COMMON CORE PART 9
August 3, 2015 in Columnists, News by RBN Staff
“Ninety-nine members of the U.S. Senate voted to reject history standards that would have students learning more about Joseph McCarthy than George Washington, more about Indian chief Speckled Snake than about Thomas Edison.”
– Lynne Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities
Source: News With Views
By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
July 27, 2015
[Note: Polls are showing Donald Trump at or near the top in the Republican primary race for the presidency. However, have you considered the possibility that he is really the Democrats’ (Hillary’s) secret weapon? It is true that he has been critical of Hillary Clinton, but he is not saying anything other Republicans haven’t said about her. So who is he really hurting with his comments about Sen. John McCain, Mexicans and others? The consensus is that his outbursts are severely harming “the Republican brand.” But what if that’s the whole purpose? He has even threatened to run as a third party candidate, which would guarantee a Democrat victory. What could be his motive for secretly causing the Democrats to win? It’s obvious ! He’s sympatico on important issues. For example, he has been very pro-abortion rights, and he has given money to leading liberal Democrats Hillary Clinton, Senators Harry Reid and Charles Schumer U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others! Just consider the possibility that Trump’s candidacy is part of a secret Democrat (Hillary) plan!]
Commenting on President Clinton’s proposed national standards, two months after his State of the Union address, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities Lynne Cheney wrote: “Whose National Standards?” (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, April 2, 1997) referring to an earlier attempt to develop national history standards and stating: “Ninety-nine members of the U.S. Senate voted to reject history standards that would have students learning more about Joseph McCarthy than George Washington, more about Indian chief Speckled Snake than about Thomas Edison.”
The same is occurring under Common Core (CC) today. College Board (CB) president (and Rhodes Scholar) David Coleman announced the 34 Advanced Placement (AP) courses high school students take would be aligned with CC. Now AP teachers must teach the CB’s “Framework” defining “the required knowledge of each period” in history. The CB website states that “all questions (in the AP exam) are derived from the course’s stated objectives.” In the “required knowledge” for the American Revolutionary period, there’s no Jefferson, Adams, Madison or Franklin. In the Civil War period, there’s no Gettysburg Address. In the World War II period, there’s no Hitler, D-Day or Truman. Regarding the Civil Rights movement, there’s no Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, etc.
The primary entity promoting CC has been Achieve, which was founded in 1996. Its first president was Robert Schwartz (who had worked at NIE where I worked), and one of its first co-chairmen (from 1996-2002) was IBM’s former CEO Lewis Gerstner. Shortly after Achieve was founded, Gerstner made an announcement that indicated that he and other CEO’s would consider locating/expanding or not their corporations’ facilities in a particular place in the U.S. based upon whether the locality or state had adopted Achieve’s internationally benchmarked standards!
Relevant to these internationally benchmarked, most people do not realize that CC is part of a much larger international effort. As part of a New Transatlantic Agreement, on May 5-6, 1997 the U.S. and the European Union convened a major conference, “Bridging the Atlantic: People-to-People Links” calling for “thematic networks for curriculum development” and stating that “governments too are obliged to adapt their economic, training and social welfare programs.” The “Partners in a Global Economy Working Group” of the conference discussed “what redesigning of curricula is required…(i.e., what career skills are needed)….”
At this time, on the National Skill Standards Board website was mention of a report by the Tavistock Institute for the European Commission. The report was completed in October 1997 and described the relevancy of Goals 2000, SCANS typology with its “profound implications for the curriculum and training changes that this will require” and what skills standards and portable credentials “benchmarked to international standards….”
As the movement toward global education increased, George W. Bush was elected president, taking office in 2001, and his Secretary of Education Rod Paige on October 3, 2003 in Paris stated: “The United States is pleased to return to UNESCO….Our governments have entrusted us with the responsibility of preparing our children to become citizens of the world.” President Obama would later refer to himself as a citizen of the world, but the problem with this concept, as opposed to resident or inhabitant of the world, is that “citizenship” entails legal obligations. And world citizenship obligations would trump those of national citizenship.
On November 17, 2004 at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, UNESCO signed a 26-page “Cooperation Agreement” with Microsoft (Bill Gates founder and CEO) to develop a “master curriculum” for teacher training and information technologies based on standards, guidelines, benchmarks and assessment techniques. Gates initialed every page and agreed that this curriculum was to reflect UNESCO’s values. These values were explained in first UNESCO Director-General Sir Julian Huxley’s UNESCO: ITS PURPOSE AND ITS PHILOSOPHY as including “a scientific world humanism, global in extent and evolutionary in background” with “transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization…political unification in some sort of world government would be required….”
The next year (2005), Bill Gates funded the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce (created by NCEE president Marc Tucker). And in 2008, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded the International Benchmarking Advisory Group report for CC standards on behalf of the National Governors Association (NGA), Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve titled “Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education” showing the U.N. is a member of the Common Core Advisory Group (also see “How Bill Gates pulled off the Common Core revolution” in THE WASHINGTON POST, June 8, 2014).
© 2015 Dennis Cuddy – All Rights Reserved
Concerning Achieve, in January 2003 Mike Cohen had become the new head of this organization. He had been director of education policy at the NGA (1986-1990), director of the National Alliance for Restructuring Education (1990-1993), senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley under President Clinton. He was detailed to the White House from 1996 to 1999, and then became U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education for Elementary and Secondary Education (1999-2001). Under Cohen, Achieve “formed the Partnership for the Assessment of College and Career Readiness (PARCC), one of the two organizations developing common assessments, and helped develop Common Core State Standards” (see www.achieve.org/michael-cohen).
