This is a Guest Post by a concerned citizen on the way Common Core teaches subjects beyond Math and English Language Arts, specifically looking at the Holocaust.
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In a recent post on JNS.org, a public mandate for teaching genocide using the Holocaust as the prime example is suggested. Now, that said, teaching about this important subject (the Holocaust) is not something that should be mandated. Why? Depending on how you view it, it will be too difficult for some ages, learning abilities and flat-out inappropriate for some age/grades.

Also worth considering, what about fact based resources? What about genocide as an entirely separate subject? Frankly, neither subject will be easy nor quick. If we are to truly learn from something as heinous as the Holocaust, we should be able to do much more than recite facts, figures and data. We should be able to have a modern-day practical application students not only identify with, but find easy to carry out. As an educator, I know each subject, the Holocaust and genocide, should be taught in-depth and as an elective – not a mandate, nor to every grade level. To grasp out how Common Core Standards can make a mockery out of world history, let’s look at some of the resources mentioned in the article and see where else this winding road will lead. First up, CChange.

Who, What is “CChange”?
CChange is known entirely by: CChange, the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide Education at Brookdale Community College (Middletown, NJ)

On their website, you can see they were awarded a grant back in 2013 by the National Endowment for the Arts (more about them in a bit). As a recipient, please notice that in using the grant money, one the books referenced: “Dead Man Walking” was to be used. Why is “Dead Man Walking” a big deal? It’s a book about a 12-year-old facing the death penalty! See a sample lesson plan here.
The purpose of the grant is to bring along reluctant readers or to bring those who are lacking  in reading up to standards. Now, ask yourself, if I truly want to encourage reading, should I not choose books on a brighter subject? Should I not choose a book that is non-controversial?

Another component of the grant is to involve the community in events. I don’t know about you, but I really do not know anyone who would care to host a community event about dead men or children being put to death, but, let’s go back to the lesson mentioned and Common Core. The goal of the lesson is to ‘synthesize’ the students understanding. The time to be spent: 1 hour.

I’m not sure about you, but I believe a subject such as youth death sentences needs more than one hour. Just what does synthesizing my understanding mean, anyway? According to Merriam Webster’s on-line dictionary, ‘synthesize’ means to ‘make something by combining different things’ (first meaning), second meaning says this: “to combine things in order to make something new.” The third definition has to do with the chemical process.

Okay, I think we could make something new out of juvenile death, but let’s look a bit further at the concept of ‘synthesizing understanding’. Let’s see what the Common Core Standards have to say about this. By typing into my search engine “Synthesize understanding Common Core”, this is what came up from their website:

  “Synthesize information from a range of sources (e.g., texts, experiments, simulations) into a coherent understanding of a process, phenomenon, or concept, resolving conflicting information when possible.”

Not satisfied with this link due to the fact it was more about science that literature, I continued on and this next link is most interesting. Warning, if you have vision problems, you’ll want to avoid the moving  circle. This particular article tells us basically that the motivation for synthesizing understanding is more about pleasing the business owners that it is about true student learning!

Ask yourself, is this truly the ‘richer’, ‘deeper’, ‘rigorous’ approach to a subject that has almost nothing to do with businesses and everything about life? I guess it would connect if we read this article about businesses buying the ‘right’ to impede education.

Moving on, however, looking into CChange a bit more, on another website, you’ll see them mentioned in the following way:

“CChange is honored to have been one of 76 organizations nationwide selected for the Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.The purpose of this grant is to engage reluctant and lapsed readers in a community read and activities.”

As I pointed out above, there are certainly better choices to engage readers, especially our younger students. If this is what the National Endowment for the Arts has for one organization, I wonder about those 75 others, but that’s probably another article for later. (Link to entire PDF)

National Endowment for the Arts, helping reshape art to Common Core Standards
Okay, I told you we’d look at the NEA later, so here goes. The NEA is connected to the Common Core because of the reading component. However, a quick look at the organization bears looking into.

• First, it’s a part of the federal government (gasp)…an independent part.
• Second, it partners with at least 20 other federal, state agencies.
• Third, they are part of the recently completed project to align Art Education to Common Core Standards.

How do the National Arts Council & the National Endowment for the Arts connect? “The National Council on the Arts advises the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who also chairs the Council, on agency policies and programs. It reviews and makes recommendations to the Chairman on applications for grants, funding guidelines, and leadership initiatives.  See more here. Did you catch the College Board’s presence as one of the participants in reshaping art standards?

Since Lady Liberty writes so much for NC, I’ve included a special tidbit for her. North Carolina tie to the new CCS aligned art standards: Charlotte/Mecklenburg Schools own Cheryl Maney (where she is a ‘curriculum specialist’) was part of the Visual Arts Writing Team!! If you’d like to see the new Art Standards, visit: http://nccas.wikispaces.com/

The original article referenced in this blog entry states that ‘mandates are not actually always funded by the state.” A bit further down, ‘no plan of action to implement’. Not exactly comforting news to a parent who will be sending their child to school to learn about the Holocaust. Ask yourself, if the state isn’t funding and there is no plan of action, why am I trusting my child to this system?

Now, to be fair, the article does state that even a state without a mandate can — with the right leadership. Just look at Florida, they have created ‘task force sites’ In fact 10 of them, $100,00000 in discretionary funding a piece. Yes, task force teaching, especially about the Holocaust! Further on, we see North Carolina. Dr. Atkinson’s name may be familiar, she is one of the owners to the copyright on Common Core Standards. Out of the thousands of teachers in NC, only 90 are being trained via continuing education on the subject. However, look closely at this statement given by Abramson:

“Since North Carolina does not exercise significant central control over curriculum, Abramson carefully targets his message to both the politics and preconceived notions of his audience to get superintendents and high school principals on board for Holocaust education, often convincing them that the Holocaust was more than a Jewish event.”

So who is Michael Abramson? He is the son of a Holocaust survivor and sits on the NC Council for the Holocaust.  Looking at NC’s Holocaust Council, you are directed to the state’s Dept. of Public Instruction. Look into the Council and you’ll see those workshops Dr. Atkinson is paying for. Here’s a quote from one of the teachers who went to a Holocaust workshop in Charlotte:

“The Holocaust is a very clear close resemblance to bullying that they see today. And they’ll be able to make those connections and they’ll also prevent it in the future,” said seventh-grade teacher Sarah Hunt.”

Really, Mrs. Hunt (or is it Ms.?) The Holocaust is close to bullying?! How can anyone possibly make the ‘synthesized understanding’ of bullying vs. human atrociousness? Maybe this is what she was referring to, a PDF file that is from the US Holocaust Museum and is titled “Redefining How We Teach Propaganda”. When you scroll to the bottom of the page, please note, this topic begins in 4th grade. 

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Museum does have this preface to educators, “Educators should avoid tailoring their Holocaust course or lesson in any way to the particular makeup of their student population.” That said, why, oh why, would a mandate for teaching about the Holocaust or genocide be needed, as mentioned in the original article?  But, that appears to be a redundant question by now, so let’s continue on.

It appears that a large portion of the Museum’s Holocaust teacher conferences, some of the lesson plans, etc. come from the Belfer Foundation. Mr. & Mrs. Belfer are extremely generous and are very philanthropic  with their fortune. However, looking at the teacher conference, you do not see a ‘Common Core’ reference, but the 2014 Conference is split into ELA and Social Studies tracks. If you look a bit further into Mr. Belfer, first, see if you remember Enron. If you don’t recall that scandal, Mr. Belfer’s family was involved in that business meltdown. Secondly, if you continue to dig a bit, you’ll see his son, Laurence, is a Senior Mentor with the Aspen Institute. Not sure who/what the Aspen Institute is? It’s an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C. The Aspen Institute is really big into Common Core Standards, by the way.

Aspen Institute
Visit their website and you’ll see this group is into economics, family, education, health, energy, the environment and more. They help with leadership initiatives and lots of others activities. One of the leadership summits is all about workforce and connecting people and jobs. (Reminder, Common Core is steeped in workforce training!) Please, watch the videos on the workforce link. Aspen Institute also has a document detailing the $450 million dollar grant that is up for grabs by schools who will help create skills for the workforce.

Common Core Standards, according to the Aspen Institute:

“The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is a near-universal set of academic standards agreed to by 45 states and the District of Columbia. Created for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, CCSS was designed by educators and academic experts, and inspired by standards from the world’s highest-performing countries. It represents a seismic shift in the teaching of English Language Arts (writing, reading, listening and speaking) and math.”

If you continue to search their website for “Common Core”, you’ll see about 124 resources.

Teaching Tolerance
The Southern (USA) Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and teaches on all kinds of issues where tolerance is vital. One such issue, the Holocaust. Here’s a bit about “Teaching Tolerance” before we look at how they suggest teaching about the Holocaust. Visiting the Teaching Tolerance website, you’ll see a lead in question about getting kids excited about social justice.

Then, look some more and you’ll see everything from gender issues to the Civil Rights movement. Okay, relevant issues, yes, but where’s the Common Core Standards tie? Bear with me. Conduct a search of the classroom resources using ‘common core’ for K-2 and notice how many of the resources have to do with gender, our bodies, feelings, family, etc. What I found is here. Be sure to notice on the right hand filter menu the vast number of CCS resources.

Now, on to the Holocaust. Here’s the resource for it, “One Survivor Remembers“.  This Classroom Kit starts at grade 3 and can be suitable for up to grade 12. This particular lesson expects a student to learn about the Holocaust by focusing on world hunger, especially in their communities. The entire classroom kit is a partnership with the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, Teaching Tolerance and HBO. You can even see the 40 minute streaming film here.

Notice however, that the lesson plan link said grades 3-12; the link with the movie says 6-12 grades. To see all the CCS ties to the Holocaust lesson (it’s tagged as ‘leaders and groups’, ‘gender equity’), here’s the link.

Oh, by the way, Teaching Tolerance is an exclusive project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), who is worth quite a few million (see their financial statement) they also have a ‘hate map’ to track current USA hate groups.  Wait until you see the picture chosen for that map. You might also find interesting the ‘intelligence files’ tab as well. Donors to the SPL include Planned Parenthood Consortium, the League of Women Voters as well as the US Fund for Unicef.

*Note from LadyLiberty: Reminder –  SPLC’s “Hate Map” that led Floyd Corkins to try to shoot up the Family Research Council.

UNICEF/UNESCO
It is their game plan to have ‘universal primary education by 2015’, according to this flyer. Also in the mix, the Millennium Development Goals (United Nations’ project), and the PARIS21 (all about global data and statistics). While the following discussion paper doesn’t name the United States, Canada or South America, it does point out the depth and breadth of data that is to be connected, amassed in one location and used.

Interestingly enough, the Guardian (a UK based publication) had released this headline back in June 2014 “World Has Zero Chance of Hitting Education Targets, Warns UN“. Now, before you cheer, it’s important to note, the U.N. is NOT abandoning its universal primary education goal, in fact, it is not the only organization seeking global school, so are the following:

EFA (Education for All) has this lovely tidbit on their website, “The Education for All (EFA) movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, youth and adults.” Find out more.

GPE (Global Partnership for Education) where Canadian Dr. Karen Mundy was just named the Chief Technical Officer for the Global Partnership for Education. Find out more. The World Bank is a partner of Global Education, if you are concerned it’s just about education.

GCE (Global Campaign for Education), “The Global Campaign for Education(GCE) is a civil society movement working to end the global education crisis.” Guess what?! The USA is a member country! If you’d like to see their goals, visit the site.

DfID (Department for International Development), based in the British government, is pushing for global education for special needs students. The recent education conference in Brussels (where much was said about global education) wound up being mentioned in a blog entry about DfID.

Lastly, uniting Common Core Standards globally, there is this website to consider: Global Teacher Education. Cross cultural learning, the next big push.

What a journey I’ve led you through! If you’re still with me, great! Start talking, start investigating, start sharing all this information. We must be vocal!

Bottom line: Common Core is NO way to teach anything well, especially the Holocaust or genocide. Stop the insidiousness of this educational nightmare and get ready to go ‘worldwide’!