The status quo of the public schools is socialist. That is what the reformers are attacking. Why do you think unions are their first and major target? There is absolutely nothing in any of the Humanist Manifestos, nor any of the socialist literature of the past two hundred years that is honored by the oligarchical system that is being foisted upon our children by the moneyed interests who threaten our education system today. Our public school system is a democratic socialist concept, which, since its creation, has been complicated and compromised by our societys worship of money and its habit of mistaking xenophobia for nationalism. Its been a bumpy road, but the public schools and its unionized educators have fought hard to live up to the goals on which the system was founded: FREE INQUIRY (which is not in any way honored by CCSS) SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE (a huge area of compromise among the rich and powerful -- they will ignore mainstream and liberal churches, but the fundamentalist opiate of the masses will be quite a useful tool for them) ETHICS BASED ON CRITICAL THINKING (A concept that is antithetical to the worship of Capitalism-with-a-capital-C that permeates the reformers.) MORAL EDUCATION WITH SKEPTICISM (This scares the living beejeezus out of reformers. Its a landmine, particularly if critical thinking is involved.) REASON, SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, & EVOLUTION (Notice that in the charter schools at which the faithful worship, technology is not a tool for the curriculum; it IS the curriculum. Students learn how to use their new technology to do the same damned things they have always done. There is virtually no educational innovation outside public schools. That is true for two reasons: First, union protections allow educators to challenge the status quo, and Second, the system is built to change a the classroom level. The inventors of public education were radicals, revolutionaries, and subversives. The best educators still are. THE ARTS AND SELF-EXPRESSION (Completely absent from CCSS, except as adjuncts to their lock-step, question-free system. The arts should be dangerous, and the reformers try to reduce them to collages of pictures clipped from magazines to illustrate their cause célèbre du jour; singing choral versions of Justin Bieber songs; doing half-time shows that support the worship of athletics; and doing cute little skits on school spirit. The Arts should grab people off the street, drag them into a dark alley, and change their minds. Thats why the reformers ignore them altogether, and do everything they can to reduce or eliminate them.) The concept of national or international influence on curriculum is not a foreign (and I use that term advisedly) concept, or even a particularly unpleasant one. The trouble lies not with the concept, but with the people who have co-opted it. Sometimes its not enough to listen to the lyrics of the song; you have to pay close attention to whos singing it.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 19:40:26 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015