EDUCATION: Many states have justified objections to the Obama administration’s attempts to implement Common Core standards.
By Joseph Nakatani, Staff Writer
Under President Barack Obama’s administration, the federal government recently tried to reform our education system with the implementation of the controversial Common Core standards. The objective of Common Core is to make America’s youth competitive in a world where the fields of technology and science are becoming increasingly cut-throat. The problem with Common Core is that it will eventually fail. The history standards allow for a bias, the math standards are ridiculous and the standards give too much manipulative power to political parties.
A problem that exists plainly within the history standards is that they leave out major figures and events such as Martin Luther King Jr., World War II veterans, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and President George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River from the high school curriculum. These major figures and events have always been an important part of our history and classroom curriculum. If the government can omit these important figures, what else are they able to censor? When the government has such broad power to censor history, America will become no better than the fascist powers of mid-20th century Europe.
Another major problem with Common Core is the math curriculum. Before Common Core, students were taught addition using simple one-step methods. Now, students are tasked with breaking the numbers apart, putting a group of them back together and then putting it all together to simply add two numbers together. For example:
17+26=?
Think: 17=13+4
26+4=30
30+13=43
Therefore: 17+26=43
The old way:
17
+26
43
The old way takes less time and doesn’t require as many steps to solve a simple addition problem—God forbid they ever have to learn higher-level math like calculus and statistics.
The final problem with Common Core is that it gives too much power to whichever dominant political party writes the curriculum. It won’t be only Democrats or only Republicans; both parties will be able to rewrite the curriculum to suit their own political agenda. While the federal government does not directly control Common Core, they control who gets to write it and, therefore, what goes into it. If we have to trust anyone with the education of our students, it should be the states and local school districts.
The states and school districts know the students better than a bureaucrat in D.C.; they can be more flexible. If students are struggling in one area, local education departments can rewrite standards to tailor to their needs. At a national level, the standards cannot be altered for the sake of one school district. This is why districts and states are better suited to the task of properly educating students.
What needs to happen in order for people to recognize the shortcomings of Common Core? States and school districts should write the curriculum for their students. If we don’t stop Common Core before it is fully implemented, we are doomed to let our students be caught in a major power struggle with people who don’t care about them or the future of America.