Common Core or Standardized Mediocrity

What is the most fundamental relationship in the universe? If you ask a theoretical physicist, you will get one answer, and if you ask a humanist philosopher, you will get another. Neither will have any bearing on your daily life.  What is the point of either of these positions? There is no point. It only means that we are not want of food, shelter or security.  We are safe and secure enough that as a civilization we can spent our time contemplating pointless abstract concepts.

If you are hungry or homeless, you will not be able to consider any of this theoretical garbage. You will be worrying where your next meal is coming or where you are going to sleep that night. When your basic needs are not being met, then, all is lost except the essentials necessary for survival. Too often this is the situation for many of my students who are deemed less than competent when measured on state standardized tests.

Too often they are too busy struggling with basic needs to worry about how to analyze Edgar Allen Poe or which culture inquiry should be used when reading Amy Tan. Furthermore, Medieval British Literature review has no connection to their world, thus, relevancy is lost as well as a class full of young, vibrant minds. As an educator the Common Core is not the answer for everyone. The idea that one size fits all is absurd.

The federal and state‘s idea that Common Core aligned with Smarter Balance will solve the problems plaguing our schools are completing erroneous. These theoreticians and politicians have no understanding as to the elemental flaw in their thinking. Instead of attacking the central issue (basic needs not being met), they are pretending to solve a problem that does not exist as they imagined.

The changes that are being forced on public schools are destroying intellectual creativity, flexibility and initiative, thus, limiting the possibilities for future generations. If the point of all this reform is to create a permanent underclass damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. However, if we are to help the next generation to succeed, this is exactly the wrong way to confront the problem.

Standardization creates mediocrity and this is where testing institutions and politicians are pushing public schools. If you work in a private school or a charter school, none of this homogeny is required as part of your curriculum. Innovative ideas are desired in these institutions while the same kind of ideas are given lip service in public school where teachers are forced to teach larger and larger classes while being told to raise test scores or else. All of this in lieu of inventive thinking beyond a testing box.

Public school teachers’ jobs are on the line if their students do not demonstrate measurable, consistent growth, on standardized tests, furthermore, if this happens, these same educators are deemed ineffective because they were unable to inspire those youngsters under their supervision to outperform the targets set by their state, district, school and department when filling in the blanks. This has nothing to do with thinking on your feet or thinking abstractly. It has everything to do with filling in the correct blank because everyone knows that life is black and white and that there is only one right answer.

The thought of learning for the sake of learning no longer fits in this new schema because students need to be focused on the endgame just as their teachers are required to do in this latest educational paradigm. In this new world order, students are considered to be weak of mind if they are seen as daydreamers or have no clear plans as they head off into the world following high school graduation.

The idea of finding yourself without an authority figure giving you and your future a stamp of approval is absurd in today’s public school culture. Educators of all ilk be it public or private stand as godlike figures pointing their charges in the correct direction. If you are the good student that knuckles under to the powers that be, then, your future will blossom as the lotus does, begging to be plucked and place upon the mantle to be admired until it is no longer viable.

In many ways, educationally, we are now on the path to become more Chinese than the Chinese in that we now demand lockstep in our public schools by adopting common core curriculum and tying monies for financially strapped school districts. The federal government’s use of money to lure states and school districts to adopt this curriculum is akin to blackmail.

If you are for the standardization of education, mediocrity, uninspired teaching, then, this standards based curriculum is all you can ask and more. Katy bar the doors because there will be a feeding frenzy as states stampede to the front of the line with no idea why they are doing it except that there is money to be pocketed.