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The Dissident Prof has been working hard and this week three of her articles have been published. They’re all on education and all deal with various aspects of Common Core.
Thanks to the great public outcry, more and more politicians are shying away from Common Core. It’s as if the name became toxic. Even the president sidestepped the label in his State of the Union Address, referring to the “Race to the Top,” the contest for stimulus funds by which the federal standards were slipped in. I tell you what all the nice-sounding phrases about education really mean in my FrontPage article, “The State of the Dis-Union: Preparing World Citizens."
(Beware: name-changing is a way to fool the people.)
At the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, I describe how Common Core is going to make things worse for the humanities in our colleges and universities, particularly in English departments. That's why those concerned with higher education also need to fight Common Core. Read “Too Late to Save English Departments?"
Read more: Common Core: State of Union, College English, Parental Engagement
By Mary Grabar, Posted April 3, 2013: Why is Marc Aronson, radical history professor and liar about communism, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Cold War presented as a panelist at the April 10 Publishers Weekly Discussion Series, Trade Books and the Common Core: Where Do They Meet?
He is one of the many radical Common Core entrepreneurs that I wrote about in my Accuracy in Media report, "Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers and Obama's Federal School Curriculum." Aronson is part of Stanford University's "Reading Like a Historian Project," supposedly intended to make students more excited about history, but really intended to make them radically skeptical of our nation's history of exceptionalism. Stanford University, of course, is the academic home of Linda Darling-Hammond, close associate of Bill Ayers.
Stanford seems to be producing a lot of material for Common Core (which is also promoted by the PBS Education site), like Reading Like a Historian published by Teachers College Press, also publisher of many of Ayers's so-called "education" books. The catalogue description includes a promotional blurb by Darling-Hammond.
To see what "Teaching Like a Historian" is supposed to look like watch this video from The Teaching Channel, which is promoted by the Department of Education. See for yourself if this is an objective presentation of source materials. Are Malcolm X's speeches the "foundational documents of American history" as presented by promoters? Yes, students are exposed to "foundational documents," but those documents are chosen by the textbook writers. They are also determined by the test writers, like radical Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond.
Posted June 27, 2013, by Mary Grabar: Part 3 of my 3-part series on Common Core testing is posted today at the Selous Foundation, "Common Core: Teaching to the New Test: Part III." What do the sample test questions and standards reveal?
Common Core is an attempt to fulfill the Obama administration’s overriding goal of closing the “achievement gap" by infantalizing students.
Common Core replaces individual excellence with collectivism, independent thought with "collaboration" and "civil," "democratic" discussion.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's stated hope in a recent speech, that a “richer curriculum” would follow these assessments, gives the lie to the idea that Common Core has nothing to do with curriculum.
Duncan outlined his plans at a conference where Bill Ayers participated in eight different activities, including a tribute to the late Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. When you look at the tests, it's not surprising.
Read Part I of my series here.
Read Part II here.
Posted January 9, 2014, by Mary Grabar: Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the dangers of confusing equal rights with equal outcomes. Our system of justice is based on the rights of the individual. We believe in rewarding individual merit, in school and on the job. But the U.S. Department of Education is intent on guaranteeing equality of outcomes and is pulling the race card.
First, came the comment by Arne Duncan in November about the "white suburban moms" being upset that Common Core "standards" were revealing that their kids weren't as "brilliant" as they thought they were. I don't think too many people have noticed (or maybe haven't wanted to say), but a large part of the new crazy Common Core standards concerns equalizing academic outcomes.
Read more: Common Core, Discipline, Equality of Outcome, the Heavy Hand of Ed
Posted by Mary Grabar, March 28, 2013: First we have a college student ordered to stomp on a piece of paper with the word Jesus written on it.
But on Holy Thursday, the U.S. Department of Education sent out this video from the Teaching Channel with a seventh-grader face-down on a table in the front of the class waving his arms and legs to illustrate a crucifixion. This video, like the other ones this non-profit produces, is intended to show teachers exciting ways to incorporate Common Core, the federal education program of the Obama administration.
Read more: Common Core Teaching: Demonstrating a Crucifixion
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