The Anti-Christian Common Core Crisis in Education

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by the Rev. Dr. Joe Renfro, EdD, The Christian Observer, September 6, 2018)

The anti-Christian Common Core educational curriculum and philosophy is now in our land devouring the Christian values to the great satisfaction of the progressive thinkers. It is a sad picture!

Someday, when America looks back on the situation, if we do not change and turn back to true core of the Christian vantage point, our nation is going to see the great mistake. Speaking about regret, the Harper’s Bible Commentary speaks of the five hymns of the book of Lamentations in the Bible, saying: “Such hymns schooled them to recognize the purpose of God amid the collapse of all man-made plans and the shaking of all human foundations, and thus prepared their minds to receive a new message from God…”  (p. 261). Do we see what is happen now, or will it only become evident after we suffer from our mistakes to our regret years down the road?

It is good to see, and admit the error of one’s ways, but the real value of it is to turn from such things. Our public educational system needs to see the situation and correct it, which is to get rid of the anti-Christian Core Curriculum and philosophy, and to replace it with one that can give not just learning, but learning that individuals can digest in their own thinking, learning conductive to character building, not just the indoctrination of the secular foundation that disdains spiritual values. We are observing the indoctrination of our youth into a socialistic, secular worldview, not to think for themselves, but to be programmed just for fitting into the work place—making much of what they see as education basically just job training.

The idea of a common core curriculum is not necessarily wrong, but the question involves what is that common core.  After all, for over a thousand years in the history of Western civilization, there was a common core curriculum—the classical, Christian education. The problem with the new Common Core curriculum is that the educational goals of the program are flawed.

A man rescued a snapping turtle out of the center of the road, and wanting to see the turtle in a safe, nice place, took it to his small pond that was teeming with fish, frogs, and all other kinds of life and let him go.  After a few years the pond had very few fish, frogs or other kinds of water animals, but it had a large snapping turtle that had devoured it all.

A very experienced and excellent Orange County science teacher speaking of the Core Curriculum said, “The curriculum lacks both depth of content and instruction in the critical skills needed to be a scientist. They rely heavily on concepts like renewable resources, nuclear power or biodiversity which are examples of emotional and political hot-buttons of the moment, but are not the basis for a foundation in solid science knowledge.”  (Biblical Christian Standards vs. Common Core Standards –by Exodus Mandate, < info@exodusmandate.org>, (July 13, 2017).

An observation by a history teacher regarding the Core curriculum was that “As dictated by the new AP framework, students will be taught that much of their country’s history was warped by racism and cultural chauvinism. American founders are reduced to a minor role, if mentioned at all.”  (Ibid).

Beliefs in absolutes is out and the teaching of relativism is in.  Seeing marriage between a man and woman is see as just one type of marriage, but diversity in families as men with men or women with women is proposed. Private property as the reward for hard work is out and a collective ownership of all is proposed. Local control of the schools is out and rule over the schooling from the top down by the government is in.

The texts are very much anti-Christian and very much pro-Islam, something like I observed recently even in a newspaper where side by side were two articles, one praising the millions of Muslims who made the trip to Mecca during the Ramadan and at the other just beside it declaring all the sexual abuse by priests and clergy—a subtle way to promote Islam and attack Christianity, when sexual abuse of the clergy can happen, which in reality it is nothing like that that really takes place throughout the society, and the violence  that is so much part of the Islamic religion is totally being ignored by the glowing picture of the millions going to Mecca.

Kim Koerber, a former Pearson Publishing executive who transferred to be a sales consultant for National Geographic – a Gates Foundation-funded Common Core publisher – told the Project Veritas undercover journalist that “conservative voters are afraid of everything,” and proceeded to say why Common Core is important in her view.  She explained that those behind Common Core and the new AP U.S. History framework have attempted to minimize the Constitution and remove Christianity from the core concepts, while they also stress the importance of teaching about Islam.

Julie Roys, an educational columnist, wrote an excellent article back in September 4, 2015 entitled, “Five Reasons Christians are Concerned about Common Core” in which she mentioned these certain areas that could prove to be very anti-Christian.They were: 1. Common Core Amounts to a Federal Takeover of Education, 2. Common Core Politicizes Learning, 3. Christian Families Will be Forced to Comply, 4. Common Core Reduces Local Control of Schools, 5. Common Core Distorts the Reason for Education.

Ray Strickland wrote about a situation that illustrates this concern that was covered by WKYC, channel 3 TV, “Parents Outraged by ‘Disturbing’ School Assignment,” that some parents were saying “It’s disturbing all the way around,” as one mon said, speaking about an assignment her 8^th grade son had at Roberts Middle School in Cuyahoga Falls in Ohio.

The assignment involved an Earth “doomed for destruction.” Students were tasked with choosing who would have a seat on a spaceship that would transport passengers to another, presumably safe planet.

The assignment was to pick 8 out of 12 people to be saved from the destruction of the Earth that was “doomed for destruction.” Students were tasked with choosing who would have a seat on a spaceship that would transport passengers to another, presumably safe planet, and the profiles of each were suggested, but it this were four definitely politically stereotyped—a Hispanic clergyman who was against homosexuality; a 21-year-old female Muslim international student”; a “60-year-old Jewish university administrator”; and “a homosexual male professional athlete.”  A number of parents felt this assignment was pushing a political agenda, so they protested!  However. Can you imagine the protests from the other side if the question had been something to do with the second coming of Christ, however?

Ezekiel 33:2-3 says: “Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If he see the sword coming he will blow the trumpet and warn the people.” In our day many are warning that destruction of coming unless we repent and turn to God, but something like this would never be allow in any way as an option in the Core curriculum. Turn or burn is very anti-progressive!

In respect to the fact that the Common Core politicizes learning the columnist, Roys, observed:

If the government is telling schools what they must teach, what is to stop them from requiring schools to teach things Christians oppose? The Home School Legal Defense Association examined the Common Core standards and writes:

“Three threads of philosophy weave through the Common Core—statism, moral relativism, and progressivism, which are revealed both by what is proclaimed and what is omitted. The statist goals of the Common Core are implicit in the lockstep uniformity that is the central thesis of the program. All children in all states will learn the same content in the same manner so that the children may become useful workers… Finally, we see progressivism in the view that all that is new is inherently superior to that which comes from prior generations of human knowledge.”

While proponents say that Common Core does not require the use of any certain curriculum that might contain a progressive agenda, Columnist George Will argued in the Washington Post that states will eventually have to conform to a common curriculum: “What begins with mere national standards must breed ineluctable pressure to standardize educational content. Targets, metrics, guidelines and curriculum models all induce conformity in instructional materials. All of this will take a toll on parental empowerment, and none of this will escape the politicization of learning like that already rampant in higher education.” 

One only has to look at the nonsense taught in colleges and universities in the name of inclusion and political correctness to get an idea of what could be forced on elementary, middle and high-school students in the future.

The Bible says in Proverbs 22:6 to “Train up a child in the way that he should go: and in the end he will not depart from it.”  II Timothy 3:7 warns that in the last days men shall be: “Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  Hebrews 6:18-20 includes: “…lay hold upon the hope set before us:  Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast…” Life in Christ provides a basic anchor, from which to orientate all areas of the development and behavior.  But the anti-Christian Progressives wish to uproot this anchor that was basic to the establishment of our culture and to insert the themes of multiculturalism, religious pluralism, elitist governance, and the benevolent government that will give to the have-nots and take from the haves.

As federal control increased, so did the influence of the early twentieth-century Progressives, who believed that the economy (and society) should be centrally managed and directed by experts, and education became an important strand in this theory. Since that time, we have seen American education continually erode and corrode in respect to the American standing in respect to other nations of the world.

 It is a sad picture, and unless we straighten things out our nation may soon be lamenting like the Jewish people of old the fact that we feel into a great error that demolishes our land by establishing the Core Curriculum and standards that ultimately undermined the very foundations on which our nation was founded. That snapping turtle of the Core Curriculum is doing a lot of damage.  Wonder what the book of Lamentation about the American fall will have to say, if we don’t change our course from the Progressive ideologies in the education of our land?