Opus 2016-316: Discernment Watch: CCC Matures

Common Core Curriculum (CCC) keeps getting mentioned.  Trump’s alleged pick for the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, is being questioned by the conservatives because of supposed support for CCC.  Like most government programs, it will not go away.  “It isn’t a government program,” the left says.  Right.  If it looks like a duck....

Keep in mind that CCC is not really about curriculum in the sense of what will be covered.  It is about how it will be covered.  It is simply the latest evolution of what the Progressives (socialists, elitists, Democrats, left wing) have been pushing for decades.  It was being pushed when I came into education 30 years ago.  The names keep getting changed to protect the guilty but it continues to be pushed.

CCC is about group think.  It is about the Great Mediocrity.  It is about stifling anyone who might raise their head in individual excellence and actually move our culture ahead.  It pushed group work, cooperative learning, collaboration and anything that keeps the bright kids from achieving.

I had a recent revelation on this.  When I am gone I leave work for the substitute that I might not do if I was present.  I can’t count on the substitute doing much more than taking role and keeping the kids out of my desk.  So I leave prepared worksheets.  I often come back and find that students who do no work when I am there have completed the assignment.  At first I thought that maybe the sub had reached them in ways I couldn’t.  I discarded that almost immediately.  My latest theory matured recently based on my “honors” class.

This is a group of nice kids.  They are above average at our school which would make them about average when I was their age.  One of my problems is to get them to stop copying each other.  They are bright enough but they are also lazy.  They have been together for about 8 years and people keep telling them they are really smart.  They were also continually taught to work collaboratively.  They have been taught to copy.  When I am with them I keep stomping on that behavior and meet fierce resistance.  The sub just lets it go.  So when I was going over their work I noticed that people who had never completed an assignment for me had the entire page filled out. 

Will this group come up with the next generation of innovation that will revolutionize the world?  I seriously doubt it.  There are a few that might surprise me.  They will be good at working on committees and boards but we know how much work committees get done.

We are teachers.  We are molding the future.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

homo unius libri