Sam Sorbo's Blog, page 3

Do the Hard Thing

I’ve recently decided to become a classical tutor for other people’s children. This fall, I will tutor a class of  nine sixth-/seventh-graders, in the Classical Conversations program. Having participated last year (with my kids) as attendees, I have now fully embraced the program to the point of teaching it. But, let’s face it, this is not the easy thing to do.

What convinced me to ramp up my participation to this level? A few things, actually. First, we had a very good experience this past year. I love not only the classical model, but also the way it is presented through this organization. Second, I was desperate to find out who would be tutoring my oldest for the six, hour-long seminars each week. (My lovely program director kept repeating, “I don’t know, but I’m certain somebody great will turn up!” She would smile sweetly, probably to hide her secret – she intended it to be me.) Finally, I prayed about it and decided that my running (screaming) from this incredible and awesome burden (and opportunity) – it looked so hard - was reason enough for me to volunteer for it. I am thrilled and excited beyond belief to be doing it, and I am honored that other discerning parents have deemed me fit enough to advise them and their young children.

The class I’ll conduct is a seminar. The small group of students and tutor sitting around a table encourages interaction and discussion. It welcomes debate, challenging the students to contribute. You can’t fade into the scenery in a class of nine. But even more importantly, the class will be studying the classics – books that will also challenge the students to think, consider, and justify.

You may have read my previous posts expounding on the great benefits of the classical model, arguing for why we enlist the classics and classical language as a basis for instruction, but I daresay I have never put it as succinctly and beautifully as this other home schooling mom who also works for the Classical Conversations organization:

By reading the classics, we initiate children into adulthood. We train them to exercise their reason on fictional issues so that they may be able to exercise discernment and sound judgment in their own lives. Reading great books and entering the great conversation that has continued throughout history is a critical part of maturing to both the love of wisdom and the practice of virtue.

This quote came from an article by Jennifer Courtney as a response to another arguing that kids should simply read what they enjoy. That’s like offering kids exactly what they want for dinner – oh, and the green M&M’s are healthier, right? It reminds me of what our local superintendent of schools said: I’m not sure it’s even necessary for kids to learn long division, what with calculators. Then, by extrapolation, why learn anything at all? The reason we learn is to be able to make our own choices and decisions. Education is the basis for freedom. Without knowledge and reason, how can we be responsible citizens of this great country?

The new Common Core system does not even pretend to return to the stringent educational standards of yesteryear, but instead relaxes current standards even more. In California, one of the approved literature choices on the high school reading list is Invasive Plants of California. It’s, literally, a list – not exactly literature.

It might seem, to a discerning eye, that the government is acting against the interests of private liberty and individual responsibility. So, what of the citizens’ response to their government? Are we so very willing to give our freedoms away at the first offer of a food stamp and a band-aid? Have we entirely lost our reason? Although it may seem like the easy thing to do, allowing the government (ostensibly “the experts”) control of various aspects of our lives is, in fact, cowardice.

Sometimes, you have to do something that is hard simply because it is hard. Just for “practice.” But sometimes it’s hard because it’s the right thing to do. If you go to the gym and don’t lift the weights, you won’t get strong. Do we really want our children to be weak and stupid?

The classical model requires students to read challenging literature because that’s how they grow, learn to think, and hone their ability to reason. Teaching is actually the final stage of learning, according to the classical model, the opportunity to exercise one’s knowledge of the material. My seminar will encourage the students to challenge each other, and, yes, even me. That may prove difficult for me, but I know it’s the right thing to do, and I expect I’ll grow and gain insight in the process, right alongside my students.

Common Core and the Common Good

Concerned about Common Core and the Common Good?  Here are some possible solutions:

Phone your school board and say something like, “I’m concerned that Common Core may not be all it’s cracked up to be.” Don’t go on the offensive with a bunch of the technical mumbo-jumbo like, “It was adopted before it was even written,” “No one even knows how much it will cost,” or, “They have no right to teach my kids about sex in second grade!” They’ve been given the talking points, and facts may annoy them. Approach with emotion, not rational thought, because anyone  who hasn’t done their own research probably believes CC to be an improvement. I don’t recommend using the logic of “It’s never been tested! How can you call it an improvement?” You could try something less reasonable, such as, “It frightens me and my lawyer,” or, “Use someone else’s school district as your guinea pigs!”

If you’re feeling feisty, add, “Did you really think you could get this by all us parents without any of us noticing – without a vote?”

Once you’ve registered your opinion, sit back and watch what happens, like watching paint dry. I recommend a follow-up letter:

Dear [School Personnel],

Please I do not wish to expose my child to the untried curricula that is being implemented, and the data tracking it advances. Honestly! What has data tracking got to do with school curricula?! Can’t we just leave that to the doctors and Obamacare?

Yours truly,

Concerned Parent [insert name here]

Remember you never have to actually make good on this threat! While waiting for a response, consider that this entire mess is not because of education, but because of the almighty dollar. (Surprised?) Here are 10 simple facts:

What is COMMON CORE?

Biggest overhaul to our education system – ever
Adopted by 45 states - before it was written - because of  federal ‘Race to the Top’ funding promises $$$
Designed primarily by non-educators
Never voted on, not even by Congress (OR BY YOU), sacrificing state sovereignty to federal government: school boards, parents, teachers lose autonomy to a non-elected DC entity – setting a precedent
No amendments permitted – no changes allowed
Costs between $12-30 Billion in CA (What does that fix?) $$$
Lower standards than California’s 1997 ones
DATA TRACKING (400 data points) on all children
Completely untested. Are your kids DC’s guinea pigs?
Coming to your school this fall!

Strangely, for many it’s greed-driven, though funding goes toward costly implementation – an iPad for every student (read redundancy of teachers: replacement of humans with machines – your kids love computers, right?), so, it’s a wash. It’s like the bureaucrats make decision without even considering consequences! Indiana, after spending $4 billion, is stepping back from Common Core. (Can they vote against it if they never voted for it?)

After waiting for an answer that will never appear, use your frustration at being ignored about this monstrous and important issue (because, remember, you weren’t even asked, they’re not really your kids, and you didn’t build that). Tell the school, in writing, of your desire to home school as a way of avoiding the disaster that Common Core obviously is (why was it pushed though clandestinely, otherwise?). To this end, tell them, you will be keeping your child home, instead of enrolling him/her in the fall, and warn them the funding that would accompany that child to the school will be sacrificed on the altar of Common Core. This will please the bureaucrats in Sacramento to no end (they love to keep your money) but it will put a dent in your school’s plans. If enough parents do this, perhaps the school will be forced to reconsider, so they can have money.

Does that sound drastic? Well, drastic times…

Full disclosure: there is a website, Stop Common Core, to guide you through a less “activist” approach, but – my way is much more fun!

Here’s my theory: California, requires parents to file a Private School Affidavit  (declaration of intent to home school) only between the first and fifteenth of October. That basically means you are generously allowing the school six weeks to get cured of the Common Core, while they are hemorrhaging money. More importantly, it gives you six more weeks with your kids before they go off for indoctrina er – education. Maybe the school will wise-up. Maybe you will  bring your kid in to school on October 15th (saying the whole home school thing didn’t really work out), and the school will miraculously be purged of the Common Core. (CA officials may ask only to see a PSA, no other school paperwork, so truancy should not be an issue before the October 15th deadline.) Or maybe you will discover the joy of a relationship with your child (untainted by a bureaucracy’s intervention), and your kids will experience parents who aren’t the slave-driving task-masters of “homework” that their schools make them out to be.

Maybe good things really can come out of Common Core.

Transformation

I just interviewed Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt on my radio show, Flash Point Live. Ms. Iserbyt is a very smart, very astute woman, and she has a formidable amount of knowledge, having served as the Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Education during the first administration of Ronald Reagan. While working there she discovered a long-term strategic plan by tax exempt foundations and corporations to transform America through our education system. She became a whistle-blower (before it was even a popular term).

I pause briefly here to recall to you our illustrious president’s quote, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Ms. Iserbyt has written several books. Deliberate Dumbing Down is recommended and available online. In our interview she also advocated her upcoming project, “Global Road to Ruin through Education.”

Sure, she sounds like an alarmist, but it’s no wonder. Having lived through WWII, and heard people say things like, “Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low income families into the middle class,” by some of the main forces in the movement to dumb down education, as the way to create a ‘working class,’ it is enough to set my own heart palpitating. Yes, that’s eerily like what the “worker’s paradise” (Marxist) movement was also going for. Iserbyt is justified in her skepticism and condemnation of the current efforts for reform in our education system. That disease has never left the body of our education system. It is only becoming more and more entrenched.

Where’s the proof? Simply the secretive manner in which the shift is occurring: Common Core. Parents are being informed, and if they ask, they are placated with platitudes. I spoke with two women today, one was a teacher, it turned out. I asked the first if she had heard of Common Core. She answered, “No, what’s that?” (She’s standing next to her good friend, a teacher, but has never heard of Common Core, the biggest reform in the US education system, ever.) I started to tell her, and the teacher piped up with, “I can tell you’ve heard a lot of the bad rumors about Common Core, but I’m a teacher and there’s a lot of really great things about it.”

“Really?” I countered. “Is that why you’re moving to Texas, where they’ve voted it’s cousin out of the state?” I didn’t know if she was hypocritical or just ridiculous. “If it’s so great why aren’t you staying to teach it, and why hasn’t your friend here heard you expounding on its benefits?”

Surprisingly, to me, a major source of concern for Ms. Iserbyt is the charter school system. She calls them the trojan horse of reform. On paper, they seem great – parents can take the initiative and get state funding for providing what we would all hope would be an improved situation for kids in school. But, in fact, they’re simply a case of the government handing out money for free to people who are not, in any way, held accountable – there is no elected board for the charter school. Once they grow in popularity, voila! They represent the argument to do away with boards altogether… and, well, uh, why have elections at all, then? Do you see where this is going?

Common Core’s less immediate goal is to have education all online, in devices, (have you heard about the push for technology in the classroom?) which not only makes it easier for the government to data mine all of our kids’ information, but also, eventually, why have teachers at all? No boards, no teachers… Hmmm.

This plan is working in Russia already, btw. And last Tuesday, the LAUSD board approved $30 million for iPads for 30,000 students, all complete with Common Core Apps.

The ultimate goal is to train workers who do what they’re told with no resistance. C. S. Lewis said, “If education is beaten by training, civilization dies.” But don’t take his word for it. Listen to Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the head of philosophy & psychology at Prussian University in Berlin, who influenced the entire movement :

Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will beincapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished … When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.” 

Chilling. That quote is from all the way back in 1810. Have we come any further in our strenuous work on education? Wikipedia defines it thusly, “Any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational.” That would ostensibly include playing video games, petting my dog, or drinking alcohol, as being educational. Wahoo! Let’s party!

So, Wikipedia is clearly flawed, but it’s also reflective of our (flawed) common understanding. Observe how we are, societally, replacing “education” with “job-preparedness,” or training. Parents are less concerned with how their kids learn as they are with them finding a good job after college. This is a bastardization of the classical definition of education, which is to encourage children in learning to think analytically. But with teachers like the one mentioned above, who can only think what she’s been taught to say, we cannot hope for our children in school to learn to think for themselves.

This fundamental transformation must stop now.

Re-Education

The greatest goal of a solid education is to give students the ability to think, reason, and discern. Learning various disciplines like algebra and writing are simply the tools for this. For instance, mathematics exposes a student to rudimentary logic, and writing is argument, stimulating development of the skills of analysis and reason. I recently attended a local forum on Common Core, hosted by our local newspaper and served willingly by both sides of the issue, and I was completely astonished to hear the Superintendent of Schools say, “I’m not sure learning long division is even all that necessary anymore. These kids will always have calculators.” Despite is title, his attitude is antithetical to the basic tenets of education.

The event was heavily attended – standing room only – by anti-Common Core activists, and there was a rowdy mood among the crowd. They felt betrayed by the unilateral implementation of the greatest overhaul of the country’s education system in, well, ever. Nobody voted on this, no parents were ever consulted, and even educators were mostly left out of the discussion. The Common Core was developed by bureaucrats – but why? And why did the states willingly adopt it, even before it was written?

The answer to that is as old as business: money. Of course, there are myriad reasons why money should not dictate our education methods, not the least of which is that nothing should dictate in a democracy.

Toward the end of forum, when they were cutting the question mics in the audience, a nervous blond woman standing in front of me walked up to the mic insisting on asking her question. The moderator tried to silence her, saying we had run out of time, but the audience encouraged him to allow her to speak – we weren’t in any hurry. “There is a video that shows Common Core implementation – telling children to choose between ‘Mommy asks me to clean my room,’ and ‘Mommy nags me to clean my room.’ The correct answer is ‘nags.’ Why are they bringing this kind of anti-parent teaching into our classrooms? And how can you assure us this won’t happen here?”

The Superintendent of Schools readily suggested we let the kids decide what seems appropriate. With horrible, telling gaffs like that, it’s no wonder the schools had not invited their parents to the forum, why most parents have never heard of CC.

When a state imposes a broad new curriculum in our schools without any input from educators or parents, no vote, no discussion, that is a totalitarian act, and parents and school boards that passively accept that infringement on their rights shouldn’t be surprised or upset when they are told their opinions are no longer necessary. The state just proved it.

As the forced implementation of this new curriculum already indicates, Common Core is the antithesis of traditional education: it aims to stifle individualism and restrict learning. Some call it behavior modification, some call it brainwashing.

Or, if you insist, “re-education.” Education, it is not.

The Reluctant Radical

I never thought of myself as a radical. I was always a good girl, well behaved and obeying of my parents. I never went through “teenage rebellion.” I didn’t drink or do drugs, even in the international, hedonistic modeling milieu. I remember being on an assignment in the Seychelles for a French magazine when the hair dresser came to me and whispered, “Don’t drink the punch.” To my quizzical look he replied, grinning, “We spiked it with ecstasy. We’re trying to get the stylist high. I’m only telling you because I can tell you don’t do drugs.”

“Wow,” I thought to myself. “Is it that obvious I’m a goody-two-shoes?” It was.

Being such a non-rebel, when I began my home school journey, I was completely innocent. We were traveling, as a family, with the kids still enrolled in a (very understanding) public school. I simply tired of trying to teach my kids their public school’s assigned ”make-up work” as I assumed the role of “substitute teacher” for them.

Then I discovered the JOYS of home schooling. As I researched how to educate my children, I learned precisely how our education system fails them, and how to combat that. I don’t have all the answers – especially not for our schools, but I will say that when parents do their daily drop-off, they don’t just waive their kids goodbye, but often their responsibilities. And the schools can’t take it all on – they’ve admitted as much by sending home homework.

We now have Common Core, which will ostensibly provide a better curriculum, improved learning conditions, and more standardized learning materials. CC has been debunked by many, unfortunately, and is really just a way to level the field of achievement. Providing sameness for all schools nationwide, CC establishes and systematizes a contempt for distinction, a hatred for exceptionalism, and a reverence for mediocrity. Why else would it push off eighth grade algebra until ninth grade, or substitute English literature with technical manuals as required reading?

What Common Core conspicuously fails to address is the disconnect that happens between drop off and school limitations, the crack where many children stumble and fall. Our schools are not lacking in their materials, but in their methodology, and responsible parents who discover this are left with few choices but home schooling.

There is exactly one authentically radical social movement of any real significance in the United States, and it is not Occupy, the Tea Party, or the Ron Paul faction. It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional. Like all radical movements, homeschoolers drive the establishment bats.

Like the author of the above article postulates, home schooling families generally are counter-culture and anti-establishment. But there is one strong distinction from other radical groups – we don’t call out for revising the system. We don’t seek to impose our views on others. We demand only our freedom. While we may encourage and advocate for home schooling, we recognize that we are fringe, which will not change overnight. The only danger we pose to the establishment is our success – the success of our strategies over the system’s.

This isn’t what we asked for. The establishment moved away from us. And Common Core is just the most recent (and blatant) step. We seek to elevate our children, while the establishment seems to want to bring them all (down) to the same level. We admire uniqueness and the schools want homogeneity.

Schools and bureaucrats see homogeneity as easy, as if education could be like a fast-food franchise. Parents might view homogeneity as safety. Blend in, don’t attract attention, don’t stick your neck out. How confusing this must be for the children! We teach fairness and equality of outcome while incongruously worshipping those who excel. Our culture lauds individuals who stand out – all our TV, movie and reality ‘stars’ are testament of that; our politicians, our business leaders. But Common Core and our current system of education honors ‘average’ instead of exceptional, and refuses to encourage the skills and qualities of leadership. More importantly, our schools can’t compete on the international stage, and we are doing absolutely nothing to correct that, as a nation. But individually, some people do recognize this and they are bringing their kids home to educate them properly.

Passion, righteousness, and a dangerous, pervasive ideology (in opposition), creates radicals. I know. I am one, now.

Texas Solves the CSCOPE Problem

CSCOPE is out in Texas, but what about the rest of us? Maybe they will start a trend, and Common Core will also be buried. It’s a step in the right direction.

“The CSCOPE era is over. However, what the last several months has proven is that the state will have to create a plan to monitor all on line material in the future so that our schools and classroom remain completely transparent to parents and the legislature knows what is being taught in our classrooms across Texas,” added Patrick.

Who’s running the “Asylum”?

Remember the German family  I wrote about a few months ago? Here are the current results of their labors:

GERMAN HOMESCHOOLING FAMILY’S REQUEST FOR ASYLUM DENIED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

TheBlaze spoke with Peter Kamakawiwoole, one of the staff attorneys at the HSLDA:

“If the government were to pass a general law precluding everybody from practicing a particular religion, obviously that’s persecution.  Under this ruling, that kind of law would not be persecution [because it applies to everybody equally],” he said.  “That’s unfortunate, because it’s not impossible to imagine any number of minorities, religious or social, facing legislation where they were legislated out of participation in society if the law is worded the right way.”

The US offers people who are compelled to leave their home countries, for fear of persecution, assistance limited to about seven months of cash  and help in connecting to a job, housing, and most of the public benefits available to US citizens. But what about other asylum seekers? The Tsarenaev family received this and more from the citizens of America, despite the older brother traveling back to the “persecuting” old country twice. But for this German family, upstanding people by any measure, not at all affiliated with our potential enemies, “No.”

It just seems that we have a backwards immigration policy for those who seek asylum here in the US now. And it’s not working out well for us, witness the Boston Marathon Bombing, for one.

Common Yawn

Here’s another good article about the new directives for our kids’ literary education.

With the Common Core national education standards coming under increased scrutiny from conservative activists, Republican politicians, and even teachers unions, The Daily Caller News Foundation took a look at the Obama administration’s recommended reading list for K-12 kids.

Common Core’s English standards stress nonfiction over literature. By grade 12, 70 percent of what students read should be informational rather than literary.

Yawn! One of the recommended texts is “Invasive Plant Inventory,” by the California Invasive Plant Council. Seriously? A list of invasive plants will constitute educational literature? Yeah, this is definitely a step up from Great Expectations… This’ll really encourage those kids to crack the books! (Sarcasm intended.)