8th Grade History Teacher: Stop the Common Core

By C.E. White

This week, President Obama will be sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States of America.  As a history teacher, I was elated to learn he would be placing his hand on two Bibles, one belonging to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the other belonging to President Abraham Lincoln, when he takes the oath of office to lead our great nation.   Dr. King and President Lincoln helped define civil rights for America…historical heroes who transformed the idea of justice and equality. 

As jubilant as I am that President Obama is symbolically using the bibles of two of the greatest Americans in our nation’s history, I am saddened that this administration seems to have forgotten what Dr. King and President Lincoln promoted regarding education.  

In Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” he stated “the goal of America is freedom.”  As a teacher, it is such an honor to teach America’s children about freedom and patriotism.  However,  over the past few years, I began to learn about a new education reform initiative called Common Core Standards.  A few years ago, when I first heard of Common Core, I began doing my own research.   My students represent the future of the United States of America, and what they learn is of utmost importance to me.  I care about their future, and the future of our country. 

My research of Common Core Standards kept me awake at night, because what I discovered was so shocking.  I discovered that Common Core Standards is about so much more than educational standards.  I wanted so badly to believe these changes would be good for our children.  How can “common” standards be a bad thing?  After all, isn’t it nice to have students learning the same exceptional standards from Alabama to Alaska, from Minnesota to Massachusetts? 

As a teacher, I began to spend nights, weekends, summers, even Christmas Day researching Common Core, because these reforms were so massive and were happening so quickly, it was hard to keep up with how American education was being transformed.  I quickly began to realize that the American education system under Common Core goes against everything great Americans like Dr. King and President Lincoln ever taught.  The very freedoms we celebrate and hold dear are in question when I think of what Common Core means for the United States.

One of my favorite writings about education from Dr. King is a paper entitled “The Purpose of Education.”  In it, he wrote “To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.”

When I sit in faculty meetings about Common Core, I hear “curriculum specialists” tell me that Common Core is here to stay and I must “embrace change.”    I am forced to drink the kool-aid.  These specialists don’t tell us to search for facts about Common Core on our own, they simply tell us what the people paid to promote Common Core want us to know.  Didn’t Dr. King want us to separate facts from fiction?  Why are we only given information from sources paid to say Common Core is a good thing? Isn’t that the exact same type of propaganda Dr. King discussed in his writings about education?  Shouldn’t we discuss why thousands of Americans are calling for a repeal of the standards?

I am told that I must embrace Common Core and I infer that resisting the changes associated with Common Core will label me “resistant to change.”  As a teacher, I definitely believe our classrooms are changing with the times and I am not afraid of change.  Teachers across America are hearing similar stories about how they should “feel” about Common Core.  This is a brainwashing bully tactic.  It reminds me of my 8th graders’ lesson on bullying, when I teach them to have an opinion of their own.  Just because “everyone’s doing it,” doesn’t make it right.  In regards to Common Core, I am not afraid of change.  I am just not going to sell-out my students’ education so that Pearson, the Gates Foundation, David Coleman, Sir Michael Barber, Marc Tucker and others can experiment on our children.

I agree with Dr. King, which is why I am so saddened at how propaganda from an elite few is literally changing the face of America’s future with nothing more than a grand experiment called Common Core Standards.  Our children deserve more.  Our teachers deserve more.  Our country deserves more.  Education reform is the civil rights issue of our generation, and sadly, parents, teachers, and students have been left out of the process.  

President Lincoln once said “the philosophy of the classroom today, will be the philosophy of government tomorrow.”  With Common Core, new standardized tests have inundated classrooms with problems of their own.  Teachers find themselves “teaching to the test” more and more.  These tests violate our states’ rights.  I wonder if parents realized that all states aren’t created equal in Common Core tests?  Shouldn’t all states, under “common” standards for everyone have everyone’s equal input on how students are tested? 

What about privacy under Common Core?  Why didn’t local boards of education tell parents about the changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act?  Do parents realize their child’s data, including biometric data such as fingerprints and retinal scans, is being placed in a state longitudinal data system and shared with others? 

If our philosophy of the classroom is to violate states’ rights, use children and teachers as guinea pigs, and hide from parents the fact that their child’s data is no longer private, it can only be inferred that the philosophy of government tomorrow will do the same.  What is America becoming? 

As I watched President Obama place his hand on the bibles of Dr. King and President Lincoln, the history teacher in me was overjoyed to watch such a patriotic moment in U.S. history.  And yet, I was crushed at the realization that if we do not stop Common Core and preserve the United States educational system, the philosophy of our government tomorrow will not be the America we know and love.