I
have been an opponent of Common Core ever since the program was launched. Not
only does it force schools to adopt an entirely new curriculum, it is a heavily
liberal biased measure that forces many school districts to spend money that
they simply don’t have. Simply put it is a program that is detrimental on an educational
and financial level. That was my initial reaction and that has only been
reinforced as more and more examples have some to the surface from the curriculum.
I
was scanning through a pro-Israel Facebook page this past week and noticed an article mentioning Common Core.
While the media source is questionable in their own bias, it was interesting to
read the excerpts found in the textbooks. Those questions included:
“Was George Washington any different from
Palestinian terrorists trying to protect their country?”
“Was Jefferson a hypocrite? Did he really think
of a slave as a sub-human while writing the Declaration of Independence?”
The
liberal assumptions that are applied to the history of our Nation is clear in
the thoughts that they wish to plant in the minds of students. However, this
was not the most blatant example that has been found as the following, much
longer, musing can also be found in the fraudulent pages:
“What then were the causes of the American
Revolution? It used to be argued that the Revolution was caused by the tyranny
of the British government in the years following the Seven Years War. This view
is no longer acceptable. Historians now recognize that the British colonies
were the freest in the world…”
“The French menace was removed after 1763 and
the colonies no longer felt dependent on England’s aid. This did not mean that
they wished for independence. The great majority of the colonists were loyal,
even after the Stamp Act. They were proud of the Empire and its liberties…In
the years following the Stamp Act a small minority of radicals began to work
for independence. They watched for every opportunity of making a crisis and in
Boston it was this group who staged the Boston Tea Party… In the Thirteen
Colonies the Revolution had really been a civil war in which the whole
population was torn with conflicting loyalties. John Adams later said that in
1776 probably not more than one-third of the people favored war.”
The debate over Common
Core has been going on for a few years now with one example coming to mind which I remember reading about in 2012
when parents of students at a Tennessee high school protested the anti-Israel content
of one of the advanced placement textbooks. The example that was given during
that time from the textbook “The
Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography” was the following
question: “If a Palestinian suicide bomber kills several dozen Israeli
teenagers in a Jerusalem restaurant, is that an act of terrorism or wartime
retaliation against Israeli government policies and army actions?”
In
the end, if you are wondering why the educational system is failing both in
quality and fiscally, it is because of the limitations placed on districts and
students stemming from Common Core. Things change as we get older and time
passes but, as this example demonstrates, it doesn’t mean that things are
changing for the better. Maybe we should go back to teaching the facts rather
than accusations and encourage self-reliance, continued study, and pride in our
history and heritage. Furthermore, let’s focus on teaching common sense rather
than common core!
