First Amendment Common Core Arrest

Yard Dart · Sep 21, 2013

A parent in Towson, Md., was arrested Thursday night at a public forum after vocally expressing his concerns about the Baltimore County School District’s plan to use Common Core standards in its curriculum.
Robert Small, a concerned father, was forcefully removed from the meeting by a police officer after he interrupted Baltimore County Schools Superintendent Dallas Dance during the question-and-answer portion of the forum.
The meeting apparently didn’t allow parents to stand up and ask questions or comment. Parents and other attendants were instead asked to write their questions on a piece of paper and officials would read them.
However, Small began speaking out against the district’s use of Common Core, prompting a security guard, who was also a police officer, to approach him and order him to leave. “Let’s go!” he said sternly.

(YouTube)
When Small didn’t immediately comply, the officer began pulling his arm and pushing him towards the exit. Some audience members gasped at the cop’s use of force.
“Don’t stand for this,” the father said as he was dragged out. “You are sitting here like cattle! Is this America?”
Small also urged other parents to demand answers on Common Core and the curriculum being used to educate their children.
As the Baltimore Sun reports, the officer then “pushed Small and then escorted him into the hall, handcuffed him and had him sit on the curb in front of the school.”
Small was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer and faces a $2,500 fine and up to 10 years in prison. He was also charged with disturbing a school operation, which carries an additional $2,500 and up to six months in jail.
Small attempted to push the officer away when he first approached him, the police report claims. Watch the video and decide for yourself if Small assaulted the officer:
Despite some opposition from parents, the Maryland State Department of Education reportedly plans to go forward with its implementation of Common Core standards, joining 45 other states and Washington, D.C., in adopting the standards for the first time this year.
“Look, I am being manhandled and shut down because I asked inconvenient questions,” Small told the Baltimore Sun after the incident. “Why won’t they allow an open forum where there can be a debate? We are told to sit there and be lectured to about how great common core is.”
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‘Is This America?’: Parent ‘Manhandled’, Arrested While Speaking Out Against Common Core at Public Forum | Video | TheBlaze.com

If you have kids in school or about to be in school it behooves you to be just like this guy and demand an education for your child....not an indoctrination!!!!
YMMV
YD

Yard Dart · Sep 21, 2013

This week alone, Glenn has shared two disturbing cases of the Bill of Rights literally being re-written in our children’s textbooks. An AP U.S. history textbook used in Denton, Texas defined the Second Amendment as “The people have the right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.” Meanwhile, students in Simpsonville, South Carolina were using a textbook that combined the Second and Third Amendments into one singular sentence: “The Second and Third Amendments — grant citizens the right to bear arms as members of a militia of citizen-soldiers and prevent the government from housing troops in private homes in peacetime.”
Cases like those, combined with ongoing concerns about the new Common Core standards, have lead many to question the state of education in America. Glenn has been vocal about his support and experience with homeschooling, and now former Senator Ron Paul has been speaking out about the benefits of homeschool.

“Ron Paul has a new mission in life. And amen, amen, amen,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “It is to get 20 or 25 percent of the population to be homeschooled. And you would not believe the response of the people on MSNBC in this interview. Listen to this interview with Ron Paul.”
RON PAUL: I want people to be able to home school their children. Not everybody is, this is designed to pick out the leaders who want to, and maybe 20 percent might be interested in doing this. But they would at least see, these would be leaders who then would be talking about running for Congress and understand why the Federal Reserve is a problem today. We have been conditioned, in all our schools, that it’s good to have a very, very robust foreign policy, to be involved in all these countries, we’ve been taught the Federal Reserve is sacred except for the last few years people are questioning the Federal Reserve. We’ve been taught deficits are good. Everyone has been taught one of our greatest presidents was Woodrow Wilson, but if you’re liberal or conservative, if you look at Woodrow Wilson, he was, he violently abused our civil liberties. He was the one that told us we had to march around the world. He was the one that changed our foreign policy. And I’d like to show that some of our presidents, the only great president have been warmongers and maybe people who argued for negotiations might be a better president. So it will be a different approach. But it will be up front. It will be the freedom philosophy. It will be based on individual freedom and not a collectivist approach.
“Can you imagine the perplexing expressions on the faces of the people at MSMBC right now,” Pat asked.
There are definitely some issues with Paul’s reasoning when it comes to the curriculum he proposes, but Glenn sees an even greater problem.
“It’s not a chance this is going to happen. Only because once this kind of thinking starts to take real root, and it already is, the federal government has got to shut homeschoolers down,” Glenn explained. “They have to because you will have too many free thinkers out there.”
“Yeah, there’s other problems with this though, too, Glenn,” Pat said. “Obviously. You’re ignoring them
“I know,” Glenn said. “MSNBC is about to get to them. Thank goodness they’re there.
COMMENTATOR: 20 percent of children being homeschooled that’s going to mean a vast drop in the number of women in the work force because it’s largely women who are doing the homeschooling. A lot of women can’t afford to give up their jobs. A lot of families can’t afford that and do we actually wants to be encouraging women not to take part of the work force because we know how valuable that diversity is. I’m just, I’m concerned about advocating homeschooling on this level when women are having such a hard time already, staying in the work force.
RON PAUL: Of course those are the problems created by what I’m trying to correct because they have to be in the work force and they have to work and not take care of kids because of the system that we have, because it’s survival for them. So you are, you’re absolutely right, there isn’t a choice.
“Stop for a second,” Glenn said. “Only MSNBC could come up with something this insane. So excuse me. We would be hurting women because we would be encouraging them to stay home with their kids? Because of the diversity in the work place, that’s more important than having mom at home, teaching her own children.?
“Oh, diversity in the workplace is way more important than that,” Pat quipped. “Ron’s wrong about that – they’re not absolutely right. Like Stu said, there’s many women already – more than 20 percent already at home and could do this. Do they want to? I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s up to them.
“You have to want to do it,” Glenn reiterated.
“You really do. Not everybody is equipped to do that and I get that fully,” Pat concluded. “But it would be a good thing for your kids and for America. I mean, whether it’s the man or the woman, one parent in the home, bringing up the kids, would be a good thing. Hey, I don’t know how we’ve lost sight of that.”
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Ron Paul on MSNBC: Homeschooling is a better alternative – Glenn Beck

Yard Dart · Sep 30, 2013

I am a high school English teacher. I became a teacher because I believe that literacy, which goes beyond just reading the words on the page, is an absolute necessity for maintaining our Republic. Proof of that is found in the many laws against reading certain texts, or against reading altogether, that have been passed down by every tyrant since literacy became available to the general population. A few examples of such tyrannical laws are the Taliban banning reading for any female or laws against teaching slaves to read or the Soviet Union’s banning of such books as A Wrinkle in Time, Where’s Waldo, and To Kill a Mockingbird. The communist Khmer Rogue in Cambodia so hated literacy that just wearing glasses was cause for execution. Literacy leads to freedom and tyrants know it.
I have been teaching for over twenty years. Generally, I have been given either no curriculum or curriculum that was focused on skills, not specific texts. I would have to get those skills taught in whatever way I wanted to get there. Sometimes I was given more direction and that direction was generally pretty good including texts, key terms, supplemental stories, and suggested writing assignments. These directions were created at a school level by the teachers in the school. I helped write some myself. Mostly, I have had a lot of freedom in how I could achieve the learning goals.
Not anymore.
Today I was in a professional development session for my school district. Our school system has swallowed the Common Core curriculum whole. Why wouldn’t they? The federal system has said that it is “voluntary”, but “voluntary” means that the district gets cut off from major federal funding if it does not adopt the standards, so “voluntary” is subjective. Here is what the Washington Post reported Sen. Charles Grassley has to say about Common Core:
Current federal law makes clear that the U.S. Department of Education may not be involved in setting specific content standards or determining the content of state assessments. Nevertheless, the selection criteria designed by the U.S. Department of Education for the Race to the Top Program provided that for a state to have any chance to compete for funding, it must commit to adopting a “common set of K-12 standards” matching the description of the Common Core.
The Washington Post also reported, “The Republican National Committee recognizes the CCSS for what it is — an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children…”
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Common Core, it is a curriculum created in the private sector but pushed onto states by the federal government and endorsed by Bill Gates. The cost of implementing the program runs from millions to billions depending on the state. It is untested and unresearched. It has been criticized for being not as rigorous as proponents claim, clearly biased to a liberal perspective, so much so that many see it as indoctrination, and it is being forced on the states in spite of the fact that a federal curriculum is unconstitutional violating the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which established the principle that“…the “power” to oversee education belongs to the states. This longstanding principle of local control of education is reiterated throughout our laws and government codes.”
All of that sounds like something that makes NO connection whatsoever to most parents or teachers or American citizens as to why they should fight this curriculum. Here, I am going to provide you with a concrete example that shows the ugly heart of the Common Core. There is something deeply dark and offensive in this lesson created to support Common Core. It is a lesson designed to corrupt essential human decency.
The unit – sorry “module” – that I am using as an example is centered around To Kill a Mockingbird with the theme of “How individuals demonstrate individuality in the face of outside pressures.” At the beginning of all of this, it looks good. I love the book; it is a great American classic and I have taught it many times. The module includes 30 days of lessons associated with the novel and multiple additional short reading assignments. However, as I looked this module over, I became more and more concerned. For me to break down the many problems with this module in detail would take quite a while, so I am going to show you an example of one lesson on one short reading assignment that left me speechless with horror.
This assignment in the module includes a short story by Guy de Maupassant, 19th century writer famous forThe Necklace. Again, this seems rather innocent; this story is often included in high school texts, but not thisparticular story and, more importantly, not with this particular writing assignment.
The short story is The Mother of Monsters (link below). A quick summary of the story is that a gentleman on vacation is introduced to the Mother of Monsters, a local oddity described as a “peasant” and the “Devil”. Her story is that she finds herself pregnant while she is working as a simple serving girl. She binds her body with boards and cords to hide her growing belly. Her child is born horribly deformed. She takes care of the child, but resents it, until a sideshow man comes along and offers to buy the “thing” and to pay a yearly stipend for its use. Once she realizes how much money she can make, she repeats her pregnancy pattern by birthingmonster after monster after monster of intentionally deformed children to sell to showmen. She lives a “bourgeois” life as a result (note the stab at the bourgeois here).
The narrator is reminded of this “Devil” when he later sees a popular “Parissiane” strolling on a beach followed by admirers. Her three children are also all deformed because she wants to maintain her trim figure throughout her pregnancies, so she keeps her corset tightly cinched. Peasant and lady; different, yet the same. Both the Mother of Monsters. Both display a level of selfish evil that most humans would revile.
Now as a high school story, this story may have a lot of meat to chew on for discussion…for maybe 11th or 12thgraders, but this is a story assigned to incoming 9th graders, students who are 13 or 14 years old. Students this age are not ready to handle the truly disturbing elements of a story which reveals some of the most perverse sides of human nature. That is bad enough; however, it gets worse. You may wonder what this story has to do with To Kill a Mockingbird and the theme of individuality. Here is the writing assignment associated with this story:
Write an essay that compares the cultural experience reflected in To Kill a Mockingbird and The Mother of Monsters and explain how this experience helped a character demonstrate individuality in the face of outside pressure.
Individuality! Outside Pressure!!!! These women chose to deform their children for their own selfish gains or selfish vanity! The first pregnancy of the peasant woman we might forgive out of mercy, but the purposeful birthing of the rest of the 11 children that she intentionally deformed is unconscionable and unforgivable. The same holds with the Parisienne.
To judge these women as demonstrating their INDIVIDUALITY in the face of outside pressure is absurd and defies human decency. It is like insisting Jeffery Dahmer was expressing his individuality through cannibalistic murder. Additionally, it is not a major leap to conclude that if deforming your children in order to express your own individuality is acceptable, then killing your children to protect your individuality (or selfish inhumanity) is perfectly fine too. This is obviously a pro-abortion message. This story paired with this assignment is a repulsive perversion of the concept of “lesson”; it is a corruption of anything descent and good.
There is something deeply repulsive in this lesson, especially as it is aimed at students as young as 13. I have been told that I must teach this module. I can make some adjustments, but not too many. I am struggling to find a way to NOT perpetuate the ugliness found here. I am certainly NOT going to teach this story, though I may find myself in trouble with the system as a result. Some things are worth refusing to do even if there is a cost.
This is what is going on in our schools. This is what you need to see with open eyes. They are doing more than trying to increase rigor; they are indoctrinating our children into one way of thinking—their way! Schools should teach how to think, but never what to think. This is why we must fight what some are trying to sell us as “hope and change” to America.
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A Monstrous Story for a Monstrous Curriculum: The Ugly Heart of Common Core |

tulianr · Oct 1, 2013

I couldn't deal with such idiocy. That's why we homeschool. It keeps me out of jail.

Brokor · Oct 1, 2013

If anything, the "police officer" (security guard) assaulted the parent.

I'm sick of the double standard and abusive police state tyranny. I'm sick of a lot of things, including the public indoctrination with "government" sponsored propaganda.

I have an idea. From now on, all "citizens" travel armed (or unarmed if they choose) and with their own private armed security detail, used to stand in between them and the state hired gestapo so they can utilize equal force. No more games. No more bullying by the police state. Bring guns, stand up to the criminal elite and their idiotic mindless servants. Have the private security wear uniforms, and let it be known that any show of force by the gestapo will be met in kind. Let our voices be heard, or let vengeance be taken on the criminals who pose as our saviors while using gorillas to haul us away should we speak out against them. END THIS.

In my opinion, that man was far too nice. If that gestapo agent had touched me, I would have warned him VERY sternly, "touch me again, and that's assault, and I will put you down like the rabid dog that you are." (and it's a very good thing I do not attend these places for that very reason.)

VHestin · Oct 4, 2013

Well yet another reason I'm glad I don't have kids(one of the other reasons being I am NOT going to give my mother more reasons to point and laugh at me, I give her enough as it is). I'd homeschool them anyway. And we don't have TV so they wouldn't get indocrinated with mindless pap. TV these days to me is just crap meant to A: demoralize the population because so much TV is negative these days, and B: serve as a distraction. Let people focus on stupid fictional crap so they don't know what's going on around them.

Yard Dart · Jan 26, 2015

If you are troubled by Common Core, check out the controversial new nationalized science standards.

TOPEKA, Kan. – In education circles, 2013 may well be remembered as the Year of Nationalized Learning Standards – and the beginning of the political battles they instigated.

Even while Americans are still debating the merits of the new Common Core math and English standards that are being installed in more than 40 states, a set of nationalized science learning standards is making its way down the K-12 turnpike.
They’re known as Next Generation Science Standards, and they’re already being implemented in seven states and considered in 26 others. The Next Generation-ready states are Delaware, California, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
The new science standards could prove every bit as controversial as the Common Core standards they were designed to complement.
The first source of controversy involves the authors of the new standards. Unlike Common Core, which was developed by two private organizations with official-sounding names, Next Generation was developed in large part by the federal government.
Joy Pullmann of The Heartland Institute reports that “13 federal agencies, including NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and (the) U.S. Department of the Interior” helped Achieve Inc. craft the new K-12 science content standards, which tell teachers which concepts to teach, and when.
Next Generation is officially being peddled by Achieve Inc. as a state-led creation, but the federal government’s fingerprints are all over the standards.
“Federal agencies are committed to lifting as much of this as we can in partnership with the states,” said Frank Niepold, co-chair of the Climate Education Interagency Working Group at the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Niepold made that revelation during an April conference call to promote Next Generation, according to Pullmann.
That will make the science standards a tough sell to taxpayers who are adamant that Washington D.C. bureaucrats not be allowed to influence what gets taught in their neighborhood schools.
NGSS introduces evolution to kindergartners
The other major concern is the science standards themselves.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a leading proponent of Common Core National Standards, has questioned the quality of the science standards.
Fordham analysts and other Next Generation critics believe the standards downplay basic science knowledge in favor of “critical thinking” skills and performing scientific activities.
Other critics say the science standards are too ideological.
Next Generation treats man-made climate change as a settled scientific fact, despite the ongoing debate within the scientific community about the role human activity plays in warming the planet.
The New York Times reports the new science standards make climate change a focus of “the middle grades,” which continues into high school, where students will be trained “in more detail about the human role in generating emissions that are altering planetary climate.”
Many school districts already instruct students in the (debatable) science of climate change, but it’s often done voluntarily and relegated to environmental studies classes, The New York Times notes.
As controversial as climate change is, the real firestorm sparked by the new science standards, however, stems from its treatment of evolution. The Times reports, “The (Next Generation) guidelines also take a firm stand that children must learn about evolution, the central organizing idea in the biological sciences for more than a century.”
The science standards introduce the concept of evolution as early as second grade. That’s a concern to many conservatives who want schools to at least acknowledge the intelligent design theory.
A group of Kansas parents and taxpayers has already filed a lawsuit against the Kansas State Board of Education and other state leaders to keep the new science standards out of public schools.
“The lawsuit argues that the new standards will cause Kansas public schools to promote a ‘non-theistic religious worldview’ by allowing only ‘materialistic’ or ‘atheistic’ explanations to scientific questions, particularly about the origins of life and the universe,” the Associated Press reports.
John Calvert, the attorney representing the Kansas families in the lawsuit, argues that since science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God, the Next Generation standards should not present atheistic evolution as the only way human beings came into existence.
“The standards lead the child to believe that evidence for a creator is an illusion,” Calvert says.
Regardless of the outcome of the Kansas families’ lawsuit, it has already accomplished one purpose: Conservatives and traditionalists across the nation are now aware of Next Generation’s contents. That will make it far more difficult for state K-12 leaders to quietly adopt the science standards without public knowledge and input, like they did with Common Core.
Public education is prone to fads, and this current obsession with creating uniform learning standards across all the states is no exception. We believe the so-called experts want uniform learning standards to collect data that will facilitate the creation of personalized learning technology. Once the technology is in place, schools will be able to tailor the education process to each individual student.
What the federal government will do with the data on each student after they graduate is anyone’s guess.
The end goal might be admirable, but it’s coming with an overly expensive price tag: The erosion of local and state controls over public schools.
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If you are troubled by Common Core, check out the controversial new nationalized science standards - EAGnews.org powered by Education Action Group Foundation, Inc.

tulianr · Oct 11, 2013

I have a lot of ambivalence on this topic.

I support local and state influence in school districts; but I've also faced the frustration of moving a child from one state to another, and finding that 8th grade in Ohio, depending on the district from which they transferred, is not necessarily 8th grade in Texas.

I think Science is Science, and Religion is Religion, and that the two should stay out of each other's yards; but I can sympathize with parents who don't want the state forcing something down their children's throats, that contradict their family's beliefs.

I think that evolutionary processes are obvious and evident in nature; but much of "Evolutionary Theory," as regards the origin of man, is still largely "theory."

I think Climate Change is an obvious fact, and has obvious historical precedent; but man's contribution to that change is certainly debatable.

I would like to see more emphasis on teaching critical thinking in the sciences, and less rote memorization of so called "scientific facts." Any of us older than twenty have seen quite a few "scientific facts" overturned in our lifetimes. I don't think we can ever go wrong by teaching our children to think and to question, always.

nkawtg · Jun 5, 2014

gunbunny · Jun 5, 2014

Sorry, that one makes me laugh each time I see it. It's not really a funny issue, though. +1 with the homeschooling. I'm waiting for the day when the state says we can no longer... I'm still trying to figure it out.

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