Parent Arrested At Public Forum For Protesting Common Core Standards

What was it that George Bush said about why the United States was attacked on 9/11?

Oh, yeah - they hate us for our freedoms.

I think he means freedoms like these:

Robert Small said he wanted to express his dismay over the introduction of a new school curriculum at a public forum Thursday night in Towson, but instead the Ellicott City parent was pulled out of the meeting, arrested and charged with second-degree assault of a police officer.

Small stood and interrupted Baltimore County School Superintendent Dallas Dance during a question-and-answer session and began to tell the audience that he believed the new curriculum was lowering the standards of education and was intended to prepare students for community colleges. "You are not preparing them for Harvard," he said.

The format of the forum did not allow the public to stand and ask a question. Instead, those who wanted questions answered had to write them on a piece of paper. Dance read the questions and had members of a panel, which included state schools Superintendent Lillian Lowery, answer them.

When Small started speaking, Dance told him that he believed his question would be answered, but Small continued to talk. After a couple of minutes, a security guard confronted Small, saying, "Let's go. Let's go."

Small, 46, asked him if he was an officer and the security guard, an off-duty Baltimore County police officer, showed him a badge. The officer grabbed Small's arm and pulled him toward the aisle. The audience gasped and some people sitting nearby got out of their seats.

As he was being taken out, Small said, "Don't stand for this. You are sitting here like cattle." Then he said, "Is this America?"

The officer pushed Small and then escorted him into the hall, handcuffed him and had him sit on the curb in front of the school. He was taken to the Towson precinct and detained. Small was charged with second-degree assault of a police officer, which carries a fine of $2,500 and up to 10 years in prison, and disturbing a school operation, which carries a fine of $2,500 and up to six months.

The police report said that Dance's chief of staff, Michele Prumo, who was standing on the side of the auditorium, had asked the officer to walk over and calm Small down. The report also said Small had attempted to push the officer away when he first confronted him.

The forum was held by the Maryland State Department of Education to explain the new curriculum, known as the common core, to the public. Objections to the new standards, which are being implemented this year for the first time in 45 states and the District of Columbia, have been growing in the past several months.

...

In an interview Friday, Small was not critical of the police officer but said he believed the state education officials were not allowing the public to express their concerns about the new curriculum.

"Look, I am being manhandled and shut down because I asked inconvenient questions," Small said.

"Why won't they allow an open forum where there can be a debate? We are told to sit there and be lectured to about how great common core is."

The format was designed so that as many questions could be asked as possible in a short time, according to Bill Reinhard, a spokesman for the Maryland State Department of Education. He said the same format was followed at a previous forum.

The department handed out rubber bracelets with a toll-free number so the public could have their questions answered. In addition, he said, Lowery stayed after the forum was over and answered individuals' questions.

Small said in the interview that he is a research manager for the Department of Veteran Affairs and has a second-grader and a sixth-grader who attend Howard County schools. He was released about 3 a.m., he said.

He said he has nothing against community colleges, because he went to one for two years and then transferred to the University of Maryland, College Park, where he got his bachelor's degree. However, he said, he wants his children to receive an education that will allow them to attend four-year colleges.

Here's the video:



Arrested for trying to ask a question and make a critical point about Common Core at a public forum held by the Maryland State Department of Education.

Just outrageous.

But not a surprise.

As I posted earlier this week, here in NY State the NYSED brain trust is completely uninterested in hearing criticism to their agenda.

That's why NYSED Commissioner John Kin sent a deputy commissioner to a State Senate hearing on education reform to hear from parents complaining about the state's reform agenda.

Because King himself doesn't care what parents or the public think about the state's education reform agenda.

He doesn't care at all.

Just like the men and women running the Maryland State Department of Education don't care what parents and the public have to say about Maryland's education reform agenda either.

Let's dispense with this sham that we live in a democratic society with cherished freedoms and rights.

You have no freedom and you have no rights.

You will sit down, shut up and do that they tell you or they will take you out and arrest you.

Common Core proponents mock opponents to the standards as Tea Party freaks and conspiracy nuts for claiming that the federal government and their corporate allies are shoving the standards and the ancillary tests, teacher evaluations tied to those tests and data tracking systems to track all that data down the throats of everybody in this country without any say.

But what do you call scenes like this where a concerned parent tries to make a point about what he sees as a problem with the Common Core and is taken out and arrested for making trouble?