Bringing Common Core State Standards out from the shadows and exposing its ills to busy parents and sidelined lawmakers has become my night and day concern to the point of a religious calling. I mean no disrespect it’s just that it is the second reason I get out of bed every morning. The first reason is my children. But Common Core State Standards has taken such a chunk out of my daily life that I have to verbally promise my daughters, “Today is a Common Core-free day” and then act on that promise. Last Thursday was a Common Core-free day. We hopped in the car and sang country songs for the two hour drive to a small desert town in Arizona, visited used book stores, and ate at a favorite diner. It was a good day and I kept my promise.
On Monday July 21, 2014 Truth in American Education published a guest post by Laurie Rogers, The Myth of the Helpless Parent, which shined a bright light on the government’s stealth maneuvering of parents out of the decision making in the educational arena of our own children.
In an opinion piece entitled All your Children Belong to Us, published earlier this month in a local Las Vegas paper, writer, Glenn Cook, covered bigger government and the continued and more frequent interference in our personal lives. Cook shared that Scotland is a blink away from every child being appointed a state sponsored guardian and isn’t it just a matter of time before our Nanny state here in America takes over parenting for us as well.
Not that I’m counting but these issues represent two more bricks in an ever growing big fat government wall that stands between us and our children.
Let’s recap, ever so briefly, why we’re told we need Common Core State Standards – The United States of America has been a huge failure for 238 years and Common Core is here now to save us at the eleventh hour by ending our college remediation needs, creating 21st century workers that will allow us to compete in the global marketplace of a predicted financial future and all of this will be accomplished through national, homogenized educational ELA and math standards for K-12 students. Oh yeah – I can see that.
Humorous? Okay. What is not funny is the truth in Laurie’s comments. Opt-out. If you don’t want to opt-out then opt-in! Get in your child’s classroom. Get in your local board meetings. Ask questions – it’s both our right and obligation – for our children. The longer we remain “helpless” the more we feed into the Nanny state argument that the government needs to take control. Parents are being marginalized at every turn and we certainly don’t need to be active participants in that process. There are plenty of people out there who feel our children would benefit from federal intrusion as Cook noted in his follow up on July 20, 2014.
I have yet to meet a parent who has said they became parents for the sole purpose of turning over the up-bringing and decision making for their child to the federal government. As Laurie said, “We are not helpless.” We are the stakeholders and these are our children. Every child deserves singing-down-the-highway-Common Core-free days. Forever.
Opting in requires tremendous grit and tenacity, people must be reminded that the deconstruction process started in the late 1800’s so have some moral fiber when you opt in. Prayer helps.