The below email was sent to me by a Utah public school teacher with permission to share.

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We were mandated to use a specific remedial literacy curriculum/software about 4 years ago grades 3-6.  After only one year, the district replaced all of the materials and software at some considerable expense with the NG or “New Generation” version. We were told to turn back in any previous materials and discontinue use.  We as teachers had no idea what that NG meant.  I started to notice “College to Career” statements everywhere in the lesson plans –not openly discussed with the educators so it had little meaning to me.  Sounded nice.

What I noticed on my own, and before the whole Common Core thing came up as an issue, was that the topics were very socially and scientifically biased.  Topics that covered a month of activities each, covered racial, immigration, earth resources use, animal humane/exploitation issues, etc…  There were no differing views, but a railroaded view and conclusion with student answers actually formatted so they had to orally or in written form answer in a certain way with pre-scripted emotionally-charged dialogue sentence starters (“It was hard for Carlita when her mother couldn’t stay and had to return to Mexico for awhile, and Carlita felt that…”).

The topics seemed to be age inappropriate and more adult oriented and politically controversial.  Issues that I never would have approached before.  Needless to say, I was and am uncomfortable teaching material that I do not personally agree with (and likely most of the parents) and do not wish to indoctrinate with topics and discussions that can be disturbing to younger children.