February 26, 2015
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The Road to 65, Mile 84: Arcaneness
February 20, 2015, Prescott-
There has come out of Phoenix, over the past several months, a concern with Common Core- the Federally-initiated set of loose education standards, which are intended to be tweaked to the needs of states and localities. Because the Federal guidelines are so general, Common Core has appeared, to the average person, as a mishmash of convoluted lesson plans and circumlocution.
In most instances, Common Core has been fit to the state levels by panels of local educators. The overriding concern, however, has been the mere fact that it is a byproduct of FEDERAL initiative. There has been a fair amount of obfuscation and deliberate taking things out of context, so as to change education back to- “Heck, I don’t know. Just make it something patriotic, adulatory of the Founding Fathers, pro-sports, useful for getting minimum-wage jobs, keeping the riff-raff in their place, and making Might the Master of Right.”
The only move the critics of Common Core have made thus far, here in the Grand Canyon State, is to institute a mandatory Civics Test, for those wanting to graduate high school. That’s fair enough. People who master Civics are less likely to be bamboozled. All the same, there is nothing in Common Core that forbids or discourages mastery of Civics, or of any other subject. We had a few years ago, in the Dysart Unified School District, in Surprise, AZ, west of Phoenix, something called Core Learning. There were, in the social studies classes in which I taught, off and on, specific units on which it was felt everyone should focus: The War for Independence, Slavery, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression. I filled in the gaps, though it was discouraged by the administrators. Several students, though, were more than glad to examine the Industrial Revolution, Gilded Age, the Spanish-American War and the Dust Bowl.
My point is that Common Core is a basic framework, not United Nations mandated indoctrination. There are frivolous, off-center lesson plans being advanced in its name, but these have occurred in the names of any of its predecessors, from “A Nation At Risk” to “The First Days of School”, as well as “No Child Left Behind”. Arcaneness is a peculiarly American aspect of education, more reflective of our freedom of expression, than of any Globo-stomp, Monolithic control of what kids learn.
I had these thoughts as I supervised groups of middle school students, who were working on learning somewhat arcane computer design applications, during the course of today.
Comments (3)
My thoughts are that there is too much of putting children's thoughts in boxes and leaving them without their own creative thoughts. Education should be about learning and exploring and having fun too.
I don't know about Common Core but I am glad we have choices and can follow those choices. Both parties like to meddle! Growl! 
The teachers in my circle of friends and family have seen various takes on the common core. You are correct in that it is a general mandate and has the flexibility to tailor the curriculum to the desires of individual states. Here the idea of common core is under attack but less blatantly. Instead the governor is attempting to remove the elected state school superintendent's authority in an end run around the voters - all because she doesn't kiss his posterior. We are a wholly Republican state but the voters elected a Democrat as school superintendent in a landslide because she was more qualified... and puts the education of the children above politics. Sadly our Governor is more concerned with having his administration in lockstep with his ideology.
I have read something about the Governor of Indiana. I liked his predecessor much better, and am not surprised to read that education is just another feather in his cap- and that it looks a bit frayed.
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