Public education is riddled with an alphabet soup of cure-alls for the education of our children. Most recently, one movement has people reeling with frustration - the Common Core State Standards Initiative, a project of the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and Achieve, Inc. and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Incidentally, all done without the expertise of teachers or professors of English or Mathematics.
The idea is to ensure there is a standard that all schools across the country can utilize for all students in all settings. As many in the education world can attest, such a thing cannot exist. At any rate, even Catholic schools across the country have joined the bandwagon, much to the chagrin of administrators, teachers, and parents alike.
Thankfully, though, Superintendent of Archdiocese of Denver Catholic Schools Dick Thompson has placed Common Core in its place for St. Anthony's and her sister schools across the archdiocese. In aNational Catholic Registerarticle, Thompson stated, "We looked at it [Common Core] and said, ‘There are a couple of good things.’ But we have rigorous academic standards infused with Catholic identity. There are parts of the Common Core we might harvest, but I can say it’s very minimal. Our agenda is the formation of the whole child, and there’s nothing in Common Core that is going to get you to heaven."
Common Core seeks to develop students into critical thinkers, so they are more prepared to delve through the multitudes of data. Common Core requires students to “reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence that is essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic." A noble endeavor for sure.
However, Common Core requires that these critical thinking skills are to be applied even at an age in which children are not yet ready, nor capable of engaging in as is revealed by Dr. Sandra Stotsky, Professor Emerita at the University of Arkansas, known nation-wide for her expertise in national standards and her in-depth analyses of the problems in Common Core; especially in English language arts standards. She was a member of the Common Core Validation Committee and refused to sign off on the standards.
Students must be taught concepts at ages in which they are ready to receive them. The fault in the logic with any national standard is that not only are children ready at different stages, the needs of a community vary from place to place across the country. Community needs in a Los Angeles neighborhood are quite different from the community needs in Sterling, Colorado. Undoubtedly, Common Core removes local control over content. I digress.
Dr. Andrew Seeley, Executive Director of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education and tutor at Thomas Aquinas College reflects that Common Core requires elementary students to apply critical thinking skills earlier than developmentally able. "They [students] learn by absorbing facts. They are not ready for critical thinking. Learning by heart and careful observation are key powers to be developed, not just with facts and vocabulary, but with beautiful rhythms and rich images of the best poetry and prose." Liberal arts or classical education recognizes the developmental capacity of children at different stages of their education and matches the instruction to those capabilities.
However, if for just a moment we entertain the idea that the purpose of an education is strictly to prepare students for a productive life, we find an interesting story in one of the world's largest entities: Google. Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google, recently revealed what the company believed necessary for a person to be productive in its industry, and the qualities reflect more what a classical education would advocate than the Common Core.
Google looks for the following attributes: the ability to process on the fly, leadership within a cohort, and humility & ownership. The latter is explained by Bock, “It’s feeling the sense of responsibility, the sense of ownership, to step in to try to solve any problem - and the humility to step back and embrace the better ideas of others." The article concludes, "And in an age when innovation is increasingly a group endeavor, it also cares about a lot of soft skills - leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn. This will be true no matter where you go to work." This rings of the wisdom and virtue learned through a Catholic classical education.
In Pope Paul VI's Declaration of Christian Education,Gravissimum Educationis , he writes, “Holy Mother Church must be concerned with the whole of man’s life, even the secular part of it insofar as it has a bearing on his heavenly calling. Therefore she has a role in the progress and development of education." Thus, St. Anthony Anthony’s Catholic School has a duty to address how our children should be prepared for the secular world.
However, the greater good of education isn't in producing producers of the future. Nineteenth century Oxford academic, Blessed John Henry Newman, eloquently shared timeless wisdom that education must be directed at the whole person, not toward forming students for predetermined professional slots. "Education," he wrote, "trains the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth and to grasp it."
Dr. Anthony Esolen,Magnificateditor and English professor at Providence College responded to Common Core. "We are not programming machines. We are teaching children...to be human beings, honoring what is good and right, cherishing what is beautiful, and pledging themselves to their families, their communities, their churches, and their country."
Thus, a child raised to search for and grasp truth, beauty, and goodness is a child who will be prepared for a future we cannot predict. He will learn the human skills of life, so he may find the greater good.That said, St. Anthony Catholic School is a community of teachers and parents united by the common vision of inspiring the love of truth, beauty, and goodness. Guided by the richness of Catholic culture and respect for the dignity of the human person, we seek to cultivate in our students a love of God, others, and self. In order that they may become people of impeccable character and exemplars of academic excellence, we foster in our students a spirit of service by teaching them to put on Christ.
By teaching students to seek wisdom and virtue, St. Anthony's is a cure for the Common Core.
Friedman, Thomas L. "How to Get a Job at Google." The New York Times. 2014 Feb 22.
Hays, Charlotte. "Common Core Commotion: Is New Curriculum Catholic-School Friendly?"
Hays, Charlotte. "Common Core Commotion: Is New Curriculum Catholic-School Friendly?"
National Catholic Register. 2013 Sept 12.
Seeley, Andrew."The Common Core vs. the Classical Roots of Catholic Education." The
Seeley, Andrew."The Common Core vs. the Classical Roots of Catholic Education." The
Cardinal Newman Society. Issue Bulletin. 2013 Dec 31.
Stotsky, Sandra. "Testimony in Favor of Wyoming Bill 14LSO-0326.L2."
Stotsky, Sandra. "Testimony in Favor of Wyoming Bill 14LSO-0326.L2."
http://www.uaedreform.org/downloads. 2014 Feb 12.
