Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Common Core's Educational Collapse of America: Breaking the Spirit of the Children

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Darkness always appears as an Angel of Light.

Conservatives call the schools that are a part of the public school system "indoctrination centers."  The education system in the United States has ceased teaching kids "how" to think, and are now in the business to teach them "what" to think.  The liberal left has gone after the children because, as all tyrants know, the parents will eventually be gone, but if the tyranny can gain control of the youth, the transformation of the nation into a tyranny is all but assured.

Uniformity and collectivism is nothing new in the schools.  The communist infiltration into our education system began long ago.  John Dewey began the process at the start of the twentieth century, and the progressives in education adopted his methods whole-heartedly.  Dewey envisioned a system where individualism and socialism become one, a collective society that guarantees everyone's welfare.  Dewey called for a radical change in education, and radical change is what he achieved.  Thanks to John Dewey's progressive vision for American education, looser morals, tolerance of slackers, and weaker judgment became central to the progressive's lesson plan. John Dewey ensured that in 1899, moral relativism and "diversity" debuted in American education.  The infiltration of the education system by collectivists began with Dewey's vision, and now over a hundred years later, the fruits of the leftist assault on the American education system has finally fully come of age.  Common Core is being accepted with arms open wide, and young America is voluntarily raising the red flag of socialism, as they condemn the principles of the United States Constitution, and the values of those that came before them.

When I was in school I was eager to learn.  As a left-handed child, I was a little different, and that could not be tolerated.  I was taught that my right hand was the right hand, and my left hand was the wrong hand.  Every time I picked up my pencil with my left hand it was yanked out, and placed in my right hand.  I was taught to write right-handed, even though I am naturally a southpaw.

From day one my penmanship was atrocious.  I hold my writing utensil in a manner different from the average person, gripping the instrument like a left-hander, curling my hand around, and even leaning my characters in the wrong direction for a right-hander.

When it came time to play baseball, dad was eager to teach me to throw, but I was confused, unsure which hand to throw with.  He asked me, "Well, what hand do you write with?"

I held up my right hand and said, "This one."

In the beginning I had great difficulty with my throwing motion.  I pushed the ball from my chest.  I was throwing with the wrong hand.  Playing the game, my arm was not that good, and my throwing range was limited.  But defensively, little got by me - because the glove was on my more coordinated side.

Why would the school do such a thing to me?  Why would a progressive teacher demand that I abandon what is natural for me, and force me to write with a foreign hand?

Marxism teaches uniformity.  Individualism is dangerous to collective systems, because individuals question tyranny, and reject mindless conformity.

The teachings of John Dewey were still in full force.  I was being taught to be a product of Dewey's vision, to be a good follower, a student of collectivism, and just another mindless automaton in a sea of faceless children.  My individuality won out, battled through the madness, and I became a person who thinks for himself, and rejects all of the indoctrination the left tried to brainwash me with.

Too many individuals slipped through the cracks.  Too many individuals means too many people that may be willing to question the authority of the ruling class, and that will just not do.

My education was nothing compared to what was coming down the pike.

Since the creation of the Education Department, and the federal government's increase of involvement in the school system, our education system has taken an even more dramatic downward spiral.  We went from being first in education a couple generations ago, to 49th in the world right now.

A product of the school system, after hearing me say that, actually said to me, "Isn't that good?  49 is a bigger number, isn't it?"

School is the ultimate re-education camp, the greatest social engineering tool available to the leftists that believe in the general will (a will of the people that only the ruling elite recognize, and must be forced upon the people for their own good).  Dewey believed it was the job of the schools to condition children for the desired social order.  Collectivism must be the center of all lessons, teaching "mutually helpful living," while deemphasizing facts, knowledge, and real-world skills.  Dewey's vision desired creating schools with children filled with "a spirit of social cooperation and community life". The kids don't need to understand "economic value." They need "social power and insight". No competition, no-homework, only collective sharing and co-existence.

The result has been chaos in the classrooms, and an increasingly sexualized, thuggish, and government-dependent crop of children with each passing generation.

No longer was it the goal of teachers to educate the future of America, but instead for them to train and ready each child for "membership" in society, complete with a saturation of the spirit of service, obedience to authoritarianism, and community organization.

In a collectivist model, the community is more important than the individual.  "You are not your own person," the children are taught.  "You are a cog in a much larger machine, an automaton whose moral prerogative is to serve the collective, and contribute to the societal community."

Overprotected children in an oversensitive society now grow up believing they can do no wrong, and that they are so special that to succeed all they have to do is believe, and draw from the collective.  Without the essential life lessons taught in the school of hard knocks, they are unprepared for the hardships life throws at a person once adulthood is achieved.  While protecting the children from being emotionally hurt, or their "self-esteem" from being injured, the progressives have taken away the chief motivators for success, determination, and achievement.  The result?  Moral relativism, and moral decay.  The leftists have achieved molding America into a society unable to fend for itself, or determine anything that requires critical thinking skills.  Moral decay is identified as healthy diversity, and a healthy fight for the "new" civil rights.  History has been forgotten, by design, and have been replaced by radicals in the classroom, training children to adhere to their radical agendas.

Today's followers of Dewey's program continue the socialist's work.  Obama's recommended reading for the kids includes Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals and leftist Rinku Sen's Stir It Up. Brainwash a child in militant anti-Americanism, and maybe he'll be a future self-proclaimed communist like Van Jones, entrenched in our educational system, and continuing to teach his radical agenda even after being exposed as a communist.

George W. Bush doubled-down in 2001 with his egregious "No Child Left Behind" policy, an unconstitutional monstrosity that has forced schools cheat and lie just to receive federal funding the government has no constitutional authority to be providing.  Domestically, programs like "No Child Left Behind" reminded us that though Bush called himself a conservative, and supported defending the United States militarily against foreign enemies, he was also 100% in line with the progressive agenda on the domestic side of things, and could not be trusted with our children.

Now, emerges Common Core, taking Dewey's plans to the next level, capitalizing on the existence of corrupted techniques and dumbed-down curricula that have normalized ignorance of America's unique goodness and brought forth a characteristic exhibited by all socialistic societies: massive dependence on government handouts.

A teacher in Massachusetts has resigned because of how out-of-control the American education has become. Susan Sluyter has been a teacher in Cambridge Public School District in Massachusetts for more than two decades, and according to her, the shift in education requirements has been so dramatic, she felt she had no choice but to resign.

“In this disturbing era of testing and data collection in the public schools, I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children learn and what a teacher ought to do in the classroom to build a healthy, safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children,” Sluyter wrote in February her resignation letter.

The kindergarten and pre-K teacher said she’s watched her job requirements “[swing] away from a focus on the children, their individual learning styles, emotional needs, and their individual families, interests and strengths to a focus on testing, assessing, and scoring young children, thereby ramping up the academic demands and pressures on them.”

Glenn Beck sees the latest progressive scheme as being the final countdown.  “If you want to control [children], you break their spirit. And that’s exactly what’s happening,” Glenn concluded. “Once you do that, once you break the spirit of a child, then they’re just slaves to whatever it is you want them to do. This isn’t healthy. This is not good… Where are people? Where are people on this?”

Lydia Gutierrez agrees, arguing that Common Core cuts the parents out of the process of determining the curriculum.  A veteran educator, the California teacher has announced she is running for state superintendent of public instruction to highlight the problems with Common Core.

“The California educational system is in disarray. And Common Core mandates are not the answer,” Gutierrez said in a prepared statement. “School districts across the states will be forced to settle for mediocrity under the cover-up name of ‘College and Career Ready.’”

New math and English learning expectations have school leaders scrambling to revamp their curriculum – and that’s denying parents and taxpayers any input into those crucial decisions.

“I believe any curriculum that is adopted by a school district or charter school should be reviewed by the public. This is a requirement I would like to see in every school’s bylaws,” Gutierrez wrote.

Common Core is being inserted into our education system one school district at a time, under the radar, for a reason.  It has much to hide, from experimental standards regarding math and reading, and the elimination of cursive writing which will hinder the development of the young minds, to replacing classic literature with "instructional" reading provided by the government.  The new standards under Common Core touts illusory "virtues" of Islam and communism, while downplaying the historical significance of Judaism and Christianity in the founding of this nation.  Common Core is Dewey's dream come true - a national standard of indoctrination, strong on collectivism, and mandated without any consideration for the opinion of the parents, or the fading voice of any opposition.

The perfect tool for America's little re-education camps.

There are those that defend Common Core that are not progressives.

In a meeting I had with congressional staffers for Republican Congressman Ken Calvert a few weeks ago, one of the staffers, whose child is in a local school district, gave acclaim to the Common Core standards, explaining how she was taught at a parent-teacher organization meeting by a guest speaker that Common Core will increase math and reading scores, enabling our little Americans to catch up to the rest of the world in education.

Writers at National Review, who claim to be conservatives, have said that the hysteria about Common Core is misplaced - that the standards are not curriculum, but standards that will help improve the education of our children.

My message to those "republican" supporters of Common Core, and the National Review writers that defends the program in their article, is that the devil is in the details, and as I wrote at the beginning of this article, "Darkness always appears as an Angel of Light."

The goal of progressive education standards like Common Core is not improving our children's scores, but to make them good, compliant, citizens in a worldwide collective.  Just ask John Dewey.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

How to Pollute a Mind: Lessons from John Dewey and Van Jones - American Thinker

Teacher resigns after 25 years because of a new 'disturbing era' in public schools - Glenn Beck

California teacher touts anti-common core views in her race for state superintendent - EAGnews

The Latest Common Core Fight: Cursive (and Common Core is Losing in Some States) - The Blaze

Dr. Terrence Moore -- Common Core and the Destruction of Literature - NC Stop Common Core

Common Core Diminishes Classic Literature - COMMON CORE: Education without Representation

The Truth About Common Core - National Review Online

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