Posted on 12/06/2012 9:57:12 AM PST by mojito
Controversy is brewing over new Common Core State Standards in English that call on public schools to emphasize the reading of “information text” instead of fictional literature. According to the Washington Post, English teachers across the country are upset by what they consider the government’s effort “to drive literature out of the classroom.”
English teachers are right to be upset, but they shouldn’t take it personally. The government has nothing much against literature, per se. Rather, this initiative is driven in large part by the desire to promote political propaganda in the classroom. The study of literature is being downgraded in the process, but for a good cause.
Consider that one of the “informational texts” recommended as a replacement for, say, Great Expectations is “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” Students would thus study government propaganda in English class....
[....]
Consider also where the Common Core comes from? The Washington Post tries to make it appear that the new curriculum percolated up from the states. But at the back end of its story we find that “the Obama administration kicked the notion into high gear when it required states to adopt the common standards — or an equivalent — in order to compete for Race to the Top grant funds.”
The Common Core, then, should be viewed, at least in part, as an attempt by the Obama administration to gain control of what is taught in public schools for the purpose of indoctrination.
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
History? Banished.
Literature? Thought crime.
Welcome to 0bamamugabe's AmeriKa.
Now suck on it....for the next four years..
If this doesn’t wake up Rick Perry and other republican governors and legislatures, nothing will.
Consider that one of the “informational texts” recommended as a replacement for, say, Great Expectations is “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management.” Students would thus study government propaganda in English class....
Heh. Good luck with that. I'm yawning already. All may not be lost; this new initiative will yield to all sorts of genius work from bored students.
Reminds me, One Name, was this masterpiece done in or out of class? I'm still rofl at it.
The elite schools will still teach literature, latin, greek and a host of other subjects to encourage children to think.
The left doesn’t want the rest of the children to be able to do any critical thinking whatsoever.
Yeah, the common core tries to force informational texts than literary texts. The recommended literature is pretty much the same as the standard classroom.
The one thing I dread is the possible presence of a “Common Core adviser” appearing at my school and asking to enter my class. I’ll have to deny it as their presence would violate current FERPA laws.
"Schools have not necessarily much to do with education... they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school." -Winston Churchill
“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... " --Johann Gotlieb fitche
Aw, they don’t read, anyway. So they won’t be reading crappy propaganda instead of not reading old white males (and Jane Austen).
***English teachers across the country are upset by what they consider the government’s effort “to drive literature out of the classroom.***
I wonder if these same teachers were as ‘upset’ when God was taken out of the schools so long ago.
What is with this word, “core”? What the heck does it mean and why are educationalizers constantly saying it?
Bookmark
The following excerpt from a series entitled, "Lessons on Liberty," by the co-editor of a Bicentennial of the Constitution volume entitled, "Our Ageless Constitution." It contrasts the Founders' Ideas of Liberty" which were intended by the Founders to be taught to rising generations, with the Counterfeit Ideas being promoted in the so-called "public schools" of America for decades.
“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” (Jefferson - 1774)
“Statesmen may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” (John Adams - 1775)
“The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” (Alexander Hamilton)
“Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first and the most basic expression of Americanism. Thus the founding fathers saw it, and thus, with God’s help, it will continue to be.” (Dwight Eisenhower)
“The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” (John F. Kennedy - 1961 Inaugural)
“…it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor….”(George Washington)
“Now the virtue which had been infused into the Constitution…and was to give it…the stability and duration to which it was destined, was no other than…those abstract principles…proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence—namely, the self-evident truths of the…unalienable rights of man…the…sovereignty of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sovereign…power.” (John Quincy Adams, on the occasion of The Jubilee of the Constitution - 1839)
"Today, across our nation, we see consequences of decades of gross neglect and outright censorship of the Founders’ ideas from textbooks and from our public discourse. We have allowed counterfeit ideas to dominate the public square, and the Founders’ principles have been crowded out. Unwittingly, many teachers and other unknowing officials have participated in the agenda of an unelected mind-controlling elite whose tyrannical actions have robbed generations of Americans from reading or studying the ideas that made America free. Like termites, they have eroded our foundations as effectively as if they had burned the books. Yet, not once have they been willing to call it by its rightful name—censorship. Once, in America, stifling ideas about the Creator and Creator-endowed liberty was considered unthinkable. . . .
"The ideas of liberty must be passed on from generation to generation if liberty is to survive. These ideas, when they are allowed to be examined freely, will prevail, because their appeal is to reason and to the love for liberty that is deep in the human heart. John Adams warned: “The people of America now have the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands, that Providence ever committed to so small a number…if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven.”
“The idea of God is the keystone of a perverted society. The true root of liberty, equality and culture is atheism.” (Karl Marx)
Our thinking is enlightened “in the degree in which we cease to depend upon belief in the supernatural.” (John Dewey, father of ‘progressive education’ and 1st President of American Humanist Society)
“…democracy is a human faith and movement, unencumbered by supernatural preconceptions.” (John Childs, a protégé of John Dewey at Columbia)
“…the majority of our youth still hold the values of their parents, and if we do not alter this pattern, if we do not resocialize ourselves to accept change, our society may decay.” (John Goodlad, 1971 Report to President, Schooling for the Future)
“As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially a faith in the prayer-hearing God, who is assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith.” (Humanist Manifesto II, 1973)
“…the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is sixteen tends to lead toward elimination of religious superstition.” (Paul Blanshard, The Humanist, March-April, 1976)
“It [the Nat’l. Education Association’s publication list] includes the delegitimizing of all authority save that of the state, the degradation of traditional morality and the encouragement of citizens in general and children in particular to despise the rules and customs that make their society a functional democracy. The NEA is drifting into exceedingly dangerous waters, and probably carrying more than a few teachers and pupils with it.” (Chester E. Finn, Jr., Ass’t. Sec. Of Education & Prof. Of Education & Public Policy, Vanderbilt Univ., 1982)
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“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines which conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence…let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountains whose waters spring close to the blood of the Revolution.” (Abraham Lincoln)
“Napoleon took no interest in Snowball’s committees. He said that the education of the young was more important than anything that could be done for those who were already grown up. It happened that Jessie and Bluebell had both whelped soon after the hay harvest, giving birth between them to nine sturdy puppies. As soon as they were weaned, Napoleon took them away from their mothers, saying that he would make himself responsible for their education. He took them up into a loft which could only be reached by a ladder from the harness-room, and there kept them in such seclusion that the rest of the farm soon forgot their existence.”
`Animal Farm’ chapter 3
Bump
You’re going to have to get A into a private, or home school.
Bump
bookmark
I don’t think that it is that simple. Literature has been on the way out in public schools on the west coast for twenty or thirty years.
When my daughter, now 41, was in sixth grade, I became concerned that she had never done a written book report. I got the idea to ask a new neighbor, who was a retired English professor from the University of Michigan, is she would consider tutoring my daughter in literature. She said no, the current thinking in teaching was that reading literature was not necessary and not particularly beneficial. So, that was back in the eighties.
What she really meant was that reading literature opens up a student’s mind to the thinking from another time and place, CONSERVATIVE thinking.
Actually if you ask most teachers they think this is a wonderful idea. “It will make us more like China” (which, evidently, they believe is a good thing)
I was just reading an article on the WSJ about the fact that US students are now scoring very poorly in vocabulary and it occurred to me that the best way for students to learn vocabulary is to read good literature.
That might be the point in eliminating literature from the curricula, even the outcome for “disadvantaged” students for whom English is a second language either virtually, or in reality. Without actually reading good literature that uses the English vocabulary and good grammar, students are reduced to memorizing words as if English is a foreign language. It would be the same for writing skills.
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