It’s a well-known observation that whenever businessmen get together, sooner or later their conversation turns to how to best separate consumers from their money (which is why businesses, in reality, exist).
And, in a forward way, something similar can be said about what happens when Marxist ideologues gather in the shadows. They discuss how to strip We the People of Constitutional rights, based on their Marxist theorems. And that is exactly what has happened with the advent of the Common Core education curriculum.
The argument for the "absolute need" of Common Core standards is that they are the only way to prepare students for careers and college. Supposedly, without Common Core standards, our children will neither be college-ready nor career-ready.
And, while the battle to resist Common Core was being fought by those of us who understood the sinister evil of what will be a forced program of education, "The Obama administration had $4.35 billion of Race to the Top federal funds, and [said] states had to adopt ‘college-and-career ready standards’ if they wanted to be eligible to compete for those funds." ("The Biggest Fallacy of the Common Core Standards," Diane Ravitch; 8/24/13)
As Ravitch pointed out, major corporations published full-page advertisements in The New York Times and paid for television commercials warning that unless Common Core standards were immediately adopted, our economy would be seriously threatened. The Council on Foreign Relations, chaired by none other than Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice, warned that our national security was at risk unless Common Core was adopted without delay. (And people were browbeating me because I said Rice was as much of a conservative as my right shoe, but I digress.)
Let me make this easy for you. Common Core standards are an across-the-board, pre-K to the end of your child’s education, system of teaching whereby it is mandated that every student be taught the exact same thing, and, for all intents and purposes, taught the exact same thing during the same period of time. In brief, it is a standard of education that creates automatons.
But let me back up to ask a question whose answer should be obvious. If, as the so-called experts are postulating, the future of America will collapse without Common Core, then someone needs to tell me this: How did we survive to become the greatest country in history, with a free-market capitalist system envied the world over, without it?
The simple truth is that Common Core is right out of Mao’s "Redbook" — his manifesto for communism. Common Core could very well be the final death-knell for the minds of our children. Textbooks, ad nauseum, will be uniform. And while in the past, states such as Texas were able to dictate what textbooks would be used in its schools, that ability will be removed. Parents and school administrators will have no say in what the children in their schools are taught. Most parents are unaware of the distortions, misinformation, and omissions in the textbooks being written by liberals today. As a matter of fact, most parents not only have no clue, but they have never even given thought to the accuracy of the books from which their children are being taught.
Imagine your children attending classrooms like those under Mao Tse-tung the evil dictator of Communist China. That’s where Common Core is taking our children. It gives unprecedented control of the minds of our children from their earliest years. It also allows government to segregate our children, based on its dictates, into groups that it controls. And, just as sinister, it allows government to ultimately control what is taught in private Christian schools and in home schooling. It has long been understood that the public school system wanted to do away with home schooling.
Common Core also allows government to dictate which children are admitted to what schools and what career paths are available to which children. I know, I know. You’re saying, "C’mon Mychal. You’re exaggerating and just trying to scare us." To which I would ask: "Did children learn more before Carter created the Department of Education, or after it?" I would ask: "What have the billions of tax dollars that have gone into public schools done to raise the level of accomplishment by students?" I would remind you that, since the early 1980s, we have been told that all it takes is more money, and our children will be academic standouts. In reality, billions after billion of dollars have netted the same results — diminished student performance.
How did Americans achieve the advances in medicine, technology, and science without Common Core if we are now being told we cannot survive educationally and economically — and that our national security is threatened — unless it is implemented?
Common Core is a ruse to further entrench communism in America. Obama’s government has built on what Carter, Clinton, and Bush started. And as Dr. Walter Williams noted, "Vladimir Lenin said, ‘Give me four years to teach children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.’ That’s the [true] goal of the leftist teaching agenda."
Mychal S. Massie is the former National Chairman of the conservative black think tank, Project 21-The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives; and a member of its’ parent think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research. You can find more at mychal-massie.com.
