Danger To Families Through Common Core

Common Core is getting a lot of attention these days. David and I get asked about it quite a bit, and honestly it’s so far reaching that it’s been hard to formulate a concise statement on why we believe it’s so dangerous. We’ve seen indications and symptoms of things that we hate about it– the revisionist history, the crazy math, the unimaginable social studies and reading assignments, etc.– but we always felt that ultimately there was more to it.

That “more” has really started presenting itself, and I am horrified that as a society we didn’t see it coming and start screaming about it years ago. A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article about a woman who contacted Glenn Beck about an experience she had with her kindergartener and the child’s teacher. You can read about it here. The gist of the story is that the teacher had been telling the kindergarten students that SHE was the teacher and the parents were not, so parents should stay out of the educational process. When the mom confronted the teacher about this, sure that the child had misrepresented or misunderstood what the teacher had said, the teacher doubled down on her position, telling the mom that she would only confuse her child if she got involved. I posted that article on our Facebook page, and the response was amazing to me. Parents responded that they had experienced similar run-ins with teachers in both public and private schools in many states. That was a major wake up call and factor in many of them withdrawing their children from the schools in question and beginning to home educate them.

As I read these accounts with horror and sorrow in my heart, it became apparent to me that a main element of the poison of common core is the intent to erode the family and actually make children much more dependent on the state. The younger teachers especially seem to have been programmed to believe that this is better, thus we are seeing a rash of it in the schools now. Common core as a curriculum is full of problems, and many are talking about that. I believe, however, that the foundational purpose of common core is to completely undermine the family unit and make children more nationalistic (not patriotic, mind you) than family-oriented. That is a great win for liberal progressives. If they teach things in ways that make no sense to parents (ie: crazy math methods) or that are different than what was learned by parents (revisionist history,) the parents can’t be involved in helping their children for fear of “confusing them further.”

I suppose that’s part of the genius of common core for the progressives. They have found a way to take control of our children without us even realizing what was happening. They have made the curriculums so confusing and infuriating that all the attention has been garnered on that element, and we have missed the core danger of common core.

 

Thankfully, families are waking up to it in incredible numbers, which is why you see an historic rise in home education in our nation. I honestly don’t believe that most people, whether they are Christians or not, would want to willingly hand over their children to the state. They are doing so, though, without even realizing it. The ones who catch on are jumping ship in record numbers, and home education is on the rise.

We must be wary, though, that the repeal of common core in some states not be accepted as a fix for the problems we are noticing. Several states, including my own home state of South Carolina, have repealed the Common Core curriculum, but if the real agenda behind common core is not actually curriculum-based, perhaps these repeals and the celebrations around them could be more detrimental than helpful. If parents start putting their children back into public schools that have repealed common core thinking they are now “safe” from the influence, the core issue of destroying families could be even easier to achieve since families will have their guard down.

Since God led our family to start Teach Them Diligently several years ago, we have always maintained that home education was a great form of education for children, but, foundationally for a Believer, it is about discipleship. It is about teaching what you know and reproducing who you are. It is about modeling for your children a love for the Lord your God and for others that can also become part of the fabric of their life.

 

It has been said that you teach what you know, but you reproduce who you are. Who is reproducing themselves in the lives of your children? What is being reproduced?