support@semo.net
1573 686-9114​​​​

Poplar Bluff Schools moved to “Common Core” at the beginning of this year, some larger schools have been incorporating it since 2010 and it is mandated by Governor Nixon and the Dept of Education that all schools start Common Core by next school year. There are so many reasons why I oppose Common Core. For many it sounds like “Common Core” is just the next new schooling buzzword (ie, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, etc.), but its so much more than that.

Let me sum it up like this: Common Core allowed the business and political but non-academic world to create standards of what students should learn at each age. Then President Obama used multi-million dollar educational money-bribes with 45 governors to bypass their own state legislature to implement the new system. But Common Core is not just student standards, it also includes teacher evaluations based solely on test scores of their students; at this point, Common Core trumps tenure.

Because of my math background, my heart sank to know that Common Core scrapped the work of over 400 Missouri mathematics professionals from primary and secondary education and from our major state colleges and universities. They had developed the Missouri math standards which were about to be put into place across our state when Gov. Nixon took the Common Core bribe. Most every mathematician on record agrees that Common Core does not prepare our students for college entrance. Check out MissouriMath.org for more info about the scrapped math standard.

Common core also includes English standards. Do we really want Washington think tanks deciding what our area children are to be reading? I don’t really know how to approach this next subject because it’s always easy to grab the low hanging fruit and chuck it at your opponent, but at the same time, sometimes…it’s necessary. Case in point is “The Bluest Eye”. For 40 years it has been argued about whether this book should be on library shelves because of its content. Common Core ends that debate by putting it on the Exemplar Reading list for 11th graders. So what is the book “The Bluest Eye” about? I’ve not read it, but Wikipedia says “It is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and an adult, as well as from a third-person, omniscient viewpoint. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism, incest, and child molestation…” The author says she didn’t want to taint the reader’s perspective so she didn’t include any morality while discussing the issues. In other words she writes as though there is nothing wrong with rape, incest and child molestation. Some people won’t want to read the quotes from the book posted below, but it’s now on our 11th grade reading list. This is graphic but we are using this verbal pornography to teach our children (yes, 11th graders are still children!):

Pages 84-85: “He must enter her surreptitiously, lifting the hem of her nightgown only to her navel. He must rest his weight on his elbows when they make love, to avoid hurting her breasts…When she senses some spasm about to grip him, she will make rapid movements with her hips, press her fingernails into his back, suck in her breath, and pretend she is having an orgasm. She might wonder again, for the six hundredth time, what it would be like to have that feeling while her husband’s penis is inside her.”

Pages 130-131: “Then he will lean his head down and bite my t** . . . I want him to put his hand between my legs, I want him to open them for me. . . I stretch my legs open, and he is on top of me…He would die rather than take his thing out of me. Of me. I take my fingers out of his and put my hands on his behind…”

Page 174: “He further limited his interests to little girls. They were usually manageable . . . His sexuality was anything but lewd; his patronage of little girls smacked of innocence and was associated in his mind with cleanliness.” And later, this same pedophile notes, “I work only through the Lord. He sometimes uses me to help people.”

Taken from PolitiChicks.tv

Where From Here?

One of the problems a parent faces is that “Common Core” is a huge topic. Similar to understanding Obamacare, it takes hours of reading and watching videos and pushing past the hype on both sides to understand it. Toni and I have gone to a full-day seminar in St Louis, a 2 hour conference in Greenville and in Poplar BLuff and spent over 50 hours online trying to learn about it. So trying to motivate parents to get involved and kick Common Core out of our schools will be difficult. The question of getting involved comes down to how important is the education of our children to you?

Go to any search engine, or onto YouTube.com, and “anti common core” and you will have plenty of material to get yourself started. For more info about the growing voice within Missouri of parents, educators and legislators who are against Common Core, check out Missouri Coalition Against Common Core. And if you are on facebook, consider liking: Missouri Moms Against Common Core (ya, even if you’re a dude).

I end with this: two videos.

Two videos have stuck out over the past six weeks as I’ve tried to learn more about Common Core. First is a child psychologist who gives her opinion at a national conference whether Common Core standards are age-appropriate; and the second is from last week when a senior, I believe his name is Ethan Young, stood up and spoke to his school board against Common Core. He has a great quote:

If everything I learn is a measurable objective, I have not learned anything. Creativity, appreciation and inquisitiveness: these are impossible to scale.