Common Core Obama's Means to 'Fundamentally Transform' America's Education System

[flowers]

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/22/Common-Core-Part-of-Obama-s-Plan-To-Fundamentally-Transform-America-s-Education-System

Proponents of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) often insist that the new standards are not a federal takeover of education. Actually, Common Core supporters could be right in one sense: Common Core is not so much about a nationalization of education as it is part of a world-wide initiative that may ultimately serve to make American values and practices secondary to global sharing.

Writing at Crisis Magazine, journalist Mary Jo Anderson asserts that Common Core is nothing less than the latest attempt by the U.N. to impose on the United States a globalist perspective with the utopian goals of worldwide peace, environmental sustainability, and economic fairness. In that context, Common Core is part of the Obama administration’s “transformational” education plan that places emphasis on global relationships rather than a unique American culture.

It is commonly known that Common Core is being financed with more than $150 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition, the Gates Foundation has collaborated with the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

In 2004, Gates’ Microsoft Corporation signed a Cooperation Agreement with UNESCO to develop a “master curriculum” which would include benchmarks and a testing program. According to the agreement, “UNESCO will explore how to facilitate content development.”

In the Agreement, UNESCO maps out its intention to establish “Knowledge Communities,” which it defines as “web-based communities of practice in UNESCO’s fields.” The goal is to create, through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) throughout the globe, communities without borders, in a sense, so that all students around the world are learning similar content and sharing knowledge. As many Americans are aware, Common Core relies heavily upon increased broadband width. In at least some states and local school districts, total reconstruction of Internet capabilities has been necessary.

According to Anderson, in this concept of globalism that UNESCO and Microsoft proposed, “a nation is permitted to keep its surface culture, such as language, music, and cuisine. But patriotism, religion, and individualism are anathema, as each competes with the globalist vision of world harmony.”

Anderson writes that the most efficient way to urge a nation to abandon its culture and natural resources is to “invest in education to ensure that the coming generation will embrace the principles of globalism as a natural consequence of their formation.”

Despite the continued, overt insistence of the Obama administration--and some prominent Republicans--that Common Core is a state and local endeavor, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has actively promoted the standards in the U.S. Recently, however, he may have dealt a serious blow to the endeavor, with a controversial comment made during a meeting of state schools superintendents. Feeling the heat of increased opposition to Common Core, Duncan said that those who oppose the new standards are “white suburban moms who – all of a sudden – their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought.”

In 2010, Duncan addressed UNESCO, and in his remarks said that education would be the “beacon” that would light the way to stem a “global economic crisis.” Offering “two overarching messages” about America’s efforts to “transform” education and achievement, Duncan said:

    First, the Obama administration has an ambitious and unified theory of action that propels our agenda. The challenge of transforming education in America cannot be met by quick-fix solutions or isolated reforms. It can only be accomplished with a clear, coherent, and coordinated vision of reform.

    Second, while America must improve its stagnant educational and economic performance, President Obama and I both reject the protectionist Cold War-era assumption that improving economic competitiveness is somehow a zero-sum game, with one nation’s gain being another country’s loss.

Duncan cited Obama in the latter’s speech “to the Muslim world in Cairo” in 2009: “Any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail.”

“In the United States, we feel an economic and moral imperative to challenge the status quo,” Duncan said. “Closing the achievement gap and closing the opportunity gap is the civil rights issue of our generation.”

Lamenting the high number of high school dropouts in the United States, Duncan said that global “partnerships” will inspire students to take responsibility for the betterment of the global community.

“A just and socially responsible society must also be anchored in civic engagement for the public good,” he said. “Education, as Nelson Mandela says, ‘is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.’”

Ironically, Duncan also touted in his UNESCO address that President Obama “wants to expand school choice to encourage innovation – and spread the effective practices of high-performing schools to all schools.”

It is doubtful, however, that school choice is in President Obama’s “transformational” education plan, as most Americans define it.

Recently, the Department of Justice challenged the state of Louisiana in court for starting a scholarship program that frees low-income minority children from failing schools. Last Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder decided to drop the initial lawsuit and instead announced he will seek to require Louisiana to submit to a bureaucratic review process that would mandate all voucher application information be sent to the federal government prior to awards being granted to students.

Similarly, the Obama administration has had a history of fighting the successful Washington, D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP).

The message from the Obama administration, then, seems to be that school choice will be tolerated only if it is regulated by the federal government.

Duncan went on to tell UNESCO the Obama administration has set a goal that the United States “will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” a goal that “can only be achieved by creating a strong cradle-to-career continuum that starts with early childhood learning and extends all the way to college and careers.”

Finally, in his description of the plans to achieve this goal, Duncan went on to tell UNESCO how the Obama administration used its Race to the Top stimulus bill grants to entice states to participate in the Common Core standards.

Barack Obama said he would “fundamentally transform” the United States of America. He has failed at transforming America’s economy and America’s health care system. Are American parents willing to trust his plan to transform their children’s education?

[Rapunzel]

Isn't it interesting that Bill Gates - a college drop out turned billionaire is behind trying to brainwash the country through education?

[Rapunzel]

Some interesting comments at Breitbart:

It's part of UNESCO and Agenda 21 to nationalize the education system and put it under the auspices of the UN. It is also a way to data mine through our children. My child brought home a survey from the energy company, that if filled out, they would get a prize package. The survey asked what temperature we kept out house at; how many people lived in our house, ages & gender along with many other prying questions. But then, maybe I'm just one of those 'middle-class, white mother's who is realizing that my child isn't brilliant', per Arne Duncan.

those pushing the agenda have their own kids in private schools -

Max
• 6 hours ago

The common core stuff is a joke, the teachers I have spoken with that have looked closely at it say that it's weird, ineffectual, and gets in the way of educating kids.

Mann D. Lifeboats
• 6 hours ago

    −

"Common Core" -- which should be "Communist Core" -- means liberal-leftist brainwashing, propagandizing and further dumbing-down of our children as never before.

J Payne
• 6 hours ago

I am forced to teach Common Core standards in my English classes. The standards themselves are actually pretty hard core. They expect a high level of thought. The problem is the texts they give us in the pre-packaged modules. The overwhelming majority of them attempt to indoctrinate our children in Marxist ideology. So they are being taught to think critically, but only on subjects that turn them into good little Marxists. They are even trying to force us to use these texts instead of substituting our own readings. I have resisted and continue to resist this element or the Common Core in my classroom.

Sparky1115 J Payne
• 2 hours ago

We had a long discussion with one of our children's teachers about this as well. It had to do with the entire chapter on Islam with no mention of Christianity. He shares your overall conclusion on Common Core. We spoke with him again when the children were learning about the Constitution. which was very interesting as it was misquoted. I've also noticed that they are missing crucial historical events so we take care of those... like the Korean War, President Reagan, the Civil War, the Kennedy's, etc. They've been "studying" WWII for four years now but not in depth.

giatny
• 5 hours ago

How have the American people allowed this to happen? Obama has effectively
enshrined lawlessness, commandeered control over all consumer credit, finance, energy, mortgages, courts, labor, education, media, internet, air, water, health care, etc. while conducting a war on fossil fuels, Christianity, and the Constitution. Anyone idiotic enough to believe ACA will be his downfall hasn't been paying attention to the absolute government control he has already established. Adding amnesty will be
the final denouement of the United States of America and freedom.

chrish giatny
• 2 hours ago

That's easy, government is like a vampire, it can't come into your home unless it's invited. And we've invited him. We demand more and more government involvement, regulation, and intrusion and that's exactly what we're getting.

To paraphrase the John Galt speech from "Atlas Shrugged,"

“You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all
that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from
the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your
sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral
ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have
fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it..."

And now we're getting it.

1redcent rambler
• 4 hours ago

Obama and Rahm and Billy Ayers handed over the public school system to Arnie, way back when and he managed to make Chicago's public schools, which were at the bottom of the barrel in 1973, even worse !

Avatar
BalsterFudd357
• 2 hours ago

WE'VE COME FULL CIRCLE FOLKS!
The down hill slide of the U.S. began when when
we LOWERED our expectations of our schools and
handed them over to federal Gov....
We've been lowering our standards ever since!
Thus...the One that resides in our Oval office