http://www.slj.com/2012/12/standards/common-core/clustering-and-the-common-core/ The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens Wed, 18 Sep 2013 01:33:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 http://www.slj.com/2012/12/standards/common-core/clustering-and-the-common-core/#comment-12530 S C Wed, 05 Dec 2012 14:17:58 +0000 http://www.slj.com/?p=21692#comment-12530 Common Core could might have been a great a great idea, but the presentation of materials leaves the door open for even more bias than a text has. I forsee, whosoever controls the lesson plans controls the thought of our young minds. While thinking skills are great to have, teaching them is hard work that entails an ethical unbiased framer. It also depends on the thinker having a large fund of knowledge to draw on to do so (isn't that what a liberal arts education is supposed to provide?). By artificially creating the "fund of knowledge" in limited pockets, all that has been accomplished is to help a student examine one issue, possibly, not even accurately. We must be honest and separate job training from college and high schools, demand excellence, and memorization of basic facts/events, and high quality manual, vocational and commercial programs as well as academic programs and the thinking process will take care of itself. Common Core could might have been a great a great idea, but the presentation of materials leaves the door open for even more bias than a text has. I forsee, whosoever controls the lesson plans controls the thought of our young minds.
While thinking skills are great to have, teaching them is hard work that entails an ethical unbiased framer. It also depends on the thinker having a large fund of knowledge to draw on to do so (isn’t that what a liberal arts education is supposed to provide?). By artificially creating the “fund of knowledge” in limited pockets, all that has been accomplished is to help a student examine one issue, possibly, not even accurately.
We must be honest and separate job training from college and high schools, demand excellence, and memorization of basic facts/events, and high quality manual, vocational and commercial programs as well as academic programs and the thinking process will take care of itself.

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