Common Core Standards and Square Watermelons



A visual representation of common core standards for common students.

Everybody will be the same with the same standards.

 

 

 

No, these aren't watermelon designed candles! They are actually fruits ready for shipping. It seems a little crazy but when you put a form around an immature fruit or vegetable it will grow to fit into that form. Apparently these watermelon can be shipped in greater quantities by shaping them. No joke!

 

From Wikipedia: "In Japan, farmers of the Zentsuji region found a way to grow cubic watermelons by growing the fruits in glass boxes and letting them naturally assume the shape of the receptacle. The square shape supposedly makes the melons easier to stack and store, but the cubic watermelons are often more than double the price of normal ones. Using similar techniques, growers have also created more complex shapes of watermelon, including dice, pyramids, and faces."

 

 

I saw this post on Facebook from SummerWinds Nursery in Mountain View, CA. Here is an interesting remark from the nursery:

 

They could be grown organically since the glass is only used to shape them. But you're right, it might be a hard sell to convince people they aren't mutant melons!

 
 

When I saw the photo I immediately thought of the "common" students we will be educating with the common core standards.  All students learning the same standards, using the same assessments for presumably the same outcome.  It is becoming an increasingly more difficult sell to convince the taxpayers the reformers aren't selling them mutant reforms. 

 

If farmers can grow watermelons to grow in a specific form, the upside for the seller is the capability to grow greater quantities.  If education reformers can educate to all students in the same standards/assessment box, the alleged result will be to create a managed workforce since every student ostensibly has the same skills and knowledge.

 

As Yong Zhao writes in Education in the Age of Globalization:

 

...let me restate my main point: it is impossible, unnecessary, and harmful for a small group of individuals to predetermine and impose upon all students the same set of knowledge and skills and expect all students progress at the same pace (if the students don’t, it is the teachers’ and schools’ fault). I am not against standards per se for good standards can serve as a useful guide. What I am against is Common and Core, that is, the same standards for all students and a few subjects (currently math and English language arts) as the core of all children’s education diet. I might even love the Common Core if they were not common or core.

 

Now that you know CCSS wants to turn out children looking the same (just like square watermelons) to serve the government/private sector purposes, read Zhao's thoughtful response to Marc Tucker's contentions on the necessity of CCSS.  Zhao's article may be one of the best refutations to the education reformers' arguments that are never backed up by fact, but rather, fantasy and meaningless rhetoric.

 

Zhao writes:

 

 It is simply not true that the Common Core will prepare our children for the future. To conclude, I quote a comment left on my Facebook page by one of my personal heros, former president of America Educational Research Association (AERA) and widely respected educational researcher Gene Glass: “Common Core Standards are idiots’ solution to a misunderstood problem. The problem is an archaic, useless curriculum that will prepare no child for life in 2040 and beyond.” 

 

And who wants all children the same...like square watermelons?