Posted on 04/13/2015 11:13:49 AM PDT by walford
Sydney Smoot might look like your average 4th grade girl, but she has taken such a bold stand against Common Core that she received a standing ovation from adults at least three times her age.
The spunky student from Brooksville Elementary in Florida could barely reach the podium when she stood before the Hernando County School Board this month, but her presence could not have been clearer.
Immediately addressing school officials, little Sydney never muddled her words as she described the dangerous impact that state standardized testing is having on students.
Sydney asked one question that addressed the obvious flaw with exhaustively testing students at the end of a school year.
“Why am I being forced to take a test that hasn’t even been tested on students here in Florida, so how can it be valid and accurate on what I know?”
However, Sydney didn’t merely complain of the problem without providing a feasible solution. Instead, she suggested that the painstaking test be divided up into three smaller tests to determine how students are fairing throughout the year.
“Why should we have so much stress about one test when we should be learning and having fun at school?” she asked.
Perhaps the most startling moment in Sydney’s speech was her revealing of a secret contract that students must sign, preventing them from speaking with their parents about the test.
“I do not feel good about a form in the FSA that you have to sign ensuring that you can’t even discuss the test with your parents. I am not comfortable signing something like this. I have the right to talk to my parents about any and everything related to school and my education.”
Sydney told Upworthy that she owes her courage to her mother, but that it was all her idea to address the school about the issue.
“What inspired me to speak all started one day when I came home. My mom asked me how the testing went, and I told her I was told not to speak about the test to anyone. I had not felt comfortable signing something in the test. I had concerns about this test because there was a lot of stress put on students and myself. I was a little nervous before the speech, but when I was called up to the podium, I did not feel nervous because I knew this speech was going to help a lot of people.”
Sydney is living proof that even though the government has failed our public education system, they cannot smother the desire to learn, as long as we continue to teach our children that they must stand up for what’s right, especially when it means standing against what’s wrong.
Theres no way it’s legally binding.
But kids won’t be aware of that, will be intimidated into compliance by it.
I’ve got to imagine that parents have a legal course of action against the school here.
In modern America?................consent for an abortion.
WE’RE GONNA CHANGE THE WORLDWE’RE GONNA CHANGE THE WORLD Music and lyrics by Lily Campbell (age 9)
We’re gonna spread happiness
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em
We’re gonna change it
And rearrange it
We’re gonna change the world.
SING FOR CHANGE
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada
Now’s the moment, lift each voice to sing
Sing with all your heart!
For our children, for our families,
Nations all joined as one.
Sing for joy and sing abundant peace,
Courage, justice, hope!
Sing together, hold each precious hand,
Lifting each other up;
Sing for vision, sing for unity,
Lifting our hearts to Sing!
YES WE CAN
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada
Yes we can
Lift each other up
In peace, in love, in hope
Change! Change!
We’re gonna spread freedom
Obama’s gonna change it
Obama’s gonna lead ‘em
We’re gonna change it
And rearrange it
We’re gonna change the world.
SING FOR CHANGEV Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada
Now’s the moment, lift each voice to sing
Sing with all your heart!
For our children, for our families,
Nations all joined as one.
Sing for joy and sing abundant peace,
Courage, justice, hope!
Sing together, hold each precious hand,
Lifting each other up;
Sing for vision, sing for unity,
Lifting our hearts to Sing!
YES WE CAN
Music and lyrics by Kathy Sawada
Yes we can
Lift each other up
In peace, in love, in hope
Change! Change!
It's hard to believe that American parents have allowed so many communistic idiot members on school boards across this country. Maybe the parents are just too busy to care what kind of education the government ruled schools provide today.
Very bright kid. Maybe I’m in a Monday mood but as a TV producer who also works with Nickelodeon, I deal with various kids on set daily, at almost every age group.
I can somehow sense there were words that she did not write and were written by an adult. However, I’m not going to take away the big picture here and the message. Good job.
We had similar tests every year 50 years ago. I hated them. Never knew what they were for and we seldom if ever saw a grade from them. Likewise they were given near the end of the screwl year and not graded until long after screwl was released for summer. I don’t know if anyone was ever held back because of a test grade but I do know a lot went to summer screwl and some repeated grades.
What bothers me most about common core is the social agenda it enforces, the secrecy from parents and the foolish long way around the problem solving it teaches. The word problems I endorse. People now don’t know how to solve written problems with to little information where assumptions are required or too much information where you have to know how to solve the problem instead of being given massive clues in how to solve it in the information provided.
The young lady is precocious to be sure but that was not her speech... she had a lot of coaching but that is OK.
Commie-core needs to be tossed along with all those pushing it, particularly that Democrat in an R jersey, Jeb Bush.
Only a criminal would make a child keep a secret from their parents.
“While I can believe that she did want to speak,”
You just beat my post by 2 minutes. I work with different kids here in Hollywood, especially in casting. 10 year olds, in general, do NOT speak like this. Then again, I deal with brats too..
Ah, I don't know about that. A 10-year-old that knows and uses jargonese such as "numbering" and "rubric" and "ensuring" and "nervous" in extended adult phrasing seem to me as if she might have been well-coached to deliver lines that ought to have been delivered by a mature education professional. Hmmmmm. I smell a rat here, the use of a child as a publicity-getting trick to present a mature argument.
Secret contract? How can an underage minor child be party to any contract, anywhere, any time? This is an outrage, every other concern is minor compared to this.
Since when is anything signed by a 10 year old legally binding?..............................
“Only a criminal would make a child keep a secret from their parents.”
Perverts like children to keep secrets from their parent(s).
I know of a 4th grader and a second grader that are worldview savvy enough to ask a question about the basis of someone else’s truth...
but that’s because I taught them to think that way.
I think it's a cheap scheme to try to get the general audience to think that judicious testing of the knowledge advancement of a pool of students is not a good way to assess the effectiveness of their teachers, and the local applied educational philosophy as well.
The schemer ought to be brought out from behind the screen and examined for perpetrating his/her concepts through a pliant child.
Bttt
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