Pioneer Institute's Dr Sandra Stotsky suggested the following radical proposal in her article "Don't Waste the Crisis over Common Core," published by the Pioneer Institute on January 9, 2015.
The entire Common Core project is rapidly going south, and within two years may be no more than a dim memory of a nightmare in the minds of a growing army of angry parents and teachers from coast to coast....
The first task is to relabel the currently toxic package as high school-ready standards and give the forthcoming “college readiness” tests not in grade 11 but in grade 8,...
Once common ELA and math standards serve to guide a curriculum that makes most students ready for real high school work by the end of grade 8, we can work out alternative high school curricula—the upper secondary options that appeal to a broad range of students even today—and give young adolescents a choice of the kind of curriculum they are willing to commit themselves to—with change always possible. This is what most developed countries do, including Finland. Our aim would be to try to make sure that all students complete a basic education through grade 8, before compulsory schooling ends and before they choose their upper secondary curriculum...
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, as we have been regularly told. And here’s one we should take advantage of in order to salvage a battered public school system. If we don’t come to grips with Common Core’s notion of “college readiness,” we face dissolution of our entire education system.... [emphasis added]
I wrote about the significance of the Finland model previously HERE and HERE and HERE. Note: Maine has brought Harvard Professor Tony Wagner, the expert on Finnish education, into the state to help Maine's Dept. of Education implement what Stotsky recommends.
 |
| Photo from Huffington Post article HERE |
Below is an excerpt from a Huffington Post article regarding Wagner's philosophy titled "The Global Search for Education: More Focus on Finland" by C.M. Rubin (6/01/11):
"The Finns had a crisis," life-long educator, best-selling author, and Harvard professor Tony Wagner explains as we discuss his new film, The Finland Phenomenon, made with acclaimed documentary filmmaker, Bob Compton....
What kind of education system will permit a country to have the people skills needed to compete globally?
Photo from Huffington Post article HERE
The education system must be equitable, accessible, and flexible. Global competitiveness requires that all people develop competencies for life and work, not just some people. This means that a successful education system should help young people to discover their talents and build their lives based on them. Reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy will remain important, but their role as 'core subjects' in competitive education systems will be challenged by creativity, networking skills, and imagination.[bold in original]
Read the whole article for information on Wagner's education philosophy. See the YouTube excerpts of his film The Finland Phenomenon HERE.
Dr. Stotsky, Pioneer's expertise must be in demolition of what used to be considered the finest education system in the world, which turned out more scientists, musicians, writers, engineers, architects, inventors, etc. The USA held more patents than any other country in the world! Stotsky, due to the use of the dialiectic, is now able to recommend the socialist European model which denies students upward mobility. As the Prof. Eugene Boyce, University of Georgia, said regarding education in communist countries: "They do not educate for jobs that don't exist."
 |
| See Tony Wagner's film The Finland Phenomenon HERE |
- Create the problem. As she said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." The deliberate dumbing down of American education system and Communist Core;
- Count on parents and teachers and taxpayers then complaining loudly;
- Impose the solution. Use fear-mongering if necessary. In this case the European/UNESCO/OECD socialist education for global workforce training which has been the plan since 1934 at least with Carnegie Corporation in its Conclusions and Recommendations for the Social Studies calling for using the schools to change America's capitalist economic system to a planned economy!
The following comment posted on the Internet in response to Stotsky's article states in a nutshell why Stotsky and her likes in the Trotskyite tax-exempt foundations should NOT be listened to.
"With all due respect to Sandra Stotsky, changing the grades in which the college readiness equation is done, doesn't change the nature of the beast and it's many heads. When I was in High School and we had three courses of study we could take, Academic, Commercial or General; I would have been flipping pancakes now if I had followed their line of thinking. The whole point is NOT to pigeon hole our kids. To offer them the best education we have to offer... which by the way... is what this country had been doing for a long time now... regardless of the naysayers who keep screwing it up, telling us that we are not as good as other countries in educating our children. Remember the Russian Sputnik and how we took ourselves over the coals for not being ahead of the Russians in science education? Damn, we did darn good with our space program. We did darn good with our technology innovations until Bill Gates decided to make being a "god" his hobby. We've done very well in medicine, etc,. So "somebody" decided that we needed Common Core to change everything, even what was not broken. Now, to nudge a bad idea into a not as bad idea is not the answer. The answer is in strengthening what has worked in so many places and areas of education and to change the places and education areas that are, in fact, broken. Nothing that equalizes everything for everybody has ever worked in history... except here, when individual freedom is allowed to flourish!"(comment made by "Yana")
Tony Wagner on YouTube promoting his film HERE
