Local control, my foot.
If we abided strictly by local control of public education in Arkansas, our public schools might still be racially segregated.
We’d still be keeping open dozens of school districts too small to achieve economies of scale by which equal educational opportunity for all our children could be more efficiently achieved.
Some local schools would be holding Sunday School five days a week in violation of the wise and vital constitutional principle of separation of church and state.
That’s what state Rep. Justin Harris of West Fork was doing at his state-funded day care for preschool youth. Then the state imposed a centuries-overdue policy advising him and others to keep a little separation, at least, between the state-funded part of the day and whatever narrow-minded gospel proselytizing they were injecting into those little kids.
So, of course, Harris figured prominently and primitively in Monday’s legislative committee hearing at the state Capitol.
Right-wing alarmists—the new political power in Arkansas—testified against the supposed looming horror of the Common Core educational standards designed by and for the National Governors Association and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Uh-oh. These standards have been embraced by the Obama administration.
You know what that means. It means one-world takeover, as of the White River. Why, this is as scary as “sustainable” economic development.
Actually, if we might seek to be sane for a moment: The Common Core standards do not mandate any curriculum on any state or any district or any school. They do not limit an individual teacher’s independent professional creativity.
What they do is outline new uniform state-by-state objectives for schools to focus on fewer subjects with more depth and context so that kids could better see the why and the how and the real-world application.
Then Common Core calls for students to be tested regularly to see if maybe the United States is catching up in educational achievement with more advanced countries around the world, of which there are now dozens.
So there was this woman, a nurse and mother, testifying to legislators Monday. She said the governors’ association and the Gates Foundation were “private trade groups” and that she, by opposing Common Core standards, was “fighting for our constitutional right to make these decisions for ourselves.”
Actually, if we might seek to be accurate for a moment: We bear a state constitutional responsibility to make our educational offerings uniform and adequate and equitable from district to district.
The “right” belongs to the educated. Only a responsibility belongs to the educator or parent.
Harris, the aforementioned proselytizer, proclaimed “touchdown” of the woman’s testimony. He said his own kids were studying math lessons in which four and four no longer equal eight.
He did not say how much four and four now equal.
I personally would like to know. I try to keep up. But I did not know that four and four had become something other than eight, just as I did not know—until the Emmy nominations—that Netflix is now producing its own original television programming.
Then Harris complained about homework that is so different from what today’s parents studied that parents are impaired in helping their own kids learn.
Two things about that: One is that I remember hearing that refrain when I was a kid, back in the dark ages, and all the parents were moaning about this silly “new math.” The second is that the world is changing fast, becoming more knowledge-based by the day, and the schooling that Mom and Dad got two or three decades before may no longer be fully adequate to the task at hand.
But I’m still wondering what four and four now are.
Some teachers are resentful of Common Core’s incessant testing. My experience is that resentment of a test is highest in those not prepared for it.
Yes, incessant testing can be a bother. These general-practice doctors checking blood pressure and drawing blood all the time—what’s that about? Are they just trying to find illness or something?
In this context, I’m wondering if you remember how erratic Mike Huckabee could be as our governor.
He could say crazed and incendiary right-wing things generally, but then specifically champion bravely progressive policies such as spending the tobacco settlement on health education, dealing with immigrants and consolidating schools.
It turns out that the first person I ever heard tout the coming Common Core initiative was Huckabee in the 1990s as our governor.
I would have assumed that Huckabee would run from that sort of thing today, considering that his new vocation is to engage in hollow right-wing demagoguery over a dumbed-down mass media.
I apologize to the former governor for that assumption.
It turns out that Oklahoma, our state’s bad role model, also is resisting Common Core.
So Huckabee sent a letter to Oklahoma Republican legislators telling them that Common Core had been near and dear to his heart since the 1990s. It’s not about mandating curriculum or teaching methods, but imposing more meaningful objectives, he said.
Huckabee wrote, “It’s disturbing to me there have been criticisms of these standards directed by other conservatives. I’ve heard the argument these standards ‘threaten local control’ of what’s being taught in Oklahoma classrooms. Speaking from one conservative to another, let me assure you this simply is not true. They’re not something to be afraid of; indeed they are something to embrace.”
It’s good to see that Our Boy Mike still has the ability and willingness to reach down from time to time for some sanity and accuracy.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.