Pearson and Gates have joined forces.
Why is a Pearson and Gates combination a nightmare for America, for anyone who cares about competitive free enterprise, constitutional rights regarding education, and local control?
First, a few facts:
1. Pearson, led by Sir Michael Barber, is the biggest education product sales company on earth.
2. Bill Gates is the second richest man on earth, a man who has almost single-handedly funded and marketed the entire Common Core movement.
Gates previously partnered with UNESCO to bring a master curriculum worldwide in his “Education For All” program. Gates openly values extreme socialism and says that it’s much better than American constitutional government. Listen to Gates at minute 6:20 on this clip. Gates says, “We’ll only know this works when the curriculum and the tests are aligned to these standards.”
Pearson’s CEA is Sir Michael Barber, a man whose company colludes with governments worldwide in public-private-partnerships (soft fascism) and believes that children’s data should be gathered on a global scale. Barber pushes his version of “sustainable educational revolution,” worldwide, explaining that sustainable education reforms mean “it can never go back to how it was.” See his speeches on YouTube and his Twitter feeds.
These two mega forces for globalizing and standardizing education have now come together.
In a New York Times article on the partnership, Susan Neuman, a former Education Department official in the George W. Bush administration who is now a professor at the University of Michigan, was quoted:
“This is something that’s been missing in all the policy statements on the common core: a sequential curriculum,” Dr. Neuman said. But she worries that Pearson has few rivals.
“Pearson already dominates, and this could take it to the extreme,” she said. “This could be problematic for many of our kids. We could get a one size fits all.”
Indeed.
So when my state school board says that Common Core is just a set of minimum standards, not a curriculum, I will point them to this: the biggest monopolizer of textbooks, technologies and teacher training–Pearson– has now partnered with one of the wealthiest foundations on earth to create a one size fits all curriculum.
Where will private schools and others go to buy books, who don’t want Common Core-aligned curriculum? How will others stay in business with such huge competition?
I had my children in a private on-line school. They have know implemented common core and we pulled our children out. Our oldest daughter was finishing up the year she was working on and now cannot finish. So we put her in a class at Stevens Henager for the GED. I went with to see what they were teaching and sure enough the GED book was filled with anti-capitalism, environmentalism ect. I found out Pearson Education has now taken over the GED program. It seems we have no where to turn they have made sure it is every where.
I have called another private school and they told me that they were told if they did not sign up for cc they would not be given accreditation. The govenor likes to talk about school choice but they are all being forced into cc so where is the choice? The private school wich is Liahona Academy said they are not teaching cc and if forced to they will not be an accredited school. I pray they stand their ground.
Even still if they are redoing the test to enter colleges and Universities how do we get around that. It is so inferiating to me.
What is the answer? How to we beat this?
My state legislator, Aaron Osmond, works for Pearson Education. He has excused himself from voting on some things before because of possible conflict of interest; I’m concerned now at the breadth of ‘conflict of interest’ that he’s now in. Has anyone talked with him to get his take on Common Core? I’ll talk with him too, but it’s helpful to go in with some information.