Before deciding to pursue freelance work and travel the world, I made the mistake of working in the bureaucratic industry of education. I was able to witness first-hand some of the most terrible injustices of the American education system. From teachers on power trips giving kids poor grades simply because they don't like them, to the forced-use of curriculum textbooks which are out-of-date and contain disproven ideas. Sit down, shut up, be submissive, don't question authority.
It became increasingly clear to me that the public school system in America is not one which allows students to learn and come up with new ideas, but rather do mindless tasks and regurgitate things which they don't even care about or need in life. One of the worst of these injustices is that public and even charter schools force their teachers to uphold Common Core. When President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Education Organization Act in 1979, a march towards federalization of American public schools began. The Common Core was one of the offsprings of the Department of Education.
The Common Core system hasn’t been around that long. As the Common Core website says, “lack of standardization was one reason why states decided to develop the Common Core State Standards in 2009.” In other words, some people were concerned that without some sort of standard as to what students are supposed to learn in each grade level, professional resources wouldn’t know how to help each individual student. The website also claims that it was launched to “ensure all students, regardless of where they live, are graduating high school prepared for college, career, and life.”
Common Core Is Supposed to Help Students Succeed, Right?
The intent of this legislation has never been controversial, it is the actuality. Public school teachers already have a hard time feeling comfortable speaking out against topics they don’t approve of, in fear for their jobs. Recently I spoke to a public school teacher with a M.Ed, who wished to remain anonymous for job security, but voiced an excellent opinion on this topic.
“I have problems with any assertion that all children, regardless of background or circumstances of upbringing are expected to learn and grow in the same manner. Furthermore, they are expected to be measured by the same standards, which is problematic when one considers the wide range of issues that our youth face across the country. I have never been a fan of Common Core (directly related to how I have never been a fan of standardized testing, for similar reasons), but the question begs, how would our local governments propose to accurately facilitate standards and expectations that reflect the students and their needs? What data will they use to inform their choices? Again, I have concerns regarding the fact that our own ‘Secretary of Education’ has never stepped foot in a public school as a student herself. This is a process and decision that should not be taken lightly, nor rushed in any way.
In other words, this teacher is demonstrating that not every student is the same, so therefore they shouldn’t be held to the same standards. Since each student has individual needs, interests, and circumstances, it is difficult to fairly assess what everybody should learn at a collective level. Furthermore, since this is the case, how could we properly facilitate standardized learning in a world where each student has individual needs?
Social Studies Standards Are Open To Personal Interpretation
Not only do teachers have to deal with Common Core standards, but also state standards. Each state that has accepted Common Core likely also has their own version of state standards which are supposed to correlate with the Common Core.
In my personal experience, there has never really been adequate levels of standardization under the Common Core system. Being a public school teacher in Colorado, I would routinely be looking through the curriculum materials of other schools that they posted online and find that the content would still change as you crossed state lines. For example, schools in New York learn World History in Sixth Grade, whereas sixth graders in Colorado would be learning about geography, civics, basic economics, and the history of many different indigenous groups in the Western Hemisphere.
In fact, standardization in this case would do very little to help a student who has to move across the country. Under Common Core, it is then possible that a student who goes to New York public schools K-6 could come to Colorado and receive the same social studies lessons they had the previous year in New York for 7th grade in Colorado.
The reason for this is that the Common Core standards (at least for social studies and science) are such filtered-down garbage that they can be interpreted a variety of different ways. Common Core social studies standards for grades 6-8 don’t mention anything at all about what the child is supposed to be learning, but instead turns the class into a giant literacy lesson. Here are some of the highlights of these Common Core standards:
In other words, according to Common Core, middle schoolers are not learning standardized lessons regarding important historical figures, movements, ideas, and other topics which impact them personally in their social studies classes. They are instead subject to Common Core standards which seem to only think that literacy is what is most important. Also in this case, they are not learning to think independently and critically for themselves, but instead what somebody else thinks about the topic.
This Happens In Science Too
It isn’t just Social Studies that Common Core standards that stress the importance of literacy over the subject content, take a look at what a successful 8th grade graduate can do in the realm of science, according to Common Core:
We can see here again that the big idea is that a student is able to read and comprehend the idea of another person, and that they are to follow procedure, and provide summaries “distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.” In other words, leave your prior knowledge and opinions behind if you want to be successful in Common Core middle school science.
Common Core Doesn’t Even Teach Social Studies And Science, So Why Use It?
To Common Core’s defense, however, it seems that social studies and science are admittedly not even the focus at all. As the website says: “The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA).
Regardless, if we are to have a standardized curriculum for K-12 classes, it needs to be something that accounts for student individuality, intelligence, interest, and needs. If we want to continue the Common Core, we should furthermore have a serious discussion about taking into account all content areas, including science and social studies, seriously. If we do eliminate Common Core, we will simply be removing federalized and nationally mandated standards in place for locally run educational systems.
To have a system in which all children have an equal shot to success and knowledge, we can come up with something better than Common Core. It is time we banished it into the history books so that we can soon laugh about it years down the line.