Leave them kids alone

I post about education occasionally, but, to my recollection, I'd never written here specifically about Common Core.  I have always found it suspect, just because I find anything tending towards ever-greater centralization suspect.

And now I can cede the floor to a concerned citizen with a background that uniquely qualifies her to remark upon it:

 Lily Tang Williams, a mother of three, testified before the Colorado State Board of Education that Common Core was similar to the education she received growing up in Mao’s Communist China.

“Common Core, in my eyes, is the same as the Communist core I once saw in China,” Williams said. “I grew up under Mao’s regime and we had the Communist-dominated education — nationalized testing, nationalized curriculum, and nationalized indoctrination.”

In a post at FreedomWorks, Williams wrote about her experience with the Chinese education system:

Our teachers had to comply with all the curriculum and testing requirements, or lose their jobs forever. Parents had no choice at all when it came to what we learned in school. The government used the Household Registration and Personnel File system to keep track of its citizens from birth to death.

“I came to this country for freedom and I cannot believe this is happening all over again in this country,” she said in the meeting. “I don’t know what happened to  America, the Shining City on the Hill for freedom.”

She said Americans should not compare their children (or their kids’ test scores) to those being educated under the Chinese system.

“I am telling you, Chinese children are not trained to be independent thinkers,” said Williams. “They are trained to be massive skilled workers for corporations. And they have no idea what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 where government ordered soldiers to shoot its own 1,000 students.”

There's so much about the education establishment that has been creepy for so many decades.  I guess you can trace much of it back to John Dewey.

My own city is, in many respects, a microcosm of post-America at its current juncture.  Politically, from a conservative's standpoint, at least at first glance, it looks to be in good shape.  In fact, it's a Republican monolith: the entire city council, and a Pub mayor.  Yet the executive and legislative branches are barely on speaking terms, and much of it has to do with differences of opinion on the whole notion of public-private partnerships and formation of various kinds of coalitions and commissions and councils and such.  There is, for instance, a Community Education Coalition that wields a great deal of influence around here. (The mayor is inclined to give that much of kind of thing a big thumbs-down, much to the howls of much of the council.)

The community routinely makes lists of top places in the nation to raise a family.  While its bona fides as a geek haven are confirmed by stats such as having the highest per capita concentration of mechanical engineers in the country, it is also home to two symphony orchestras, a decent visual-arts scene, and a reputation as a modernist architecture showcase.  It is pursuing all the amenities ambitious Gen Xers are said to want: bike trails, good restaurants, a demonstrable sense of being a "welcoming community."  The most prominent religious leaders in town are decidedly liberal.


 I've also mentioned that the city is home to the world headquarters of a Fortune 500 multinational corporation in the power-generation business.  In recent years, it has hired large numbers of Chinese, Indian, Brazilian and Mexican personnel in areas such as engineering, IT, and HR.  Not coincidentally, it has been a major force for the local diversity push.  It's also a major presence in the aforementioned education coalition.

This coalition, along with the local school corporation, has been a tireless advocate for government-funded pre-K.  Several things about that: For one thing, it introduces a government player into what is currently (mostly, except for a pilot program for lower-income families that involves social workers) an array of private-sector choices, mainly run by area churches.  Also, pre-K's cheerleaders argue that our state is one of the few that aren't getting on board with this, to which the rejoinder is that we are one of the last outposts of resistance to nationwide uniformity on the matter, keeping alive the states-as-policy-laboratories model.

As I say, the city is in many ways a microcosm of where post-America is.  One such way is that the less-vocal majority of the population isn't buying the trendy initiatives the coalition types would foist upon it.  The pre-K initiative was on the ballot in the November 4 election and went down to a sound defeat, despite weeks of yard signs and letters to the editor.  Much like the nationwide rejection of the collectivist agenda.

The other main area of focus for this education coalition, along with pre-K (which will surely be resurrected again, despite two elections in which it was rejected) is a push for greater STEM emphasis in the high schools.  The idea is that the city's future hinges on advanced manufacturing, and the local populace needs to be prepared to participate in it.  It's couched in terms of the greatest human concern of course:  "There's going to be nothing for these young people to do if we don't ready them to hit the shop floor and the metallurgy lab, and the whole plan we have for the city's future falters."

Now, there is a certain kind of rejoinder to this that has its spokespersons on the right.  A little over a year ago, I had drinks at a bar in Florida with a fairly prominent conservative blogger, who has made his living as a writer, who told me that he'd told his kids that he'd only pay for their college education if they learned how to make things.

And there's good reason for assuming such a position.  The humanities in this country have been completely poisoned.  You can go through all four years of an English major at many US universities and never read any Shakespeare or Milton.  What you will get is lots of indoctrination about gender fluidity, inequality, and class privilege.  I would steer any kid of mine away from that garbage, too.

But this gets back to the point of one of my posts from yesterday: Becoming really adept at making high-precision material objects means little if it is occurring against a backdrop of spiritual decay and degraded humanity.  A more efficient and convenient societal life is not going to save us from what really ails us.

This is the rat that Ms. Williams smells in Common Core.  Six Sigma expertise paired with a morality that aspires to nothing higher than "respect for others" does not speak to our deepest humanity.  She's been down that path, and wants a different future for her family tree.

It's fitting that I should be able to conclude this post by sharing a phone call I got while writing it.  A pre-K teacher in the local Head Start program called to ask me, in my capacity as a musician, to come to her class and introduce her kids to some simple musical concepts. She took care to mention that, because it's Head Start, we wouldn't be able to sing any Christmas songs. She said she'd check with her higher-ups regarding a list of ditties that would be deemed acceptable.