Common Core: A Beer Bong for Our Education System?

A couple of weeks ago it was announced by some “national educators” that they had just issued new guidelines that call for sweeping changes in the way science is taught in the U.S. These guidelines would include a recommendation that global warming be taught as early as middle school. They would also include a firm stand that children must learn about evolution.

26 states, including Iowa, have committed to seriously consider the guidelines. Supposedly the guidelines were to combat “widespread scientific ignorance” and would help students become “more intelligent.”

“In many respects, the standards are meant to do for science what a separate set of guidelines known as Common Core is supposed to do for English and Mathematics. To date 45 states have adopted the Common Core standards”.

Common Core was started with high hopes of raising our students’ performance in Mathematics and English by establishing standards that each student should know to have the highest success in these areas. One could argue that is a desirable objective to bring our student performance up to world class level. However, just like the proposed science standards something went amiss along the way. One of the problems, fatal in my opinion, is that the process provides an ideal way for reformers that want to push their agenda, global warming and evolution in this case, down the throats of our children and past the control of local people in the school system.

One of my favorite books, “Inside American Education” by one of my favorite writers, Thomas Sowell, included a statement by Sowell that “Parents who send their children to school with instructions to respect and obey their teachers may be surprised to discover how often these children are sent back home conditioned to disrespect and disobey their parents”. Although that book was written in 1992 it is even more accurate today. I’d recommend it for every parent. While the secular progressives argue that religion can’t be taught in schools they have no reservation in trying to interfere with the religious teaching that occurs in the home and in our churches.

Since the claims of global warming were made over ten years ago, sound scientific research has proven the claims were either totally false or grossly over-exaggerated when they were made. Maybe someone can tell me how teaching this dogma, totally disproved by true scientific inquiry, will make our students less ignorant and more intelligent.

The implementation of these standards through a process similar to the Common Core indicates to me that, although Common Core started out with noble intentions, it has become what amounts to a National beer bong for our education system. If you don’t know what a beer bong is ask your kids, they’ll know.

Editor’s note: If you don’t know what a beer bong is I, ahem, had some experience with these in college (prior to being saved I should note)…. This is obviously not a positive reference.

Photo credit: Chris Breeze via Flickr (CC By 2.0)