Here’s the debate from Logan last night. Please share your thoughts below.
Alyson Williams and Wendy Hart against Common Core, and Tami Pyfer and Dave Thomas from the Utah State School Board for it.
All posts by Oak Norton
Data sharing with private entities begins
“Oh no, your child’s data is safe” they told us. “It’s not going to be shared.”
Sorry Washington state residents. You’ve been sold out by your state office of education and now your children’s non-public information is going to the Associated Press and Seattle Times media organizations. I wonder what that contract looks like…
“Wow,” said Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Jose Banda. “I wasn’t aware of [this agreement], and I don’t think any of my staff was aware that this was being considered and approved.”
Mr. Banda, maybe you should listen to the parents opposing Common Core a bit more…
Full article here:
http://kuow.org/post/state-deal-give-media-organizations-student-data-alarms-privacy-experts
Arkansas Mom Smashes CC at State Board Meeting
Don’t miss this testimony by an Arkansas mom exposing the idiocy of Common Core math standards.
Common Core Aligns with Cognitive Distortions
By Joan R. Landes, MA AMHC
“One of many terrifying risks of the Common Core Standards is the manipulation of curriculum by political ideologues to brainwash vulnerable children.”
As you read that statement, you may not be consciously aware that the choice of emotionally triggering words attempts to escalate your feelings of fear and anger. Then, if you are properly distressed, you will likely act to oppose Common Core Standards. This technique of sensational emotionalism created “yellow journalism” and underpins the production of propaganda. Unfortunately, this writing technique is being taught to Utah first graders.
“Propaganda?” you ask. “Our little six year olds are learning how to create propaganda?”
Here’s an accepted definition of propaganda: “Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.”(1)
Using that description, the unequivocal answer is “Yes.”
But it gets even worse.
Not only are students as young as six being taught how to manipulate others by using emotionally evocative words, the childrens’ cognitive processes are also being programmed to think in emotionally reactive ways. Here’s how it works (as documented in Oak Norton’s YouTube video):
Step One: Your child is told he is responsible for solving a social problem at school.
Step Two: Your child is instructed to develop a communication to you, his parents, which will create a motivation to act.
Step Three: Your child is taught the power of emotionally triggering words to foment anger, fear, and other reactions.
Step Four: Your child thinks, writes, discusses or role plays using these provocative words to create emotional reactivity. Perhaps he even uses these techniques on you, the parent.
Step Five: The teacher assesses your child’s mastery of this skill set and praises or punishes accordingly.
Step Six: Your child remembers and retains this ability to manipulate others in the future.
But here’s the sobering part: Your child has also programmed his own thoughts to be emotionally reactive and triggered.
As a clinical mental health therapist, I am trained to assess, diagnose and treat people of all ages who are suffering from mental illness. One of the best-researched, evidence-based therapies that are employed by psychotherapists world-wide is to detect and replace cognitive distortions. What’s a cognitive distortion? It is a dysfunctional way of thinking that often results in distress for clients. Some examples include black and white thinking, magnification or minimization, filtering, and one of the most common and damaging: emotional thinking.
Emotional thinking says, “I feel, therefore it’s real.” People who are stuck in emotional thinking are extremely reactive, easily triggered, easily manipulated and disconnected from logic and factual decision-making. Emotional thinking is very common in children and in people who have suffered trauma or simply suffered the trauma of a poor education. Adults who are trapped in emotional thinking are crippled by their inability to think logically when faced with emotionally triggering stimuli. If they feel depressed, then that must mean that the world is hopelessly depressing. When they feel anxious, that must mean that the world is a terrifying place to be avoided. When they feel angry, that must mean they need to engage in conflict. When cool thinking is needed, emotional thinkers melt into a “hot mess.” When logic is required, they lapse into feelings. When reason is wanted, they often fight, freeze or flee.
As thoughtful parents, teachers and mental health clinicians, we do not want to train our children into cognitive distortions like emotional thinking. The lessons documented in the video are perfect examples of attitude and behavior change strategies. They require children to choose and use emotionally triggering words in written, spoken and acted form. These are exactly the same techniques I use to change my clients’ patterns of thoughts and behavior. Unlike corrective psychotherapy, however, these Common Core aligned lessons are training children into cognitive distortions!
If our children are trapped in emotional thinking, they become targets of manipulation by their peers, media and political appeals. Unfortunately, our society is already reaping the harvest of emotional thinking in our political discourse, economies, social structures and culture. Large swaths of the population are emotional thinkers who are jerked around by their emotions and by those who can pull their emotional strings. Although my clinical practice could be enriched for years with a new generation of distressed emotional thinkers, I would happily exchange that job security for a generation of rational thinkers who can respond to genuine emotion in healthy ways.
The Common Core Standards provide cover for radical curricula as we have already witnessed. The CCSs don’t develop the curriculum, but instead provide legitimacy for manipulative courses by allowing the stamp of approval: “Common Core Aligned”. We must not allow CCSs to legitimize lessons that will train our children in propaganda techniques and cognitive distortions. We must keep local control over our children’s education so that unhealthy strategies can be easily detected and quickly corrected. Our children’s future happiness may depend upon it.
- Garth Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 4th ed. Sage Publications, p. 7
Common Core Movie – Building the Machine
Coming in February, a new documentary movie exposing Common Core. Check out the trailer here. The original trailer was taken down temporarily while an updated one was posted online. The Home School Legal Defense Association is the organization behind this documentary.
Survey shows Common Core opposition in Iowa teachers
Iowa teachers recently took a survey about their views on Common Core. We always hear from state officials how teachers have embraced Common Core, yet we hear from many teachers how they hate it and it is damaging their students and crippling their ability to tailor any educational experiences for children.
The results of the survey and teacher comments can be found here:
http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2013/11/survey-shows-common-core-opposition-among-iowa-educators/
Dr. Gary Thompson and the Wisconsin Mock Hearing
Today, we got this awesome email from a school student in Wisconsin.
Hello, my name is ___________.
I am a student at _______ High School, in ______ Wisconsin.
I am enrolled in a Government Class. The class is conducting a mock legislative hearing about Common Core.
I have been assigned to play the role of Dr. Gary Thompson during the hearing and would like to ask you some questions about your view on whether the Wisconsin State Legislature should repeal or amend the common core standards.
What is your stance on Common Core? And why?
What brought this about? Last month, Dr. Gary Thompson was invited to Wisconsin to testify in a *real* legislative hearing against Common Core’s behavioral testing and data collection. Near the end of his testimony, a state legislator asked who paid for him to travel there to testify. Gary pulled out and showed them a check he was given to cover his airfare and car rental. This state senator then jumped all over the group that paid for him, as having ties to the John Birch Society. Further compounding his ignorance, the senator and another legislator shortly thereafter, sent out a press release condemning right-wing extremism and paid testimony in their Common Core hearings.
Not one to be cowed, Dr. Thompson (who campaigned for President Obama) fired back a letter demanding the resignation of this state senator. The letter went viral. Here’s a news report:
http://watchdog.org/114521/thompson-commoncore-resign/
And here is Gary’s awesome letter calling for this senator’s resignation:
http://watchdog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/11/Thompsonletter.pdf
If you want to watch his whole testimony, here you go. Thank you Dr. Thompson for standing up for what’s right.
Anti-Common Core Facebook Campaign
This week, people all over the country are changing their Facebook picture to Stop Common Core. Please join. Right click on this image and save the image to your computer.
Then go to Facebook, and hover your mouse over your profile picture.
Click to edit your picture, and upload this image you saved.
Then every day, post an article exposing Common Core to your wall. Use #stopcommoncore as well.
Invite people to sign the petition at this website if they live in Utah.
Arne Duncan threatens California over Common Core testing
http://www.themoralliberal.com/2013/11/04/duncan-threatens-california-over-common-core/
Oh, but Common Core is state led and the feds have nothing to do with it… Yeah right. Lets hope the superintendent of CA sticks to his words:
“This legislation will continue to be guided by what’s right for California’s children…. We won’t reach [our goals for 21st-century learning] by continuing to look in the rear-view mirror with outdated tests, no matter how it sits with officials in Washington.” -Sup. Torlakson
Catholic professors to Bishops, get out of Common Core
Reported in the Stop Common Core in North Carolina website, and what appears to be a Catholic related blog, this letter was sent to all US Bishops and signed by over 130 Catholic professors. It makes the case that Common Core is a flawed philosophy and approach to education.
***********************
Your Excellency:
We are Catholic scholars who have taught for years in America’s colleges and universities. Most of us have done so for decades. A few of us have completed our time in the classroom; we are professors “emeriti.” We have all tried throughout our careers to put our intellectual gifts at the service of Christ and His Church. Most of us are parents, too, who have seen to our children’s education, much of it in Catholic schools. We are all personally and professionally devoted to Catholic education in America.
For these reasons we take this extraordinary step of addressing each of America’sCatholic bishops about the “Common Core” national reform of K-12 schooling. Over one hundred dioceses and archdioceses have decided since 2010 to implement the Common Core. We believe that, notwithstanding the good intentions of those who made these decisions, Common Core was approved too hastily and with inadequate consideration of how it would change the character and curriculum of our nation’s Catholic schools. We believe that implementing Common Core would be a grave disservice to Catholic education in America.
In fact, we are convinced that Common Core is so deeply flawed that it should not be adopted by Catholic schools which have yet to approve it, and that those schools which have already endorsed it should seek an orderly withdrawal now. Why – upon what evidence and reasoning – do we take such a decisive stand against a reform that so many Catholic educators have endorsed, or at least have acquiesced in?
In this brief letter we can only summarize our evidence and sketch our reasoning. We stand ready, however, to develop these brief points as you wish. We also invite you to view the video recording of a comprehensive conference critically examining Common Core, held at the University of Notre Dame on September 9, 2013. (For a copy of the video, please contact Professor Gerard Bradley at the address above.)
News reports each day show that a lively national debate about Common Core is upon us. The early rush to adopt Common Core has been displaced by sober second looks, and widespread regrets. Several states have decided to “pause” implementation. Others have opted out of the testing consortia associated with Common Core. Prominent educators and political leaders have declared their opposition. The national momentum behind Common Core has, quite simply, stopped. A wave of reform which recently was thought to be inevitable now isn’t. Parents of K- 12 children are leading today’s resistance to the Common Core. A great number of these parents are Catholics whose children attend Catholic schools.
Much of today’s vigorous debate focuses upon particular standards in English and math. Supporters say that Common Core will “raise academic standards.” But we find persuasive the critiques of educational experts (such as James Milgram, professor emeritus of mathematics at Stanford University, and Sandra Stotsky, professor emerita of education at the University of Arkansas) who have studied Common Core, and who judge it to be a step backwards. We endorse their judgment that this “reform” is really a radical shift in emphasis, goals, and expectations for K-12 education, with the result that Common Core-educated children will not be prepared to do authentic college work.
Even supporters of Common Core admit that it is geared to prepare children only for community-college-level studies. No doubt many of America’s Catholic children will study in community colleges. Some will not attend college at all. This is not by itself lamentable; it all depends upon the personal vocations of those children, and what they need to learn and do in order to carry out the unique set of good works entrusted to them by Jesus. But none of that means that our Catholic grade schools and high schools should give up on maximizing the intellectual potential of every student. And every student deserves to be prepared for a life of the imagination, of the spirit, and of a deep appreciation for beauty, goodness, truth, and faith.
The judgments of Stotsky and Milgram (among many others) are supported by a host of particulars. These particulars include when algebra is to be taught, whether advanced mathematics coursework should be taught in high school, the misalignment of writing and reading standards, and whether cursive writing is to be taught.
We do not write to you, however, to start an argument about particulars. At least, that is a discussion for another occasion and venue. We write to you instead because of what the particular deficiencies of Common Core reveal about the philosophy and the basic aims of the reform. We write to you because we think that this philosophy and these aims will undermine Catholic education, and dramatically diminish our children’s horizons.
Promoters of Common Core say that it is designed to make America’s children “college and career ready.” We instead judge Common Core to be a recipe for standardized workforce preparation. Common Core shortchanges the central goals of all sound education and surely those of Catholic education: to grow in the virtues necessary to know, love, and serve the Lord, to mature into a responsible, flourishing adult, and to contribute as a citizen to the process of responsible democratic self-government.
Common Core adopts a bottom-line, pragmatic approach to education. The heart of its philosophy is, as far as we can see, that it is a waste of resources to “over-educate” people. The basic goal of K-12 schools is to provide everyone with a modest skill set; after that, people can specialize in college – if they end up there. Truck-drivers do not need to know Huck Finn. Physicians have no use for the humanities. Only those destined to major in literature need to worry about Ulysses.
Perhaps a truck-driver needs no acquaintance with Paradise Lost to do his or her day’s work. But everyone is better off knowing Shakespeare and Euclidean geometry, and everyone is capable of it. Everyone bears the responsibility of growing in wisdom and grace and in deliberating with fellow-citizens about how we should all live together. A sound education helps each of us to do so. The sad facts about Common Core are most visible in its reduction in the study of classic, narrative fiction in favor of “informational texts.” This is a dramatic change. It is contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation.
Proponents of Common Core do not disguise their intention to transform “literacy” into a “critical” skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature. Professor Stotsky was the chief architect of the universally-praised Massachusetts English language arts standards, which contributed greatly to that state’s educational success. She describes Common Core as an incubator of “empty skill sets . . . [that] weaken the basis of literary and cultural knowledge needed for authentic college coursework.” Rather than explore the creativity of man, the great lessons of life, tragedy, love, good and evil, the rich textures of history that underlie great works of fiction, and the tales of self-sacrifice and mercy in the works of the great writers that have shaped our cultural literacy over the centuries, Common Core reduces reading to a servile activity.
Professor Anthony Esolen, now at Providence College, has taught literature and poetry to college students for two decades. He provided testimony to a South Carolina legislative committee on the Common Core, lamenting its “cavalier contempt for great works of human art and thought, in literary form.” He further declared: “We are not programming machines. We are teaching children. We are not producing functionaries, factory-like. We are to be forming the minds and hearts of men and women.”
Thus far Common Core standards have been published for mathematics and English language arts. Related science standards have been recently released by Achieve, Inc. History standards have also been prepared by another organization. No diocese (for that matter, no state) is bound to implement these standards just by dint of having signed onto Common Core’s English and math standards. We nonetheless believe that the same financial inducements, political pressure, and misguided reforming zeal that rushed those standards towards acceptance will conspire to make acceptance of the history and science standards equally speedy – and unreflective and unfortunate.
These new standards will very likely lower expectations for students, just as the Common Core math and English standards have done. More important, however, is the likelihood that they will promote the prevailing philosophical orthodoxies in those disciplines. In science, the new standards are likely to take for granted, and inculcate students into a materialist metaphysics that is incompatible with, the spiritual realities–soul, conceptual thought, values, free choice, God– which Catholic faith presupposes.
We fear, too, that the history standards will promote the easy moral relativism, tinged with a pervasive anti-religious bias, that is commonplace in collegiate history departments today. Common Core is innocent of America’s Catholic schools’ rich tradition of helping to form children’s hearts and minds. In that tradition, education brings children to the Word of God. It provides students with a sound foundation of knowledge and sharpens their faculties of reason. It nurtures the child’s natural openness to truth and beauty, his moral goodness, and his longing for the infinite and happiness. It equips students to understand the laws of nature and to recognize the face of God in their fellow man.
Education in this tradition forms men and women capable of discerning and pursuing their path in life and who stand ready to defend truth, their church, their families, and their country. The history of Catholic education is rich in tradition and excellence. It embraces the academic inheritance of St. Anselm, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Blessed John Henry Newman. In contrast to such academic rigor, the Common Core standards lack an empirical evidentiary basis and have not been field-tested anywhere. Sadly, over one hundred Catholic dioceses have set aside our teaching tradition in favor of these secular standards.
America’s bishops have compiled a remarkable record of success directing Catholic education in America, perhaps most notably St. John Neumann and the Plenary Councils of Baltimore. Parents embrace that tradition and long for adherence to it –indeed, for its renaissance. That longing reflects itself in the growing Catholic homeschool and classical-education movements and, now, in the burgeoning desire among Catholic parents for their dioceses to reject the Common Core. Because we believe that this moment in history again calls for the intercession of each bishop, we have been made bold to impose upon your time with our judgments of Common Core.
Faithfully in Christ, we are:
Gerard Bradley, Robert P. George, Anthony Esolen, Anne Hendershott, Kevin Doak, Joseph A. Varacalli, Patrick McKinley Brennan, Robert Fastiggi, Duncan Stroik, Thomas F. Farr, Matthew J. Franck, Ronald J. Rychlak, V. Bradley Lewis, Patrick J. Deneen, E. Christian Brugger, Kenneth L. Grasso, James Hitchcock, Maria Sophia Agirre, Father Joseph Koterski, S.J., Francis J. Beckwith, Thomas V. Svogun, Scott W. Hahn, Eduardo J. Echeverria, Ryan J. Barilleaux, Brian Simboli, John A. Guegen, G. Alexander Ross, Suzanne Carpenter, Patrick Lee, Peter J. Colosi, Robert Hunt, Matthew Cuddeback, Joseph H. Hagan, John A. Cuddeback, Michael J. Healy, Thomas HIbbs, Susan Orr Traffas, Michael J. Behe, Thomas r. Rourke, Robert H. Holden, Philip J. Harold, David T. Murphy, W. H. Marshner, David W. Fagerberg, Melissa Moschella, Daniel J. Costello, Jr., Brian Scarnechia, Thomas Behr, Brian Dbranski, Daniel Philpott, Anne Barbeau Gardiner, C.C. Pecknold, Anthony Low, Heather Voccola, Raymond F. Hain, Catherine Abbott, Therese Bonin, Francis P. Kessler, Christopher Wolfe, Carson Holloway, Stephen M Krason, Laura Hirschfeld Hollis, Wilson D. Miscamble, Stephen M. Barr, D.C. Schindler, Jeanne Heffernan Schindler, David L. Schindler, Father Edward Krause, C.C.C., Christopher O. Tollefsen, Paige E. Hocschild, Robert C. Jeffrey, Father Anthony E. Giampietro, CSB, Roger Loucks, J. Daniel Hammond, Kenneth R. Hoffman, Timothy T. O’Donnell, Thomas W. Jodziewicz, Sr. J. Sheila Galligan, IHM, Maura Hearden, Robert Gorman, Steven Justice, Carol Nevin Abromaitis, Sean Innerst, Robert A. Destro, Richard Sherlock, Adrian J. Reimers, Jessica M. Murdoch, Mary Shivanandan, Alice M. Ramos, Dennis J. Marshall, Dennis D. Martin, Janet E. Smith, Leonard J. Nelson, III, Charles D. Presberg, Brian T. Kelly, Michael F. McLean, Philip T. Crotty, R. E. Houser, Gary D. Glenn, Cynthis Tollin, Virginia L. Arbery, Maryanne M. Linkes, James Likoudis, Emil Berendt, David Fr. Forte, Anthony W. Zunpetta, Thomas D. Watts, Catherine Ruth Pakaluk, Craig S. Lent, Christina Jeffrey, Robert G. Kennedy, Holly Taylor Coolman, Raymond F. Hain, David Whalen, David M. Wagner, John G. Trapani, Jr., Tina Holland, James F. Papillo, J. Marianne Siegmund, Daniel Hauser, Joshua Hocschild, William Edmund Fahey, John C. McCarthy, Christopher O. Blum, Chiyuma Elliott, Mark C. Henrie, Jeffrey Tranzillo, Craig Steven Titus, Father Peter M. J. Stravinskas, William W. Kirk.