Pullmann cuts through Common Core

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Pullmann cuts through Common Core
Joy Pullmann’s new book will be published later this month. | Encounter Books

Bad things, sometimes, take time.

The Ed Sullivan-era musical satirist Tom Lehrer enjoyed shocking his audiences with piano-driven ditties about educational experiments describing “new math,” a teaching method where students are encouraged to focus on concepts over practice. After singing a complicated word problem to his audience, Lehrer would grin and declare, “It’s so simple, only a child could do it!”

That was in 1965. Since then, the teaching methods Lehrer depicted as a farce have become routine in most American public schools because of a national educational initiative called Common Core. And it’s not just math that got confusing — every subject from grammar to physical education has been warped by a liberal technocracy’s failed attempt to make the next generation of Americans “college-ready” and “career-ready.”

At least that’s what Joy Pullmann ’09 proposes in her forthcoming book, “The Education Invasion.” Amid a series of teary-eyed episodes between confused children and enraged mothers, Pullmann presents the story of how Common Core — without a single ballot cast — became the standard of American education when it started appearing in schools in 2011.

Pullmann herself is a mother of four and the managing editor of The Federalist, an online conservative news site that often skewers progressive social projects. This Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 8 p.m. in Lane 124, she will speak on Common Core and its assault on education.

Common Core began with Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ desire for educational improvement — and a lot of his own money. Using what Pullmann describes as a “shadow bureaucracy” and the Obama administration’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Gates funded a rewrite of K-12 curricula in 2009. The changes occurred behind closed doors and without voter knowledge — to impose national standards of education on public schools is illegal and unconstitutional. With additional support from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative — which awarded money to schools that adopted the new curriculum — proponents were able to force Common Core into schools by baiting them with the promise of federal grants.

Like George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind before it, Common Core was intended to use the classroom to prepare students for college and their careers. That means no more fiction in English classes. No simple math. Now children would be tackling real-world problems from a young age. Common Core designers believed these steps would prepare the next generation of Americans for the white collar world waiting beyond the school doors.

When schools actually started using the curriculum, however, disaster struck. Parents who called schools concerned about the confusing math problems that even they could not understand received vague and elusive answers from school officials. And their kids were punished. In one instance, Pullmann describes a student forced to stare at a blank computer screen for three hours because her mother did not want her taking a Common Core test.

Pullmann relays most of Common Core’s story from the vantage of enraged mothers and teachers frustrated because they no longer have control over the classroom. In fact, the bulk of the book’s material comes from complaining parents or think tanks opposed to Common Core. While this may seem like it could make the book a one-sided argument, it actually speaks to what a frustrated mother must feel like when she is helpless to save her children from their schools. Pullmann even notes throughout the book that she did not receive much help from school officials in her research.

According to Pullmann, only a society enslaved by progressive bureaucrats would design and implement Common Core. Because in reality, not all students look forward to a wealthy — or even college-bound — future. Common Core denies the fact of income inequality, and by using students as guinea pigs for the wanky experiments of Bill Gates’ shadow bureaucracy, it drains the meaning out of education.

For example, Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” one of the most commonly assigned books in high school English classes, was labeled a fifth grade level reader book because it is linguistically simple. But as readers of “To Kill a Mockingbird” know, the novel is complex even for adults, important for school curriculum not because of the language’s difficulty, but because of the way in which Lee blends a young girl’s coming of age with a story about social inequality.

Common Core’s treatment of “To Kill a Mockingbird” addresses a problem with educational initiatives that Pullmann’s argument against Common Core only begins to address. The initiative is not bad because it fails to prepare students for college and the real world. Instead, Common Core — and all other initiatives of its type — is destructive because it repurposes education’s end to serve material gain.

Only a lifetime of study could fix that.