Common Core is a many-tentacled beast. Just when you think you have one part of it nailed down, another surfaces. Considering its aggressive nature and rapid assimilation of our nation, it is easy to let our efforts get drowned in an emotional reaction, rather than a calculated response. This monster that menaces our children's future can be stopped.
Our efforts must be offensive as well as defensive.
First, we must educate ourselves on our enemy.
What is Common Core?
Along with that, we need to find people in our state that are already fighting Common Core. Join your fellow patriots in contending for educational freedom and localized authority over our schools.
The most crucial offensive measure is informing our family, friends, neighbors and community. As one of the moms against Common Core said (forgive me, I cannot remember which one said it): "Silence isn't acceptance. Silence is ignorance."
For ignorance to be fought there has to be knowledge imparted. And the only way that will occur is if you and I choose to warn those around us. This is not a partisan or religious issue. All of our children will be affected by these new standards and the implementation of them.
Print out some Stop Common Core flyers and hand them out to help enlighten people on the dangers of Common Core.
Write to your local school board members, Director of the Board of Education, and your state representatives. We have to get legislation passed in our states to reject Common Core.
Lastly, stay informed. It was lack of oversight by the public that allowed our government to get this far. We must be aware of what our opponents are formulating next.
Common Core has grown to gigantic proportions, but just as the Kraken of old, it can be defeated. We must face the beast and resist its advancements across our nation. With every tentacle we sever, we wrestle freedom from its grasp and gain hope for our children's future.
While reading through countless government documents regarding Common Core, I kept running into the same word, over and over. Like a broken record, the Common Core proponents and professionals worked it into their "pro-Core-paganda."
Rigor.
And always in the context of 'the standards and curriculum are rigorous' or designed to produce 'rigor' in the students' assimilation of knowledge.
Rigor is not a term that we commoners hear too often; and so I looked it up to be sure I understood what they, the professional educators, meant. Rigor, in the academic context, is defined as: "scrupulous or inflexible accuracy or adherence." (www.dictionary.com). Is that what we want our children's education defined as? Inflexible? Rigidly compliant?
Children were not designed to be under the microscope, studied like bacteria in a petri dish. Children are unique individuals with desires and dreams. We, as parents, teach our children "Reach for your dreams. Work hard. Be the best you, that you can be." But soon our schools will be teaching them, "Your dreams are irrelevant. Just do the work. Be what we want you to be."
The system of education is changing and creativity is quickly becoming obsolete. Our children will no longer dream of becoming firemen, doctors, teachers, business owners, or whatever sparks their interest; no, instead our schools will parrot the government's needs to them. Is our nation lacking in blue-collar workers, no problem, we will simply program the next batch of kids for those career opportunities. Common Core, in partnership with the P20 Council, will ensure that our nation, even our 'global community', has no want of 'human resources'.
An education is a living thing that grows and evolves along with the individual. It has to remain flexible for any learning to occur. Common Core will paralyze our children's ability to think for themselves. It will stunt their intellectual capacity so that the only thing they will be capable of is regurgitating the rhetoric taught to them.
Common Core, fellow parents and educators, is the death knell of childhood and education as we know it.
I, for one, refuse to let this government sign my children's educational death warrant. We have to be persistent and demand that our elected officials take the pen out of Uncle Sam's hands, before it's too late.
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