Conservative Media and Common Core Analysis

I just finished watching a clip sent to me from one of the popular conservative shows about the subject of Common Core. Several thoughts went through my mind and this blog post will address them. First, let me tell you where I am coming from: I know there are major problems with education today. I am a home educator for some of those reasons. Additionally, I decided to take my own education into my own hands several years ago and my focus was not to get training for a job like most colleges offer, but to get a real true blue education, one that Thomas Jefferson, Alexander the Great, Laura Ingalls Wilder and many of our ancestors had.  Simply speaking, a liberal arts education. An education in the liberal arts is not the art of becoming a modern liberal, but the study of the arts and sciences of an entire collection of the Great Minds from the Ancient to the Modern. Basically an education from Herodotus to Churchill and then some. These are the ideas that make us free. Liberty means free and comes from the word liberal. Liberal comes from the word liber, which in Latin means the bark of the tree. In ancient times, the great ideas were written on barks of trees to facilitate the spreading of the ideas that opened minds and caused good people to do great things. With that in mind, I express my passion and love for the liberal arts because of the sense of purpose it gives me and the understanding of the ideas that has shaped our world.

Now, about the clip. I watched it and several things I got from it were:

1. It contains dumbed-down standards

2. Less standards to shoot for than in the past (no cursive writing and other things)

3. Our private information is sold to manipulate the system

4. Liberal doctrine and dogma is taught and expected to infiltrate homes

Something that I was surprised with was the chemical reaction that happened to me. I haven't watched this popular TV show host-turned-internet-host for many months now and so I was prepared to quite literally feel my amygdala (fight or flight gland) turn on in my brain. I also felt the blood rush to my arms and legs and out of my center core. It was incredible. I began to remember the biology lessons that have taught me about the miraculous way our body prepares itself to attack a saber-toothed tiger, which is that all blood is distributed away from our core organs and into our appendages in order to give strength to our legs to flee and to our arms to attack. So this was now happening to me and it was incredibly real. It felt like I had taken in a drug. 

Upon recognizing this, I began to think back a few years ago at the time I listened to his show everyday and how I kept going back for more as if it was an addiction. Since I have "gotten off" him, I have been able to read thousands of pages of classic works, written 80% of a public school charter, read and studied the Idaho Education Laws, and read and studied the Common Core on my own (see below about what I learned from it). So much have I done that I considered how his show must have been a waste of my time. Now, with the extra time saved from getting off my addiction, a combination of all my studying has enlightened my understanding and given me peace to continue to find my way. 

I know that I am going somewhere blunt, plain and harsh…and I hope and feel that you can follow me here to the end. Here is what I am feeling. I feel strongly that these kinds of shows and the chemical reaction effect that they have on many are keeping people from doing things that really can make a difference. However, let me make a clear point that the information they bring to our attention is absolutely important, but the way that they present it and hold people to them like glue is what is mediocre. It might be a tool of the adversary to keep us in the doom and gloom mood and addicted to the issues, rather than doing the better things. 

Now, with that said, I feel that a good conservative show is an exciting treat every few months if I can stay away from the addiction. They have their place and have brought about much enlightenment, but I wonder if it can go the wrong direction if they are daily getting into the homes and tempting people to keep coming back for more. I also wonder if our cores will suffer more diseases with less blood nourishing them because it is so often nourishing our arms and legs. We live in good times and bad times, as the opening lines state in Charles Dickens', A Tale of Two Cities. But I feel that we were born at such a time as this to do good and "better" things and affect much change. Getting off our addiction will create more time to do better things and send more blood to our core and brains to feel better and think better. (Understanding more biology will help us too—heeheehee)

So as I stated above, I decided to tackle Common Core document and see for myself this past spring. Studying the CCdoc was quite a fun thing because it gave me a sense of accomplishment and a good direction of how I wanted to think about it, do about it and talk about it. I found:

1. Low standards of the English Grammar

2. Low standards of History 

3, Low standards of Math

4. Low standards of Science

5. No curriculum is mentioned. They expect each state to figure out the curriculum that "brings" the students to achieve the standard

6. The standards are measurable and include things like being able to analyze, discuss, find, think, write, understand, apply. Measurable standards mean you can check them off and test people on them. 

So, to summarize my list, I found that it was a list of standards that must be met, albeit, a list of standards well below the high standard of learning, even missing some of the important things like cursive writing and so forth, so a mediocre school would only "have to" teach to the standard and not feel they had to go higher or teach other things not on the doc, but a good education would go above and beyond the standards. 

Now, in the CC document it does not state "how" anyone "gets" to those standards except that it gives each state the choice on how they are going to get there. In the case of Harmony Educational Services, which is what we are using to provide the super curriculum of Williamsburg Academy and Intermediate for our children, they are allowing the parent to choose how they want their children to satisfy the low standard, but at the same time allowing the individual families go much higher (families have standards of their own that reach the stars, don't they?). CCdoc doesn't care about that…that's okay because I do, so I do something about it. 

Pondering the CC document, I came up with four things:

1. It was not complex to read

2. It was basically a list of standards each student ought to be able to do (not able to know--that is curriculum and there is none of that in the CCdoc)

3. There is no curriculum, only standards of ability, curriculum is only the medium to get to those standards and families can choose their curriculum if they use homeschool charters, such as Harmony Ed.

4. Conservatives (of which I am one) might (because of the walls they build up against them) think this: "Liberals are progressive, their ideas are bad for us, so therefore, CC must be bad for us"

5. I couldn't see anything bad in CC except that it requires a very mediocre brain to get to the standards, but that doesn't bother me because I am expecting more for my children and trying to persuade others to take the bull by the horn and not outsource their children's education any longer.

The deepest thing I pondered about was the wall that we build up toward the Liberals (and they might deserve it--). That wall is our prejudgement of their (we see it sometimes as evil) progressive ideas. So anything we hear about them on TV or Internet, especially when we dwell on them every day, we begin to feel fear, hate, emotions and all that comes with those things. We fear for our lives, our freedom and our privacy. We basically live in fear. Then all our blood rushes away from our brains and core organs and into our arms and legs. We lose most of our ability to think rationally and we act on our emotions. This is exactly what I don't want to do any longer and why I read the CCdoc in the first place. I wanted to find out about the "evil" ideas. 

I only found one "evil" idea: CCdoc is only expecting a certain standard: mediocrity. It said nothing about the Liberal Dogma. Liberal Dogma mostly comes from curriculum or classroom discussions, if it is important to the teacher. There is no curriculum in the CCdoc (See the 9th and 10th paragraphed section, including the lists). Liberal Dogma comes from being in the particular school systems that promote it and from (beginning with the desires in our heart) outsourcing our children's education. 

I deeply learned from "getting off my conservative-media addiction" and from reading and studying the CC document that because I don't put my trust in an educational system, but in God and my personal revelation from Him about how to educate my children, I have no need to fear it. And that trust expands to almost every other "evil" liberal idea. God will win and he is revealing to us daily, individually and collectively the things we ought to do. 

Going Through the Hoops with Common Core

I don't know if you have listened to much of the hype about Common Core. I did, but I wasn't satisfied with the hearsay, so I did my own research earlier this year. I read the entire document's contents and found it to be just a list of certain abilities and skills dealing with each subject. There is no curriculum involved, only standards to be met. These standards are the basic fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic. The following are all the examples from the 8th grade literature standards:

Key Ideas and Details

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.1 Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to the characters, setting, and plot; provide an objective summary of the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.3 Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.

Craft and Structure

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.5 Compare and contrast the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.6 Analyze how differences in the points of view of the characters and the audience or reader (e.g., created through the use of dramatic irony) create such effects as suspense or humor.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.7 Analyze the extent to which a filmed or live production of a story or drama stays faithful to or departs from the text or script, evaluating the choices made by the director or actors.
• (RL.8.8 not applicable to literature)
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.9 Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.

Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.10 By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of grades 6–8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

See, these are only standards of skill. Now, these being the standards, there must be a way to practice and measure these standards in some way and that brings us to curriculum. Since CC lets the states choose any way they want to get to these standards, the state then chooses the particular curriculum as the medium to "get" or to achieve these standards. Let's say for instance, a public school in your area chooses to read one of the Twilight Series books to "get" to these standards, but in Williamsburg Academy Online, they choose to read The Scarlet Letter, or Jane Eyre to get to these standards. You can imagine on the one hand, you are submitting your child to the bent and corruptness of Twilight while getting to the standards, while another mom has chosen WA for her child, who is submersing herself in the richness of great literature, of ideas, of morals, of self-awareness and the invitation it sends to join the ranks of all the Jane Eyre's of the world who say "Yes" to God and "no" to sin. Curriculum is what the parents have most control over when it comes to CC and that's the beauty of the whole thing.

Common Core only states a standard of learning, but it has nothing to do with how any one school needs to get there. Now, with that in mind, CC does not have all the beautiful standards that once were thought of as being great, like learning cursive, or learning to show our math-work in the old fashioned way (now a new way) or even the standards of character and self-analysis that once were so beneficial to a nation. So, because of the lack of those beautiful standards a parent has a choice to make. They either consign the responsibility over to a public school system nearest their home and allow any curriculum that will achieve the standards or they can seek for the best education that will use higher standards and higher morals that go well above the mediocrity and instill in their child a love of freedom and all those things that are good and necessary. 

What about the hype? The only thing I see about it, is that it's hype…just hype over false conclusions. The conservatives are weary of the liberals and anything the liberals say is "probably furthest from the truth." As in the case with CC, the conservatives are mostly crying over the lack of good standards and the horrible possibility of bad curriculum. They are absolutely right about that, but the thing that most people don't realize when they listen to today's conservative media shows is that both those things are completely controlled by the parents. The parents have total agency to put their children in a school they believe will deliver the best material (and usually those schools don't care much about the standards of CC…they just get them over with, even sometimes without the student even knowing they are accomplishing them, for the sole reason that they want the focus to be on the best and greatest and not on the mediocre). The parents also have total agency on teaching their child cursive and other "lost standards" they want to instill in their progenitors. 

This is my take and probably a lot more than you want to know, but I am passionate about getting people to look through the media and get their noses in the real documents. And as they do so, they will realize what they have control over and it is usually most of the control. This is a harsh and corrupt world in which we live, but if we are seekers of truth we will ALWAYS find it and feel FREE.