By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh ——Bio and Archives--April 5, 2014
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“Add 26+17 by breaking apart numbers to make a 10. Use a number that adds with the 6 in 26 to make a 10. Since 6+4=10, use 4. Think: 17=4+13 Add 26+4=30 Add 30+13=43 So, 26+17= 43”If you are dumbfounded by this kind of stressful and irrational logic, you are not alone. A simple subtraction, 243-87=156 done quickly “the old fashioned way,” turns into a complicated solution that requires strange logic and drawing a graph such as the one illustrated below: Can we imagine now studying calculus and differential equations under such contorted thinking? But it gets much worse in reading, writing, government, and history. A Common Core kindergarten problem instructs, “In each cube stick, color some cubes blue and the rest of the cubes red. Draw the cubes you colored in the number bond. Show the hidden partners on your fingers to an adult. Color the fingers you showed.” Aside from the fact that the problem is almost impossible for an adult to comprehend, it involves “cube sticks,” “number bonds” and “hidden partners.” The worksheet further urges children to impose this math concept on an adult. Another example from the Go Math! Common Core aligned math curriculum involves Mina Boyd’s kindergarten child who was given the worksheet to Count and Write 20, presumably 20 apples that looked curiously like bombs. There were actually only 19. Was it a printing mistake or were the publishers having difficulty with this “transformational” math? One reader described the assignment beyond brainwashing - a form of Pavlov’s dog conditioned response, “neuro-linguistic programming, and otherwise known as hypnosis.” A fourth grade reading assignment asks students to describe adultery, a highly inappropriate topic for elementary school. Sixth grade students in Arkansas were given in 2013 the assignment to “revise” the “outdated” Bill of Rights, “suggesting that the government can grant and remove inalienable rights.” Middle School students were also told that the Second Amendment requires gun registration. According to the workbook, “This amendment states that people have the right to certain weapons, providing that they register them and they have not been in prison.” It gets even more interesting. The USDA is now in the business of nudging grandparents to use ChooseMyPlate.gov to help their grandkids eat healthier, and giving instructions to offer their grandchildren “hugs” instead of treats and to “read government bedtime stories.” People like Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee have constantly pushed the Common Core standards. If implemented, they are “designed to make the United States more competitive with the rest of the world.” How exactly would a dumbed down curriculum make children more competitive? Were we not competitive enough before Common Core? Was American higher education not the envy of the world? Why must we now destroy it? Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education is running Common Core ads non-stop. Parents are waking up and garnering the support of some teachers. But there are powerful groups who are pushing Common Core because there is a lot of money at stake. Common Core standards are not a grass-roots, nor state-led initiative. It is the Obama administration Race to the Top competition bribing schools with billions of dollars if they adopt Common Core. It is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it is Pearson, the billion dollar educational publishing and testing conglomerate, the Center for American Progress, the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and recipients of Bill Gates Foundation money who continue to propagandize Common Core. U.S. News and World Report quoted Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (1.5 million members), who stated that the Common Core implementation is ‘far worse’ than ObamaCare. Money is no object when it comes to sending school administrators to a luxurious hotel and spa ($38,000) in order to discuss strategies for implementing Common Core standards at schools in the Inglewood, California impoverished school district that had to be bailed out in 2012 to the tune of $55 million. The Daily Caller assembled a list of complicated, dreadful math problems and worksheets that are glaring evidence that Common Core standards are not really trying to improve our children’s education, but are hurting their education. Common Core math standards are based on the theory of Constructivism. This theory rejects the drilling of children on basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication). Instead, children are taught to “construct” their own way of figuring out an answer. An incorrect answer is acceptable as long as the child explains how he/she got the wrong answer. The reading found in the English literature selections is not chosen for the joy of reading and learning, but instead, they are to be “analyzed and discussed by students using leftwing norms” of morality and behavior. This unproven theory of education is called New Criticism Literary Analysis. Moral ambiguity, acceptance of perverse and aberrant behavior presented as courage, overt sexuality, adultery, and even pornography are some of the themes chosen for young and older students. For example, schools in North Carolina who adopted the Common Core standards are requiring the reading of the sexually explicit book, The House of Spirits. Middle school readings include the complete United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the complete United Nations Millennium Declaration with the main theme being global diversity and global citizenship. Stories include head scarves of Muslims in France, an American teenager punished in Singapore, an arranged marriage in India, learning Japanese, an African novel, and articles promoting global warming as settled science. The readings indicate the progressives’ love affair with third world societies which they deem superior to our own. Centuries of European and American civilization and culture are glossed over. The few stories devoted to American culture include a kid who tries to avoid parental punishment for breaking curfew, Halloween, and a controversy over sea lions in Oregon. The Eagle Forum described some of the reading materials aligned with Common Core. The common denominators are anti-Americanism, sexuality, porn, and global warming:
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Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh, Ileana Writes is a freelance writer, author, radio commentator, and speaker. Her books, “Echoes of Communism”, “Liberty on Life Support” and “U.N. Agenda 21: Environmental Piracy,” “Communism 2.0: 25 Years Later” are available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle.