I find it interesting that you dismiss Bill Whittle as not “actually saying anything” in that video, and further denigrate and dismiss him because he isn’t a teacher, or because he sold cars for a living.
What’s wrong with selling cars for a living? When a person goes home from their job of selling cars, do they simply drink beer with their gut hanging out, or is it remotely possible that someone who sells cars for a living might be well read, or dare I say, intelligent? Or does a car salesman require a college degree to be viewed as qualified to have an opinion on anything?
Or is only someone who works with the The Chicago Annenberg Challenge worthy to have an opinion on Education? It sounds like you would trust the judgement of someone like that over someone who sells cars even if he is certifiably wrong and his policies are destructive.
Just because a person has been immersed in education doesn’t mean their viewpoint is, by default better than a viewpoint held by Bill Whittle who was, after all, only a lowly car salesman. It *might* be better, and their viewpoint *might* have insight the car salesman doesn’t possess, but immersion in a system doesn’t make viewpoints more valid or sound. Otherwise people like Al Gore really would be experts on how to run a government.
You don’t need to be a pilot to have the viewpoint that when a plane crashes, what kept it in the air was not working as designed. Likewise, you don’t have to be a teacher to see that the smoking wreckage of education and understand it doesn’t work, despite the billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at it. Just because someone says that there is a problem with the smoking wreckage of education, be it a Freeper or a Car Salesman, doesn’t mean they don’t know what they are talking about.
I haven’t seen the video in some time, but the main concept he conveys is not difficult to grasp, unless you don’t understand a basic conservative tenet: When possible, decision making of all types should be kept as close to those affected by it as possible, and people should have the opportunity and right to change to a different situation to address it.
An overarching, bloated, federal government, state government, town government, or school district is the epitome of that thought process, and Common Core is simply another expression of it. It is a 3000 mile long screwdriver being wielded by people in in the Lyndon Baines Johnson building (how fitting) to tighten the screws on people who deal with environments and demands that are foreign to them. But hey, they have expert “educators” manning the hallways there, and they know best. Not like they have ever gotten anything wrong before. As you seem fond of saying, “I mean, hey, it’s worked so well so far.”
You take offense that people on this site see it that way, and that puzzles me only if I discount the possibility you aren’t a conservative, you are too deeply entrenched to see it the way conservatives view this issue (unless comparing everyone on Free Republic to General Jack Ripper) or you personalize the issue so much that you are unable to view it with anything other than emotion.
Okay, good, let's start with that. You are much better off making your own case than linking me to a video you haven't seen in a while. I think if you looked at it afresh you'd realize it's not really very good. Let's look at what you said, because it took him 9 minutes but it took you about 3 sentences. Well, there were three good sentences in there, and that was one of them. Here's another:
...decision making of all types should be kept as close to those affected by it as possible, and people should have the opportunity and right to change to a different situation to address it.
AGAIN, right! Now... what is one of the glaring problems of the smoking wreckage of education? A liberal curriculum implemented by teachers who are either liberal or apathetic. Let's get as close to the affected as possible: the classroom.
We need conservative teachers. Wailing about the state of education when the majority of conservatives won't touch it with a 3,000 mile long pole is pretty useless. You need conservative teachers to get into those classrooms and teach meaty, weighty stuff.
THAT is how you fix it. You can protest Common Core till you're blue in the face. It won't do any good because you are still complaining from the outside. You're like a woman whose cat is up a tree and you call for help getting it down. Neighbor arrives with pellet gun and you say "Not like that!!" Fire fighters arrive with hose and you say "Not like that!" Local lumberjack arrives with saw and you say "Not like that!"
You need to get up that tree yourself if you want that cat down your way. Not just you, of course. Conservatives in general.
Now you'll come up with a list of reasons why conservatives don't become teachers. It's morally wrong to work for the government (unless you're military). It's morally wrong to join a union (great, there goes any career with cops and firefighters too). Whatever it is, excuse after excuse.
Okay, keep operating that way. Be like that woman I was talking with earlier, chanting about dismantling it and not offering a single reasonable plan as to how, or what we'd do with the millions of feral youth who'd roam the streets then. Pretend it can be done with diatribes and bumper stickers (I got a Free Tibet bumper sticker for you too.)
You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube. It's out. You'll get rid of federal involvement in education about the same time you get rid of the Federal Reserve. Good luck with that one too. I'm so sick of conservatives whose answer for everything is to just roll back time to just before the Titanic and start over. You can't. It's too late. So your choices now are whine on the sidelines or get in there and change it from within.