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| Citizens from all political sides want to reclaim educational freedom |
The Left-Right Alliance for Education has issued a statement on its objection to Common Core State standards. The group's mission:
“The Left-Right Alliance for Education” was formed to bring together education reform advocates from across the political spectrum, and across the nation, to determine if it is possible to form a multi-partisan alliance for countering the current federal/corporate alliance driving education reform policy. The members of the Left/Right Alliance for Education understood on a basic level that to be successful in countering the CCSSI we needed to, 1) set aside those points of opposition that are highly partisan, 2) create a clear and succinct message of mutual opposition to Common Core, 3) make it clear that these points of opposition are shared by people from all over the political spectrum, and 4) appeal to the universal desire that all parents have for their children’s education, which is not just to be “career-ready”, but more importantly to become mature thinkers who are highly-motivated, self-disciplined, hard-working, creative, ambitious, happy individuals who know their own minds and who are prepared to thrive in any life path they choose.The full statement can be found here.
I was invited to contribute to this effort and am proud to support this group in its mission to unite those from the left and the right against Common Core standards. The CCSS proponents can no longer authentically state that it's "teapartiers", "crazy rightwingers", "rightwing nutjobs" or whatever disparaging label they wish to slap on those who question why/how Common Core was adopted/implemented. Here is a graph from the contributors on their political alignment to this joint effort:
Political Alignment:
Participants in group effort were from a well-balanced a broad political spectrum. Contributors were asked to classify their politics and the graph below was the result:
How will the reformers counter the alliance's core beliefs? How will they attempt to marginalize citizens across all political alignments?
- We oppose the philosophy of standardization built into all federal education initiatives, including the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
- We oppose high-stakes testing.
- We oppose a national student data system.
I am gratified to see the Right and the Left coming together on this issue. I find it necessary and appropriate that this should happen. I consider myself a Good, not Brilliant, student with College Degrees. I have seen this trend toward Complexity in education for decades and relegated it to different kinds of Intelligence. Namely, the kind if intelligence that people possess who find rote memorization easy. That is true, but more importantly there has been an effort whether it be conscious or unconscious, planned or accidental, to make education more Technical, more Theoretical and much less Practical than it needs to be. By doing this the process becomes discouraging to the Average student by over-complicating subjects already complex in nature, such as, Math, Science and Language.
ReplyDeleteLets all get together and change the nature of education to the Practical, whereby we teach the student not to Theoretically Fish on paper, but to Practically Fish out on the lake shore with a worm, a rod and reel and learned, practical procedures to get a fish on the hook. I believe we could teach even the devoted theoretician how to do it.
I'd like to see included in this agreement, in so many words, the realization of a need to return to the most local controls in education: the family and its community, AWAY from state, federal and international controls AND FUNDS. This would necessarily include a rejection of any kind of outside mental programming and new attempts at a slave class of people.
ReplyDeleteI know that is quite a push, but heck, it will take a big push against totalitarian nudges from both parties and other groups, over many, many years.
Overall, this is great to see! I am glad to see agreements. Freedom, after all, is the glue.