Posted on 12/01/2014 8:49:21 PM PST by PROCON
"Do you just want your kids to be test machines and cheap workers for corporations?"
Lily Tang Williams, a mother of three, testified before the Colorado State Board of Education that Common Core was similar to the education she received growing up in Mao’s Communist China.
“Common Core, in my eyes, is the same as the Communist core I once saw in China,” Williams said. “I grew up under Mao’s regime and we had the Communist-dominated education — nationalized testing, nationalized curriculum, and nationalized indoctrination.”
In a post at FreedomWorks, Williams wrote about her experience with the Chinese education system:
Our teachers had to comply with all the curriculum and testing requirements, or lose their jobs forever. Parents had no choice at all when it came to what we learned in school. The government used the Household Registration and Personnel File system to keep track of its citizens from birth to death.
“I came to this country for freedom and I cannot believe this is happening all over again in this country,” she said in the meeting. “I don’t know what happened to America, the Shining City on the Hill for freedom.”
She said Americans should not compare their children (or their kids’ test scores) to those being educated under the Chinese system.
“I am telling you, Chinese children are not trained to be independent thinkers,” said Williams. “They are trained to be massive skilled workers for corporations. And they have no idea what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 where government ordered soldiers to shoot its own 1,000 students.”
Williams said that while she understands that testing is necessary to improve education, top-down standards controlled by the federal government are not the answer: “Federal government holds the stick. International corporations hold the money.” She complained that students are offered this system of carrots and sticks by outside groups. Instead, she said, parents are supposed to control their children’s education.
“Individual rights. Individual liberty. That’s what I came to this country for,” Williams said. “Do you just want our kids to be test machines? Workers — cheap workers for corporations?” she asked the school board.
America is great. Don’t compare yourselves to China. That’s why lots of Chinese are trying to come here — to try to be free. And they all tell you, “Do not go after the Chinese Communist education.”
Williams said the Chinese system produces great test takers and great machine workers who are brainwashed and lack critical thinking skills. “I was brainwashed so bad it took me ten years in this country to get out of it,” she said.
Do not get in between a Chinese mother and her children’s well being. It won’t end well.
0bama, Gruber, etc. will be thrilled with this feedback. Just what they were aiming for.
More immigration of people like this author, please. We need more CITIZENS like these.
why dont we have more politicians like these:
http://www.lily4liberty.com/about-1.html
I like this woman and I hope what she says wakes parents up.
ping
Then there is the crowd that thinks communism is great, but does not know what it actually is, and really, really wants it ...
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This needs to be seen.
It’s not simply another reason to homeschool issue any more.
It’s a matter of the future of our country and children and grandchildren.
A co-worker of mr. mm’s is from Russia and aside from commenting on Common Core, he’s saying the EXACT same thing about what Americans are doing and where this country is heading. He is flabbergasted, just cannot believe it.
The problem with Mao's educational system was not its uniformity, as such.
Talking about parental choice is kind of silly. Any public school system will have a curriculum that gives little or no choice to parents, whether the curriculum is determined locally or nationally. The only true individual parental choice is deciding whether to home school or send the kid to private school.
I'm not a huge fan of Common Core or other national initiatives, but some of these criticisms are just silly.
Should have noted that an individual parent may be able to have some slight influence on local educational decisions, but none at all on national ones. The amount of such influence is at best limited, and drops off quickly with increasing size of the system.
A friend of mine who is a retired programmer worked with lots of Chinese over the years and that was his major observation and complaint of them. They didn't have the ability or experience to solve problems "outside of the box"
I homeschooled my son through high school. Some years ago a friend in OH lived in one of the best school districts in that state. She told me they would present topics to the children and would send work home with the children for the parents to teach their children. She would spend four hours a night for each of her two children, teaching what the school had given out as homework.
I tried to convince her that homeschooling would be easier than that since I didn’t have to spend as much time as she was spending. Because before they could teach what was sent home the parents had to understand what had been sent. Back then, before common core, it was easier. Now the parents have no clue how to teach common core math and getting the right answer is not as important as adhering to form. Neither the children nor the parents know how to work the problems and the teachers still aren’t doing any real teaching in class.
Before common core, parents may not have had a choice, but at least they could figure out what their children were learning and could choose to teach it to them. With common core, especially common core math, that “choice” is no longer available.
You’re absolutely right. He should be on death row.
I’m not a huge fan of Common Core or other national initiatives, but some of these criticisms are just silly.
*************
silly?
Islam is being taught in US schools through common core
Massachusetts Public Schools Teaching the Shahada: ‘There Is No God But Allah’
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3220682/posts
http://pamelageller.com/2014/10/massachusetts-public-schools-teaching-the-shahada-there-is-no-god-but-allah.html/
See this link for more examples - CA, MA, MS, TN, MD
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3227490/posts?page=19#19
In 2004, I know for a fact that inner city students in my neck of the woods were taught a 1-week section on Islam that included practicing it. someone teaching there saw the Xeroxing of materials going on. The next year, a consultant was brought in to train teachers about teaching Islam.
IOW, this has been in the works for awhile.
The criticism in this article was that Common Core was bad and like Chinese Communist schools because it didn’t give parents control over what their children learned.
This is a silly criticism because parents in any public school have very little control over what their children are taught.
Doesn’t mean I don’t think there aren’t legitimate criticisms, of course.
Teaching what Muslims believe is not one of them, of course. If nothing else, an ancient military maxim is “Know thy enemy.”
The first part of the Shahada is unexceptional, IMO, and as a Christian I would have no problem reciting it. The Shahada is at root a tautology, “God is God.”
It can be properly translated as, “There is no Allah but Allah,” using the Arabic word for God also used by Christian Arabs.
Or it can be translated as, “There is no God but God,” which is a fine summation of Christian (and Jewish) belief. “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one”
I could not recite the remainder of the Shahada, because I don’t believe Mohammed was “a,” much less “the,” Prophet of God.
Translating the first part of the Shahada as, “There is no God but Allah” is IMO inaccurate, as it implies Mohammed taught Christians and Jews did not worship God. That is flatly untrue, as the Koran makes perfectly clear. However much his followers may have deviated, Mohammed was clear that he believed Christian and Jews worshipped the same God he did. It is an accurate translation, as the Arabic word Allah is the exact equivalent of the English word God, but people who don’t understand it think it’s claiming that “their” God isn’t really a God.
You may believe Mo was mistaken in this belief, but you can’t say he didn’t believe and teach it.
It's fair to note that this predates Communism by at least 1300 years.
In ancient and medieval China the entire educational system was geared to producing men who could pass the incredibly difficult imperial examination.
In the highly arduous preparation process, independent thinking was pretty thoroughly stamped out.
For the Chinese, this was probably a feature, not a bug. They were not fans of independent thinking.
And there is confusion about saying the pledge of allegiance with the word “God”.
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