Rotten to the Core (Part 2): Readin’, Writin’ and Deconstructionism

Michelle Malkin.com ^ | January 25, 2013 | Michelle Malkin

[Academiadotorg]

The Common Core English/language arts criteria call for students to spend only half of their class time studying literature, and only 30 percent of their class time by their junior and senior years in high school.

Under Common Core, classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are of no more academic value than the pages of the Federal Register or the Federal Reserve archives — or a pro-Obamacare opinion essay in The New Yorker. Audio and video transcripts, along with “alternative literacies” that are more “relevant” to today’s students (pop song lyrics, for example), are on par with Shakespeare.

English professor Mary Grabar describes Common Core training exercises that tell teachers “to read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without emotion and without providing any historical context. Common Core reduces all ‘texts’ to one level: the Gettysburg Address to the EPA’s Recommended Levels of Insulation.” Indeed, in my own research, I found one Common Core “exemplar” on teaching the Gettysburg Address that instructs educators to “refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset.”

Another exercise devised by Common Core promoters features the Gettysburg Address as a word cloud. Yes, a word cloud. Teachers use the jumble of letters, devoid of historical context and truths, to help students chart, decode and “deconstruct” Lincoln’s speech.

[ClearCase_guy]

It’s bad if words mean something.
It’s bad if we say something is “true”.
It’s bad if we say something is “bad”.
It’s bad if people think too much.

[Mrs.Liberty]

At my son's high school (south San Diego county), none of what we read in high school--the classics--were on the list of books the students read in class. One book I recall that the seniors had to read was the one about building schools in Afghanistan, "Three Cups of Tea". The entire year was devoted to various themes around this book, and final senior presentations as well.

The other thing they did in English class, all four years, was require the students to read 10 books a year, and answer a questionnaire about the books.

Here was the kicker. The books did not have to English language books.

[robowombat]

How appropriate. The author of ‘Three Cups of Tea’ was exposed as a charlatan and fabricator of Clintonesque proportions.

[thecodont]

The author of ‘Three Cups of Tea’ was exposed as a charlatan and fabricator of Clintonesque proportions.

Really? More information, please. Thanks.