The Common Core – Mediocrity Replacing Educational Excellence

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Progressive ideology is using the rights issue to subtract the individuality of each student in the educational process, in such a way that mediocrity is increasingly the result.  In educating the slower students the more rapid learners are being held back under “The Common Core Standards.”

The politically correct progressives in contemporary American public education attack a central part of the basic educational ethic—individual responsibility. Under the cloud of equal rights for all, the rights of many are taken away. Our rights were “endowed by their Creator,” but the progressive mindset is that they are granted by the state.

The Bible teaches that responsible behavior should be rewarded and irresponsible behavior should suffer the consequences.  The parable of the talents shows how excellence should be rewarded, and indolence or irresponsibility paid its due value. Matthew 25:26-29 says that after the servant did not use what was given to him, the Master said, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

The article “Liberal Reporter Attacks Child for Getting Good Grades” (2-17-14 Eagle Rising-Onan Ooca) talks about parents filing complaints because their children who had not made “A”s were excluded when a school hosted a congratulatory event for its straight-A sixth grade students. This once would have been ignored, but America has changed, since, under the flag of equality, excellence is considered inappropriate in many situations. No longer do we push our children for excellence…but now we make excuses for mediocrity.  Ooca said that this was “simply emblematic of our culture of corruption.’’ Many parents want an “A” in each class for their child, regardless of achievement.

The Common Core Standards are the latest example of our American Public Education cultivating more mediocrity than excellence in academic achievement.   The politically progressive crowd manipulates public schooling, as the liberal, progressive Center for American Progress envisions, so as to ensure that “students are able to begin a career that would provide a livable wage or start college with little or no remediation.”  But education is much more than just what is taught.  Many graduate from secondary school with minimum learning.  More and more students enter college requiring remediation.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence greatly ired the progressive crowd when he said that the issue of race “rarely” came up while he was a child in Georgia in the 1960s, at which Columbia University associate professor Marc Lamont Hill immediately criticized him for desiring to eliminate race as a social issue, and preferring instead to work toward a merit-based society in which racial concerns play no part. Hill said it was disturbing, particularly for a powerful justice like Thomas, to “make decisions on color blindness.” (“CNNers Rip into Clarence Thomas’ Politically Incorrect Childhood Memories” by Noah Rothman -February 12th, 2014)  But learning should be colorblind!

The Common Core is one tool many progressives wish to use to raise the lower performing students, very often black and hispanic, up to be equal in achievement with the more advanced students, so as to reach a common plateau in society both intellectually and economically. However, in this process the progressives fail to see that they are really cultivating mediocrity when the program is shifted from individual responsibility to group categories.  Observe that as progressivism has been instituted from the time of the promises of President Johnson’s politically correct call for the Great Society, we have suffered a continual fall in academic achievement in the American public schooling in comparison with that of most other industrialized nations.

Ever since President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” policy, teachers and schools have been mining data often relating to racial or socio-economic categories, rather than motivating students to expand to learn as individuals. But Uncle Sam provides a program of $4.35 billion dollars of carrots to swing in front of fifty hungry rabbits. The new standards are indeed tougher than many currently in place, but there is also the danger of states being disincentivized from ever raising standards beyond the initiative.  A student can pass the standards, and still fail in really being educated!

The Common Core misplaces emphasis on common mass learning. All children, however, do not fully “learn” necessarily through memorization. Drilling children to memorize the curriculum may help them pass a test but rarely results in true understanding. Furthermore, each child is different, and strictly teaching the “common core” often impedes exceptional students from reaching beyond the mediocre.

It is sad that American education has deviated from the source of true understanding, as the Scriptures say in Proverbs 2:3-5:  “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God.”

The Common Core Standards is just another futile attempt among so many other programs that have been tried since American public education supposedly outgrew its need for God as a vital part of the learning development in our children.

II Peter 3:18 is a common core standard that says to: “…grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.” This Christian ethic once was part of American public education, not to say at all or even most students were Christian, but the Judeo-Christian values were basic in many ways, and this was a vital cog.

Quietly and almost without notice, the Common Core significantly erodes local and state control of school curriculum, as it has been passed in forty-six states. It sets the Math and English curriculum in every participating state at the same level with top-down oversight from Washington. It stipulates that the states either adopt the program or get no money from Uncle Sam.  It is basically one size fits all.  And without question, the opponents of the Common Core are rightly worried that it will lower academic standards, politically indoctrinate students, destroy local input, and be a move further away from the traditional standards that once made our nation the world leader in education.

For the progressives, if students have not achieved, it is to be blamed on the inadequacy of the educational process.  The Center for American Progress (February 14, 2014) boisterously applauded that all the states and the District of Columbia have adopted the program to raise the bar for student achievement.  But although such programs do help some with raising up the lower-achieving students, in the process it tends to lower the achievement of the higher-achieving students.  I wonder what would have happened to our nation if we had followed the progressive thinking that is now corroding our culture in the days of the founding of America.

Thomas Jefferson was before the day of the progressives, but he set an example of high achievement and he was not manipulated into learning by the powers that be.  He had self-motivation, much of which was from the influence of his early training by Christian ministers.  He was a remarkable man who started learning very early and never stopped.

Summarizing Jefferson’s life in respect to education–At five, he began studying under his cousin’s tutor. At nine, he went to live with a Scottish clergyman, who taught him Latin, Greek, and French. After his father died, he entered the school of James Maury, an Anglican clergyman, studying at age fourteen classical literature and additional languages.  At sixteen he entered the College of William and Mary. At nineteen, he studied law for five years under George Wythe.  At thirty-three, he wrote the Declaration of Independence plus the Public Education Bill and a statute for Religious Freedom. After serving as the governor of Virginia, a member of Congress, and as the third president of the United States, he almost single-handedly founded the University of Virginia and served as its first president.

Without question education was central in his life and he understood actual history, the nature of God, his laws and the nature of man.  That happens to be much more than what most of our progressive politicians who legislate educational directives understand today.

Some of Jefferson’s quotes speak strongly to our situation in education and beyond.  He said, “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not…It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes…I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them…My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government…To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

Thomas Jefferson would not have applauded the Common Core Standards being sent down by our Federal Government, for he would have seen this as but another nail in the coffin of American public education—the deflation of individual responsibility.  The Common Core only produces a contracted fruit of true education leading to mediocrity!

by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Educational Columnist, Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, 5931 West Avenue, Lavonia, Georgia 30553,  706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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