Should Florida take the Rifle or Shotgun Approach to Education?

What is this new program of instruction which is titled “Common Core (CC)” that is being pushed upon our children and grandchildren? The goal of CC is a good goal. No one will argue that point. The goal is to teach our students in the United States to become world class students and be able to compete in a very highly competitive world of business, government, scientific research and technology. Just for an instance take this into consideration. China graduates more outstanding scholastic students than we graduate students from high school. Basically the CC advocates are trying to keep the US competitive with Europe and Asia. If we don’t then China or other nations will be running our businesses, our governments and developing new technology resulting in the US being less competitive and costing us more to exist. No one can disagree to this approach to saving America through education

One other thing which is testy to many citizens is the early assessment of the student. The student is scored as to their ability to learn and other skill sets that they may have. The Common Core State Standards will be designed to ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter credit bearing entry courses in two or four year college programs or enter the workforce. The standards are clear and concise to ensure that parents, teachers, and students have a clear understanding of the expectations in reading, writing, speaking and listening, language and mathematics in school. Understand that students will be shunted to higher learning levels or to areas where those with lesser talents will learn trades, etc. Gone is choice, gone is the opportunity for the student who has to work harder to achieve success. Our children will be identified as it was in the old Soviet Union…this type student will advance to university and this lesser ability student will go directly to the local job placement bureau.

What is the main concern with Common Core education?

Common Core is to improve education in America…to make us very competitive. And, how is this to be done? Teachers will instruct on those subjects and those items of subject matter that a student must know in order to excel in the nation and in the world. Teachers will teach the exam subject and the answers to exam questions. Education will be a rifle and target approach to education where there is a set of subject questions with a set of answers. The student will sight in on what some higher up believes the student should learn and be tested to qualify as an educated person of high achievement in society at the time. And, the question is who chooses the subjects to be taught? Some government or university scholar who probably will never have the common sense needed to feed himself independent of government. A person with poor work skills that have never competed in the real world for a job or is able to run a business, balance a business budget and excel as a business person or employee of a firm. A person probably with a belief that they are the higher power. We would pray this will not be the case.

Now compare this future scenario to how most of us were taught years ago. I call it the shotgun approach to education where you were taught a huge amount of material…your class books were thorough and as modern as they could be at the time covering just about everything in the specific subject. Basically you had to read it all, be familiar or very knowledgeable of the entire subject matter because you did not know exactly what question or how the question would be asked to assess your knowledge. You had to be WELL-READ and try your best to score high on the exam. When testing occurred the test was as thorough as they could be with random questions across the spectrum of what you were taught for the testing period. You did not know the question to be tested but you were exposed to everything you should know in order to have the correct answer at hand to any question. You were simply expected to recall the learned answer from all the vast material you were exposed to over the time period.

What was the product of what I call the shotgun approach to education? The result was that your student ended up being a very well-read and broad minded person and much better educated as compared to where Common Core will leave us all.

Under Common Core a student will only learn what they are told to learn. And, there lies the main problem. What will they be taught? Who decides what they are taught? Will parents be able to demand specific subjects be taught in their school district and not what some university or government employee feels or believes is best. I fear the socialist or Marxist creating the study guidelines. We sure do not need this new stupid math and science or socialism being taught. We want Capitalism, Algebra, Physics, the US Constitution, Economics, History and Religion being taught using the ageless methods of yesteryear as opposed to the programs that frustrate the student and drive them from learning. Our programs of yesteryear were simple…not like the mind games played upon students and teacher of today. You choose your future, but you better choose wisely or face what the world faced in middle-age Europe hundreds of years ago.