Common Core Contradictions

 From a commenter at NRO:

Common Core is, itself, a contradiction: it professes to help get kids ready for college and careers while at the same time it destroys the very tools they need to learn to do just that. For English standards, Common Core favors informational texts over fiction while completely deleting poetry and art interpretation from the curriculum. In Math, Common Core seems blatantly to create a nation of idiots but, most worrying, is the complete deletion of any learning of algebraic manipulation. These selectively deleted areas of study are so very worrying because they have one major thing in common: they teach kids how to do critical thinking. They also teach kids how to think creatively and to think outside the box (yes, algebra too). Without these skills, how on earth are kids supposed to succeed in college or careers, let alone in high school? If future generations cannot think critically and creatively, if they do not learn how to question what they see and if they cannot think for themselves then they become sheep. But, isn't that the point? The sheer amount of political messaging in Common Core texts and even math problems would seem to prove just that. However, the lack of poetry and art and fiction takes away something else from kids: the opportunity to feel, to have an emotional reaction to what you read or see. The Common Core website explicitly states that kids shouldn't be exposed to any material they may cause an emotional reaction because that somehow takes away their "safe space." But reacting emotionally to the world is what makes us human. A purposeful denial of this doesn't just turn kids into sheep, it turns them into robots. Automatons for the collective......

I think there is little doubt that the developers and promoters of Common Core - diminished human beings like David "No one gives a shit what you think or feel" Coleman and Bill Gates - have stripping children of their emotional reactions and autonomy as a CCSS goal.

There's a reason why the only learning that is privileged in CCSS is text-to-text close reading.

It's because the developers not only don't give a shit what kids think or feel about stuff, they don't want kids thinking or feeling about stuff at all.

Just follow the orders the teachers gives you.

Regurgitate what you just read.

Be good little automatons.