Part II - Thinking Critically about the Common Core -

This piece on why the common core is bad is impressive. It had me agreeing with it by the time the young man from Knox county completed his attack on the core.
Even the two experts who helped create the core, according to this video speak out against the final product.  But once again when you dig deeper this claim is not what it seems. Bits and pieces, partially true, are culled out and used in slightly twisted form to elicit your agreement and lead you down a very manipulative path. For example the two educational experts mentioned were not part of creating the standards, but are rather part of the vetting process at the end.  In the case of the math standards This article artfully explains the fallacy of Dr. Milgram's vocal objections. 

The fellow who created this video is a Canadian, living in Japan (which immediately sent up "red flags" about why he was interested in the common core and made me look at his entire body of work).  I determined that he is one of the group of folks who see conspiracies to create a "new world order" in many things.  

He vilifies Bill Gates who gave millions to help create the Common Core suggesting he had an ulterior motive.  While I personally prefer that we fund education from our commons (taxes) rather than relying on philanthropy, I don't believe that there was any evil intent behind the money Gates gave for the common core development.  The google search I did on Common Core (hereafter dubbed CC) yielded conspiracy stuff all over the map.  There are those that think it s carrying forward an evil United Nations agenda and others who think it is leading to tracking what your children think so that the government can control your mind.  

One of the skills I learned in school was about vetting sources by recognizing the bias of those who wrote the material. Even someone who seriously wants to learn about the CC presents real problems. In large part when you do a google search you will see things Goggle has decided to show you based on the algorithms of your previous searches. Google analyzes your search history and presents you with what it thinks you want to see.  This results already skew your data to your preexisting biases.  I get different results from the same search so how do I know I have "valid and good" information?
Google further puts what it decides you want to see in order of what other people who are like you read.  So you see how difficult it is to ferret out the "truth" of anything.  Thus, items by conspiracy theorists rise like cream to the top of the google search for the person who google thinks might be interested in this kind of thing over scholarly studies from universities.  Site after Site are posts by groups like right-reason.com, Freedom Works.org, Karen Bracken (a talk show host is leading an impeach the President and save our country effort) most of these and others are self-described tea party patriots"  who see everything as an attack on freedom.  The people in these groups tend to see everything as black and white. 

They take a specific anecdote, and apply it as though it is happening everywhere.  Let me give you a specific example from one of these websites. "An elementary school librarian told the group that elementary kids in her school "are being forced to read technical books instead of stories and they don't like it.  They said the books are boring and they are losing interest in reading."  The Librarian said she was instructed to tell the kids they must learn how to read these manuals if they expect to get a job at Volkswagen (VW has a facility in TN)."

Let's unpack her comments.  First teachers are being required to use non-fiction (not technical manuals) but a technical manual would qualify as non-fiction.   Indeed, as a librarian I am purchasing more non-fiction than I used to.  I believe this is good -- Many kids who never wanted to read fiction are captivated by non-fiction.  It is more difficult to read non-fiction because you must learn factual material instead of just remembering a story line.  It is also easier to teach critical thinking from a non-fiction text as you tear into it pulling out the most important fact and the supporting data.   Do I believe elementary students were reading technical manuals? 

No!  They might be exposed to reading real technical manuals.  The teacher  might have been told to tell kids they need to learn this skills so that they can read technical manuals -- and get a high paying job at a place like VW -- probably.  I often tell kids that I taught myself to play the guitar because I could read a "technical manual" in the form of a how-to book!  Once unpacked this anecdote sounds a lot less ominous.  Also, let's be honest, the people in our communities have accused schools of teaching irrelevant material for a long time and it seems reasonable that we would be justifying what kids are learning not only to the kids but also to the general public showing how one could get gainful employment from it.

We must learn how to look at things to find the biases and then how to find good unbiased information.  That will be the next post.