This Is Why It's Hard To Have a Sane Discussion About Common Core
3 min read
Ken Libby does yeoman's work tracking crazy articles about Common Core under the #corespiracy hashtag. These are just two posts of many that he flagged this morning, but they are useful to demonstrate why having a substantive discussion about Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and the associated policy changes being implemented in parallel to the CCSS rollout, is difficult to achieve.
On a related note, posts comparable to the examples highlighted below make it easy to relegate objection to any element of CCSS as part of the lunatic fringe.
Historian David Barton doesn’t share the enthusiasm over the disappearance of cursive writing instruction, which is one of the reasons he believes Common Core poses “serious problems for the future of the Republic.â€
Barton explains that children who aren’t taught cursive handwriting will grow into adults who can’t read the nation’s founding documents, papers and letters – virtually all of which are written in cursive, according to TheBlaze.com.
There is a lot to flag here, but let's start with the most obvious two: referring to David Barton as a historian, and citing The Blaze as a source. This piece also opens with a callout to the Zimmerman trial, because obviously, a white man getting off for murdering an unarmed black youth is clearly connected to the CCSS.
From Common Core…stealth jihad directed at America’s children | Lady Patriots.
And the most unbelievable of all is that Common Core is using our public schools, Catholic schools, and private schools to indoctrinate our children into islam. ‘The Five Pillars of Islam’ are an integral part of Common Core teaching beginning in pre-k and lasting through the12th grade. For example, students have muslim beliefs lessons where they must watch videos, research pre-selected web sites, complete worksheets, and create posters about the duties of muslims.
If only there was a way to see how often Islam was featured in the actual standards - well heck, I guess we'll never know.
Posts like this are laughable to most people, but the unfortunate reality is that they make it difficult to have a sane discussion about an important topic.
Image Credit: Image retrieved 9/16 from Forging Elite Sarcasm.
