Inspiration from a Great Friend

  As you probably know, I am not a big fan of the core curriculum.   In fact, I just had one of those long post exchanges on one of my friends fb posts with one of her friends who probably thinks I have a screw loose (if she only knew!). She was defending the core curriculum emphatically.  She said she works in education and her kindergartener is reading and writing and doing math and the core is the magical system for making this all happen.  Umm... Btw, most 5 and 6 year olds learn to do that stuff in kindergarten.  The first year of organized education shapes their malleable little minds and fills the spaces between Dora and why-is-my-sister's-cookie-bigger-than-mine? With all sorts of useful information like reading, writing and math.  Aside from being little petri dished of lice, viruses, and strep throat, these amazing little people suck in information like sponges, and it is truly one of the coolest things ever to watch your little one learn to read and proceed to announce everything written. "Mommy, what does 'omg those shots were amazing and how hot was that bartender' mean?"  "Where are you reading that?"  "In your phone."  "Give my that you little urchin!  Mommys phone is off limits!"  Guess what, it's not the core curriculum.  It's the general curriculum of kindergarten.  Somehow between my macaroni letters and sparkly Christmas ornaments, I learned reading, writing and 'rithmatic too in kindergarten circa 1973.
  The core, as I have learned from attending various seminars and reading with that amazing flair I got from putting my macaroni letters together, is based on getting students ready for college.  I am not joking.  From five years old, the core is grooming Jr. For the SAT.  Bye bye childhood, hello Ivy League.  Thank you Common Core.  Seriously?  I can not begin to tell you how many ways I think that is wrong, but being me, I will try.
  First of all playing and learning social skills are important parts of being 5 and 6.  They are important throughout your life, and impact everything you do as well as self esteem.  Even, dunt da da, college!  Reading and writing are big of course and you will continue to perfect them, but social skills and play will eventually be taken for granted and put on the back burner.  They will help our younger children the most as they navigate this bigger world they have found in school.  They need to learn through play while they can.  Think about it, they were peeing in their diaper half their lives at this point.  Algebra can wait.
  Also, who says your 5 year old is going to college?  Not only will it be $80,000 a year by then (with no  financial aid available so who is paying for this anyway?) maybe they will want to do something else, like go into acting, or music, or video production.  None of those occupations require a college degree.  Which brings me to my next point, art and music.  Schools are viewing these amazing skills as unnecessary, and the arts are the first classes to get the boot to be replaced by more time to prepare for the tests.  Teachers gear their entire curriculum toward doing well on the test from day one.  I don't know who wrote the test, but s/he is getting more worship than all the current gods put together.  I wonder what Jesus would do if he saw my daughters math homework, or the 7 pages my 5 year old brings home every day?  He'd probably run away and start his own religion....hmmm,....  Honestly, if they want to prepare my 5 year old for college, teach him how to pitch strikes or do a perfect layup shot.  If you start at 5 and keep focusing on it through twelfth grade, not only is he going to college, he's got a scholarship!  Boo ya!
  Honestly, the ELA core is based on reading and answering questions and writing essays on what you read.  Not what you THINK about what you read, but EXACTLY what you read providing at least two examples.  The other day my daughter was afraid to use an adjective because it wasn't explicitly stated in the reading passage.  Really?  Is this how we create bold and innovative thinkers?  Steve Jobs would have spent several years in the fourth grade if that's how it was.  There is actually more critical thinking in the math portion.  You actually have to combine at least one, sometimes three mathematical procedures to get the answers.  Of course then you have to write exactly what you did in every step or you get points off, so you better pay attention.  Big Brother cares about your methodology equally as much as the correct answer.  Good thing Costco doesn't ask you exactly how  you came to the conclusion to buy 1,000 Advil  instead of 2 million.  That's easy though- 1,000 is the smallest amount they carry, AND you have two kids in Common Core.  Two examples!  Your purchase is approved!
  In all honesty, I went to a neurological seminar on brain development in children a few months ago. The Neuropsychologist mapped the average human brain and had a timeline of its development.  Do you know that around 19-22 your brain function actually decreases?  It goes through a pruning process eliminating non-useful brain cells, and then reorders itself to work most efficiently.  19-22, just the age that kids get to college.  Maybe because Common Core will get all kids into college, pruning will become obsolete, and Frat parties will assume that responsibility.  Plus the mediocre social skills will have the kids drinking even more, and pruning?  Save that for the hedges.  Honestly, the neuropsychologist  recommended that kids take a year or two after high school to start college.  Their brains will be better suited, and they will find out how much working at the gap really sucks so they will be more determined to use college as a tool for education.
  Actually, I did get an interesting thought today while I was on the phone with one of my dearest friends ever.  Why don't all kids take the GED after 8th grade?  If they pass it, let them take whatever they fucking want in high school.  Biochemistry?  Ok.  Auto mechanics?  Ok?  Photography? Poetry? Marine biology?  Sure.  They already meet the criteria to pass high school, why not let them be free to explore their real interests?  Or better yet, develop some that allow them to be free thinkers and really learn something aside from how to dissect a passage for two (or more!) examples.
  Truthfully, I understand the premise behind the common core, and it's bullshit.  It's a program bought from a private company that tries to get our children to think along the same lines.  It accounts for learning differences in math by teaching them four ways to do something so they are too confused and end up learning the only way that their parents know, and then go back to the private sector for tutoring since neither you nor your college student babysitter armed with google, and YouTube still  can't figure out how this math we learned twenty years ago works today.  Let's keep that education economy moving, and focus on the perfect layup 12 hours a day on the weekends.  My oldest friend who I met in a brownie daycamp when I was 6 recently brought up this point:  How is it that our hippie 70s parents who were selling pot in the garage and drinking at noon raised all these smart kids who had no trouble with school and testing?  We didn't need tutors and 3 months of pretests.  We had recorders and paper mâché and a compost heap outside.  We had square dancing and gym 3x a week, and had cooking lessons, and beanbag chairs, and library time every day in a massive library with book nooks and tree houses and big soft pillows.  We never watched a movie unless it was from National Geographic, and some kid in the class actually knew how to use the projector and make it stop stuttering (that was probably Bill Gates in his class!). We played strategy games and had experiences, and were asked for our opinions, and most importantly, we learned.
  You know when you are potty training your kid and there are two types of parents.  One type takes the potty everywhere and wears a watch with an alarm set at the times she needs to put her kid on the potty.  The other type lets the kid run around naked half the time and has a cabinet full of Swiffer pads and seventeen pairs of underwear in her purse.  The bottom line is always the same, the kid won't be wetting his pants walking down the aisle, and if he does, he probably shouldn't have had that last shot of Jaegermeister, but hey, his new spouse is now in charge anyway.  Whether or not the core tries to mold your kid into another brick in the wall,  it is up to us, as parents to reinforce our child's opinions, and open their eyes to the arts, and make learning an exciting experience.  One of my biggest fears is that my five year old will be burnt out by 10 with all this forceful feeding of basic algebra and book reports (yes he does 3-4 a week!).  I think he'll be too short to really perfect the layup, but he makes up amazing stories with his animals, and knows every dinosaur there is, what it eats, and how it's social structure works.  Damn if I am going to discourage his ideas.  I'll just tell him to be a brick for the test.  I think he will do just fine.  Actually, I think he will do awesome.  He would probably enjoy making some macaroni letters.  Maybe we will try it next weekend.