Common Core Facts: Listen to Sandra Stotsky, Joy Pullman, Jamie Gass on Recorded Webinar Call

Sandra Stotsky, Joy Pullman and Jamie Gass were on a webinar call sponsored by Stop Common Core in NY State this past week.

You can listen to it here.

Thanks to Stop Common Core in NY State for providing this to other activists so they can fight common core in their states.

Missing the Twain and No Absolutes. The Future for our Children?

Why do Common Core standards remove a piece of literature teaching absolute truth?

Common Core standards mandate more scientific and non-fiction reading in public schools and less emphasis on literature.  Huckleberry Finn has been removed from classrooms in Massachusetts as a result of these mandates.  From Charles Chieppo and Jamie Gass, Schoolkids Missing the Twain from Telegram.com:

The Missouri of Clemens’ youth was a slave state. His family owned several slaves, and he was even a Confederate soldier for a few weeks. But Clemens came to be a powerful voice for civil rights. “Lincoln’s proclamation,” he said, “not only set the black slaves free, but set the white man free also.”

Mark Twain’s greatest achievement was “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” a tale about the title character, the abused backwoods son of an alcoholic, and Jim, a Negro slave fleeing captivity. The story chronicles their journey together down the Mississippi. Twain not only uses Jim’s humanity and heroism to help Huck unlearn his own racism, but to illustrate the moral and societal failure of slavery and racial discrimination.

According to Twain scholar Jocelyn Chadwick:

“The book’s pivotal moment is when Huck awakens to hear Jim ‘moaning and mourning.’ Jim’s been crying for his family, and Huck says some of the most significant words I’ve ever read in fiction: ‘I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does there’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.’ ”

No less of an authority than Ernest Hemingway wrote, “All modern American literature comes from … Huckleberry Finn... There has been nothing as good since.”


It's regretful Massachusetts public educated students won't be reading Huckleberry Finn in their classrooms:


Sadly, students in Massachusetts and across most of the country may soon have to seek out Huckleberry Finn on their own, because it isn’t included in national K-12 education standards that have been adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia.

Twain’s masterpiece isn’t the only casualty of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s decision to adopt weaker national standards known as “Common Core.” These new English standards include less than half as much classic literature and poetry than the Massachusetts standards they will replace.

We might be "lucky" in Missouri since Twain wrote in Missouri and students "might" be able to read a local author in the classroom with the 15% rule "allowed" by our consortia.    However, adopting additional material is frowned upon because "common" means just that: common.  All students are to learn the same material in every state. From Achieve:

When 48 states and three territories signed on to the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), it was their goal to create a shared set of expectations in English Language Arts and mathematics. Therefore, states who adopt the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are expected to adopt them in their entirety. While states will not be considered to have adopted the common core if any individual standard is left out, states are allowed to augment the standards with an additional 15% of content that a state feels is imperative. For example, some states may include literature from authors born in the
state or about groups or events important to the state. In some cases, these requirements are even written into law. States may also need to add content to courses so that they align with other existing policies. It is important to note, however, that adding to the CCSS is purely optional.

In fact, the 15% guideline should be considered primarily as a common-sense guideline to meet specific state needs. States should be judicious about adding content and keep in mind the possible implications of doing so. Remember, a central driver in the creation of the CCSS was to develop standards that were common across states lines – and clear and focused – the opposite of the “mile wide, inch deep” standards so prevalent in many current state standards. A literal interpretation by states of the 15% guideline (that is 15% added at every grade level and in each subject) would undermine the very reason the states developed the Common Core State Standards in the first place.

What will Massachusetts students lose by not reading Huckleberry Finn?  Read this comment from a reader on the site:

bbbbb wrote:

"All right then, I'll go to hell" is another big moment.

Huck was going to collect the 200 to turn Jim in, but realized he could not.

It underscores the moral truth than all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of happiness."

There is a natural law so powerful about right and wrong; that is not subjective, that is not relative, that Huck was truly willing to allow his soul to be damned for what was truly right.

It's a great book. I think I'll re-read it.

 
There are moral lessons learned through literature, not through fact driven and scientific text.  Imagine that.  Common Core mandates will diminish literature in favor of factual texts since students need to be better workers.  Too bad students' sense of morality will suffer to further workforce needs.


Now read this article from David McElroy Is this what happens when you teach children there are no absolutes?:

Humans have always robbed each other, killed each other and done other evil things to one another. But as we became civilized, we learned that some things are right and wrong. Many of us believed in ideas rooted in natural law and natural rights. Other people rooted their ideas in different ways, but they still agreed upon most of the basics of what was right and wrong.

Sometime during the 20th century, that long-held shared belief about right and wrong started falling away among the public. It wasn’t just the immoral or lawless who were responsible. Those types had always had the willingness to hurt people and to do things that they knew were wrong.

The new belief to take the place of moral absolutes in the public consciousness was moral relativism, even if people wouldn’t necessarily know what to call it. The idea was that there wasn’t really such a thing as absolute right and wrong. Those were old-fashioned religious concepts, they said. Instead, right and wrong were said to be very relative and situational. I saw and heard this idea influence things I was taught in school, and I’ve seen more recent examples that were far more blatant.

I thought about all of that Thursday when I ran across some video that was uploaded to YouTube four years ago. I can’t verify it, but it appears to be the raw footage of interviews done by a TV news station with two young females about a crime they’ve committed. (Since the face of one of them is obscured, I assume she was still a juvenile.) As I listened to these girls, I found myself thinking that they’re the end result of teaching generations of kids that there aren’t any moral absolutes.

Read more about these girls' crimes here and why they wanted something that didn't belong to them. 

Below is a youtube video in their own words about their crime and reasoning.   Here is an article from wpbf.com in Lake Worth, Florida detailing their crime.  Think about Jim, a fictional character in a novel, and these girls in their non-fictional world.  Who represents the best of being human?  Huck coming to terms with his own racism and discovering absolute truth or these girls who only acknowledge their own desires/wants and have no empathy for others?  

Would you rather your children read Huckleberry Finn or watch reality youtube?   At least Huck is remorseful.  That word apparently was never on the spelling list or in reading material for these girls.
 

Common Core = Educational Equity, NOT Educational Excellence.

...two words NOT allowed in Common Core standards. "Uncommon" & "Creative"

Jamie Gass from Pioneer Institute writes about current DOEd education reform and common core standards in an article entitled "Leaves of Memory Going Dark":

Gov. Patrick, Secretary Reville, and other state officials must realize the damage the national standards are doing to the high school English curriculum and require yearlong courses in American and British literature, as well as classical literature in Grade 9 or 10. If they do not, their lasting legacy to the Bay State’s schoolchildren will be one of trading that which is beautiful and enduring for the jargon-filled dead language of educationists.

Here are some of the buzz words and jargon-filled dead language of educationists sprinkled in Arne Duncan's, Michelle Rhee's and David Coleman's statements about education and education reform:

• Educational equity
• Common core
• School choice
• Global competitiveness
• STEM ready
• College ready

What the educationists don't tell you but what is becoming apparent is this is not about individual education and teaching to each child.   That which is beautiful and enduring is being replaced with data driven assessments and conformity.  What is obvious is when the DOEd pushes common core, the emphasis is on common.  Education is not geared to excellence and surpassing goals.  Education's emphasis is for all students to be the same according to Arne Duncan:

His record of achievement is already secure. After talking about national standards for decades, the U.S. has finally adopted them. This is an example of Duncan’s quiet skills. By deleting the word “national” and working through the governors, he bested conservatives who have long refused to accept standards from Washington. Using the lever of Race to the Top, 41 states have adopted “common core” standards in just two years. “For the first time, a child in Mississippi and a child in Massachusetts will be judged by the same yardstick,” he says.

States won't be judged by the same yardstick, students will judged by the same yardstick.  This means children with low, middle and high IQ scores will be judged on the same common standards and assessments.  How's that working out for gifted or highly motivated students?  Common core is determined to make these kids common and services are being curtailed for them according to Insidehighered.com:

The College Board, facing widespread criticism, on Tuesday announced that it was abandoning plans to test out an August administration of the SAT this year. Many high school students want a summer option for taking the SAT, but many college and high school officials were upset by the College Board's plan to try out the idea with a summer program of the National Society for the Gifted and Talented -- a program whose $4,500 price tag led many educators to call the pilot a "rich kids SAT."

Initially the College Board defended the idea of using that group to test an August SAT. But on Tuesday, the board issued a statement that said in part that "certain aspects" of the summer program whose participants would gain the August SAT opportunity "run counter to our mission of promoting equity and access, as well as to our beliefs about SAT performance." The statement added, however, that the organization was "still very much committed to exploring the concept of a summer administration," and would look for ways in the future to do so "in a manner that better aligns with our mission and the students we serve. Steps also are being taken internally to ensure that future initiatives receive the appropriate level of senior management review."

This statement of equity and access from the College Board, soon to be headed by David Coleman, one of the primary architects of Common Core, is not surprising and is a foundational belief (if not the foundational belief) of educational reform.  What can gifted students expect in North Carolina thanks to Common Core?  From educationviews.org:

Under new education reforms adopted by North Carolina, gifted elementary school students will no longer be able to take middle school courses formerly available to them.

In an effort to phase in a set of national education reforms knows as the Common Core — an educational initiative that seeks to improve American education through unified and rigorous teaching across state lines — North Carolina has voted to install a more difficult curriculum for the 2012-2013 academic year.

Officials say that middle school math courses currently taken by gifted elementary school students will be too difficult for them after the curriculum changes, the McClatchy-Tribune reports. As a result, middle school courses will no longer be available to advanced elementary school students.

These changes fuel an already heated national debate on education reform. They raise the question of whether compliance to national educational standards such as the Common Core can stifle individual schools, preventing them from being able to push — and conversely, alienating — their brightest pupils.

This is reminiscent of Nancy Pelosi's statement about Obamacare:


"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it...away from the fog of the controversy"



Now that the governors, state boards of education, and the common core architects are telling you what's in Common Core and educational reform, if you have a student whose learning style/ability is not "common"... good luck.