Group was targeting one lesson plan instead of viewing the program as a whole.

Chavez, who died in 1993, is considered an icon of the American labor movement and Latino community for his efforts to unionize field workers across the country.  Last year, the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument was dedicated in Keene, California, an event at which President Obama spoke.

This isn’t the first time Olson has taken issue with Zaner-Bloser’s materials. Earlier this month, Olson ripped the company for teaching third-graders about organizing protests, a lesson plan that cited the 1985 SEIU-led janitors strike in Los Angeles.

It appears that growing public opposition to Common Core now include concerns that Common Core materials are biased against the free markets.

Source: Posted on 25 October 2013. Tags: educational standards, failure of common core standard, Kyle Olson EAG, political correctness, union propaganda By Bill Korach www.thereportcard.org  http://education-curriculum-reform-government-schools.org/w/2013/10/new-common-core-for-6th-graders-unions-good-employers-bad/