If we think of the Common Core as a bucket or a banner instead of pretending it is about the transmission of knowledge, its function becomes much clearer. All the changes that would cause an outcry if pursued separately, and in many cases already have created widespread popular rejection, get to Come on Down Anyway as the game show announcer would say. A science fiction geek might explain the Common Core as a cloaking device allowing controversial shifts to be put into place without exposure. Especially if the new materials are all “web-based” and just waiting to be downloaded.
We have already encountered the Southern Poverty Law Center and its social justice/Teaching Tolerance curriculum numerous times, most notably here. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/social-cohesion-can-commence-once-reality-is-born-largely-from-beliefs-and-boundaries-co-created-with-others/ SPLC has been even busier than we recognized though and has also created the US’s very first ABF–Anti-bias Framework-and Literacy-Based K-12 Anti-bias Curriculum called Perspectives for a Diverse America. http://www.tolerance.org/sites/default/files/general/Perspectives%20for%20a%20Diverse%20America%20User%20Experience.pdf
Now before I start raising anyone’s blood pressure by describing the ABF’s intentions, let’s go Down Under to a K-12 pilot Global Change Agent Michael Fullan was involved in about a decade ago. It was called the Dynamic Paradigm of Learning and Change and it “identifies key aspects of the need, nature, and means of changes in identity, dispositions and orientations to the world and others, to be required of educators [that’s the real reason why tenure is being taken away or greatly restricted now in the US], in order for them to be able to assist young people [that would be the children we entrust to adults and pay vast sums to actually know something] to achieve similar transformational outcomes.” Got that? Psychological changes. Shifts in values, attitudes, and how the world and other people are now to be perceived.
Education Queensland came right out and phrased the kind of Learning and Personal Change being sought in the individual student through K-12 education as a “new way of being” to be “required” of teachers and students. Remember Backward Mapping from our previous post? Well, Perspectives and the ABF offer “the opportunity to infuse CCSS implementation with social justice values.” How? Well, remember Literacy is now to be taught Across the Curriculum and the ABF has 4 domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice and Action. Does that sound alarmingly similar to “identity, dispositions and orientations to the world and others” to anyone else?
Each teacher now gets to, or must if his or her principal insists, use the Anti-bias anchor standards and “grade level outcomes of the ABF for backward planning” and “engage a spectrum of social justice topics and cultural and [italics in original] social emotional competencies–critical in today’s diverse classrooms.” Yes, that would be the real reason to eliminate tracking of the more academically talented and to require a Whole Child Classroom focus. If you think this is an outlier, remember that the NEA worked with the SPLC on its CARE Guide http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/shaping-a-mind-is-more-important-than-stuffing-it-grasping-the-psychosocial-key-to-fundamental-transformations/ .
The “rich text” available for download highlights and fosters the “exploration of identity, authentic accounts of real-life experiences, intergroup understanding, historical empathy, the awareness of prejudice and injustice, individual and collective struggles against injustice and–finally-action against injustice.” They do mean that latter part about forcing action by the way as in “Students will plan and carry out collective action against bias and injustice in the world and will evaluate what strategies are effective.” Hey, you didn’t think ‘engaging’ classwork was just going to be about video gaming, did you?
And we can all be relieved that the Perspectives topics “will go beyond the more common issues of race and ethnicity to include wealth and poverty, disabilities, religious discrimination and immigration.” Plus, as an added bonus to make sure that the desired changes in consciousness do occur, Perspectives “encompasses…less covered, equally important themes like gender, sexual orientation and class.” It is supposedly the first “curriculum of its kind to offer an explicit blueprint designed to move students into the position of advocate.” Not to worry though. I can find no indication that the curriculum includes a Che Guevara beret kit or Mao’s Little Red Book as a Graphic Novel to hammer home that these are required orientations and dispositions.
Good to know then that the curriculum’s “marriage to the Common Core will allow it to be widely implemented.” The ‘backwards design’ approach of ABF and Perspectives does sound better than the List of Twenty Things Your Child Must Now Believe and Be Willing To Do, but it merely masks the nature of the sought change through the K-12 classroom. We can just imagine all the hateful things students will hear about the “dominant culture” and how they will just blossom as they are told repeatedly to “develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society.” Students may not be able to identify precisely why the US pushed to separate from Britain and form a new country, but they will now learn to “recognize that power and privilege influence relationships on interpersonal, intergroup and institutional levels and consider how they have been affected by those dynamics.”
Feel the Outrage! is such a useful tool if transformative action is the End Game being sought. The outrage might be misplaced. It may be destructive, but those are mere details. I can just imagine how students who have been piloting this framework and thus getting to use the classroom over years to “identify figures, groups, events and a variety of strategies and philosophies relevant to the history of social justice around the world” would feel if a School Board then felt empowered to step in and tell them to remember the parts of American History that encourage patriotism. Walkout maybe? To commemorate what Gandhi would have done? Any other parent think they might slam the door in the face of a child “inspired to go home and talk to their parents about purchasing clothes from companies that practice ethical manufacturing”?
Of course that confrontation may be the first alert to the nature of the fundamental psychological changes going to the core of a child’s ‘being’ occurring in the classroom. By then it may well be hard to reverse, which is, I suspect, a big part of why the Common Core label makes such a fine cloaking device. “Web-based” means even the School Board may not know. I want to close with some related confessions that fit with the desired changes being sought that is probably not on your radar either. In 2004, a book by Seattle educator Barbara Ray Gilles called Nurturing Civilization Builders: Birthing the Best Schools in the World.
Gilles was kind enough to admit why we are hearing so much about collaboration as a necessity and the need for schools to create Communities of Learners with a single shared understanding after perspectives have been shared. She pointed out that “school classrooms encompass the largest community that young people experience.” If changes in “identity, orientations and dispositions” are sought, and globally that is in fact what the new purpose of K-12 education has quietly become, then the behavioral psychologists have come to recognize that the herd effect is needed. It both forces the change initially and then reenforces it over time.
Gilles again: “when you combine the individual wills of each person in a group focused on a unified goal, a ‘group will’ occurs that is greater than any individual. This collaboration is necessary to bring about a massive transformation in consciousness.” Gilles called the End Game she was backward mapping from Living Democracy. It fits with the vision of a New Kind of World we keep encountering as an End Game. Her motto of “Nurturing the compassionate genius within while co-creating a world that works for all” also fits with what SPLC claims is possible and the new goals of education change.
Gilles noted that “our values determine what we pay attention to, which in turn determine our behavior and create our habits.” That is true and there can be no question (going back to Milton Rokeach and his definition of Competency) that changing values is the fundamental purpose of all these planned classroom shifts.
The question becomes whether the World actually will change if this becomes the purpose of K-12 education globally or whether we are simply disarming our young people mentally and psychologically.
Will they be capable of dealing with the Evil and Bullies of the World?
With all our talk of honoring diversity and challenging oppression and injustice, aren’t we pushing an educational template that simply makes it easier to oppress and dominate most people?
If the individual mind is disarmed, what will be our real recourse?
I met a former US Marine who gave me a glimps as to where this leads. Explaining his grocery store line experience in a Communist country, he said he noticed his produce selection had a substantial rotting spot with some liquid in the bottom of the packaging and mentioned his peppers had a rotten spot signaling he was going to switch his selection before his turn in checking out; he was up next. The cashier said “Tough”. Perplexed by her silly inisistence that he had to still buy it, his friend nudged him and urged him to proceed with the purchase. The friend later told him that had he not gone ahead and bought the bad produce, the store would have turned him in as a possible “dissenter”. This is the Socialist religion of “Nihilism” we are being subverted with; no standards allowed. You are not even allowed to judge your food selection before a grocery store purchase.
When I was in elementary school in the 80’s (Ontario, Canada), the “disarmament” of the individual mind was happening alongside some still-traditional teaching. Feminism had a stronghold in the curriculum, but the rampant gender questioning and pseudoscience of radical environmentalism hadn’t appeared on the scene – at least not in the primary school years.
Fast forward a couple of decades later and kindergarten kids are wearing pink “anti-bullying” t-shirts as they file into the school gym for their bi-monthly social justice propaganda. (Ironically, I’ve heard from other parents that those children who choose NOT to wear the pink t-shirt are ostracized by other students and, yes, even teachers.)
When I started seeing terms like “heterosexist” and “white privilege” in the school newsletters and little mention of academic achievement in English and math, I decided it was time to jump ship and home school.
Spartia-sorry you were hung up in comment limbo. Welcome to iSC.
I was out in California speaking the last several days and am a bit confused on what time it is.
One of the points parents are having a hard time fully accepting is just how much the classroom in K-12 has become about pushing psychological change. Thanks for adding your experiences.
If you have time to view Gatto’s entire “Ultimate History Lesson”, it is time well spent. In the last hour of the 5 hour interview, Gatto explains Harvard’s “Ingles Lectures” series and how they give info on the purpose of schooling that was not meant to be disclosed to the masses and how he got a phone call as to why he was looking for them. I have been able to purchase a couple of them over the internet. Here is a clip from Gatto’s history lesson, plus a less detailed scripted version of generally the same info. Gatto mentions how the kids in the class are actually a tool, guided by the teacher, to humiliate individuals into the pre-assigned social position their early public school teachers chose for them, and to humiliate them away from their fixed beliefs. http://trueteaching.blogspot.com/2013/11/gatto-reads-social-engineers-admitted.html
Notice where Adrienne is from and who that connects her to.
http://ijme-journal.blogspot.com/2014/04/teaching-tolerance-one-project-many.html
Wow; LL. I had heard of Southern Poverty Law Center and figured they were an unpleasant nuisance but I never knew they were this bad; sheesh!
Look what I bumped into while looking at anti bias references. They do blend together at a point.
LL, Do you have a link?
I posted but it never showed. Trying again. Thought it may have gotten stuck in comment purgatory.
http://www.thejusticeconference.com
Oregon is one of 10 states who were early implementers of career pathways. So is CA that I just got back from. http://www.clasp.org/issues/postsecondary/pages/career-pathways-explained
This new multimedia presentation graphic makes it clear that I am correct that WIOA federalized this for all states and communities.
Plus having Bruce Katz, with his own blog tag, announce this today at both the RSA blog plus the Brookings one, tells us what is in store. “It’s time that we rewrite our own federalist contract and realign power and responsibility for the modern era in which cities and metropolitan areas, rather than nations and states, drive economies and progress. ”
When I listen to a Con-con presentation, I always wonder why any lawyer would be confident it would not run away. That quote suggests again we should be wary.
Notice it said it was the largest “Biblical and Social Justice conference”? Um, “Biblical” and “Social Justice” are oxymoronic. “UnBiblical and Jesuitical” would be truthful. Did you notice Mrs. Hybels from Willowcreek on the lineup? Willowcreek is in cohoots with RW and “Purpose Driven” (fruit of Druckers Transformational Marxism).
LL-take a look at page 7 of this Community Schools as a means to gain Equity Framework http://www.communityschools.org/assets/1/AssetManager/CS%20Equity%20Framework%20-%20Final%20Working%20Draft.pdf
Clasp is highly involved in head start programs within the NW, and a food stamp program.
Wow, to the sun schools statement! The entire model is about race.
Seems like that is what we are focusing on statewide.
http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-23379-permalink.html
Why is it that bad choices are never considered as a potential reason for poverty? Don’t get me wrong I know there are genuine needs in families, but some like one I know purchase new electronics and wait for the next refill on the food stamp card, decline promotions at work because cash assistance would go away.
That Anti-Bias Framework requires kids to talk a lot, constantly, about their families and family history. It all starts from the family and identity, and that continues for every school grade.
It makes it impossible to have privacy, and to go to school for education while keeping personal and family details out of it.
SPLC seems to exist to keep bothering people about this stuff, to promote the grievance industry. But now we would be required to provide personal information to support that mission.
What SPLC is doing is described in this chapter from Mein Kampf, http://www.hitler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch02.html. It gives several techniques on how to steer culture into “Socialism” which is just another word for the religion of “Nihilism” (no standards allowed), which is fully described in Nazi insider Hermann Rauchning’s 1939 (pre WWII) book “Revolution of Nihilism”:
This chapter describes techniques for “spiritual terrorism” and how unions are used to silence individuals and how, if one tries to correct a course, how it automatically results in bringing hatred toward one’s self. It is quite disgusting.
I’m sure they’ll be opening up Young Pioneers branches at local schools shortly. Either that, or they’ll start entering this information during directed “interactive” sessions on the school’s computers. Very quickly they’d not only be discussing what goes on in your home, they’d be building a database from it.
Having all the kiddo’s and teachers handle the databasing is much better than those pesky punch cards IBM had to use when doing the databasing of Jews for the Nazis before they were able to round them all up. http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
They have done this same pattern to every country they have “liberated”. This time they aren’t looking for Jews per se; they will be looking for former US military, “patriotic” types, gun owners, government dissenters, school teachers, anyone with leadership potential. The school teachers will be picked up in the first round; these people, first and formost, hate those who are dumb enough to help them. Google former KGB agent and databaser, “Yuri Bezmenov” (aka Thomas Schuman) for more info.
Please join STARVE THE BEAST USA on FB. Website in the process of being built. There is only one thing we can do at this point and that is to get our children out of the belly of the beast. If parents aren’t willing to do that then this country is doomed. This weekend they conducted a seminar in Dubai on Common Core. Here is the link. This is a global takeover and UNESCO is in charge. Coleman, Zimba, Daro, McCallum, Pimental……………puppets and nothing more.
Karen-can you describe how we starve the beast? We have been discussing today how Opt Out may be a start, but really furthers the transition away from subject knowledge to the psych focus. Pretty sure not paying property taxes will cause a forfeiture of property.
I was saying it was UNESCO with proof while others were still treating the standards as about content. We did get everyone in CA to concede they were goals although their preferred term was “expectations for students.”
You are correct; this is a global takeover; but keep in mind UNESCO is just one office of many in the United Nations; and their “NGOs” (non government offices) are vast. For example, the UN’s “Agenda 21” program is what your local zoning department is run by. You might want to check into what that is all about. Here is a former Zoology Professor and excellent historian, Dr. Walter Veith giving a lecture that will give you the fast track on the UN Agenda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSNU-jlHkDs
Kyrie-Karen is a known Agenda 21 expert, but your link may help others.
Veith goes over UNESCO, and their claims “your children have to be modified”. Veith talks about leaving the education system himself because of what he has seen is “hair-raising”. He gives lots of shocking quotes on SIECUS, use of explicit sexual educational materials, shawmanism, extactic dimentions, spirit guides??? all quotes from the horses mouths.
… In order to achieve global government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of people, their individualism, family loyalties, patriotism, religion; it all has to go; the state is supreme and individuals are nothing.
This will be great for criminal types; but realize what that means for normal people. We are being told we have to give up the idea of “decency”, “respectibility”, “dignity”, etc.???
I hope everyone takes the time to see Veith’s talk. He tell the audience what they won’t hear elsewhere and uncovers much doublespeak, shows the players, and shows why it is urgent, as Karen said, to “stop feeding the beast” (stop giving strangers our kids to work on their minds, behind closed doors, for 12 years and stop giving education credentials respect).
Karen-as you know I talk about the very alarming ATC21S in my book that the US is a partner in as is UNESCO, the OECD, and the World Bank. The most comprehensive post I have on the role of UNESCO and the accreditation process in forcing global compliance with UNESCO’s vision is here http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/decreeing-the-interdependence-of-environment-economy-society-and-cultural-diversity-in-the-21st/
The creator of MENA is tied to the accreditation racket because that is what Quality Assurance means. That is the term of art UNESCO created. The ed degrees from Michigan State also tie him to both the Effective Schools Movement that is based at MSU and BSTEP, which was created there.
When I stopped writing the book to look more closely into the accreditation process after some alarming statements made by the Gypsy Principal from Charlotte-Meck, it turned up major connections between the holding company accreditor Advanc-ED and Dubai. http://213.42.28.185/disnad/page/manage/files/files/Accreditation%20Letter.pdf is an example of how expats cannot escape this vision for the schools however far they travel. NCA is the oldest of the accreditation subs and is based, interestingly enough, in Chicago.
I would be happy to cooperate with the Starve the Beast website. As usual, as scary as what I write about can seem, it remains just the tip of the iceberg of what I can prove and tie CCSS to.
Here is the article about the meeting in DUBAI. http://teachuae.com/2nd-annual-mena-common-core-conference/
Why is that in Dubai? To see the world’s tallest building? To get lots of FF miles?
To avoid the hoi polloi sneaking in and taking notes?
To show that the Infidels have decided to voluntarily neuter the minds of the Best and Brightest?
Remember that Excellence is a defined term created by psychologist Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi. In an official ed statement or meeting like that it is always his meaning of the term, which is intended to mask the transformative purpose. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/excellence-means-education-putting-what-we-feel-wish-for-and-think-in-harmony/
That conference insures that CCSS continues to impact schools abroad to adopt the change the student focus embodied in the term Excellence instead of the historic transmission of content knowledge. Must not have anyone returning to the US having had an old-fashioned Algebra course instead of a conceptual, activity-based, collaborative mastery version.