Look Who Funded and Developed “Common Core” Education

Dave Hodges
Activist Post

After reading this article, the reader will become aware that Common Core is a simply a regurgitation of Bloom’s Taxonomy combined with some very clever propaganda interwoven into the fabric of every course which embraces social justice, collectivism the eventual deindustrialization of America through the acceptance of climate change theories and the resulting carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies which will follow.

No teacher and no school board member was asked to contribute to the Common Core standards. Nor was any State Legislature involved in the creation of this monstrosity.

Under this plan, every teacher will teach the same material with much of the same teaching strategies as every other teacher. This is the 21st Century educational version of the Stepford Wives. The Tenth Amendment is dead and individual freedom is being stamped out.

Common Core Plagiarizes Bloom’s Taxonomy

Common core espouses the laudable goal of making children think critically. In every piece I have read where the establishment defends Common Core, the company line states that it is important to move children away from memorization learning to analyzing and creating. I wholeheartedly agree with this goal. However, we do not have to spend billions of dollars to achieve this end.

In 1948, psychologist Benjamin Bloom and associates, developed the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Under the taxonomy, learning progressed from memorization to analyzing and creating. If that sounds familiar, Common Core has copied Bloom’s taxonomy almost verbatim. Sure they changed nouns to verbs and verbs to nouns, but the progression of learning is almost identical. And this is what is being touted as the great revolution in teaching and learning. After comparing Bloom’s Taxonomy to Common Core, can there be any doubt that of the lack of authenticity of Common Core?

Why would the creators of Common Core go backwards and regurgitate Bloom’s Taxonomy? First, the taxonomy is respected and gave America some of her best days in public education. Bloom’s taxonomy was successful because of the fact that the government did not get to control the content or the application. Secondly, if a respected learning progression will be universally accepted, then the substance behind the theoretical approach can be slipped in and the propagandizing of the young can begin. Yes, I am talking about a system of education where propaganda is a thinly disguised goal.

Nobody is going to challenge the notion that we should get children to think more critically. And what if the creators of Common Core can mandate specific topical material to be taught within the Common Core, an entire generation of young learners can be molded to the desired point of view. Before you tell me to remove my tin foil hat, please examine the evidence listed below and then honestly tell me that there is not a cause for concern.

First, let’s take a look at the history of failed federal educational programs.

One Failed Federal Education Program After Another

To understand where we are going, we have to first understand where we have been. Teachers have endured such educational faux pas from Goals 2000, to School to Work, to No Child Left Behind and now we are witnessing the latest in fad in American education, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Each one of the aforementioned programs threw billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet, while contributing to the dramatic decrease in student performance. For example, SAT Reading scores, for the high school class of 2012, reached a 40+ year low since the implementation of No Child Left Behind. (NCLB).

The successor of NCLB, Common Core, is based upon social justice, arriving at knowledge and subsequent decision making through a spirit of collectivism and developing a communal agreement about the need to teach and to integrate into each classroom an underlying theme of sustainable development. These goals are not just going to be taught in specific Environmental Science courses, but these philosophies are to be implemented and taught in EACH and EVERY course that a child takes during their educational experiences beginning with pre-K and stretching to post graduate secondary education.

Bill Gates, the driving force behind Common Core

Globalist and Eugenics proponent, Bill Gates, is one of the Founding Fathers of the Common Core movement and its copyright holders, NGA/CCSSO. Gates donated about $25 million dollars to promote his version of global education. Gates has made several donations to CCSSO to promote Common Core. In 2009, Gates made two separate donations of $9,961,842 and $3,185,750. In 2010, Gates donated $743,331 and in 2011, he contributed $9,388,911. In 2008, Gates donated $2,259,780 to the National Governor’s Association (NGA) to develop and implement Common Core. The NGA is the conduit into America from the United Nations UNESCO, Education for All Agenda 21 version of globalist education being forced down the throats of our young people.

Gates is listed as partner with UNESCO/UN to fund ”Education For All,” which in turn was transferred to the National Governors Association which changed the name to Common Core. In a key document, “The Dakar Framework for Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments” which identifies the goals for what became Common Core. The document speaks directly to the Agenda 21 educational ideals of collectivism, social justice, environmental justice and the espousing of the beliefs of the pseudoscience known as sustainable development.

Common Core Serves the Edicts of Agenda 21

Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 Public Awareness and Training focuses on impressing upon every citizen on the planet, the indispensable need for achieving sustainable development. In plain language, Common Core is going into every country. The implementation names of this global education may vary, but the underlying Agenda 21 philosophies do not. Chapter 36 also states that the globalists plan to “reorient” worldwide education toward sustainable development. In future installments in this series, the weak academic standards of Common Core will be revealed. Reform of the nation’s standardized objectives is merely a smokescreen to the true intent of the program which is to covertly gain acceptance for Agenda 21 policies.

Subsequently, the Agenda 21/UNESCO documents clearly state their intention to turn each student into a globalist who will accept smaller living space, residing in the stack-and-pack cities of the future, acceptance of drastic energy reduction and the loss of Constitutional liberties. The document goes on to say that:

While basic education provides the underpinning for any environmental and development education, the latter needs to be incorporated as an essential part of learning. Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns…

Educational Russian Roulette

The Common Core is an untested, federally promoted, unfunded experiment. The standards creators (NGA/CCSSO) have not set up a monitoring plan to test this national experiment, to see what, if any, unintended consequences the Common Core will have on our children. This is a game Russian Roulette being played on the socio-emotional, intellectual and spiritual aspects of our children’s development.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. If we let the teaching of the controversial topic of sustainability in each and every course, our children will not be given the chance to debate the merits of climate change theories. This will lead to the unquestioned ushering in of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies. This will spell economic doom for this country as know it today through the biggest wealth transfer in American history through cap and trade which will severely curtail individual and small business energy usage.

Yet, the rich will be able to afford to buy their way out of restrictions by paying the penalties that the average person cannot afford. Ultimately, this will lead to neo-feudalism. If you doubt the veracity of these comments, let’s give President Obama the floor and let him tell you in his own words.

Are we really naive enough to believe that Obama is just making up this nonsense about implementing cap and trade and causing our utility prices to skyrocket and significantly lowering the standard of living for the middle class?

We can teach our kids to think critically without this program, we could just return to Bloom’s Taxonomy because it works. However, this would not offer the pretext for the Bill Gates’ of the world to shove their climate change agenda down the throats of our children and get them to acquiesce to what is coming.

In another 10 years, this federal program will implode like all the other federal education programs, but the damage will have been done. How many more decades can America endure a drop of reading comprehension scores by another 40+ points until we are as functionally illiterate as most Third World countries? And more importantly, how far will that American standard of living be decreased during this time as we produce a generation of children who will mindlessly accept the resources scraps of this planet as they attempt to survive in a completely changed world?

Solutions

Is it time to homeschool? It is certainly understandable if many choose this option. For most, the time for mass homeschooling has not yet arrived, but we need to demand accountability and demand it now. Teachers and administrators need to be involved in revamping of this program. For example, when dealing with controversial topics like climate change, both sides of the issue need to be fairly presented. We need to halt the funding of Common Core immediately and embrace what it is based upon: Bloom’s Taxonomy. We need to embrace what we know works, not the anecdotal accounts of Common Core supporters who stand to make billions of dollars through the implementation of this program. We also need to return education to the local level and empower local school boards to make education decisions on curriculum as they once did. Then and only then, can we shape a future for our children that we can trust.

Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Views and The Arizona Republic.

The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty.