A friend of mine posted this video (with a Glen Beck link) on facebook and it struck a nerve. Though I agree that healthy political debates and opposition are good, I wholeheartedly disagree with this guys viewpoint.
Interesting. As a math teacher in the middle of this, however, I see the common core as a great tool to push students further and into more rigorous thinking than we have challenged them to do before (or at least in my generation of teaching and my generation of being a student). Utah's implementation of it has been less than perfect and has left teachers to try to interpret and create much of the curriculum ourselves, but the core itself is good. I am teaching kids concepts that are beyond the level of what many of them would have otherwise reached. And guess what, many of them get it! He said we want to teach "free minds," but everything in society has minimum expectations and education is no exception. We need to give kids as much opportunity to learn as we can and exposed them to as much "free thought" as we can so that they can make decisions for themselves and be contributing members of society. Teaching is a difficult job for many, many reasons. All teachers I know are frustrated with Utah's approach to implementing the Core, but I don't think any would call the core a stifling socialist takeover.
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