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| The only item David Coleman requires now is a crown. |
The big news in education last week was the reduction of fiction reading in schools thanks to Common Core State standards. Many writers bemoaned the fact that Catcher in the Rye was being pulled from the approved list of literature by the centralized education system present in the United States. So much for local control.
Under reported was the story on who is issuing these edicts on educational content and delivery. It's not Obama and it's not Arne Duncan. It's David Coleman, who in our new centralized educational framework, should go by the title "Prince David Coleman" for being the lead architect in the crafting of the standards. He has been endowed with special powers and seems to be untouchable in his pronouncements on how your local school district should teach and what it is allowed to teach. Are we still in America? Government for the people, by the people...or have we morphed into a public education system run by an elite?
Potter Williams Report has written an excellent piece on the man controlling your school in David Coleman, Architect of Common Core Standards, Replacing Classics with Propaganda:
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So who started this fiction vs. nonfiction smack down? Who's
really behind getting kids to read spreadsheets and tech manuals instead of
classic American literature?
Look no further than the new President of the
non-profit College Board[1],
Mr. David Coleman.
David Coleman is no exception to the current crop of
reformers determined to produce cogs for the State. He has no experience
in the classroom except for a short gig as a tutor yet he has managed
to build the curriculum in public schools for the 21st century with little
interference.
The 42-year old has hit the jackpot no doubt to his own
familial relations. His mother, Elizabeth Coleman, has been president of
Bennington College in Vermont for 25 years. A University of Chicago alumni, she
was a Ford Foundation Scholar, and a graduate of Cornell and
Columbia. Ms. Coleman has also been a consultant for the
Annenberg Corporation. Prior to Bennington she was the dean of the College
of Arts and Sciences and a professor of humanities at the far left New
School for Social Research in New York while little David was growing
up. The New School was begun by progressives in 1932 and modeled
itself after the neo-Marxist social theory of the Frankfurt school.
At Bennington, Coleman showed
her son the way by pioneering curricular programs in writing and launching a
social justice initiative, the Center for the Advancement of Public Action.
Following in his mother's footsteps, David Coleman has been
called the "lead
architect" of the Common Core Standards now adopted by 45 states and
the District of Columbia. The bipartisan National Governors Association which
has been instrumental in pushing the standards praised Coleman's selection as president of the College Board. One
of the reasons for the states' passive acceptance of such a critical initiative
centers on Coleman's and others insistence that as a literature scholar he
believes in the value of a liberal arts education. At the same time he's touting
the value of Shakespeare he makes statements like this:
***************************************************************************“It is rare in a working environment,” he’s argued, “that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.’”"As you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.”
Mr. Coleman seems to have a problem expressing himself without vulgarity in other venues as well. Susan Ohanian was the first writer to note his continuing issue with crass language (warning: vulgar expressions ahead) in Standardized Testing, the Common Core, and Dropping the F-Bomb:
by David Coleman
EXCERPTS
. . .I think PARCC is doing some beautiful work. . . to design assessments that seriously recognize two ideas: One is that assessment is an extremely powerful signal for instruction but you gotta own it. Cut the shit when you like "ooh we wrote this test and all these people are doing test preparation. They shouldn't be doing test prep; they should look at the standards."
I mean is it a perfect life? Fuck you. NO! I hate that disingenuousness. If you put something on an assessment in my view you are ethically obligated to take responsibility that kids will practice it 100 times. . . .
These Standards say that all kids deserve and must read the good stuff. We must stop watering down text. We must give demanding texts at every level. . .. That's true for English Language Learners. These students have a right to rigor. . . .These core standards demand that all students can and with adequate practice master greater rigor. . . .
Crack that whip! Get those kids into shape! Demand, demand, demand and give the kids the "right" to rigor. What he doesn't talk about is that he is the one to decide what is rigorous, what is not and what students must learn. David Coleman is an unelected official deciding what your local district MUST teach and how.
But don't put ALL the blame on David Coleman. Potter Williams details some of the politicians (Democrats and the Republicans) allowing and/or supporting Coleman to have this power:
- Arne Duncan (US secretary of Education)
- Jeb Bush (Former Republican governor of Florida)
- Mitch Daniels (Republican governor of Indiana)
- John Hickenlooper (Democratic governor of Colorado)
- Kati Haycock (The Education Trust)
- Randi Weingarten (AFT President)
- Kaya Henderson (DC Public Schools Chancellor)
- Bob Corcoran (GE Foundation President)
The article chronicles Coleman's connections with private industries profiting handsomely from the publicly funded mandates. To understand how schools cannot now set their own curriculum (no matter what your school district/state legislation states) and why students won't have the ability or time to read and discuss Catcher in the Rye in literature class, read how one man was able to manipulate standards/assessments with the help of politicians and corporations making handsome profits from the takeover of public education:
Whether Coleman sees himself as the schoolmaster of a one world order education is unknown. What is apparent, however, is the horse has already left the barn here in the United States. With the common core standards already in place, conservatives and liberals alike have failed to vet transformers like Coleman primarily due to Republican globalists who have been on board in the transformation of public school education with their far left comrades since the late 1980's.
Ohanian ended her post on Coleman's speech at Brookings with this thought:
Remember this:The Common Core State (sic) Standards and Assessments are something you can't use at a price you can't afford.
People do seem to be starting to catch on, here's another: Obamacore: The substitution of propaganda for great literature in our schools
ReplyDelete"...English teachers are right to be upset, but they shouldn’t take it personally. The government has nothing much against literature, per se. Rather, this initiative is driven in large part by the desire to promote political propaganda in the classroom. The study of literature is being downgraded in the process, but for a good cause.
Consider that one of the “informational texts” recommended as a replacement for, say, Great Expectations is “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” Students would thus study government propaganda in English class (this Executive Order was issued under President Bush, but it is still propaganda — a political sop to the environmental left, as Stanley Kurtz shows).
Another Common Core’s non-fiction exemplar is an excerpt from a 2009 New Yorker essay by Atul Gawande on health care. This too is propaganda – an effort to show that Obamacare is wise policy..."
While, like you, I've been railing against it for years... and "they've" been promoting it, in its essentials, for well over a century, this part made me laugh:
"The government has nothing much against literature, per se. Rather, this initiative is driven in large part by the desire to promote political propaganda in the classroom."
Just what is it that you suppose he thought good literature was good for, if not innoculating you against falsehoods and other such worldviews?
Did they really suppose it's just entertainment? Just useful for well-todo-cocktail party banter? Yeah? Well, as I said, the process has been underway for a long, long, time.
Students do need to be able to read and comprehend nonfiction, but that is already addressed in content area classes of science, social studies, etc. which upper grades have always covered. I'm confused why C.C. designers want to emphasize this, unless it for content area teachers to be held more accountable for general reading skills rather than their content skills. If so, WHEN would teachers find time for this?
ReplyDeleteThere could be more nonfiction taught in lower grades to prepare for later expectations.
People are starting to catch on: Obamacore: The substitution of propaganda for great literature in our schools
ReplyDelete"...English teachers are right to be upset, but they shouldn’t take it personally. The government has nothing much against literature, per se. Rather, this initiative is driven in large part by the desire to promote political propaganda in the classroom. The study of literature is being downgraded in the process, but for a good cause.
Consider that one of the “informational texts” recommended as a replacement for, say, Great Expectations is “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” Students would thus study government propaganda in English class (this Executive Order was issued under President Bush, but it is still propaganda — a political sop to the environmental left, as Stanley Kurtz shows).
Another Common Core’s non-fiction exemplar is an excerpt from a 2009 New Yorker essay by Atul Gawande on health care. This too is propaganda – an effort to show that Obamacare is wise policy..."
While, like you, I've been railing against it for years... and "they've" been promoting it, in its essentials, for well over a century, this part made me laugh:
"The government has nothing much against literature, per se. Rather, this initiative is driven in large part by the desire to promote political propaganda in the classroom."
Just what is it that you suppose he thought good literature was good for, if not innoculating you against falsehoods and other such worldviews?
Did they really suppose it's just entertainment? Just useful for well-todo-cocktail party banter? Yeah? Well, as I said, the process has been underway for a long, long, time.
The old forbidden fruit strategy works wonders. When an authority figure doesn't allow his charges to have something, it oft produces an unexpected reaction. Remember the words of the late Senator Barry Goldwater during the floor debate on GCA '68: "When you tell an American he can't have something, you can bet your last dollar he'll find a way to get it."
ReplyDelete