Wednesday, June 11, 2014

ObamaCORE Emerges As a Major Issue As Education Takes An Orwellian Turn

Move over Obamacare. Mid-term elections will also be referendums on ObamaCore. - NY SUN

Contrary to what the public is told, Common Core is not about standards. It’s about content — what pupils are taught. In the Social Studies Framework approved on April 29th by New York State’s education authorities (but not parents), American history is presented as four centuries of racism, economic oppression, and gender discrimination. Teachers are encouraged to help students identify their differences instead of their common American identity. Gone are heroes, ideals, and American exceptionalism....

Common Core was invented five years ago by a handful of Washington based education “experts” and bankrolled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But it took off when the Obama administration put into the stimulus bill $4.3 billion in state education grants called Race to the Top.

President Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, made it clear the surest way for states to qualify was to adopt Common Core. Some states took it sight unseen, since the first grant applications were due in January 2010, and the standards were not written until months later. New York adopted Common Core in July 2010, in return for $697 million.

All in all, 45 states signed on to a program that had never been tested in even one school. What pomposity....

Private schools and home schooling won’t shield you if you want your children to compete for college. ACT and SAT tests are already being aligned with Common Core. This is a No Exit system.

But what’s most at stake is truth. Novelist George Orwell warned in “1984” how distorting history destroyed freedom: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”