Elitism in Education: Parents are Belittled and Disrespected by Educrats

Maryland father, Robert Small, was dragged out of a Baltimore Public School Common Core Town Hall, because he had the audacity to ask an unscripted question about the new Federal education agenda, the Common Core State Standards Initiative. After he was shoved out of the meeting he was arrested and charged with second degree assault of a police officer and disturbing a school function, which charges carry $5000 in fines and up to 10 years in prison. We might never have known of this audacious abuse of power were it not for another parent who's YouTube video hit the Stop Common Core network online and went viral within hours. Within a few days the story went national.

Governments, and the elites, at every level in this nation have forgotten that they derive their power from the governed. School boards have forgotten that tax payers pay their salaries and they work for the people not the other way around. When schools say they want parental involvement it has come to mean they want parents to surrender their natural rights to direct the education of their children and offer their drone like compliance to any decisions the elitist experts deem worthy and appropriate. When will parents stand up in mass and remind them what it means to be a parent and to exercise that God given right to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

Today I interviewed with the local CBS station in Baltimore as just one more parent like Robert who is seriously concerned about the stealth implementation of Common Core. A half hour before this story aired the Baltimore police department dropped the charges against Mr. Small. In my work advocating for parents and families I have seen this kind of scenario play out over and over. The law is too often used to intimidate parents into being quiet and compliant to the agendas of public education systems. In my experience it is only when they (state officials) get caught that they drop the charges and run. Parents, don't be fooled. This abuse is common place not a once in a while thing. It only gets attention when someone faces the intimidation that keeps everyone else quiet and speaks up, and only when there act of bravery happens to find it's way to YouTube.

Parents have a right to be involved in decision making at the local school level. Common Core threatens local governance of schools and threatens to be the final step in pushing parents out. We could learn something from this father, do we have his courage to stop following like cattle. He challenged parents to do their own research of Common Core and to ask the tough questions. He asks us not to allow ourselves be silenced or our constitutional rights to be trampled on. We better heed his warning and meet his challenge or there will come a day when we will lose all our innate rights as parents to direct the education and upbringing of our children.

When I posted similar comments about the CBS story on the Stop Common Core in Maryland page a teacher commented in a way that I believe sheds profound light on just why a Superintendent feels himself justified in having a father removed and arrested: "While I agree with parents having a right to have a say in education... it has to be an educated right... I can't listen to all parents.... sometimes my soon to be TWO Master's Degree's outweigh your thoughts as a parent." -- AN EDUCATED RIGHT -- Are those rights you only get if you're educated? And who "educates" you and "tests" you to determine your fitness for that right? The government? Sometimes I am just appalled at how some people think.

Even ignorant parents have a constitutional right to direct the education of their children. This is well established. I think it is a dangerous line of thinking to doubt whether one parent is less worthy of this right than another. And what of the one less worthy? Should they then be denied this right which is not only a natural God given right but a Constitutional right? I understand that public school teachers often struggle with absent parents, belligerently involved parents, and yes, even ignorant parents, but I am dismayed how often the existence of so called "bad parents" are used as an excuse to limit or even eliminate the rights of ALL parents. We must not be tempted by this excuse, to say that because some people abuse their human rights, their God given responsibilities, we should divest everyone from them.

One thing is certain, if parents feel belittled and disrespected by the teachers who serve their children, if parents are expelled from the decision making process within their school districts, we will NEVER solve the problems we face. No matter how humble, or ignorant, or how poor a parent may be, the attitude that dismisses parents because they don't hold masters degrees -- or even collage degrees -- the attitude that has a parent expelled and arrested for demanding answers of those he has elected to run his children's school (those he pays to run it), is an elitist attitude that doesn't respect anything but accredited learning. It dismisses the wisdom of life long learning, of experience, of intuition, creativity, the intrinsic wisdom that is born of love for your child. This elitism throughout history has proven dangerous to freedom, it has proven to seed tyranny in society, a tyranny of the type C.S. Lewis wrote of when he said:

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies [I would substitute accredited elitist experts]. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

This "torment without end" is exhausting, and more so because those of us who stand against it are so few. Those of us in the ring, those of us who have taken up the fight in our little corners of the world can't hold on forever unsupported. We are getting tired and we need reinforcements. It will take a volunteer army of parents, in numbers much larger than the elitist oppressors. So, If you have casually followed but haven't put your hat in the ring, now is the time.

Our American Story: How Will our Children Discover the Truth?

"At the core of every moral code there is a picture of human nature, a map of the universe, and a vision of history. To human nature (of the sort concieved), in a universe (of the kind imagined), after a history (so understood), the rules of the code apply." -- Walter Lippmann

There may be few things as perplexing as the seemingly opposite versions of America's past that have formed between the political left and right in our nation. It represents as Thomas Sowell has written an abject conflict of visions. With such stark differences between the visions that have emerged from our political struggles and how completely they color the telling of our American story, how will our children discover the truth?

Nearly all American history text books in schools today weave a tale of America's past as the expression of racism, sexism, and bigotry. The tales of the Founders as self interested politicians, brutal white slave owners as the common white man, American industry as robber-baron oppressors, and American foreign policy as imperialistic. Over the past 40 years, people have told the story of this country's past dishonestly and we can no longer afford to ignore this reality. We are reaping what we have sown, for "the classroom in one generation becomes the government in the next." -- Abraham Lincoln

As a parent I teach my children the story of America in a way that is almost completely contrary to what they are being taught at school. I teach them that compared to other nations, America's past is a bright and shinning light. America was and is, the city on the hill, the foundation of hope, the beacon of liberty. It is terribly confusing as they get older, they wonder how can their teachers teach what is so terribly wrong? They begin to doubt whether they will ever know who is right and who is wrong, because one thing they sense all too keenly, they can't both be right.

Thomas Sowell proposes in his book "A Conflict of Visions", that the scientific method might be applied to measure the validity of two very different ideological visions of the world being contested in modern times. He explains how "vision" begets "theory" and theory can be tested by evidence. "What empirical verification can do is to reveal which of the competing theories currently being considered is more consistent with what is known factually." The key is for our children to be presented with all the facts. This of course is impossible if a parent relies solely on the public education (or even collegiate education) system to provide a full pucture.

How often we hear, "history is subjective," as if to dismiss the notion that one vision isn't more correct than the other. It is true that visions are subjective and by extension the teaching of history is subjected to the vision with which is is colored, but this does not leave the truth up in the air. We can judge whether one vision or the other is a more correct "theory". We must judge which is truth and which is error, for they cannot both be truth.

The social vision our children choose to accept as truth is vitally important to the future of our nation and world. "Policies based on certain visions of the world have consequences that spread throughout society and reverberate across the years, or even across generations or centuries. Visions set the agenda of both thought and action." For this reason our children must learn the History they don't teach in school at home, they must be vested with all the facts. They must come to understand the very different social visions and moral codes that have led to these two diametrically opposite views of American history. Only then can they apply the evidence to reveal which vision and moral code is more consistent, which is rooted in truth.

Join me and other parents in our study of an America that was committed to both personal freedom and public virtue, to human achievement and respect for the Almighty God. The history that admits what every Founder, pioneer, cowboy, and business man knew; that freedom alone was not enough, that without responsibility and virtue, freedom would become a soggy anarchy, an incomplete licentiousness.

Join me at “American History They Don’t Teach in School” and join the discussions about our history that they aren’t having in American education today.

My Summer Project: Left-Right Alliance for Education

My summer project has been working with a group of education advocates across the country to construct a multi-partisan outline of common opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Today we completed the project and published an excellent resource for the Stop Common Core movement nationwide.

Last spring I came away from a Hillsdale collage lecture on the Common Core with a deep concern that the Stop Common Core movements developing throughout the nation were not coalescing around one central message that had the power to cut across the political spectrum and that the opposition to CCSSI was being widely mischaracterized as limited to only one side of the political spectrum, which is hindering the effort to get the opposing message a fair hearing in the public discourse. I was convinced that we needed a serious effort to construct a concise message that would navigate the movement out of the partisan weeds.

The next day I had a discussion with a close friend tied to the Stop Common Core movement in another state who had just that afternoon had a similar discussion with a group of advocates on her side of the country. Within a few hours the Left-Right Alliance for Education was formed to bring together advocates from across the political spectrum, and across the nation, to determine if it is possible to form a multi-partisan alliance for countering the current federal/corporate power driving education reform policy.

After weeks of deliberate, methodical discussions on key points of current education reforms in the U.S. we have finally completed the project we began three months ago. I believe the work we constructed shows that there is a wide spectrum of common political opposition to the CCSSI and I believe we can work together if we stick to those points upon which we agree. The Left-Right Alliance has developed a message as succinct as the CCSSI's own and is a resource that has the potential to be very valuable in shaping the opposition's message.

You can read the document at the Left-Right Alliance for Education but I have also included the report below:

Stop Common Core, Cuts Across Politics

This week I went to a Hillsdale College Kirby Center lecture in Washington DC: "Common Core Common Sense: Why it’s Illiberal and Unconstitutional.” Dr. Daniel B. Coupland gave a measured explanation of the Common Core State Initiative (CCSS) and the general points of opposition from both sides of the political spectrum. There was little presented that I had not already read or discovered in my year of research about the CCSS initiative. What I came away with was a deep concern that the Stop Common Core movements developing throughout the nation are not coalescing around one central message that can cut across the political spectrum and speak to the hearts of every American.

I became convinced that in order to be successful at defeating the CCSS initiative we must do three things, 1) we must set aside those points of opposition that are highly partisan, 2) we must create a clear and succinct message of common opposition and stop haggling over the details, and 3) appeal to the universal desire that all parents have for their children’s education, not just to be “career-ready”, but more importantly to become mature thinkers who are highly-motivated, self-disciplined, hard-working, creative, ambitious, happy individuals who know their own minds and who are prepared to thrive in any life path they choose.

What we are doing to answer the assertions of CCSS supporters is important work, but we are too often pulled away from the central point by engaging them in long drawn out debates about whether the content standards themselves are good or bad, whether the standards will push a curriculum of political indoctrination, or whether the whole public school system is the enemy. What’s lost in these debates is the bigger picture which is that each successive effort to standardize education around a workforce development vision has failed, and Common Core will make those failures look small in comparison.

With CCSS advertising their mission in a clear and consistent way, and grassroots opposition fractured between political poles and decentralized by voluminous websites, bloggers, and local groups, I am not surprised that parents around me are latching onto the one message that consistently breaks through. It is very difficult for most parents, who can't devote so much time to sifting through the arguments, to discover the central point of opposition to the Common Core.

CCSS has this simple message under its logo, “Preparing America’s Students for College & Career.” What parent doesn’t want their child to go to college and have a career? What parent doesn’t want a “consistent, clear understanding” of what their child is expected to learn? What parent doesn’t want a child “fully prepared for the future?” We all do. But what parents wants a “career ready” child who is a simple cog in a managed workforce? What parent wants their child to have a “consistent, clear understanding” of how to navigate the technocratic corporate world or manage the layers of bureaucratic paperwork and rubrics of compliance? What parent would believe that workforce preparation as the central goal of education is going to “fully” prepare their child for the future? What parent isn’t concerned that their child’s education is devastating their innate love of learning?

Instead of sifting through the dozens of complex arguments for and against Common Core, parents need to understand two basic concepts in order to discover the central point: that the Common Core deconstructs the traditional liberal arts education which most contributes to the development of mature, creative thinkers who are prepared to thrive in life. First, they must understand that the CCSS initiative cannot solve the problems inherent in the successive efforts to standardize education because it will mandate standardization on a vast scale. Second, they must understand that by shifting the purpose of education away from the liberal arts in favor of a servile education for the so-called “real world,” the education of their child will be materially damaged.


We oppose the CCSS initiative because it continues the failed education reforms of the past by mandating minimum, common, and quantifiable standards and high-stakes testing which leads to the hyper-focus on quantifiable skills at the expense of the greater characteristics of sound education.


When asked about the standards themselves, The Hillsdale lecturer, Dr. Daniel B. Coupland, said he had found that for the most part they are solid standards. But then he went on to explain the limitations of standards. Common Core standards are just what standards always have been. Standards represent coalescence at the middle, whether that middle is nation-wide or state-wide; they represent minimum standards of quantifiable skills. Even good rigorous standards when combined with high-stakes accountability measures will usually result in the hyper-focus on those quantifiable skills that will be tested, upon which school funding and teacher progress will be measured. Inevitably this focus will squeeze out those portions of education that most contribute to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path.

This has been the universal criticism of the last federal effort to standardize education, NCLB. Award-winning reporter Peg Tyre, in her series on the Common Core, started by reviewing the failures of NCLB, highlighting that the failures of NCLB center on high-stakes testing rather than standards:

“Testing kids was a good way of coming up with data on how kids did on the… test, but it didn’t… actually improve what happened in the classroom. In fact, to accommodate NCLB, schools began teaching—and children began learning—less. Under No Child Left Behind, school administrators and district leaders quickly figured out the ugly consequences for schools when they failed to improve their students’ test scores... So in response, many schools demanded that their teachers dumb down instruction… teachers were made to teach to the test in the most direct and simplistic way possible so more kids would do better on the tests. This made school pretty boring… [And was particularly] a profound setback for poor kids. The unintended consequence of NCLB was that it created a “bottom” level of acceptable instruction, but that geared the whole education system toward that low level.”

The architects of the Common Core said this quasi-federal initiative was set apart from NCLB because “They had a vision of creating a high goal for schools to strive for, instead of a bottom set of standards that would ultimately doom them.” But how was their vision different from NCLB in real terms? They didn't create a set of voluntary goals for schools to “strive for”. The CCSS did nothing to address the negative effects of NCLB high-stake testing and the standards are described differently by almost every supporter of the initiative. The architects called them something to "strive for" like an ideal, some repeatedly describe the standards as a "solid baseline", and multiple reports have indicated that the CCSS are set somewhere in the middle when they are compared with state standards prior to the initiative. So which is it, an ideal, a middle, or a baseline?

The idea the the CCSS initiative is designed to correct what is wrong in education, to set high standards and give schools the tools to excel is certainly suspect when schools whose standards were stronger before CCSS are told not only that they can't alter the standards but they can add no more than 15% in any content area. Sound more like their placing limits on achievement that setting high goals to strive for. It's a speed limit in education. Some Schools will inevitably fall well short of their limit (as the farm tractors you get stuck behind on the road) but anyone caught trying to get ahead will be penalized.

We oppose the core vision of the CCSS initiative to build a system for centrally managed student training with the purpose of fitting the future generation as cogs in a managed workforce for the “Global Economy.” This central goal will dismantle liberal arts education which most contributes to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path.

CCSS has built its mission around a central idea that exposes how they see the core purpose of education in the “21st Century.” That core purpose is to train kids to be “Career-Ready” to compete in a “Global Economy.” Thier core purpose is to turn education in America into job preparation. Dr. Coupland said that this was the central concern he has about the Common Core. The architects set this as the “goal” for all students to “strive for.” Coupland said that the pre-modern educational models made a clear distinction between the liberal arts and servile arts. James Daniels, a proponent of classical liberal arts education described it this way, “The two models are different in regard to the goals that they pursued. The goal of the liberal arts was to cultivate a wise and virtuous man. The goal of the servile arts was to cultivate skills for a given trade.” The CCSS initiative has made a choice to pursue the servile arts as more “relevant to the real world” and more competitive in the “global economy.”

C.S. Lewis described the purpose of servile schooling this way :it “aims at making not a good man but a good banker, a good electrician… or a good surgeon.” There’s nothing wrong with having good electricians or surgeons, but to pursue “training” at the expense of development of human character comes with a stern warning from Lewis.Hhe writes, “If education is beaten by training, civilization dies… the lesson of history is that civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost.” Dr. Coupland further explained how these two purposes should be applied in education. He said, “To support one’s self is only one part of a good education.” In order for us to be truly free we must have so much more. A broad liberal education is an imperative for the development of “mature” free-thinking people who know “who they are, why they are here, and understand their relationship to others and the world around them.” Coupland said that the CCSS initiative contains in it a “cavalier contempt for the great works of art” and approaches education as though building human beings is like “programming machines.”

The education reforms of the past three decades have incrementally dismantled our liberal arts education in favor of workforce development on the conveyor belt of standardized outcome-based schooling. There is no evidence that this has been good for our children, that it has made them more intelligent, more capable workers, or more moral human beings. In fact, it is apparent that our society has taken a change for the worse and that our kids are being “dumbed down” despite the best efforts of their parents. Parents are sick of their children being deluged in test-taking skills and assignment rubrics that leave no room for creativity. We instinctively know that this has been devastating to the development of our children's minds and character. We know that our children are born with the light and love of learning in abundance, and then we send them to school where within a few short years that love is replaced by boredom or utter frustration, and for some settles in as hatred of and failure in school.

The CCSS initiative threatens to sink the future generation into a system where they are fitted as cogs in a managed economy. The results of this federal initiative will not turn us around and get our society back on track, rather this federal initiative will be the worst of them all. It will bring about the total deconstruction of our children’s intellects and moral character by cutting our children adrift from self-discovery accomplished through learning the sound ethics and morals which are found in the pages of the great literary works, the discoveries of the great scientists, the thoughts of the great historians and mathematicians, and all the other elements of a broad liberal arts education. What will CCSS prepare them for? They will be prepared to navigate the regulated technocratic corporate world, to manage the layers of bureaucratic paperwork and rubrics of compliance, and to be adept at storing factual information and regurgitating it upon request. It won't matter that they don’t know their own minds because no one will care to ask what they think. Just ask David Coleman, the director of the CCSS development process and now president of the College Board, who said “As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a s--t about what you feel or what you think,” and “It is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but before that, I need a compelling account of your childhood.’”

This construct is seriously damaging to our children and to the future of our civilization. We should not set as education’s central goal “career readiness” at the early age of 3, 5, or even 10. We should focus on providing a strong, quality liberal arts education first, and then when our children are moral, mature, highly-motivated, self-disciplined, hard-working, creative, ambitious, happy individuals, they will not only be prepared for the rigorous study and application of excelling in any career path of their choice, but they will be capable of governing their own lives and sustaining a free society.

Why we oppose the Common Core: 

We oppose the CCSS initiative because it aims to operate a system of centrally-managed student work training, while discarding the vital qualities of a sound education that contribute to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path.

Three Points of Opposition: 

1. We oppose the core vision of the CCSS initiative: to build a system for centrally-managed student training with the purpose of fitting the future generation as cogs in a managed workforce for the “Global Economy.” This central goal will dismantle liberal arts education, which most contributes to the development of mature thinkers who are prepared to thrive in any chosen life path and sustain a free civilization.

2. We oppose the CCSS initiative because it continues the failed education reforms of the past by mandating minimum, common, and quantifiable standards and high-stakes testing which leads to the hyper-focus on quantifiable skills at the expense of the vital characteristics of sound education.

3. We oppose the CCSS initiative’s use of highly predictive computerized testing for the tracking of students. There are serious concerns that CCSS violates our children’s privacy rights as these tests can be manipulated to measure physiological, behavioral, and attitudes, which data will be collected along with extensive intimate data in the P-20 database available across stateliness, by the US DOE, and special interests. 

Common Core: The Cost of Uniformity

Outcome Based Education: From Goals 2000, NCLB, RTTT, to Common Core

Well intentioned school reformers have been pushing the idea of outcome based education for decades. What is outcome based education? It's the idea that educating kids is like building a product on an assembly line. The idea that you get predictable quality controlled equality of outcome from every student by an equality of inputs. This has created a paradigm shift in education. Viewing the education of children in an unnatural way and transforming classrooms through the one-size-fits all standardization of education. 

It is not surprising that this idea got teeth after the creation of the Federal Department of Education. Consistent with the compulsory regulatory nature of government, the DOE began it's work by "encouraging" uniform regulation compliance in exchange for federal education dollars. This pursuit of equality of inputs has pushed all the education "reforms" that parents, teachers, and students are fed up with, including the newest, "Common Core". Each "reform" gets progressively more controlling as each one fails to attain the equality of inputs/equality of outputs that is desired.

I believe those who continue to push this idea have a warped view of reality that is seriously dangerous in practice. I struggle to understand their confused thought processes that are coloring everything our kids are taught overt and subliminal. They carry with them a strange dichotomy that pushes "equality" through uniformity, and simultaneously teach the relativity of multiculturalism that supposedly celebrates diversity. These competing messages make for messy minds and kids ill equipped to make sound judgments about themselves and the world around them.

They will not stop pushing their outcome based education philosophy because it is rooted in their misconceived notions of what "equality" is. They keep trying newer forms of "quality control" because in their view the obvious failures are the fault of never quite reaching the equality of inputs (making everyone the same). They say there are still too many schools doing things in too many different ways. Basically we don't have the conveyor belt model down to a science yet.

The pressure this has put on teachers (and by extension students) has changed education from the "lighting of a fire to the filling of a pail" and prompted schools to shift their mission from extending educational opportunity to all, to a promised "guarantee" of success for all" (Thus "No Child Left Behind) -- which of course fails not only because we are all different but because there is not one singular definition of success.

My sons middle school principle once explained it to me this way as he defended the paradigm shift -- because of the failures of parents "now days", schools have a greater responsibility to ensure students succeed in a more direct way. Instead of providing opportunities and then leaving it to the student, aided by their parents, to take hold of those opportunities, school today must “guarantee” that their students will learn. He said, In education today it is “no longer the mind set to give students opportunity,” but it has become, “I’m going to make you learn it.”

My school district’s mission statement exemplified this thinking. The statement said the mission of our schools “is to guarantee that each student develops the character traits and masters the knowledge and skills necessary for personal excellence and responsible citizenship…” Can schools guarantee that children will develop character and master knowledge? How is it done? It is done as my principal suggested, by taking the attitude, “I’m going to make you learn.”

There has always been a certain segment of society that has believed you can guarantee a certain outcome through compulsory means. Whether or not that is true, I believe it is a dangerous way to be teaching American children. John Adams said that, “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” How can we instruct them in the principles of freedom through compulsion?

This changing paradigm is moving us into an era where children are not empowered to pursue excellence, and largely because they are no longer free to manage their own success or to suffer the consequences of their failure. How do the character traits of responsibility and self-motivation develop without experiencing failure and true life consequences? Can any lasting life lessons be learned in a controlled, sterile, forced environment?

The lofty plans of these "reformers" to transform education may achieve the result of universal C-level proficiency. But at what cost? At the cost of highly motivated, self-disciplined, hard working, creative, ambitious, happy children.

If we force “learning” – which in this new philosophy means successfully regurgitating information on standardized tests – we will teach children far more damaging lessons. We will teach them that they are not free. Or even worse, we will teach them that freedom is dangerous because it allows for failure. We will teach them that failure is an unacceptable part of life. Therefore, freedom must also be unacceptable.

This loss of freedom and failure teaches a twisted reality and confuses and harms our children. It removes true accountability and ultimately teaches them that they are weak and reliant on others for their success. In this climate, we raise lazy, entitled children who are unsatisfied with themselves and others and are far more likely to fail in the real world and be unable to recover from it.

We ought to remember the wise words of Abraham Lincoln, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If the philosophy of the school room in our generation is to seed mistrust in freedom and accountability then Lincoln's words are a true prediction of calamity for our government in the next.