LETTERS

Common Core a disaster waiting to happen

Posted 2/12/15

To the Editor:

I see that many schools have closed in Rhode Island due to snow so far this winter, and in Warwick, schools have been closed four days. Wonderful. 

I’m so happy the kids can …

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LETTERS

Common Core a disaster waiting to happen

Posted

To the Editor:

I see that many schools have closed in Rhode Island due to snow so far this winter, and in Warwick, schools have been closed four days. Wonderful. 

I’m so happy the kids can get out and play in the snow and hopefully away from their electronic gadgetry and especially away from the classroom tyranny of Common Core.

This is not a new issue for parents of elementary and middle school students struggling with homework.  They will know exactly what I’m talking about: the crying, the frustration, more serious emotional problems because the curricula is simply age-inappropriate. This is especially true at the elementary level. Their young brains have not developed to the point of comprehending abstraction. That doesn’t come until the ages of 11 and 12.

Common Core, the bastard child of No Child Left Behind, is a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much discussion in this state during its implementation.  The federal government promised the goods and the state quietly accepted the money. Teaching to a standardized testing is most certainly not education. It’s indoctrination, an endurance  “race to the mediocre,” if you will.  Perhaps that’s what the Gates Foundation wanted when they funded David Coleman and four others to the tune of $2.5 billion to produce this methodological nightmare. These five were accountable to no one. There was no peer-review, and all the material is owned by a private corporation.  So these are not even federal standards.

Here is a short list of problems.  Because of federal money, school boards become impotent, individual districts and schools no longer have any real control over what is taught, teachers who can see through the blarney are harassed and intimidated and, in math, the methodology is, in a word, absurd.  In English language arts, the classics are hardly discussed anymore and the books that students are told to read are mostly fluff.  Yes, an assault on common sense, but just imagine an entire force of worker bees in just one generation. Brilliant, Bill!

So far to the best of my information, four states have flatly refused the curricula and over 20 states are pondering the removal of Common Core altogether.

I feel a great deal of sympathy for parents, teachers and administrators who have to confront this educational abomination on a daily basis. Teaching to a standard is teaching to the test with very little learning and critical thinking happening. And the standards? Some schools appear to be doing rather well since the “standards” are lower than most people in their wildest imaginations would believe.

Many already know that American education has been in a dumbing-down mode for some time now, and Common Core might just be the tombstone of real education in our country.

And ponder this: Common Core creators have publicly admitted that the curriculum taught from K-12 is only designed to get a high school grad into a non-selective college. It’s social engineering as misguided as RhodeMap RI.

I urge especially parents to dig deeply into the genesis and application of Common Core and decide for yourselves if this is really what you want for your children. 

So kids, let it snow!

Jim Morgan

Warwick

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