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Another high school student at Farragut High School in Knox County, Tenn. is receiving widespread attention for an eloquent speech he made against Common Core at a school board meeting. This time the student, Kenneth Ye, gave a rousing speech before the Knox County school board urging it to drop the Common Core standards because they make learning joyless and, in fact, turn American schools into something approaching Chinese sweatshops. “Our schools are being turned into data-run factories,” Ye charges around the 4:30 mark in the video, “factories based on speedily-approved standards that are now being implemented around the country.”...

I recently published a post with various answers to the question: How hard is teaching? Here is one response I received by e-mail from a veteran seventh-grade language arts teacher in Frederick, Maryland, who asked not to be identified because she fears retaliation at her school. In this piece she describes students who don’t want to work, parents who want their children to have high grades no matter what, mindless curriculum and school reformers who insist on trying to quantify things that can’t be measured.

Peonage for the Twenty-First Century The Common Core exists only because we have forgotten that parents have a right to educate their children. The state has no educational authority of its own apart from what parents delegate to it. A young man and woman arrive at the office of the town clerk to procure a marriage license. They're all smiles, until the secretary hands them a document to sign, wherein they read this remarkable sentence: “The State, conceding to the parents the making of their children's bodies, asserts its primacy in the making of their minds.” [...] I've lately been...

For quite a while, The Motley Monk has been on top of the Common Core, concerned about its implications for Catholic schools. Last September, The Motley Monk discussed some reasons why parents should be wary. In November, he pointed out why a number of Catholic school principals fear its potential impacts for curriculum. Also in November, The Motley Monk questioned whether the NCEA had embraced the secularist educational agenda of the Common Core irrespective of what those principals fear. The Motley Monk then followed-up with a post asking whether the NCEA’s President had put the proverbial “cart before the horse”...

Fifth grade students at Fremont Elementary School in Colorado were assigned a reading passage that describes global warming as a dangerous, man-made phenomenon that will destroy civilization in a few hundred years. The reading assignment was found inside a workbook aligned with the controversial national Common Core curriculum guidelines, and was titled “Homework from the Future.” It tells the fictional story of a visitor to the year 2512 who discovers that the eastern United States is under water and the country’s population greatly reduced, all thanks to man-made global warming:

Common Core is full of pretentious little gimmicks, each a potential Pandora’s box of nasty surprises. For example, there is one called Close Reading, which says that children in elementary school should read the same difficult passages over and over. I didn’t trust this thing from square one, so I wrote an analysis called “Close Reading is close to a con” (link below). This article was meant to be a strong indictment but to my surprise one of the comments was even stronger. “Domo,” the commenter, clearly has experience in the trenches. Note all the weird little twists. The Devil...

There are also traditional word problems. Twitchy has found a word problem that may be the most egregiously awful math problem the Common Core has produced yet. Take a look: 15. Juanita wants to give bags of stickers to her friends. She wants to give the same number of stickers to each friend. She's not sure if she needs 4 bags or 6 bags of stickers. How many stickers could she buy so there are no stickers left over?

Freepers, as an adjunct professor of humanities, I am most interested in your opinions on American historiography and education.

AND…creepier. An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a “political spectrum”. The survey is part of Oak Forest High School’s Common Core curriculum, which according to the school district’s website is to …”provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do...

OAK FOREST - An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a "political spectrum."

Saturday the 7th of December will mark the seventy-second anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The commemoration of that “date which will live in infamy” brings up memories of more than Pearl Harbor but of the entire American effort in World War II: of the phenomenal production of planes and tanks and munitions by American industry; of millions of young men enlisting (with thousands lying about their age to get into the service); of the men who led the war, then and now seeming larger than life—Churchill and F.D.R., Eisenhower and MacArthur, Monty and Patton; and of the...

Is it possible to teach students the meaning behind President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without mentioning the Civil War? According to the government’s new Common Core education standards, the Gettysburg Address must be taught without mentioning the Civil War and explaining why President Lincoln was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. …

This past week I took my kids to see the second movie in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. While it is a violent series, I cannot think of a better movie or book series to open the door to moral and political discussions with our teen and preteen kids. For those unfamiliar with the Hunger Games, it is the story of a gladiatorial competition in a futuristic totalitarian regime, which requires each of 12 isolated districts to select a teenage boy and girl by lottery to fight to the death until only one “victor” survives. The story centers on...

A new book, “The Art of Rube Goldberg,” has just been published. Even though Goldberg died four decades ago, his name and fame are as great as ever. His comic genius was to show simple things made immensely complicated. This image of a nuclear bomb to kill a fly, as it were, perfectly captures a lot of the evils in our modern world. Things are over-designed, over-legislated, over-regulated, over-dictated, over-everything. Except successful. Which brings us by perfect segue to our public schools. People are always saying we don’t spend enough money. Probably we’re spending twice as much as we need...

<p>Current and former students in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies expressed their support for professor emeritus Val Rust following a demonstration in one of his graduate classes last Thursday.</p> <p>Student demonstrators alleged that there is a “toxic” racial climate in the graduate school, including in Rust’s classroom. Organizers told the Daily Bruin last week that they decided to host the demonstration after a recent report examining racial discrimination among the university’s faculty stated that UCLA’s policies and procedures do not sufficiently address racially motivated instances of discrimination.</p>

As Common Core continues to concern parents across the U.S., a book that includes drugs, drinking, racial stereotypes all wrapped up in a political agenda has made its way into the Common Core curriculum. Fourth graders in Dupo, Illinois are reading a biography of Barack Obama entitled “Barack Obama”, written by Jane Sutcliffe and published by Lerner. The book contains very mature content and highlights the problems Obama has faced while growing up, all while blaming the color of his skin

Obama’s Education Secretary recently said that opponents to the Administration’s “Common Core” Standards are merely “white suburban moms” who are, all of a sudden, learning that their kids aren’t real bright. Arne Duncan (wow. . . Perfect name for a 1970’s sitcom) made the degrading remarks to a group of state school superintendents on Friday. According to the Washington Post: U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of...

We have a tendency in our fast-moving world to focus on controversial-sounding soundbites, instead of the complex policy debates that underlie them. Unfortunately, I recently played into that dynamic. A few days ago, in a discussion with state education chiefs, I used some clumsy phrasing that I regret – particularly because it distracted from an important conversation about how to better prepare all of America’s students for success. In talking about the importance of communicating about higher learning standards, I singled out one group of parents when my aim was to say that we need to communicate better to all...

Common Core: Rather than defend a program accused of indoctrinating students via national standards and whose implementation is as bad as ObamaCare, Education Secretary Arne Duncan plays the race card. Perhaps nothing personifies the arrogant nanny state paternalism of the Obama administration more than this statement by Duncan on Friday: "It's fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn't as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn't quite as good as they thought they were, and that's pretty scary."...

(Update: Adding more on opposition to Core, where Duncan spoke) U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan told a group of state schools superintendents Friday that he found it “fascinating” that some of the opposition to the Common Core State Standards has come from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.” Yes, he really said that. But he has said similar things before. What, exactly, is he talking about? In his cheerleading for the controversial Common Core...