Common Core Re-Education
Posted by strugatsky 10 years, 10 months ago to Education
Anyone with children in the public school system needs to hear this.
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We have a small business and have employed most of the teenagers in the neighborhood. They come to us for part time work when 14 or 15 and stay until they graduate from high school. This is seasonal work, so we see them in the summers and the break gives us a convenient way to see the changes from year to year. They come to us bright eyed, often intelligent and willing to work. Every year, they get dumber and dumber; by the time they graduate they are almost useless - in other words, ready to join the McDonald's hamburger flipper team, or become a union member, or a government employee - any job function that they are assigned to occupy. We talk to them, ask them what they study, what they read. Not once had anyone mentioned a real book; their basic arithmetic skills are non-existent, asking them to add fractions is a waste of time. This is in a fairly well to do neighborhood where most people are professionally employed and expect most of their children to go to college.
Another item - many of the kids are on prescription medication because the school, parents, or whoever, considers them to be unruly, e.g., ADD. Most of them are normal kids who show signs of independence and the drugs put an end to that.
LEAVE, while you still have the option to leave and add to the numbers that will stop them from pushing this agenda on everyone else.
Still fighting the battle from inside, losing or not.
Altruism has often been pointed out as "socialism", including in calling Jesus Socialist or half a dozen other historic figures. It's a false comparison, because altruism is the voluntary sharing of wealth where one has the means and control to do so.
Constructive Selfishness does not negate altruism - it just recognizes it for what it is - a means to selectively change society for the better by those who create, produce, and sustain society.
Socialism is forced redistribution, the opposite of choice.
The basic premise of the Democratic Party changed in the 1970s, as the Socialist Party stated, publicly, that it would use the Democratic Party as their face to America. They have not only succeeded, but half the representatives presently in my party are members of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Unions were two-fold - they were a way to empower individuals against the abuses of businesses that were not competing for workers, but were cooperating with each other to force worker pay down artificially and abuse them with impunity with unsafe conditions.
They were also a means for socialists to force their own ideology into the mix.
No, I think we can reject the idea of altruism as the basis of redistribution.
What is the alternative? No altruism? No giving by choice by those who wish to? Pass a government law preventing it? That's the OTHER side, the government that Ayn Rand warned us about, getting involved in the freedom we have.
I utterly oppose Socialism, but I oppose any Federal action to empower itself past what is outlined in the Constitution.
That's also one of the foundations my party once held (and does NOT any longer): Freedom.
Socialism is about as far from freedom as one can get, save short term economic freedom. It's a mirage, and always collapses within 75 years. Been tried hundreds of times. Always fails.
On the subject of altruism – I agree with you completely that if a person wants to help others, voluntarily, that’s fine. The problem is that altruism in America is a multi-billion dollar business. The government takes at the point of a gun, but almost everyone else tries to take through manipulation, pressure or a guilt trip. The churches push the guilt trip button, the Girl Scouts push the support our girls button, the food pantries hit the guilt button (you’re supposed to feel guilty for the fact that you work and produce). I once saw a Craigslist ad for a “turn-key charity business” – pay them the money, come up with a cause and start collecting! For 20 years, I’ve asked the “charity collectors” to show me a hungry person, adult or a child, with a caveat that they’re hungry not because they just drank or smoked all they had, and I will feed them. Every time, for 20 years, I get the same pre-programmed response – we know of someone who knows of someone who is hungry. Yes, there’s good in helping others, but in today’s America, that good is like a needle in a haystack.
I wish that I could find a video by Jane Goodall. She began bringing boxes of bananas to a gorilla troupe. When as before each gorilla was an independent individual and provided for their own food, now the biggest gorilla grabbed the box and gorged at leisure. The video shows a previously independent small female crawl over to the big guy and, literally, with her hand stretched out and shaking, begged for the free bananas. This is the essence of welfare.
Ayn opened it up to say, "Hey, it's okay to be NOT sacrifice" in response to what she saw coming about "donations" and "charity".
When altruism and charity become mandatory, even by virtue of being a "good thing" which if you don't do makes you "bad", it's no longer "charity" - it's a requirement, it's a debt, and it's a step toward socialism.
So JFK Socialist? No.
LBJ? I could add to the list above, but you did a good enough job expressing all the reasons I find his behavior contemptible. He was the first in my party to become a true appeaser of the Socialists in this country.
McCarthy saw the dangers of what was coming and was crushed for it.
Later, when the KGB records came out, it turned out that McCarthy was not just right about what he suspected, but had VASTLY undersestimated the degree of infiltration both Hollywood and the U.S. Government had endured and continued to endure after McCarthy was torn down.
LBJ was just he beginning. That's why the Socialist Party was so confident in stating, in the 1970s, that they would use the Democratic Party as their face to America.
They also noted that in people who had the center of the brain associated with pleasure damaged and removed, that all altruistic behavior stops, utterly. Interesting note, that.
Nice to have someone see an ethical JFK Democrat for what he is.
Keep up the fight.
I'll be fighting for freedom (real freedom).
Republicans just fight from another angle.
Brakes and Gas for driving, depending on the goal, each taking turns.
Socialists are the monkey wrench.
Anyway, I don't think that either party can be cleaned up - it will take a major cleansing to get this country out of the abyss that it had plunged itself into. That, in my opinion, can happen only through a total collapse and a civil war. Depressing, but I don't think that there's an alternative. And if that doesn't happen within the next 10 years or less, the recovery will be nearly impossible: the new generation is so uneducated, incapable and unwilling to work, that there will not be anyone capable of rebuilding. We will go the way of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Look at the socialist countries failing already.
If we don't let the Socialists make excuses, don't let them label successes "Socialist" and failures "capitalist", then we're likely to have plenty of examples of why we as a nation do not want to go that way.
Look at what happened to the OWS.
Why stay in such a party?
Many left the party, saying "the party left me".
They're right, it did. And more and more as people abandoned the party to the very people they disagreed with.
Could you imagine if Russia had simply infiltrated us with pro-Russian people who loudly pushed a Russian agenda and we decided that there was too much Russia in the USA so we should all leave it to them?
A John Galt only works if you convince the people necessary to the "revolution" to come with you. Then the revolution fails, the country may fail, and everyone turns to the solution YOU suggest, because you have the resources to do it.
So I remain. It would serve no purpose to leave.
Here, every vote I make is for the least socialist candidate, and imagine if everyone had stayed and voted that way... .
As it is, I'm a roadblock. I take some abuse from modern Socialists in Democratic Party clothing, but tough for them.
I like the way the professor lays out the goals and gives examples in the video. Homeschool is not an option, they will have the same standards and assessments to meet.. It's like having a bad professor: do you go along with his stupid ideas to get the grade, or do you challenge him?
If the UN is involved, you know that the goal is world socialism, and whatever it takes to make that happen. Yes, it is like Mao, who removed children early from parents lest they be influenced by their thinking. So too does Common Dore distance parents from the decisions of what their child learns, while distancing the child from the parent through values clarification in the name of English or health class. George Clooney as an English reading assignment - what merit in that? Who, else, Cher, Alex Baldwin, Robert Redford, in place of Thomas Wolfe (the "Look Homeward Angel" one), Wm. Wordsworth or Dickens? No way! Math that says any answer is right if you can explain it? Would you want a surgeon so trained? I see no advancement in learning, We may level out on the international scale, if the UN gets all countries dumbed down equally. Now, could you support any politician who said yes, that is what we should have!
Hillsdale also has several on-line courses that are free and good for high school kids.
Common core does not represent the material that most parents want their children to learn (Soft areas like History, Social Studies, etc.). the hard areas like mathematics, and science are more in line with the "older ways".
There appears to be a lot of material that is what I would call necessary. First, Second and Third graders leering about sexual orientation. Fifth graders learning about sexual techniques etc. This material is not common core it is Hard Core.
The whole curriculum should be reexamined and revised to make it a more meaningful body of knowledge appropriate for the age of the student.
It is insidious and destructive to our entire foundation as a nation.
But you are correct, bias and discrimination do exist - and I would even contend, are good things when applied properly.
Another way to look at it is from the "back-side": -- which results would you prefer? The current trend of "anti-discrimination" policies that are tantamount to censorship, in speech and in action, with force being used by those that scream the loudest against those whose mouths have been taped shut? Or leaving individuals alone and "allowing" open discrimination as the choice of every individual? Will the later choice result in some unpleasant and "unfair" situations - sure. But it will also push those that felt discriminated to prove that they are in fact better people, as opposed to running to the government for protection and food stamps.
I do want to make a caveat here -- although I believe that individuals should be free to discriminate or not as they see fit, in case of government agencies, discrimination must be controlled (illegal). This is because the government operates on public funds and does not have the restrictions and pressures of a private business or an individual. If allowed, the government can discriminate indefinitely and never pay a price for it -- if things go bad, it just raises taxes to pay for its mistakes.
That's my opinion and you are welcome to disagree.