Another Concern About Common Core...

I hope this makes sense...


“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. Always remember these commands I give you today. Teach them to your children, and talk about them when you sit at home and walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them down and tie them to your hands as a sign. Tie them on your forehead to remind you, and write them on your doors and gates.”
Matthew 6:5-9

  In the old days when most moms stayed home the above verse was a little easier to do. Mom was always home. All those little incidences which came up during the day were perfect opportunities to insert little “lessons about God.” Later when the child entered school, you could still feel pretty comfortable that your same values were being reinforced at school. Teachers could freely talk about God, read the Bible, and pray without any complaint or problem. The Ten Commandments were posted in every school, at the courthouse, even in some businesses. Things have changed so much in our schools, in our homes and even in our churches.

Now in order to protect our children, we have to take a more vigilant stance. We can’t just sit by and hope for the best. We have to become watchmen on the walls of our schools. If we don’t, we are going to lose our children, lose our way of life, and our freedom.

One way I fear this may be done is through indoctrination of our kids while they are at school and never have I felt this so close upon our doorstep as now with the adoption of the Common Core Standards. There are many things that trouble me with Common Core but I would like to address one of the teaching methods “clustering.”
I have watched a couple of videos showing teachers teaching a Common Core lesson and what stood out was how they break up into small groups and openly discuss things or work together on math problems. It seems pretty innocent on first glance, but as I watched 2 or 3, I had a few thoughts come to mind. They do the clustering in the reading/language arts and the math. In math it supposedly helps the students work to figure out the problem together, realize there are more than one way to get the answer through “discovery”. In reading/language arts they are given an informational text and they read it, discuss it in whatever context the teacher has directed them, questioning, discussing, debating. 70% of the reading in Common Core is for informational text and only 30% is for teaching the great literature classics. 

Depending on what types of documents and the directions given by the teacher, as I watched I had an observation about what was going on. This was a perfect way to get the kids to “group think” or think like every other person in the group. In these small groups (3-4 to a group) the kids are very closely seated at different tables discussing often controversial subjects. 

Can you imagine: there’s the boisterous child who always has an opinion, the intellectual child who thinks he knows it all and the quiet, timid child in one group. Whose opinion do you think will matter most? I don’t think it would be the quiet, timid child although, we as adults realize that being quiet doesn’t mean you don’t know anything or that your opinion wouldn’t be valid, but children are not as wise about those things. They are often easily swayed by the more confident, boisterous child, so that’s why I think constant “clustering” like this over and over, day by day, year to year could cause kids to care more about what their peers think than their own opinion. Everything becomes relative. Peer pressure, to be apart of the group or cluster and feel accepted by the group or cluster, etc. could become more important to the child than what he has been raised to think by his parents. The group, his peers, becomes more important than his principles instilled in him by his parents and depending on the teacher, this could leave the child wide open to be guided into beliefs he would have never accepted had he/she not been constantly questioning, debating and being guided by the group and the teacher or the curriculum depending on what types of articles or documents and lessons they are given to “cluster” about. I know peer pressure has always been a problem but I think this could become “peer pressure on steroids.”There could also be questions about the informational texts being used. How do we know if the information is good and evenly discusses both sides of the issue?


Here are a few examples of classroom assignments:


  “Argue for a life of sexual freedom picturing a spontaneous sexual affair that hurts and harms no one.” (“The Storm” by Kat Chopin) · Give a “logical explanation” for Timothy McVeigh’s “unquenchable fury against the U.S. Government.”
· Write an essay about illegal immigration. “Aside from providing the United States with a source of manual labor, what other good do illegal immigrants contribute to American society? Think of the intangibles they bring.”
· Read “Drugs” by Gore Vidal. “Write an essay in which you use critical thinking skills … concerning the legalization of drugs.”
Students are asked to write about whose fault it was that “pushers got the kids hooked on heroine and deaths increased dramatically.” The assignment asks “Whose fault? Evil men like the Mafiosi? Permissive Dr. Spock? Wild-eyed Dr. Leary? No. The Government of the United States was responsible for those deaths.”

The use of profanity and vulgarity in textbooks that are aligned with Common Core is shocking and well beyond the mores approved by most Alabama parents.
  Parents this is VERY serious. These types of activities used daily or even weekly year after year from K-12 could be dangerous. I see this as a type of indoctrination or undermining of the parents beliefs, values and principles and putting in their place whatever the “group” has decided. These are children, not adults who can not make true assessments about many different situations simply for the fact of maturity and life experiences. We know wisdom comes from God but also from maturing and having life experiences of successes and failures and from the advice of your parents or other adults you know and trust. Last of all, knowing these types of lessons will be taught, do you trust the people in charge of Common Core who are setting the standards, making up the lessons, eventually recommending curriculum and doing the testing ?

Remember: President Obama’s Secretary of Education has characterized Common Core as a “revolution” to help in the “battle for social justice”.

Think about all of the things this administration has done in the last four years. Don’t you think he will be just as radical and persistent in getting what he wants in education. Why do we have to hand Alabama’s children to them on a silver platter? Here, do with them what you will…..and they most certainly will.

Call and e-mail your senate education committee members and your own senator Monday through Wednesday.
They are listed at the top of this page: http://www.legislature.state.al.us/senate/senatecommittees/senatecommittees.html#anchor539453
 Contact info for all the senators here: http://www.legislature.state.al.us/senate/senators/senateroster_alpha.html
We need to bombard them with our calls!