Actually many are told not to talk about it. I spoke to a NJ principal out of my district about it trying to have an honest dialogue and get his take. He supported it in that he feels he has the ability to remove poor teachers. He was also impressed that our daughter's 1st grade teacher was using rubrics (I had to look that one up and am not really impressed.). I went into the curriculum, its purported problems and politics... he glazed over. Of course in NJ the teacher's union controls everyone including the Superintendent. It was a polite and honest conversation at a tailgate and I believe it is ignorance not intent when it comes to lack of understanding (from both sides). I think the approach to educators should be conversational rather than accusatory and aggressive. Otherwise defense mode kicks in, the lines are drawn, and they will defend it for the sake of defending it.

I would be careful about conglomerating all teachers in this. My mother-in-law teaches kindergarten and our State began adopting Common Core after a huge brouhaha only a couple of years ago. It was pushed mainly by the Governor and the school administrators. My mother-in-law looked at the curriculum she is supposed to teach from and complained because it was making things harder for most of her students to understand rather than easier. She was told that if she didn't teach it she could be disciplined and lose her job, because if the schools didn't follow Common Core, they lost their federal funding.

At least here where I live, it is the administrators and legislators that are the main proponents - and I'm in a solid Red state. Many of the teachers - and especially the ones who have to teach mathematics - are really starting to turn against it. I can only hope that the tide turns so red (my apologies to Alabama fans) that the legislators are forced to pull it, but only time will tell.

I have thought for decades that the plan for public education was to create mindless robots to work the jobs created by the industrial revolution. Now it seems to have morphed to Politically Correct Socialist mindless robots.

Teachers, surprisingly (and to my great disappointment) do not research it. They regurgitate whatever info is fed to them from their boss. If you ask clarifying questions you'll either get their made up interpretation or an annoyed look. Try it. Some have even told me they aren't' supposed to talk about it... which can only mean one of two things. They Don't have the knowledge OR they're hiding something. And the vast majority probably don't see past hiding their own ignorance, but it's much worse than that.

Post Office isn't really the greatest comparison because it is actually a Constitutionally-mandated program, but the gist of your argument is valid. A better example might be Social Security, the EPA, or any of the other alphabet soup of government bureaucracies.

Or know and don't care. Thanks

Read Credentialed to Destroy.... And anything else you can get your hands on. And most teachers are pension sheep so they don't know the truth either.

Yup. It's called the mob mentality. And we see it everywhere from the Occupy Wallstreeters to the welfare bums. It's (unfortunately) an extremely effective tactic for controlling large populations that in essence boils down to divide and conquer.

John Stossel showed the basic problem with it, and tied it to thee even more basic problem that we even have public schools..

But he didn't discuss the leftist problem descriptions and distortions of history in Common Core lessons.

Children must be taught concretes first and abstractions second. Reality is a concrete. Reason is abstraction. Rational application of these create a good life.

If emotions become the primary focus, reason and reality fly out the window and you end up with a non-thinking and obedient populace full of anger and envy of anyone who has a hand on reality.

I think we might be there already.

I am not doubting you, but could you provide a little more support for your claim?

There's not enough room in a single column to address all of those ;)

It took 50 years, but Khrushchev proved prophetic. They (through Common Core) have buried us. Never mind that they have been buried first.

Yes, but he barely scratched the surface of common core with this article. It has roots in Russia and the Bolsheviks. This has been trying to get pushed into our schools for decades, but got rejected because the names they were calling it gave away the real motivation behind it...so they kept changing the name and tweaking the talking points and now it's just being accepted (along with billions of federal funding) because it uses labels like "critical thinking" and "higher learning" and "excellence"...and so on and so on. The sheep gobble it, it makes them feel all good and happy that they're their kids will be oh so smart with all this "higher ed" and don't do the research to see that it's actually a predator after their kids' minds. The goal is to change society...and this will do exactly that if we don't stop it! It's been done before...history proves it. (It doesn't include independent, individual, reasoned thinking based on logic...it's based on emotional learning.)