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“I trudged the several blocks home from school, satchel in hand. It was a beautiful, golden afternoon, and I was ready for some adventure. I had a little homework, but that could wait until after supper. My parents knew that kids needed time to play and there was only so much daylight left. My best friend and I spent the afternoon exploring in the nearby woods and seeking out “evil” boys to annoy. We got home in time for supper and had plenty of time to finish our homework before bed. I don’t remember ever being stressed about tests and...

The "propaganda of the deed" or propagandas by deed have traditionally been an anarchist tool - and for violent purposes....... or have they? That's what we have been told for a long time, but why can't other activities by various statist oriented groups also be deeds intended to make a point - even non violently? I think they are and I think they have. In the 1920's, the New York State Legislature put together a joint committee to investigate seditious activities, and the result of all this was a work titled "Revolutionary Radicalism". I actually think this does a disservice,...

The Common Core gold rush is on. Apple, Pearson, Google, Microsoft and Amplify are all cashing in on the federal standards/testing/textbook racket. But the EduTech boondoggle is no boon for students. It's more squandered tax dollars down the public school drain. Even more worrisome: The stampede is widening a dangerous path toward invasive data mining. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the ed tech sector "is expected to more than double in size to $13.4 billion by 2017." That explosive growth is fueled by Common Core's top-down digital learning and testing mandates. So: Cui bono? In North Carolina, the...

School officials at a public elementary school in Chicago are ordering teachers to sign students up for “designated restroom times” when entire, overcrowded classes of little kids must use the bathroom each day. The rationale for the draconian pee policy is to improve the school’s dreadful results on Common Core-related standardized tests. An anonymous teacher at the unidentified pre-K-8 forwarded a memo concerning the policy to Anthony Cody of Education Week. The memo reportedly went out to all faculty members at the school last week. “Welcome back and Happy New Year!” the memo reads. “In order to maximize student learning...

Another high school student at Farragut High School in Knox County, Tenn. is receiving widespread attention for an eloquent speech he made against Common Core at a school board meeting. This time the student, Kenneth Ye, gave a rousing speech before the Knox County school board urging it to drop the Common Core standards because they make learning joyless and, in fact, turn American schools into something approaching Chinese sweatshops. “Our schools are being turned into data-run factories,” Ye charges around the 4:30 mark in the video, “factories based on speedily-approved standards that are now being implemented around the country.”...

I recently published a post with various answers to the question: How hard is teaching? Here is one response I received by e-mail from a veteran seventh-grade language arts teacher in Frederick, Maryland, who asked not to be identified because she fears retaliation at her school. In this piece she describes students who don’t want to work, parents who want their children to have high grades no matter what, mindless curriculum and school reformers who insist on trying to quantify things that can’t be measured.

Peonage for the Twenty-First Century The Common Core exists only because we have forgotten that parents have a right to educate their children. The state has no educational authority of its own apart from what parents delegate to it. A young man and woman arrive at the office of the town clerk to procure a marriage license. They're all smiles, until the secretary hands them a document to sign, wherein they read this remarkable sentence: “The State, conceding to the parents the making of their children's bodies, asserts its primacy in the making of their minds.” [...] I've lately been...

For quite a while, The Motley Monk has been on top of the Common Core, concerned about its implications for Catholic schools. Last September, The Motley Monk discussed some reasons why parents should be wary. In November, he pointed out why a number of Catholic school principals fear its potential impacts for curriculum. Also in November, The Motley Monk questioned whether the NCEA had embraced the secularist educational agenda of the Common Core irrespective of what those principals fear. The Motley Monk then followed-up with a post asking whether the NCEA’s President had put the proverbial “cart before the horse”...

Fifth grade students at Fremont Elementary School in Colorado were assigned a reading passage that describes global warming as a dangerous, man-made phenomenon that will destroy civilization in a few hundred years. The reading assignment was found inside a workbook aligned with the controversial national Common Core curriculum guidelines, and was titled “Homework from the Future.” It tells the fictional story of a visitor to the year 2512 who discovers that the eastern United States is under water and the country’s population greatly reduced, all thanks to man-made global warming:

Common Core is full of pretentious little gimmicks, each a potential Pandora’s box of nasty surprises. For example, there is one called Close Reading, which says that children in elementary school should read the same difficult passages over and over. I didn’t trust this thing from square one, so I wrote an analysis called “Close Reading is close to a con” (link below). This article was meant to be a strong indictment but to my surprise one of the comments was even stronger. “Domo,” the commenter, clearly has experience in the trenches. Note all the weird little twists. The Devil...

There are also traditional word problems. Twitchy has found a word problem that may be the most egregiously awful math problem the Common Core has produced yet. Take a look: 15. Juanita wants to give bags of stickers to her friends. She wants to give the same number of stickers to each friend. She's not sure if she needs 4 bags or 6 bags of stickers. How many stickers could she buy so there are no stickers left over?

Freepers, as an adjunct professor of humanities, I am most interested in your opinions on American historiography and education.

AND…creepier. An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a “political spectrum”. The survey is part of Oak Forest High School’s Common Core curriculum, which according to the school district’s website is to …”provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do...

OAK FOREST - An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a "political spectrum."

Saturday the 7th of December will mark the seventy-second anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The commemoration of that “date which will live in infamy” brings up memories of more than Pearl Harbor but of the entire American effort in World War II: of the phenomenal production of planes and tanks and munitions by American industry; of millions of young men enlisting (with thousands lying about their age to get into the service); of the men who led the war, then and now seeming larger than life—Churchill and F.D.R., Eisenhower and MacArthur, Monty and Patton; and of the...

Is it possible to teach students the meaning behind President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address without mentioning the Civil War? According to the government’s new Common Core education standards, the Gettysburg Address must be taught without mentioning the Civil War and explaining why President Lincoln was in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. …

This past week I took my kids to see the second movie in the Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. While it is a violent series, I cannot think of a better movie or book series to open the door to moral and political discussions with our teen and preteen kids. For those unfamiliar with the Hunger Games, it is the story of a gladiatorial competition in a futuristic totalitarian regime, which requires each of 12 isolated districts to select a teenage boy and girl by lottery to fight to the death until only one “victor” survives. The story centers on...

A new book, “The Art of Rube Goldberg,” has just been published. Even though Goldberg died four decades ago, his name and fame are as great as ever. His comic genius was to show simple things made immensely complicated. This image of a nuclear bomb to kill a fly, as it were, perfectly captures a lot of the evils in our modern world. Things are over-designed, over-legislated, over-regulated, over-dictated, over-everything. Except successful. Which brings us by perfect segue to our public schools. People are always saying we don’t spend enough money. Probably we’re spending twice as much as we need...

<p>Current and former students in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies expressed their support for professor emeritus Val Rust following a demonstration in one of his graduate classes last Thursday.</p> <p>Student demonstrators alleged that there is a “toxic” racial climate in the graduate school, including in Rust’s classroom. Organizers told the Daily Bruin last week that they decided to host the demonstration after a recent report examining racial discrimination among the university’s faculty stated that UCLA’s policies and procedures do not sufficiently address racially motivated instances of discrimination.</p>

As Common Core continues to concern parents across the U.S., a book that includes drugs, drinking, racial stereotypes all wrapped up in a political agenda has made its way into the Common Core curriculum. Fourth graders in Dupo, Illinois are reading a biography of Barack Obama entitled “Barack Obama”, written by Jane Sutcliffe and published by Lerner. The book contains very mature content and highlights the problems Obama has faced while growing up, all while blaming the color of his skin