Common Core: The "Beast" within our Schools

It’s been said there’s a horrid creature lurking in today’s schools, coast to coast, Kinder through 12th grades. It is clawing at American children and the walls that confine classrooms. Teachers, administrators and school district officials, even many politicians are at risk. America is doomed to squander globally if this being is not put to rest.

This horrid beast is replacing worksheets, textbooks and scripted curriculum programs made not by teachers, but by for-profit publishers under the guise of being what’s best for kids. There has been a security breach and attack of the standardized tests we loved so much as children. You remember, the type of test where you only had to pick keywords out of paragraphs and bubble in the corresponding answer. The standardized test where you could even guess and still have a chance to have an agreeable score. War has been waged on silent classrooms where pin drops can be heard in the absence of the sole voice in the room, that of the teacher, that is. This goes against the adage our grandparents taught us, “children are to be seen and not heard.”

The creature that’s lurking near every classroom door is actually allowing kids to think for themselves. Kids don’t have thoughts, they should only believe what they are spoon fed and only speak in regurgitated nodes. This evil monster is asking them to explain their thinking...in MATH! Who thinks in math, let alone uses group discussion and written word to document the route they took to get an answer? Something has gone horribly wrong when kids are talking about science topics in LANGUAGE ARTS. The beast’s foul stench has made it all the way out to the PE fields where students have to teach one another and explain why one warm up or exercise routine might help a specific athlete over another established training regimen.

And the worst thing of all, this enemy has given teachers a little freedom to get rid of the list of things they are to teach in a school year and has allowed them to go more in depth on fewer topics rather than get to the last chapter in the dumbed down, dry textbooks we gave them.

This demonic creation is The Common Core (“Dun-dun-dunnn” sound effects play here).

I’m declaring here and now that war is being waged against our children and with things like student choice and voice occurring in our classrooms, we will not have children suited for employment in our factory economy. We will not have workers who sit quietly, do what they’re told without asking questions or innovating better ways of doing things. We’ve used our 19th century model for, well centuries, and it’s why America ranks 14th among developed countries. (Pearson, 2015) Wait, what? 14th. You mean the United States throws more money at education and gives more standardized testing than many and is still only 14th? (A.P., 2013)

So perhaps those who’ve been asking questions about the why things no longer work in terms of the world we’re living in are on to something. Could it be true that those who sit still and do what they’re told, both students are teachers, fair far poorer than those who live in a classroom where creativity is allowed and encouraged. Do teachers really know what’s best for kids with all their training and experiences with real students?

The true purpose and methodology behind Common Core, not the hyped media version, has classrooms where students are forced to delve more deeply, think more thoroughly and work collaboratively to ask and answer questions while solving problems. Sounds a bit more like what it takes to be CEO and Head Engineer.

Activities like giving students the actual Magna Carta and having them work together to make sense of it is better than simply telling them what it is and what it means. Will activities like this take longer? Yes. Are they “hard?” Of Course. Can all students be successful with these types of activities with the proper amount of scaffolding? You bet. Common Core should be like an apprenticeship where students learn by doing and showing, rather than sitting and getting.

Many of us were raised to believe the misconception that things we were tortured with like weekly spelling tests and timed arithmetic were the most effective way to teach and learn, when in fact, all this did was pump our brains with disconnected facts that we simply mind-dumped on Fridays after the test. How many people still profess to be poor spellers and count on their fingers? Without a connection to tangible learning, this type of “learning” is a waste of time.   Why not let the spelling inquiry and a variety of word choice come from the need to properly present a researched topic or solve an equation quickly to complete a blueprint? Couldn’t history be learned through re-enactments after reading historical fiction? Research to verify and produce independent work would garner longer lasting knowledge than filling in a bubble on an end of unit test. Why not present real world problems and help students work in groups to solve pieces of the problem, then present findings to one another to form a comprehensive plan...kind of sounds like the way companies come up with solutions. Could students research topics of interest and host an educational fair to enlighten their peers and parents rather than a canned research report for solely their teacher’s eyes? Doesn’t that sound “authentic?” Motivating? Inspirational even?

The beast that is Common Core is more, as the kids would say, “Beastmode!” Properly used, they represent a shift in thinking, doing, creating, that in a properly trained teacher’s hands, is a large missing piece of the success pie we want our kids, and ultimately our society, to have. It is not “the” answer, but on the way to a solution that will slay the real educational beast that is over policing, over testing, over administrating and will put power back in the hands of the learners. Teaching kids how to think, not what to think is at the core of Common Core. It’s education in “beastmode,” not a beast.