Why Peter Greene Hearts Common Core

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1. Lesa Wilbert says:

   March 30, 2014 at 7:54 am

   This is hysterical! I needed a good laugh. I’m wondering how to exercise my freedom tomorrow. Maybe I will wear my hair down and straight. I might even go rogue and wear a green shirt.

   Sent from my iPhone

   >

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2. artseagal says:

   March 30, 2014 at 7:58 am

   How sweet to actually smile in these times. Thanks Peter Greene! I am overjoyed that I may actually add “licensed engineer” to my list of esteemed degrees and certifications … for actually learning to build planes while they are flying in the air … and I have CCSS to profusely thank. Next year I might even learn how to fly “by the seat of my pants”…oh the places you can go and the degrees you can earn thanks to CCSS.

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3. Joanna Best says:

   March 30, 2014 at 8:23 am

   That’s funny.

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4. Amy P says:

   March 30, 2014 at 9:37 am

   I’m making the new banner to hang above my whiteboard now:
   FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

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5. Henry says:

   March 30, 2014 at 10:53 am

   Hope that common core lovers will “heart” this beautiful piece of writing.

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6. spintop says:

   March 30, 2014 at 12:12 pm

   That was amazing. This is our week to take “the” tests. Tests that determine if our students can pass on to the next grade, or if they must go through a ritual to better build their grit and vigor for more testing. In the end, a committee will move them all on to Junior High. It is quite ridiculous.

   I do “heart” your article.

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7. KrazyTA says:

   March 30, 2014 at 1:23 pm

   “A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin]

   Thank you, Peter Greene, for helping us make good use of our day.

   😎

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8. Richard Holsworth says:

   March 30, 2014 at 1:50 pm

   I’m glad Diane Ravitch is in our corner. At Sassarini Elementary here in Sonoma, we are gearing up for the first ‘field tests’ of the so called ‘common core state standards’ a computerized testing and evaluation system championed by Bill Gates – it’s a nationwide rollout of what I consider the delivery system for the all out nuclear attack on public education and teachers (the last really big unionized workforce.)

   Bill Gates Comes To The Defense Of The Common Core
   According to prepared remarks provided to The Huffington Post, Gates told educators at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards’ Teaching and Learning Conference that the Common Core is the key to creativity for teachers. He also charged that the controversy around the Core “comes from people who want to stop the standards, which would send us back to what we had before.”
   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/14/bill-gates-common-core_n_4964026.html#conversation-4964026-308847427

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9. Bob Shepherd says:

   March 30, 2014 at 3:06 pm

   That’s the spirit, Peter. It is not enough to comply with Big Brother. You must heart him. Gritfully.

   I, too, admit that in the past I was clueless.

   In the past, when planning a lesson and thinking about what was important for students to grasp and experience in an encounter with a text, I would consider

   what the students knew and cared about and might learn to care about and

   what the particular text required.

   I would plan my lesson so as to give students whatever the particular students and the particular text called for. I actually thought that students and texts were unique and complex. Can you believe that?

   Little did I realize that what all students need at all times is exactly the same instruction in exactly the same bullet list of skills. Nor did I understand that what’s important in all texts and in all lessons for all students can be put into a single, simple list of “stuff to be measured by standardized tests.” The standards.

   That was before Achieve appointed David Coleman, by divine right, absolute monarch of instruction in English language arts in the United States and so relieved me of applying my years of training and professional judgment.

   Where, in my error, I might in the past have thought that the key to understanding text A was being familiar with the Irish Easter Rebellion of 1916 or that keys to understanding text B were recognizing that it was an instance of the archetype of the hero’s journey and uses, with modern irony and bathos, a bunch of ancient folklore motifs, now I understand that none of that stuff is important. All that’s important is whatever happens to be on LORD COLEMAN’S LIST. I can skip all that wasted “thinking” I had been doing and choose from the list that Lord Coleman has so generously supplied what’s important for kids to think about when engaging with ANY WORK WHATSOEVER. Lord Coleman has done the thinking for me, and I can stop doing any of that thinking about what matters ever again. What a relief!

   Here’s an analogy to clarify what a service Lord Coleman has rendered to the nation. Imagine that you are Vermeer or Picasso or simply a hobbyist painter taking a still life class at the YWCA. You have a subject, a blank canvas, and a bunch of paint and brushes. Think of the difficulty involved in creating anything under those conditions! But give any of those people a paint-by-number canvas, and all they have to do is fill in the spaces with colors of the correct number!!!! How easy is that!!!!

   And, when you are done, every piece, by any painter, will be almost exactly identical! No more messy differences!

   But here’s the best part. I used to think that education was a handoff between people of different generations and so a fundamentally humane undertaking. But now I understand that PEARSON can replace PERSONS. You can create nationally marketed software programs to replace me, all tagged to THE SINGLE NATIONAL LIST. That software can test students continually to find out where they stand in their gritful march toward MASTERY OF THE LIST and feed them precisely the lesson they need to ensure that they are not thinking independently or going off on some wild goose chase because they have discovered some intellectual enthusiasm but are heading toward the predetermined goal for all!!! Goals from THE LIST.

   Which means that I am not necessary. I can be replaced by software. Which means that I am relieved of ever having to work again. You can put 400 students in a room, and they can all do their lessons on their tablets from Pearson or Amplify or one of several Gates-funded startups, and a low-level aide can walk around to make sure that the tablets with the preloaded software are turned on. You see, class size DOESN’T MATTER. That march through the software toward mastery of the predetermined list is called personalization, by the way. And standardization and regimentation unleashes powerful market forces to spur creativity and innovation redefined as identical outcomes for every child.

   And that’s what a complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs: students who are identically milled, like machine parts.

   So, not only do I not have to think, anymore, I don’t have to have a job. Teaching, there’s an app for that. An app that clicks unrelentingly through THE STANDARDS BULLET LIST.

   And fortunately, the teacher’s unions are helping in the transition to a future of teaching apps that replace teachers and relentlessly click students through the bullet list. Who would have thought that the unions would be so selfless as to put the profits of educational software manufacturers and uniformity in educational outcomes above the interests of their members and of their members’ students!

   Such selflessness in service of Big Brother!

   Reply
   • Bob Shepherd says:

     March 30, 2014 at 3:12 pm

     So, give me a big Great Grate for our selfless unions, now propaganda ministries of the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.

     You see, I’ve got this Whole Brain thing down.

     Maybe, after the educational software revolution, I can have a job walking around that class of 400 and serving as a tablet technician.

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10. julie says:

    March 30, 2014 at 8:44 pm

    Wonderful article, now with common core we can come out of the cave man days and teach critical thinking. Obviously we never taught thinking skills before or they wouldn’t have come up with the common core. Had they been trained by the common core in critical thinking they would have used it to see what a mess common core would create, and how poorly structured it is and how testing and making kids little robots all in the same box really isn’t very , well good thinking.

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11. gitapik says:

    March 31, 2014 at 6:44 am

    Got some laughs out of this (thanks, Peter) but, sadly, it’s extremely accurate in it’s irony. I laughed, but it’s frightening that a handful of people can have the power to institute such sweeping change with so little planning or public input.

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    • spintop says:

      March 31, 2014 at 7:32 am

      And a handful of people with no experience or knowledge of educational practices. What worries me is that this time last year there was a modest media conversation about our state mandated testing — this year nothing. Even as the requirements and restrictions become more and more bizarre — this year nothing.

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      • gitapik says:

        March 31, 2014 at 4:07 pm

        Yes. The big push is on. No room for any debate, anymore. The media is controlled by…well: a “handful of people”.