Banning the Common Core

            When I first began teaching, my mentor would often tell me that if you stick around long enough, everything comes back around.  Yesterday’s best practice becomes tomorrow’s.  What she didn’t tell me was that education policy in this country would become a battleground of  ideologies championed by demagogues all claiming to have the best interests of kids in mind, while proposing “reforms” clearly meant to benefit adults.

            The latest case in point was introduced in the Michigan House last Friday:  HB4276, which would (drum roll, please), BAN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE COMMON CORE STANDARDS IN MICHIGAN.  I’m not making this up.  Coincidentally (or not so coincidentally if you still believe in fairies), the Indiana version of that bill was also introduced last week in that state’s House of Representatives.  Both bills were introduced by Tea Party members who claim the CCSS represents a loss of local control for school boards, and a standardization of instruction that can only lead to (gasp!) the indoctrination of school children at the hands of the liberal (and socialist) elites of the teaching profession.  In conjunction with other bills in the Michigan House (HB4102 would lower graduation requirements for Michigan high school students), you’ve got to wonder when the asylum will be purged and the adults put back in charge.

            What these bills represent and have in common with other recent “reforms”, is, in fact, reflective of what we’ve seen nationally in the last decade:  a narrowing of interest that caters to the worst in humanity—selfishness and self-righteousness.   The loss of any kind of altruistic motivation on the part of our so-called leaders has led us to an absolutism that endangers our institutions, and our communities.  When all that drives us is a number on a chart, or the bottom line in a budget, we fail to understand that the boundaries of the communities we are so fervently trying to save are broader than those drawn on a district map.  The community every teacher and every administrator truly serves is both national and universal, and the same that Jefferson and Lincoln served before us.  When we forget that, we’re on our way to advancing our own demise.  Welcome to the Apocalypse, boys and girls.