About a year ago, Senator Margaret Dayton invited me to a meeting with a top member of the Utah state administration. One of the first things out of his mouth when we entered the room was “I’ve read the Common Core standards and there’s no Marxist indoctrination in them.”
It was clear what had happened. The Utah state office of education had set up a straw man argument telling this official that “these extremists fighting Common Core think these standards are going to indoctrinate children into Marxism.” Then they give them a copy of the standards and say, “here, read it for yourself,” thus proving their false allegations to be true.
I replied and said, “nobody has ever said that. It’s not the standards that are going to indoctrinate our children and we’ve never said that. However, the people pushing Common Core nationally have an agenda behind them.” We had a good discussion and he took lots of notes and was concerned that we protect Utah from federal intrusion. He asked Senator Dayton to run a bill to protect Utah and she did, but that bill was ultimately rendered toothless after the state office of education pressured senators to change the language on the bill from “shall exit” to “may exit” if one of several triggers occurred.
Unfortunately, this state official now travels around telling people that Common Core is great and there’s nothing to worry about. I share this story now because there appears to be a true cause for concern regarding indoctrination.
Last December, Glenn Beck’s site theblaze.com posted a very important article regarding terrorist turned educator Bill Ayers. Ayers spoke at a conference in December and openly talked about using the absolute access the leftists in America have in the school system.
“If we want change to come, we would do well not to look at the sites of power we have no access to; the White House, the Congress, the Pentagon,” Ayers added. “We have absolute access to the community, the school, the neighborhood, the street, the classroom, the workplace, the shop, the farm.” – Bill Ayers
Why did Ayers say this? He knows as well as anyone that the US Department of Education is a socialist factory. Charlotte Iserbyt documented this in her excellent work “The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America.”
Ayers also knows people like Linda Darling-Hammond are in positions of power in education. Ayers recommended her to President Obama as a choice for secretary of education.
Ms. Darling-Hammond is a Marxist who wrote the book “Learning to Teach for Social Justice.” She is the senior researcher with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium which Utah signed onto as a governing member as part of our Race to the Top application. Last year we got the state board to vote to exit from SBAC’s assessments on our students.
An informant inside the state office of education told us that the state was writing an RFP for the assessments in such a way that they would only choose a provider using SBAC’s assessments, and sure enough, out of about 13 applications, the state office chose AIR, the official partner of SBAC to deliver our assessments. AIR is an organization with an extreme agenda which you can read about here.
What else has Ms. Darling-Hammond been involved in? CSCOPE, a program forced on Texas for their curriculum. CSCOPE was based on the research and beliefs of Linda Darling-Hammond. This past week Glenn Beck exposed CSCOPE as a subversive curriculum that completely turns American history on its head and straight out indoctrinates our children.
Here’s the kicker and I wish we had full knowledge on this. Susie Schnell pointed out in the Blaze article that it said Common Core tried to purchase CSCOPE but it was turned down. It appears that during hearings on CSCOPE in Texas, a retired science teacher made this statement that at some point, Common Core Standards tried to purchase CSCOPE. This is interesting because Common Core is just a set of standards, not an organization. The National Governor’s Association and Council of Chief State Superintendents Organization are the two non-governmental entities that created and copyrighted Common Core with funding from the Gates Foundation. CSCOPE is a curriculum. If this statement is correct, then there is a possibility that the people behind the Common Core standards were looking for a curriculum that could be used in all the states to finish out the national education takeover and globalization that Gates agreed to do with UNESCO in 2004.
So Common Core set de facto national standards. The federal government funded national assessments with SBAC and PARCC. And CSCOPE may just be the pilot program for national curriculum..
Listen to Glenn Beck’s monolog from Friday. I don’t think he fully understands Common Core yet, but he’s at least starting to dig in and I’m sure more will be forthcoming. He also talks about something they are working on in the field of education.
So what can we ACTUALLY do to stop this all??? Is it inevitable or can something be done?
Yes something can be done. Alert your neighbors and legislators. The more people are awake to the issues, the easier this will be to overturn. Glenn Beck’s answer is pull your children out of public schools and homeschool them before they get indoctrinated into good little obedient global servants.
The reason why I do what I do is because several years ago when I got started, I had 4 daughters and I thought, “we can take care of their education, but who are they going to marry that will take care of them and their families? What if that person grew up on Investigations math and were mentally handicapped for life because his parents didn’t notice the problem until it was too late? Someone needs to do something. I am someone.” Find your motivation and commit to it.
We need more people who are educated on the issues and not dependent on myself and a handful of others who are doing research. We’re happy to do it, but imagine the impact of 10,000 people educated on this issue and asking legislators and state school board members to put Utah uncommonly ahead of the rest of the nation. It would be easy to do and free teachers, students, and parents from the grip of this rising beast.
You know, none of the stuff I’ve looked at in this article or others on your website are a problem in my experience so far with the Common Core. My daughter attends one of the best junior highs in the state, located within Davis School District. Our district did not adopt the same methods as the rest of the state seems to have. One of our math teachers (who is also my daughter’s teacher) maintained an account with a previous textbook provider in order to provide students and parents with concrete examples of work they’ve been doing in class so homework goes better, and has also provided his own online workbook for the same reason. He is also now serving on a textbook adoption committee to bring in the best material they can to teach the varied concepts presented in each level. Another teacher has used the “flipped classroom” approach, with videos students and parents can watch at home. If they do not understand the homework after this, the teacher works with them the next day in class. To me, this is an excellent approach. Let’s be honest. Most parents do not retain the kind of math skills needed to help children with their math homework in junior high and high school (and some upper-grade elementary school, because with the new curriculum, these kids are learning what we learned in junior high). I am lucky to have a husband who uses higher math every day. I would have to spend a lot of time looking things up on the internet and studying the helps these teachers have provided in order to even hope to help my children with math. I am thankful that these teachers are trying novel approaches to help their students succeed. In addition, I have been very pleased with what I have seen so far in the math curriculum here, in both our elementary school and our junior high. Kids are learning basic math concepts from all disciplines, one block upon another, so that information is retained much better and concepts make much more sense. The conventional way starts out by giving kids building blocks (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), but then starts introducing harder math a “genre” at a time and not tying any of them together in a meaningful way. I learned pre-algebra, then algebra, but then went to geometry, then back to Algebra 2, and then trigonometry. When the time came for the ACT, a lot of kids had been out of geometry for two years and were struggling to remember the concepts they learned (unless they were among the lucky few who were naturally mathematical or whose parents could afford an expensive ACT prep course). With the curriculum our district is using now, kids will retain these concepts and be able to relate them to each other and to life. I don’t pretend to be an expert in the Common Core; I only know what I am seeing with four kids in the Davis District school system from 9th grade down to 2nd grade (and a kindergartner next year). I don’t see all the negative stuff you guys are talking about. Maybe you can convince the rest of the state to go the direction the Davis School District has gone. It sounds to me like those who wrote the homemade textbook in Jordan and Granite districts have a political agenda. I have not seen anything like that in our schools.
Melissa, thank Peter Cannon on the Davis School Board for one who is making a difference there. Unfortunately, not all districts and schools are so fortunate. As for the indoctrination, it’s happening around the state but not in full swing. CSCOPE is designed to do that if it’s brought under the Common Core umbrella. There are people in Utah who believe they can forever protect Utah from these influences, but when we take federal money, we take federal strings and all the strings are pulling toward a full nationalization of standards, assessments, and curriculum.
Oak, I knew there was a problem with CC, & heard about CSCOPE too. Today, Mar 14, Glenn Beck had his program devoted to CC. There were a couple of Utahns there. One, David Cox, who is now teaching at a charter school, says that folks want to beware. Just taking them out of public school & home schooling may be forced out of that in days to come. I’m 77 & concerned for some of my great-grandchildren’s educations. Will become a shadow of some of our state reps as I get more up to speed on the subject.
I taught for several years in naval schools. Graduated from NavShips School Administrators program. I directed 150 senior instructors at the time of my retirement. Developed everything from curricula, master lesson plans, personal lesson plans & developed test items & evaluated the test items based on test results. The things I see being put on folks who would be great teachers if all of the “standards” being pushed on them didn’t smother them.
Later, when I’ve learned more,
Is it true that even private schools and home schooling (NOT just public schools)will have to incorporate Common Core curriculum or lose ACCREDITATION, so there’s no getting around it….be vigilant !!