Posted on 03/31/2014 8:27:20 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
I have been a Freeper for 12 years and a teacher for 10. I work in Los Angeles, in a public school, and I teach English. I want to say something about Common Core, although my observations will be strictly limited to my particular domain: English. I cannot comment on the Math portion.
I will begin bluntly: I do not understand the conservative outcry about Common Core. Perhaps it’s only because I teach in California, but to me it is an improvement, at least in some ways. If you aren’t a teacher (and most conservatives aren’t, which is a pity) you don’t realize what California standards were like. Oh, the goals themselves weren’t particularly remarkable… in the end, the goals are always the same for English, no matter how they word them: children should be able to summarize, identify, describe, explain, compare, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize the plot, characters, setting, theme, mood, tone… same stuff they’ve done for years.
What was noxious about California standards was their pressure to conform to a liberal reading list. The text books they issued looked as if someone had gone down a checklist with authors arranged by skin color and nationality. I could almost hear the editor muttering to himself, “We need an Indonesian.” Very few authors were classic writers noted for their skill. They seemed to think one short story by Hemingway, one by Poe, and one by Bradbury was sufficient to represent the Dead White Males of the Pre-enlightenment Era (that’s sarcasm, for those of you in Rio Linda). The ESL textbooks were even more pointed: children were directed to read essays on how FDR saved America, how nuclear power is bad, bad, bad, how the 2nd amendment is contingent upon government permission(!), how migrant workers are victimized by pesticides… yes, it was cheery stuff.
Now comes Common Core, and one of the first things they addressed in the training was this: children raised on the simplistic language of modern-day PC authors cannot comprehend anything else, and did horribly on the periodic assessments. The periodic assessments, created by people who apparently hadn’t gotten the memo, had included excerpts from The Odyssey, Anne of Green Gables, Call of the Wild, David Copperfield… could a child raised on the toothless prose of Gary Soto and bell hooks even comprehend the long, intricate sentences that were common to writers many years ago? No, they couldn’t. Imagine that.
So this is what the Common Core material suggests: classic writers. Documents written by the Founding Fathers. Greek mythology. Mark Twain. Louisa May Alcott. Yes, really. Common Core steps away from guiding the teacher’s curriculum along the PC lines of “authors of color” and “writers who champion social justice” and actually recommends classics, but makes no effort to control what the teacher chooses. This, my Friends, can only be an improvement, because liberals were in charge of our books for too many years. Any choices by teachers will swing to the right because frankly, they were so far to the left that there was no way to go further unless you have 7th graders reading Andrea Dworkin, and teachers with that attitude would have already been doing it.
I don’t expect a wave of support… my sad experience is that many Freepers hate teachers with such a livid passion that I wonder about them. But I wanted to say this: Common Core is much less prohibitive in English than the previous standards. Again, I cannot speak to the mathematics, the science, the history… but I can tell you that in English, it’s an improvement, for the reasons I have given above. Okay, flame away.
Miley Cyrus sure will be jealous.
I didn’t get hostile with you until you made it clear that you deserved no better. If you look back on this thread, you’ll find I’m perfectly capable of having a civil conversation with a partner who can hold up their end. You started off posting that pathetic video of a used car salesman making adolescent quips and now you say that if I try to convince conservatives to really engage in changing the teaching the profession, I’m the equivalent of a government program trying to get vaginas into engineering. You don’t even deserve the time I’ve spent on you. Naming yourself after a mushroom is the only reasonable thing you’ve done. Stuff a sock in it yourself, if you can manage it without directions.
I agree, that is at least taking a real stand, and making a difference. I applaud them!
I’ve got a plan. Dismantle the federal Dept. of Education.
Then dismantle all federal laws or regulations in any way connected with education.
Remove all federal funding from education.
That should reduce taxes at least somewhat.
Return all control, oversight, funding and any regulation of education to the states, and they can hopefully then leave most of said oversight to the counties.
Voila - problem solved.
And in the process, de-fang the teachers’ unions.
How’s that for a plan!
Dead on assessment of Whittle. Long on rhetoric and snark, short on fact-based logical argument. Thanks for setting the record straight for us teachers.
It’s a beginning.. :)
In order to build a new house out of good materials and a sound plan, first the old rotten building needs to be dismantled and hauled away.
Yes, and this one is rotten to the core.
The foundation needs to be dug up and burned. Then the ground salted.
Then build locally...
It’s gone so far in the wrong direction that there is no way to repair it.
It was started wrong. John Dewey is considered to be the father of public education and he was a socialist and used schools to create socialist drones. His plan has worked rather well.
Public schools should be 100% locally funded, operated, controlled. The smaller the locality the better. Neighborhood, parish, block, town. I don’t even trust county at this point. My county government is run by 3 lying thugs and they are powermad big frogs in a small pond. I wouldn’t trust them with a five dollar bill or my daughter or my car for five minutes.
And now we have a huge problem with 3 generations of AFCD no daddy in the home children. Who have been raised, and their mothers and many times their grandmothers, without a shred of personal responsibility or the understanding of what it means to be a civilized human being. These people cannot govern their own appetites, minds or hands and legs, nor do they even know it’s possible, or a good idea.
So, where to go from here?
In some diseases there has to be a healing crisis where the symptoms get worse before they get better. I don’t see any way around this as far as the social body as a whole.
That’s why I think sane people should live far away from huge cities filled with the kind of people mentioned above. Certainly such types of people live everywhere - in my valley, too. On EBT cards, incredibly irresponsible, and hub sees this a lot on medical calls as a firefighter. Many living in utter filth and degradation expecting some form of government to take care of every single want and whim. But out in rural areas, there aren’t that many of them. Makes all the difference.
When I read the writings of the Founding Fathers and others from that time I am always astounded by how much better they were educated than today’s citizens, despite the millions and millions of tax dollars that are spent every year.
And most of them were educated for the most part at home by their parents or a tutor, with much self study. No public monies involved.
There were no public schools anyway, as we know them. Maybe town schools at the most.
Yes, probably. Our taxes are ridiculously high, and for what?
1. To impoverish and weaken us.
2. Fill the coffers of gov. employees and unions.
3. To be able to hire more and more gov employees and have them live off of our blood.
4. To enslave the children and thus future generations.
Am I missing anything?
Nope. :)
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