I generally try to stay away from hot topics in my public dealings. It's not that I don't have opinions, it's just that I want to keep my relationships civil. Getting into political topics often opens up a lot of emotions that can injure friendships, which I don't want to do (which is mainly because I have a personality that doesn't like conflict). But there are times when I feel like certain things need to be heard and I don't feel like the message is getting out there. Of course, I know I don't have a huge influence on the world, but if I can at least spread the information to a few more people, I've done something.
Okay, here's my beef. It's this thing that the government wants to push upon our kids called Common Core. Now, I'm not an expert on this, but I'm hearing many things that concern me. Instead of getting into the nit-picky details, though, I thought I'd talk about my three main concerns about it.
#1. If this is such a great new educational system for our kids, why did the government try to sneak it through without parental feedback? When they've tried to install this under our noses, this raises many red flags for me. Why does this have to be put through so quickly? I just saw a video the other day of one of our local school officials who had no idea this was even being implemented until this year. Shouldn't they, of all people, have had some kind of heads up from their higher-ups? So, let's slow down and get a look at what Common Core entails before whole-hardheartedly subjecting our children to it.
#2. Money. How much is this going to cost the taxpayers? They haven't told us yet. They are only charging us a little bit at a time. So far, our school district has only budgeted $54,000 for teacher training on Common Core. Looking at the overall budget, that doesn't seem like much, but what about all the new text books and computer systems that will be needed to implement this? How much is that going to raise our taxes? By my humble estimation, it will probably be in the thousands of dollars per classroom. Add up all the classrooms (which I have no idea how many there are in our district) and I'm sure we will be into the millions of dollars. Who's paying for this? Oh yeah, we are. Did we get a say in it? No. If nothing else, that's taxation without representation. It seems like I remember that as being something that really ticked off our founding fathers.
[Addendum: I heard that the feds want to add a $5 per line tax to all phone lines as a way to help offset the cost. How much will that impact your family now?]
#3. We don't even know if this new educational system will work. Have they tested it? Not really. And what little testing they did in New York turned out disastrous. They want to overhaul our whole educational system because they have a new theory? Shouldn't it be tested first to prove that the system is better? You'd think so. An analogy I thought of is this: what if someone had a theory that sucking on swamp water would cure cancer. Without testing it first, they get government approval to scrap all other cancer treatments and initiate a nationwide mandate that all people doing cancer treatments now have to suck on swamp water. Does that sound smart? Who knows, maybe sucking on swamp water will cure cancer, but shouldn't we test it on a smaller scale first to make sure it works before making everyone have to do it?
Now, I'm not even getting into the other details. Things like data mining, tracking, and potential emotional damage to children. The materials that are coming to light also seem bent on breaking family ties apart and teaching a specific political agenda.
This is what I call on all parents to do: get informed. Get involved. Maybe after you do some research, you might feel this is the best thing for your kids. Fine, but at least find out what our government has planned for them. No responsible parent should be unaware of what their children are learning in school. Find out about Common Core and see if it meets your family's needs. And if it doesn't, let your voice be heard before it's too late.
Here are a few websites that have more info, some for and some against:
http://truthinamericaneducation.com/
http://www.utahnsagainstcommoncore.com/
http://www.corestandards.org/
http://www.scholastic.com/commoncore/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_Initiative
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