[EDUCATION] The Agenda Behind Common Core

The Common Core State Standards Initiative seems to have become among the largest systems failures in America's education system. According to Duke Pesta, assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and vocal opponent of Common Core, this federal program was created thanks to a lobby group with among others Bill Gates at the top. Nobody asked for this policy in the states, but the states that embraced it did so because they were promised that they could avoid having to be in the "No Child Left Behind" program, a program that everyone now seems to agree is lousy.

The people who designed Common Core apparently only consulted two experts if the standard they developed would be suitable for the children to cope with higher education. Neither of them wanted to have anything to do with it and wrote an article about how worthless Common Core was, and are now touring the US holding lectures about how lousy it is.

One of the most striking examples I've heard deals with how children are supposed to solve math problems together. Apparently the teachers don't really teach math, but put the children in groups of two and three and give them a problem to solve. The sole purpose is to get every kid in the group to reach the same conclusion. If one kid actually solves the problem, but the other two kids arrive at a different answer in agreement with each other, the kid that solves the problem will be marked "wrong". The other two will be marked "right" simply because they are in agreement. What the actual bleep?

In a school in California kids a lot of children couldn't count properly in the fourth grade. Because of this the parents hired tutors for the children. The school responded by issuing a leaflet which said that children who study more math on the side may not continue to learn math in school, because they must stay on the same level as everyone else.

Another crappy thing about this standardization is that the government take the opportunity to collect information from the children. Not only the children's grades but also all the comments and reviews a teacher make will be saved digitally. In addition, some schools have performed downright interrogations where they ask the children whether or not their parents are registered voters, or whether or not they voted in the last election and what they voted for.

Duke Pesta suggests that the reason that Common Core was developed is to make the children more dependent on school. This explains why so many parents can't help their children with math and why so many schools are pro common core - it increases the demand for teachers with special knowledge. But he also believes that there are purely political explanations, the government wants to indoctrinate children and feel that they can do so with more ease now. The things that the kids learn and the essays they have to write (one writing assignment for example was: "Describe why the state is like a family, only better.") all have a leftist-statist angle.