Posted on 01/29/2015 5:28:40 AM PST by HomerBohn
The United States may be producing only one-tenth as many scientists as does China, but if California is any guide, Americans may soon excel in at least one area: “sensitivity.”
That is, as defined by modern educational overlords.
It’s all part of the new standards of Common Core, the controversial education program pushed by Barack Obama and the Department of Education. Writes the Sacramento Bee:
Across the state [of California], report cards are undergoing a sea change in how students are measured for academic performance. Where teachers once graded students on traditional math or English skills, they now judge attributes such as grit, gratitude or being sensitive to others.
Districts are changing their report cards to reflect the new Common Core State Standards, which are intended to move students away from rote learning and memorization. Rather, critical thinking and analysis geared toward deeper understanding of academic subjects are the goals.
… For … traditional academic subjects, teachers grade students on a 1-to-4 scale. But when it comes to attributes such as grit or being sensitive to others, they give students one of four marks: A for almost always, O for often, S for sometimes and R for rarely.
Critics, though, are marking this change S — for suspicious. For instance, American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson calls it “a sign of descent into full indoctrination camp mode” and writes:
Obviously, there are no objective standards possible, so teachers will subjectively evaluate students on these qualities. And human nature being what it is, the degree to which a child conforms to the teacher’s own vision of human nature and the correct viewpoint. Education schools and teachers unions are both strongholds of left wing thinking, so it is fully predictable that children from conservative households will be regarded as uncooperative, insensitive, and ungrateful.
Many would point out that, because man will always have a tendency toward some type of prejudice, subjectivity in a system should be kept to a minimum. G.K. Chesterton once observed, “There are only two ways of governing: by a rule and by a ruler.” Proper rules exist to make things orderly and fair; the more man moves from rules to rulers, however — especially when those rulers are divorced from the highest rules (Truth) themselves — the more disorderly and unfair the system becomes. This is why we often hear talk about the “rule of law”; a capricious tyrant can impose an “order,” and it can constitute moral disorder.
Introducing subjectivity into a system does not have a good track record, either. Consider, for instance, the Soviet offensive against Finland in November 1939, an invasion almost three times the size of the Allied force that landed at Normandy on D-Day.
The Soviets got their heads handed to them.
While this was partially due to the Finns' grit (and theirs was a real grade) and ingenuity, another factor was that Joseph Stalin had purged most of the top generals from the Soviet army. In Marxist regimes, such people are replaced not on the basis of merit, but on whether or not they toe the party line. The result was gross incompetence among the top military brass.
Meritocracy is under assault in America, too, as it’s being subordinated to egalitarianism. When it was discovered that girls didn’t score as highly as boys on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) years ago, for example, it was rewritten and made more “girl-friendly.” And there has been much focus on how blacks and Hispanics lag behind whites and Asians academically, with the assumption that equality of outcome must be achieved.
This isn’t easy in a meritocracy, where objective measures reign. After all, “There is absolutely no evidence that statistical proportionality is the norm anywhere on Earth,” as Dr. Walter Williams has noted. And this is where subjectivity is invaluable to an egalitarian. The “rulers” can then simply “equalize” performance based on a political agenda, favoring certain groups or individuals and disadvantaging others. And there’s no shortage of zealous ideologues in education.
Yet not all these biases have to be conscious. People often are unaware of what motivates them and can find objectivity elusive even when they truly want to exercise it. It’s difficult for teachers, or anyone else, to divorce their feelings and biases — shaped by their inculcation and ideology — from their judgments.
Reflective of this exaltation of subjectivity is the goal, as the Sacramento Bee put it, of de-emphasizing “rote learning and memorization” in favor of “critical thinking and analysis.” This desire sounds noble and intellectual, but does it withstand scrutiny? It’s a different way of saying, as is educators’ wont today, we don't just teach kids facts; we teach them how to think. And as I wrote in February 2014:
This is quite convenient. After all, it's easy to test knowledge of facts; thus, such measures can reveal modern education as a fraudulent enterprise. But "how to think" is a bit more nebulous, and, if you define the expression of feelings-derived folderol as reason, your students cannot fail.
Yet there is a deeper reason why liberals eschew facts: they refute fiction. And since leftist agendas have no basis in reality, exposure to snippets of it is deadly; for, just as one small pin can pop a balloon, one little fact can shatter a rationalization.
Some would also point out that the goal of the “how” without the “what” is an exercise in futility. As a brilliant man I know put it:
First, thought cannot take place in a vacuum — there must be something (a “what”) to think about. Second, even if substance-free thought were possible, why should we teach students how to think in place of what to think? Implicit in the admonishment [“Don’t teach the ‘what’”] is that teaching students how to think is superior to teaching them what to think. Hence, if you teach students how to think in place of what to think, you also teach them what to think — that is, that "how" is superior to "what," thereby violating the very admonishment you sought to uphold; the what — "how is superior to what" — preceded the how.
Put simply, the idea that “how” is superior to “what” is just that: an idea. And an idea is a thing, a thing is a “what,” so teaching an idea is teaching the “what.”
The even larger issue here is that with few people today believing in Truth, which is objective, there is a tendency to fancy that subjective reality is all that exists. In this way of thinking, then, subjectivity can’t be a problem; it’s just a matter of whose subjective preferences will hold sway. And that’s how you end up with a lack of common sense — and Common Core.
It's not what you do, but what you are that matters. If what you are is white, you're the ultimate source of whatever problem is identified. This society is obsessed with race and whites are THE scapegoat for many social, economic, & political ills. In this case, the problem is inferior academic performance among non-whites, excluding Asians.
just a manner to drag folks down to a lower level to achieve without effort.
As far as grading ‘Gratitude’, to whom will they be grateful?
Well isn’t that swell..
In 30 years you can be confident that your heart surgeon will at least excel in niceness...
The crux of why even republicans and some so called conservatives like CC is the data and the companies will be provided all the meta data on our kids and families and that data for campaign donations will keep folks like Kasich in Ohio here in power and well funded...the next step will be elimination of state control over education...there is already a bill written to do just that...Kasich, like others will likely be fine with top-down control over schools...
Feel Good Education,
harumph!
The last good thing to come out of California was The Eagles; prior to them, the Beach Boys.
Just another way they are showing that they hate Whitey.
Good point. Smart conservatives would use the, “Gratitude” wedge to subtly and subversively introduce the notion of God. It’s a tactic of the left to twist and distort conservative principles to their ends. Not sure why turnabout wouldn’t be fair play. They wouldn’t/ shouldn’t be over the top with it...just plan a few seeds that suggest a higher power and let the kids think and explore from there.
The problem is that now the social managers want everything to be proportionate. (except Basketball and other things where blacks excel). So they add all these other criteria.
The most bizarre situation when I knew all was lost is small. I was in a class teaching factoring quadratics (yeahhh!!!) I was told that it was a group assignment. They'd work in teams, discuss it, choose the solution they all thought was correct, and submit the same solutions for a group grade. So in this class there were students who got A's in factoring who couldn't factor!
Did I follow the group directive? Of course not. But modern teachers can be such tools....they go along with this BS.
JMHO
In second grade I had a nasty old maid lesbian for a teacher. She took every opportunity to humiliate and degrade the boys in class and the little girls were n’er do well wonderful angels as far as she was concerned.
One day after being ridiculed in front of the whole class over something which I forget... probably because I stood up for a classmate that was being picked on by the teacher... looking out the window, or not paying attention or something, “normal” for a 7 year-old boy, in a pre-Ritalin era.
I sat there at my little desk during quiet time and pulled out a sheet of that newsprint type recycled lined paper that the little kids used to practice block writing with... you know the lines run long ways on the paper in green ink and every other line is dashed as a guide where the half height portions of the letters should be.
On the paper I took a pen and wrote, “F*ck You Ms. Creamer” about 15 times filling the page, and when I was done I took the paper and ripped it into tiny pieces and then when and put it in the waste paper basket.
Later that day I was given a note to take home to my mom. The note asked my mother to come in for a parent teacher conference and told her I was being given detention after school the next day. It didn’t say why.
Well the next day I was sitting in detention after school and mom showed up to the classroom. Out of her desk, Ms. Creamer pulled out my Opus, reassembled with about 50 pounds of cellophane tape. Among her other aspersions, Ms. Creamer proceeded to tell my mother, “Your son has an overdeveloped sense of fair play.”
My mom erupted, like in that scene in the movie Uncle Buck where Uncle Buck dresses down the vice principal because she is trying to break the spirit of his niece.
Mom often said she regretted ever sending her happy, joy-filled little boy to government school. I can’t say it was a good fit for me, and mostly it didn’t suit my advanced skills... homework was a chore and all my learning was in-class and I apparently had superior problem solving skills as I was always in the 98th percentile on the California Aptitude tests they gave every year.
But it’s true... Government school changed me... there used to be the wonder and amazement of a young child... I always wanted to share what I had, or bring my discoveries to the attention of my peers and share in that way (like writing this, I suppose). In the end I found a world full of hate-filled sociopathic losers like Ms. Creamer (the “Ms.” says it all). It’s really sapped the wonder and joy from my life...
Oh, well.
FUMC
Kasich has a Chris Christie problem.
Homeschooling yet?
Let’s see how sensitive they are to traditional christian patriotic red red and blue conservative Americans.
Do they get extra credit for speaking Ebonics?
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6088/6112846190_41f341d873_z.jpg
I do not know in what grade they stop doing this, but something similar has always been done.
I agree the gobbledy-gook about teaching HOW to think CRITICALLY is a cover to hide their incompetence at teaching at all. Try being a critical thinker who says their methods are BS and see if you win accolades for your “learning”.
Total bs...I am SO glad I do not have to face the choices parents face with children in schools.
So would it even be possible for parents to rise up and defuind their local schools until they teach a “rote memorization” course of study like they USED to do?
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