Conforming to the Core

On July 22nd, Glenn Beck is having a Common Core educational event at 600 theaters around the country called, “We Will Not Conform.” It’s very exciting to think that individuals across the US will be brought together in an interactive event where they can learn and share and even strategize about how to defeat the evil that is currently invading our schools.

My friend, who is extremely knowledgeable about Common Core on US education in general, is refusing to go to this event, because she knows they will be supportive of charter schools, of which she is not.

This is the eternal (it seems) debate. Whether to support a half-way solution as a method to achieve a better version of corruption. I struggle with this myself, because I am very drawn to black-white and not so much into gray. I think in terms of ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’. But radical change is a tough move, and so… baby steps. Is rejecting Common Core and promoting school choice, including charters, better than status quo? Certainly. Is this the best option? No, but that option is not available at this time.

I support Beck’s event simply for its attempt to start the dialog, or raise the volume. I don’t support charters because they are tax-money-for-no-accountability. But as an alternative to no-account public schools, I choose door number “C” for charter. We must engage in any reasonable dialog that is offered, in this case by Beck himself, or there is no discussion at all.

BTW, it turns out that Huckabee has completely walked back his position on CCore. You might recall that initially he proposed changing the name of Common Core (I myself suggested Commune-Core), to fool all those home school zealots out there, but it turns out the home school zealots are not that easily fooled! (Not as easily as Huckabee had been. But he can be excused because, having been present almost at the creation of the standards, or at least the idea to have standards, he simply was unaware of how things had morphed.) Now he’s come to realize the entire initiative was hijacked by the left in an attempt, as per usual, to create a working class of little marxist laborers. Huckabee still believes standards are a good idea. The argument to that is, of course, not if they can be (and were so easily) subverted by nefarious agents.

The most secure solution is for parents to involve themselves more in their kids lives and education, take back the tax payments and relieve the government of a responsibility to which it clearly cannot aspire. That will take a reformation on a grander scale. For the time being, however, discussion is a great place to start, because people cannot effect change in education if they are unaware that change is even necessary. It turns out that education is the antidote to conformity, just as it is to the Common Core.