Critical thinking for adults in a world flush with "information" and conspiracy theory about the common core!

One of my teacher friends sent me this link.  She had received it from a friend on Face Book and was quite rightly confused by it. It said that Lily saw the common core as the same curriculum she experienced when a child in Maoist China.  I listened to the whole thing trying to find out how the CURRICULUM WAS LIKE that of communist China. I learned that it was not the curriculum that was like the curriculum of Maoist China.  What Lily feared was that anything that was a government program that collected data about you could be used to hurt you.  AND in Communist China that certainly was true.  She sees the data collection (which we use in school to drive instruction) would be used to turn us into silent subservient slaves to a central government.  Here is the link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilaSvC9PGKk
 

What Lily misses is an important difference between our government and the government of communist china.  Our government is US ---we regularly vote people into office and out of office.  We have constitutional issues we vote on.  IN TRUTH the common core may be tossed out before we find out if it is good or not because their is so much conspiracy theory out there about it!  I hate to be the bearer of these tidings, but Lily, the government already knows you are a citizen and the IRS has your number in case you to do not pay your taxes (the price of belonging to this great club we call The U.S. and having public schools, garbage collection, roads, social security, libraries, public colleges and land grant institutions etc....all goods that we share in common and support with our TAXES.)  Yup who knew -- TAXES can be good especially when they fix the pot hole down the street!

My friend found this post disturbing.  Did I know anything about this?  Well, no. But as a librarian, it is my job to find out! I immediately began to search for information on that great heap of TREASURE and TRASH that is the internet.  What I found was a lot of conspiracy theory and virtually no real information about what is actually in the common core in the first pages of my google search!  People get a buzz from being angry or upset, while peaceful thoughts don't boost the blood pressure.  What fun is that?!  

I am going to dedicate several posts to this since it deserves more than a cursory look.  So today I would like to focus on who we believe when we are looking for information.  I will be showing you some things that on the surface seem very reasonable and only upon deeper inspection send up red flags as the authors move deftly from fact to fantasy.  Stay tuned if you are really curious about what Common Core is and whether we need to tweak it or throw the baby out with the bathwater  Of course,  this is ALL from my analysis and point of view.  You see we cannot divorce ourselves from the baggage of our experience, education, reading, friends, and the time in which we are born and raised!! AT best we are aware of our bias and struggle to understand and combat it! That is the first important fact.  If you want to know what biases I have you might want to check out who I am .....am I trustworthy?  Am I widely read?  Do I know a lot of people with different viewpoints or do I have only friends who reflect my personal belief system? Do I have experience with the subject I am writing about? These are valid questions and need to be asked whenever we read information.  By the way teaching this skill is one of the common core objectives...hmmm 

When I was growing up the news was separated (in as much as is ever possible) from opinion. There was the editorial and news.  News attempted to be dispassionate.  Example #1  - You could not interject something like this article from the Heartland Institute does.  Let's take the first bit of its reporting about the common core. 

"Montana legislators are debating a proposal that would repeal the state’s implementation of the Common Core State Standards, a set of requirements for what elementary and secondary school children should know in each grade in math and English.
On November 4, 2011, Montana was the last of 46 states to adopt Common Core. Other states, such as Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia, never adopted the standards, and a recent nationwide backlash has led to successful repeals in Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Carolina."  so far it is only factual reporting with a foreshadowing of where we are headed since the article is focusing on repeal already.

Common Core supporters say implementing standards that are both high and unified with other states will jumpstart the U.S. education system and improve student achievement on a mass scale.   Still factual -- but wait here it comes...."A study from the Brookings Institution contradicts that claim, instead finding government-mandated standards fail to correlate with student achievement. For example, every state has had its own set of standards for many years, yet variation in achievement is four to five times larger within states than between them, despite the quality or rigor of the standards."  source https://www.heartland.org/policy-documents/research-commentary-montana-common-core

This is a tame example.  So first things first -- who is the Heartland Institute and the nice thing about this particular cite is that their site has an about feature which lets you learn about them.  Following it you find out that this is an organization dedicated to " discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems."  Armed with this information I can pretty well guess where they will land on any number of issues --- like environment, constitutional reform, healthcare, taxation and government....but at least we start with an understanding.   NOW AS ACTUAL INFORMATION --- NOT SO MUCH!  I need to first LEARN about what is actually in the common core.  To do that I need to go to a website like http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/.  Here I found Information about what the core is, how it came to be, and I can even link to specific curriculum.  So this is where I began my exploration.  Is this site without a viewpoint.  NOT HARDLY --- these guys spent years of work creating the common core.  Think they have an investment in getting you to understand and appreciate it.  You bet they do.  Tomorrow we will explore that!