He is not my mayor. It often comes as a surprise that NY State is very large while NYC is located on the Island of Manhattan.
Posted on 12/07/2013 2:50:55 PM PST by NYer
When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, he came to my high school for an assembly. One of my classmates rose to ask him a question. After naming his public grammar school, he explained that he had not been taught any formal English grammar in his years there, and as a result, he found himself woefully unprepared for our high school English program. “What,” my classmate asked the mayor, “will you do about this?”
Mr. Giuliani became visibly flustered. He apologized and said he was not aware that this was happening. He expressed his disproval over the school’s dereliction, and he promised to investigate in short order.
Years later, I discovered that my classmate’s ignorance did not stem from sloth or incompetence within his particular school. Rather, he – along with thousands of other children across America – was a victim of a faulty educational initiative in English and language arts programs called Whole Language. Wildly popular in the 1980s and 1990s, Whole Language rejected phonics and traditional grammar instruction on the assumption that grammar is simply absorbed, and therefore it did not need to be taught formally.
After years of sustained ignorance of English fundamentals and shockingly low test scores, the much-ballyhooed Whole Language program was quietly abandoned.
While my classmate was suffering as a laboratory rat for the latest educational fad, I was instructed in traditional phonics and English grammar at my local parochial school. In seventh grade, we learned to diagram sentences. With this solid background, I made a seamless transition to our reading and writing intensive high-school English program.
In other words, I was well prepared because my Catholic grammar school taught me the basics using its tried and true approach. It did not shortchange me with ineffective educational fads or theories that perpetuate ignorance rather than knowledge.
But after centuries of success with a proven Catholic pedagogy, Catholic education has suddenly and inexplicably yielded to the latest encroaching and ephemeral fad. This year over 100 dioceses hastily adopted the Common Core State Standards Initiative that seeks to direct education for children across the country. Despite the promise that the standards “do not dictate how teachers should teach,” Catholic school teachers in Common Core schools are forced to teach in an entirely new manner according to “the standards” – and not according to Catholic pedagogy.
I have seen this pedagogical transformation personally this year in my children’s parochial school. Their teachers told us in September that Common Core was about “going deeper” into the concepts and theories underlying the material they were to learn. After three months, it seems that “going deeper” means writing out mathematical processes in words as an exercise in This video.
My sons still do traditional computation, but it has taken a back seat to their learning how to explain their math verbally – a tedious and unnecessary chore inspired by the still unseen Common Core directed state assessments in mathematics.
Their school is not the only casualty. At a near-by parochial school, my colleague’s fourth-grade son is struggling with Common Core’s version of two-digit multiplication (as may be seen in the video above). His teacher is teaching computation in this verbose way, and her son is required to solve it in this way.
Math is not the only subject under siege. From the primary grades through high school, new textbooks have been printed in English and social studies to correspond to the new standards. What will Catholic schools do when their Common Core social studies textbooks present Gloria Steinem and Harvey Milk as heroes of the civil rights movement?
By adopting Common Core pedagogy, Catholic schools have surrendered both their unique pedagogical method and their very identity. Catholic education begins on the premise that a loving, rational God created an ordered and purposed universe that points human beings back to Him. In studying creation and all its features, including human beings and their works, we discover truths that shed further light on the mystery of God, the ultimate Truth.
To do this the Church has adopted the pedagogical approach of the ancient Greeks and Romans known as the liberal arts, which progress in three stages – grammar, logic, and rhetoric – according to the age and abilities of students. The grammar stage, which lasts through about sixth grade, lays the foundations that are needed for what educators today call “higher order thinking skills” of logic (conceptual thought and analysis) and rhetoric (abstract thought and synthesis). This Trivium model is timeless because it corresponds to the natural intellectual development of the human person.
Common Core forces Catholic educators to skip the grammar stage and jump right to logic and rhetoric, beginning even in the primary grades. Under Common Core, children will not absorb and memorize the basic components of learning – which is why in a few short years Common Core will fail and go the way of Whole Language and the dozens of other similar educational fads proffered over the last several decades.
With Common Core, Catholic education ceases to exist. Instead, parents will be left to choose between public schools and schools with uniforms and religion classes, which charge tuition.
If these are the choices, then our already struggling parochial and high schools will fold in very short order.
Catholic schools must reclaim their pedagogy and identity by rejecting Common Core immediately. Our proven educational success – and our formation of young Catholics – is worth far more than the latest inherently flawed educational fad.
Ping!
My children are no longer in Catholic grammar school, but if they were and the school was teaching in this manner, I’d pull them immediately and homeschool the both of them. (I currently homeschool only my youngest. My oldest is a senior at a Catholic high school that has refused the Common Core.)
Why our diocese has chosen to go with this nonsense is really beyond me. I wish the bishop would realize that the more Catholic schools are like the public ones, the fewer people will bother laying out the tuition for them on top of the incredibly high property (school) taxes we pay here on Long Island.
Regards,
Well, I hope everyone understands that.
My kids’ private school is starting to use common core. They are juniors in high school. English has been interesting. History is a joke, and they hate it. One of them is taking trig online and the other is in AP calc, so they are missing common core for that.
I’m glad they will be graduating next year!
Ping!
Years ago I read an article in Scientific American that made a lasting impression. There is a theory that every human being “invents” his own language as a child and as he grows up, he adapts it so that he can communicate with the people he associates with. What he reaches the age of rationality, he also adapts to the way of reasoning that is prevalent among those about him. In other words, he grows in his language skills by modeling. So it seems to me that if he is offered no models, then he is left on his own to pick it up. But “progressive” education has always gone against this notion, and leaves each student “free” to express his uniqueness. But if the theory I am talking about, which takes the traditional view that each child should be schooled using tried and true models, if this is correct, then this leads to confusion,
correction: “then the “progressive” way necessarily leads to confusion.”
But “progressive” education has always gone against this notion, and leaves each student “free” to express his uniqueness. But if the theory I am talking about, which takes the traditional view that each child should be schooled using tried and true models, if this is correct, then this leads to confusion,
God programmed me with a questioning mind. My first sentence was phrased as a question and I have not stopped. Watching the video of the instructor, the questions immediately began to surface. What the "lattice" technique does is reduce mental math. Why is it even necessary to draw such a large schematic to solve a simple multiplication problem?
Ping
"Going deeper" is a term used to sideline any nosy parent or teacher who may suspect that something is amiss.
If any of you remember "Outcome Based Education" that is what this is. It is like taking a pig fresh out of its pigpen and dressing it up in expensive clothes. It looks good, but it still stinks real bad.
The educrats, headed by the likes of William Ayers, have used the inner city public schools as their experimentation centers for the last thirty years. They have fine-tuned all their little tricks as to how to fool unsuspecting people into thinking that their educational expertise is actually top-notch.
Test results in the inner city schools have shown repeatedly that they are really not educating but indoctrinating the students with skills so low that the students graduate not knowing how to fill out a job application.
"Going deeper into concepts" is as believable as "moving forward into hope and change."
With your new Mayor I’m certain you will become very busy posting your concerns about everything religious that will be enforced. Partcicularly when he seeks to reduce to nothingness any financial support towards religious schools including their tax free base particularly if they won’t accept the revisionist CORE curriculum .
Luckily you belong to a Catholic rite which is still traditional and in existence. Whilst I suffer in the throes of participating in a mass where I along with the congregation are learning new Baptist and Calvanist hymns every Sunday. Truly hoping someone doesn’t drop the host as they receive communion or leave it in a pew when leaving the auditorium called a church.
When I win the lottery don’t be too surprized to learn that Cardinal Dolan has had someone dump the full set of Obamacare 2000 pages of legislation and 50,000 regulations on his rectory doorstep with a note.
BEFORE YOU START SHOOTING YOUR MOUTH OFF IN SUPPORT OF THIS HOW ABOUT GOING THROUGH WHAT IT DOES FIRST
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The American bishops need to learn first that the American government is their enemy, and premise their responses to government initiatives on that. I am not saying they should not study them, but that when they study them, that is the correct assumption.
Souls will be saved.
metmom,
Could you please add me to your Homeschool ping list?
Thank you!
VK
She doesn’t live in or near NYC.
Sure. Welcome aboard.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a huge increase in homeschooling as a result of the CC.
It is likely to push a lot of undecided people right over the edge.
Indeed, I’ve got a cousin in NYC with 2 little ones in (public) school (YICK). Anyway, I’ve almost got him convinced that homeschooling is the way to go. A few more weeks of this Common Core stuff just might do the trick.
Regards,
He is not my mayor. It often comes as a surprise that NY State is very large while NYC is located on the Island of Manhattan.
THANK YOU!!!!
I’ve actually met people who seem to think that NYS is one giant extension of NYC, but I’d certainly expect FReepers to know better.
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