Amy Prime is a second grade teacher in Iowa and a parent of five children. She knows how different each of her children are.
In this article, she wonders how the Common Core will work, and she draws an analogy with farmers growing corn.
Her analogy begins like this:
“It is easy to like the common core in theory. We want all of our kids to have the same skills when they graduate, right? But the problem with this idea is that our children don’t start out life the same, they don’t learn the same, and they aren’t meant to grow up to be identical either.
“We all start out as seeds but, when grown, some of us become fruits or vegetables, some trees, and some flowers.
“Imagine that there is a company that makes corn-based products. So they donate a lot of money to politicians and then convince them that our farmers are doing a poor job of growing corn. The politicians agree and then recruit a research company to decide what an ideal crop of corn would look like when grown. The people in this research company have never actually grown corn before, but they come up with criteria for what this corn should look like anyway.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great analogy and so true! It will be difficult for teachers to be vocal about this because many are concerned about losing their position in education. However, know that there are many retired educators and parents out there, standing behind you, supporting education and children.
Sandra Wickham
Woodland Park
LikeLike
Xian Barrett now has nothing to lose and is becoming quite vocal. Everyone please read his most eloquent statement about his firing:
http://chiteacherx.blogspot.com/2013/07/yes-i-was-fired-and-still-we-will-win.html
LikeLike
Welk, bio-agriculturehas found ways to grow seeds, producing relatively identical stalks of corn and disallowing the farmers from saving the seed corn to reproduce it without paying the company for moe seed corn. The seed has been genetically modified to be “perfect”. I suppose edudeformers think they can mold children into clones theough their magic!
LikeLike
So we are now working on the genetically modified version of children.
Gates controls Monsanto and the USDOE. May he rot.
LikeLike
So basically, Gates = Monsanto…?
LikeLike
Yes, partners in monopoly and privatizing schools, science, agriculture and the gene pool itself.
LikeLike
I had a superintendent that compared the NCLB concept and the on-going concept of everyone child should be the same as the government trying to have teachers produce hay bales. They all need to be the same size, weight, and square.
LikeLike
Don’t know that I’ve ever seen a square hay bale. Maybe that’s a newfangled one! Around this neck of the woods the bales are cylindrical or the old fashioned longer length than height and side smaller bales.
LikeLike
Maybe they were confusin’ hay and straw.
🙂
LikeLike
What’s the difference between a teacher and a farmer?
The teacher will tell the government man (GM) that he is oh so wise and handsome and do what she has been told to do all the while kissing the GM’s bare ass.
The farmer will tell the GM to go stick his seeds where the sun don’t shine and if the GM ever sets foot back on his land he will be eating lead.
LikeLike
NOT THIS TEACHER!
LikeLike
This argument is fallacious. In every state there already exists a certain standardized curriculum. Schools as institutions do not provide personalized education. So be realistic in your arguments. Exactly what kind of an education should school institutions provide?
Vivian Gruder
LikeLike
“Schools as institutions do not provide personalized education”…. I am sorry but you are incredibly misinformed.
LikeLike
Linda: didn’t you know that proof by generalized assertion is all the rage today?
Masking tape: a teacher’s best friend. [Michelle Rhee]
98% of all teacher evals get a perfunctory “satisfactory.” [Bill Gates]
High-stakes standardized testing is just, like, out of control! Gag me with a spoon! [Arne Duncan]
“Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t.” [Dr. Steve Perry]
Ok, time to take a deep breath.
“All generalizations are false, including this one.” [Mark Twain]
I know the last isn’t considered informational text, but it does give food for thought.
🙂
LikeLike
Yes, Vivian, there is a standard curriculum, but through electives, smaller class sizes with human being teaching them, extra-curricular activities, etc.,education is made more personal. The caring teacher that knows his/her students and subject provides a personalized education. Of course, with the common core and even more high stakes testing will, as intended, depersonalize and harm public education…just as vouchers and charter schools drain resources, cause per pupil expenditures to rise, further degrading the opportunities of public school children. Its a fabulous pincer movement from the profiteers/privatizers.
LikeLike
Chuck, my response was directed at the argument against a standard curriculum. What you write is true and good, but it does not negate the advantages of a standard curriculum nationwide, as Albert Shanker originally proposed. So instead of damning the idea of a standard curriculum in toto, target the deficiencies of the particular common core curriculum. Let us not confuse the two sides of this argument.
LikeLike
And what are those advantages?
LikeLike
LP,
Being a tad impertinent with that question, eh!!
You ever notice that most times you won’t get an answer to such questions?
LikeLike
The analogy can be carried further by looking at the “reformer” evaluation of Teachers.
In a laboratory setting we can control the variables that effect growth of corn (temperature, water, sunlight etc.) and measure the effect of a fertilizer (Teacher) on the growth of the corn.
With the VAM (or SPG) the reformers are trying to control the variables in a students life (poverty, disabilities, etc.,etc,) and measure the growth of the student due to the Teacher (fertilizer). The major problem is that there are too many variables effecting growth in a student and they cannot be controlled in a laboratory setting. So even if all the students (seeds) were the same (which they are not) we still could not predict Teacher effect on student growth!
LikeLike
Carrying things further, this is why all those corn fields across the country are basically dead zones. The only thing that it allowed to survive is the corn. And there’s no real topsoil left, so nothing *can* grow without lots of fertilizer (think teacher-proof lesson plans, and TFA-ers) and insecticide (think no tolerance discipline policies, or the KIPP model).
LikeLike
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
LikeLike
Of course good educators know that one way to do things is not going to work for all children. The problem is that the people shoving that notion down the pipes are not educators. I also worry about the effects of Common Core on apsects such as creativity and innovation. The concept of personal opinion seems to be booted, too.
LikeLike