Common Core Curriculum—Dumbing Down Education

I have written on this page my aversion to the widely accepted Common Core Educational standards.  Common Core is being instituted all over the United States—at least in 45 of the states.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have written this national curriculum; and it is strongly supported by the Obama Administration. There is nothing new about the Curriculum; it is a decades old idea fostered in the Clinton era by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Mr. Tucker proposed a system of labor-market boards at the local, state, and federal levels where curriculum and job matching will be handled by government functionaries.

Since the early 1990’s the state of Massachusetts has found a way to beef up the educational prowess of their high school graduates by instituting rigorous academic standards, teacher testing, and high-quality tests that students must pass to graduate from high school. These three measures have caused Massachusetts graduates to move from mediocre performance on the SAT tests in the early 1990’s to first place in the nation in 2005. In that year, Massachusetts students scored best in the United States in all categories on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests.

Why do states adopt the Common Core? It is simply because of money paid to them by the Federal Government for buying into the system. Of course, they understand that the Feds have LOTS of money. The Feds get it from China and give it to local school boards.

One home-schooling mother in our family has told us that if she were to use the Common Core in her teaching she would have to tone down her teaching so that it complies with lower academic standards than the standards she is using now. That’s dumbing down education in order to comply with government standards.

This post was resourced from the Wall Street Journal of 5/28/13 page A15.

The Case For Abiding the Law

Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the lawbreakers.

But our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the "plight" of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives.

Merely using the word "illegal" to describe their breaking the law is considered to be a sign of mean-spiritedness, if not racism.

On the other hand, if an ordinary American citizen breaks a law, no one cares if he has to live in fear for years -- "in the shadows," as it were -- worrying that his illegal act will be discovered and punished.

No cities announce that they will provide "sanctuary," so that American law-breakers will be protected from the law. But, in some places, illegal immigrants are treated almost as if they were in a law-breaker protection program. What is even more remarkable about this special treatment is that you are not supposed to think about special treatment of illegal immigrants as special treatment. Somehow, they are awarded a special place in our concept of justice—a special brand of compliance with the law is applied to them.

It seems in the American mind that illegal immigrants may "earn" their citizenship. But an ordinary American citizen cannot “earn” his way out of complying with the law. Ordinarily, penalties apply to those who break the law.

Some have argued that all illegal immigrants should be found and deported. We are told that there is no way that the government can find all the people who are in the country illegally and deport them. Does anyone imagine that the government can find all the embezzlers, drunk drivers or bank robbers in the country? And does anyone think that this is a reason why the government should stop trying to enforce laws against embezzlement, drunk driving or bank robbery? Or…let embezzlers, drunk drivers and bank robbers "come out of the shadows" and "normalize" their lives?

Why are there immigration laws in the first place? For the benefit of the American people -- not for the benefit of people in other countries who want to come here.

Political and media elites treat the American people as if they are the problem -- a problem to be circumvented with pious promises about border security that have not been kept for decades.

All this argument ignores the fact that we, Americans, are faced with a serious humanitarian problem. Those of us who have dealt with illegal immigrants face to face for years, realize that these poor people just cannot be humanely dealt with by kicking them out. Christian ethics, also, indicate a kinder approach to the problem of illegal immigrants.  These unfortunate immigrants need our help; but circumventing our laws does not seem the right route to me.

I sincerely hope that any new immigration laws are not undertaken without securing the border first and then making a guest worker program that can be enforced to the benefit of both Americans and immigrant Mexicans. Living with chaos at the border is no way to run an immigration policy.

The President “Resets” the War On Terror?

The President has announced a wind-down of the war on terror. He says the al Qaeda is a shell of its former self; and he has inferred the war has been won. Who believes that—with al Qaeda making marked gains to control territory in north Africa, launching more deadly strikes in Iraq, killing American diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, controlling more and more of the insurgency in Syria, launching strikes against Pakistani and Afghan targets, and threatening Israel?!! All this is not to mention the enemies of Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas, attacking Israeli military over their own borders and raining down rockets on Israeli targets from Gaza and Lebanon. This war is winding down??

It seems obvious that the president is only conceding the battle to the enemy and wasting all the effort and cost Americans have paid to keep our nation and the rest of the free world free.

Foreign powers know perfectly well how to interpret the President’s words. Those words about protecting Americans against attack have exactly the same weight as his words about establishing a “red line” against the Syrian government if they were to use chemical weapons against their enemies—that is, absolutely nothing. The President is a toothless tiger. No enemy in their right mind will pay a bit of attention to his empty threats.

The primary and most important job of the Federal Government is to protect the American people. Our President and his administration is not doing that—he echoes the words of British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain in the early last century when he thought he had placated the Nazis in Germany. He announced “peace in our time;” that promise brought nothing but disaster on the free world.

Unfinished wars seem to be the pattern of policy in American government. Viet Nam was the first and now we are faced with another surrender to an aggressive enemy. America can do better than this!

 

How To Make a Blog

I know from correspondence with those who read my blog there are many of you who would be good bloggers. Establishing a blog is very easy; and it takes less than 60 seconds to do it. Here’s how:

Go to blogspot.com and just follow the directions. I less than an eyewink you will be on your way to posting blogs. Then, as you think of issues that interest you, write the posts that you would like to disseminate. Save every post you write so that you can refer to them in the future—sure enough, you will think later about the same issue and wonder if you every blogged on that issue. If you have all your posts in the same folder or on the same file, you will know whether you have blogged on that issue in the past.

Change your blog post twice weekly or more often; this keeps people interested in reading it. Make your blog posts short enough so that people can read it in less than two minutes. People will get bored and quit reading if you write a post that is too long.   

The next thing you need to do is get some people to read your blog. To do this, establish a sign-off statement on your e-mail that announces to everyone you write to that you have a blog and ask him or her to look at it. Create a business card for yourself with your blog url on it so that everyone you give a card to will know how to find your blog.

Next, establish a bunch of friends on Facebook and announce through that medium that you have a blog for them to examine. Now, speaking about Facebook, it is a good idea to post your blog posts on that social media site. You can do it by using the “notes” facility if the blog post is longer than the ordinary site for comments on FB. It is a good idea to post the title of your blog posts on Twitter also. You probably will not have enough characters on Twitter to post your entire url, so…go to the url shortener, “bitly” to shorten the url so that it can be used on Twitter.

Don’t just sit at home and wish you could get your ideas out in the culture. Put them on a blog so that others can use and appreciate them.  Undoubtedly, you will be blogging on issues about which you have learned by reading the papers or the internet. Be sure to reference your quotations, stating clearly where they came from and who wrote them originally. Do not plagiarize.

Blog, Twitter, and Facebook posts are a good way to tell people about your faith in Christ—that is just a suggestion of the many ideas you can spread around.

What Do You Understand about the Benghazi Controversy?

Do you believe, as former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Administration would have you believe, that the whole Benghazi affair is so old that it is not any longer significant? Do you believe the possibility that the attack on the Benghazi compound was a terrorist attack is an insignificant part of the story? Do you believe that the Obama Administration was doing its best to protect the interests of the American republic? Do you believe that the President and his Administration had no political interest in this affair from the beginning—they were only interested in protecting America’s interests?

If you believe the things above, think, again. There is another side to the story that you need to consider. Conservatives are being castigated for politicizing this story about Benghazi for their own benefit. You should consider the possibility that President Obama and his Administration had significant political goals in mind when the decisions about protecting the Benghazi compound were being considered.

Much has been made of conservative voices claiming that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist attack. And…nobody now believes, as the Administration said in the beginning, that the attack was a simple protest cooked up at the time as a response to a video tape criticizing Islam. But what is the importance of the idea that the attack was a planned and organized terrorist operation?

One answer to that is that if the attack was planned in advance, there had to be some significant defect in American intelligence to have missed their plans. Maybe that is significant; but maybe it is not, because American intelligence cannot be held responsible for knowing everything that goes on in the world.

But there is a more ominous implication to the question about a planned terrorist scheme: Ever since the killing of Osama bin Laden, the President had been touting the idea that al Qaeda was on the run, severely disabled, and no longer a significant threat to the free nations of the world.

If that idea were true, then, there would certainly not be any point in spending American efforts to counter their supposedly dangerous but insignificant functions in the Middle East. In other words, if you have a non-problem, then that indicates a non-response (which we saw at Benghazi). IF THE PRESIDENT WERE TO MAKE A STRONG RESPONSE TO THE BENGHAZI ATTACK, IT WOULD INDICATE THAT HE HAD MISLED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE IN THE FIRST PLACE BY TELLING THEM THAT THERE WAS NO PROBLEM WITH AL QAEDA.

All the President’s bluster about how America had defeated al Qaeda before the election would have brought into question his foreign policy in the Middle East. That would have been devastating to his campaign. Therefore, the “smart” political response to the phone calls for help from Benghazi was to treat the situation as an aberration of local and insignificant civil unrest caused by an offensive video tape. Thus…no significant military response and the ensuing death of the ambassador and his three body guards. This happened even though American forces in Tripoli were within easy striking range. In fact they should have been in Benghazi all along protecting an embassy in a turbulent location.

I think that if anyone is guilty of politicizing the Benghazi debacle, it is the President, not the Republicans. Benghazi was a terrible mistake and a disaster for the American people—caused by a president more concerned with his appearance before the election than for the safety of America and its interests in the Middle East. If conservative critics prove right on this issue, the action of the President and his Administration should be considered treasonous to the American people.

 

 

How to Find the Will of God—For You!

After several decades of searching for God’s mysterious will for our lives, Nancy and I have come to the conclusion that it is really not so hard to find. But…it comes in a peculiar way—through closed doors!

I have little sympathy for people who wait for God to hit them over the head with a 2x4 in order to get their attention and tell them what He wants them to do for Him. Very infrequently will God communicate with us that way.

 It is important to wait on the Lord. Sometimes, very good things result from waiting upon the Lord, but while we are waiting, we should be seeking His guidance. He is not helpless to communicate with us.

The way to find God’s will for an individual person is to read the Bible and find several predominant themes concerning God’s will for His people, e.g., worship, kindness toward others, care for widows and orphans, intact marriages, sexual integrity, ministry to the poor, the pursuit of justice and mercy, etc., etc. These things are not hard to find in the pages of the Bible. Next, one should find something in that list that is of special interest—then begin asking around. When you find some place where you might be used, go and do it. If it is not in God’s will for you, the door to opportunity will close. Then, look for something else. It’s as simple as that!

A few years ago, I asked a friend why he had never done anything in Christian ministry. He answered, “God has never called me to do anything.” That is nonsense. God calls each of us to some service with Him. But just sitting with folded hands and refusing to look for God’s will is not becoming a follower of Christ.

The Common Core Curriculum for American Schools

Guess what! The United States Federal Department of Education has crafted a new initiative to replace the failed “No Child Left Behind” program of the 1990’s.

The new program with which the states are required to comply or lose federal dollars is called the Common Core Curriculum. This new way of teaching for all public schools in the nation from K→12 upsets the tried and true “old-fashioned” teaching by which subjects were presented in their proper contexts and with logical background so that the subjects might be properly understood.

This program manifests a break-up of logical, traditional, thinking instead of more traditional methods. Consider this: Into the mix of 11^th grade English literature class is Presidential Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management. Also, Fed Views by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the Cost Conundrum: Health Care Costs in McAllen, Texas, and Untangling the Roots of Cancer. Eleventh grade students are also taught to master the “California Invasive Plant Inventory” based on the claim that “invasive non-native plants threaten wild lands.”

After reading about this Common Core Curriculum and listening to a speech from the Westlake school superintendent, I am increasingly concerned about the socialist and environmentalist bent of the program. This thing is loaded up with politically correct ideas and teachings. The patterns of fractured thinking in the subject matter has been reduced to simple formulas about oppressors and the oppressed, capitalists and workers, Western imperialist and their non-western victims. Government has become the solution, not the problem.

This kind of thinking about the world in which we live indoctrinates kids in what to think rather than how to think. It has been said that “…you can’t make socialists out of individualists—children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.”

Hmmm…. This new effort by the educationalist establishment looks like another strange, new, style of teaching—this one aimed at the agenda of new age people planners. I am suspicious of such new and revolutionary changes to traditional teaching. Remember the “new math?” It was deemed the latest in teaching math; and it turned out to be a disaster.