Before I begin, I'd like to say that I have no political affiliation. I'm neither liberal nor conservative, neither Republican nor Democrat. I'm simply speaking from the point of view of a weary teenager fed up with the mob mentality that we should not question anything. I am simply an outsider looking in.
With the implementation of CommonCore standards in recent years, there have been growing concerns from all sides of the political field. Many examples of these concerns have come to light within this past year alone.
A highly rephrased statement from the big guys running this show is, paraphrased, "rigorous activities to help prepare the the student for critical thinking in a business-focused world". Well, that sounds great! I'm all for progression in today's servicable-at-best education system.
So, we can expect change from our mundane standards to focus on more engaging and individualized methods to teach and learn?
No?
Well, are things at least going to be more simplified to benefit our more streamlined modern society?
No??
Hm. Well, let's discuss for a moment, why this was implemented in the first place. Students were seemingly less engaged in school, claiming there were way too many standards, and teachers were wondering what the sudden lack of involvement was about. Well, enter common core. This was supposed to simplify the monotonous tasks assigned to teachers and students by streamlining and removing non-practical standards by way of:
-throwing in new, convoluted and generally confusing standards
-adding more pressure to the teachers by mandating the extent to which each of these foreign standards should be taught, leaving less room for the teacher to individually work through their state's own requirements
-collectively teaching every student the exact same skills with little malleability to at least work around seemingly unneeded standards, not to mention the ridiculous ways under which they're taught and questions are answered.
Now whether this is federally mandated or if each state gets a say to which the extent the government places this program remains a mystery, at least to me considering that there's no straight answer regarding this. No one seems to have a straight answer thus far but one thing is definitely clear; it's disliked by an overwhelming majority...
Of teachers, parents, and of course, students, all of which have been subjected to the undisputed authority of this program that will ready us for college so we can all make the big bucks.
Hate to break it to you guys at Common Core, but that's not what's happening here. Us students know it, the parents and teachers know it, and you for sure know it.
I'm speaking on behalf of all the people I just mentioned to those who support Common Core.
I don't care what your intentions are with this system. Some say you're intentionally and sneakily implementing Marxist ideologies into some lessons, some say you're intentionally dumbing down our generation of students to become mindless collective sheep (throw in some kind of example from George Orwell's 1984 here, I suppose), other's say the highest powers are intentionally destroying America by means of indoctrination and confusion to the point of us all giving up and saying, "you just gotta do it".
The real answer is, you don't. You are an individual, and you have a voice. For every argument is a counterargument. And whether or not all these conspiracies at this point are true or false no longer matters. What matters is that it needs to be stopped. Of course this generation is expected to do poorly in the real world. Most of the questions I've personally been exposed to aren't applicable to everyday life in the least. I take engineering classes, without a common core mandated curriculum, and I can tell you first hand that it's easier to design (and build) a bridge than it is to solve your average algebraic Common Core equation.
As I've stated in previous journals, I'm all for academic progress. I know that only in a perfect world could we work with each student individually so they could be a free thinker and make the most of their lives. But this isn't a perfect world. That would be an overwhelming task for any administration. But it seems with Common Core, we're slowly, but surely, regressing into a more primitive means of educating the masses rather than teaching the individual. Call me a hippie all you want, but I see a tangible difference between the words "educate" and "teach".
To educate sounds more industrialized and one-size-fits-all. Colder and more distant.
To teach, however, sounds a bit more intimate, focused more on the mind rather than the desk. I am fully aware that we should have the opportunity to grasp the fundamentals of the workforce and think critically and abstractly to help solve issues we may come across working. Yeah, that's what college is for, not grade school.
So it seems we had a decent system that maybe could've used some modifications, but definitely not to the extent to which we've seen under these guidelines. In other words, if it's not broken, don't fix it.
Personally, I believe that the education should open the minds of students, allowing them to question themselves and world around them, but in today's society, we definitely don't want anyone questioning authority, you don't question mommy and daddy, why question your perfect government?
If you answered that question in the favor of your Messianic leaders, then you may be one of the people I'm talking about.
I'll leave on this statement from a smart Knox county, TN, high school senior.
"If what I've learned can be measured solely my objectives, then I've learned nothing at all."