For the sake of a uniformity in education promoted as a good so that when students move to different schools they will be on the same page in their various courses (the strongest favorable argument), and so that extensive testing can measure student progress comparatively through the common core (more “educating to the test”), a curriculum/educational standards/testing regime has been adopted by 45 States and many Catholic and other private schools called the Common Core (due to severe criticism it is changing its name here and there).
This initiative was heavily funded by internet software and book publishing houses that stand to make literally billions of dollars on its nationwide implementation. Many States and schools adopted the Common Core prior to even knowing what it contained. None adopted it after field testing – there was none. Now that the initial – unfavorable – results are coming in, some schools are dropping Common Core, which has stalled out and a widespread movement to abandon it is spreading.
There are numerous objections to the Common Core, listed below, but our first and primary objection is the significant weakening of the literature portion of the recommended curriculum. Students in the Common Core will be reading less literature, and more “non-fiction” or “informational texts” such as bland, politically biased government EPA and FDA brochures or Federal Reserve System handouts that defend their policies – in other words propaganda.
Page 5 of the introduction to the Common Core English Standards presents a chart that shows that children in grade 4 will be reading 50% “informational” texts vs. literary texts. By grade 8 they will be reading 55% “information texts”; and by grade 12, 70% “informational texts” and only 30% literature.
Because the Common Core Standards Initiative ties teachers’ evaluations to the scores their students make on the Common Core assessments, teachers are indirectly pressured to teach the Common Core Literature Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks. Two of such “Text Exemplars” contain what most people would judge to be pornographic sections. We are not prudes – these two works contain raunchy, inappropriate, lascivious, prurient and sexualized sections: Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Readers may google them to read the texts to judge for themselves – we will not post them here.
What is particularly troubling about including such texts – besides the fact that they contain such unacceptable sections and are otherwise by no means great literature, is the intention and lack of judgment of the people who selected such books in the first place. After including such works – for no literary merit – should we trust them any further? No one with any common sense would have included such texts. Who are these people and what are they up to? Whatever their aims, these selections alone disqualify them from any further serious consideration as good judges of literature, and hence disqualifies the Common Core list they selected as a list any school should follow or use for any purpose.
Going through the rest of the Common Core literature “text exemplars” for high school, we find approximately 54 (39%) out of about 136 books (excluding poetry) that would generally be considered classics and some even Great Books. To be fair, for many schools getting the students to read 54 classics would be a huge improvement; for good-to-excellent schools that should be far too few over 4 years –which exemplifies the “race-to-the-middle” criticism of the mediocrity of the Common Core. But even that is too generous to Common Core: many of these texts are read only in short excerpts, with commentary or answers suggested to teachers that betray a liberal political bias, an anti-religious worldview, or are simply incorrect, and chronologically mixed up.
Here is a brief summary list of additional problems with the Common Core:
- Insufficient, utopian and radical aims of education
- A set of mediocre academic standards
- A pseudo-science of textual “complexity” disguising the real intent of requiring students to read things that would not be found in a traditional literature class
- Superficiality and bias in the choosing of “texts” for reading, to the neglect of the true, great classics
- Simplistic and mind-numbing ways of reading any good literature that remains in the curriculum
- The continuing dumbing down of English classes
- And a tyranny of textbooks that ensures teaches will force on students the absurdities and bias that is the strange brew of the Common Core. [i]
We would add to the above list:
- No coherent or logical organization to the readings, which mix genres and time periods without explanation or apparent purpose
- A defective measure of text difficulty – which seems to be the only organizing principle
- No consistence reference to – indeed, an apparent ignorance of or neutrality to – any historical significance of the books chosen , their importance, lasting influence and connection to the Great Conversation of Western civilization
- No consistency seems to be placed on the moral value of the books selected, with a resulting poverty of meaning, moral worth or search for the transcendent – the good, the true, the beautiful
- An excessive representation of modern books such as Harry Potter and Hunger Games, with no time-testing of their literary worth or lasting influence
- A “Math by Estimation” approach that allows “3 x 4 = 11” not to be marked incorrect, but to be praised for method – even though incorrect (to be sure, math always included consideration of the means, but the correct answer was also critical – both are essential)
We could go on at length in discussing the failures of the Common Core. There are many online articles detailing these. For our purposes this is sufficient.
In conclusion, the Angelicum Academy curriculum – which is classic literature-based – is the very antithesis of the Common Core.
