Over the past few weeks, we at Democrats for Education Reform have been hard at work refuting scare tactics about Common Core State Standards from the extreme right wing including claims that CCSS will bring international influence into American standards. Many Tea Party Republicans are worried that the new standards are designed to “inculcate [international] ideologies into the education of every child.” Glenn Beck claims that if CCSS were implemented, American students “would be the guinea pigs for the world.” Less far-reaching theories assert that Common Core is merely a plot by the federal government to control citizens akin to the former USSR or Nazi Germany.
We’re posting today to announce a change of heart: Tea Party Republicans, you were right and we were wrong.
As it turns out, international control of curricula, endorsed by federal and state governments, extends far beyond Common Core. Not only that, it’s been happening for centuries. Here are a few examples where outsiders seized control from the local schools and families who know best:
July 4, 2012: Socialist physicists at the European science lab, CERN discover the Higgs boson, which allegedly provides mass to all matter in the known universe. The CERN science-crats stripped parents of local control by announcing the Higgs boson resolved some of the biggest questions facing physicists, even though this change was never voted on by ANY American school board.
April 25, 1953: British scientists working out of state-funded laboratories impose their worldview on the United States by announcing the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. Though the mainstream media heralds the discovery as one of the greatest of the 20th century, few report on the lack of innovation following the imposition of a one-size-fits-all explanation for the structure of genetic information.
March 28, 1882: France enacts the “Jules Ferry Laws” which make primary education in France free, non-clerical, and mandatory. Despite rampant American francophobia that has included recent efforts by conservatives to ban the word “French” as a descriptor of Toast or Fries in Congressional cafeterias, this system is very similar to that in use now by all 50 U.S. states.
March 9, 1776: Ivy-tower academic and foreigner Adam Smith writes The Wealth of Nations. Without bothering to road-test any of his ideas or build teacher buy-in, he unilaterally forces the idea of capitalism upon today’s economics teachers.
Early 1700’s: The German Kingdom of Prussia becomes what many historians cite as first country in the world to introduce tax-funded and generally compulsory primary education. Because we followed the Prussians, millions of U.S. taxpayers are burdened with the responsibility of educating other people’s children.
November 11, 1675: Calculus czar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz insists on UN-style international regulation of math textbooks by creating a standard system of notation to find the rate of change of a curve rather than allowing the market to run its course and find what works best for calculus consumers.
1543: Polish astronomer Copernicus publishes De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), in which he introduced his seminal thesis on heliocentrism and fomented dissent across the Western Hemisphere.
1118: Iranian cleric Umar Khayyām pursues a radical Islamist agenda in mathematics by investigating ratios and cubic equations. Today, parents across the country are dismayed to find Muslim influence in math classrooms.
Common Core is just the tip of the iceberg – European socialists, internationalists, and non-Judeo-Christians have trampled over American school boards for far too long. If you want local control of education in its purest form, tell those brainwashed by Adam Smith, Francis Crick, Gottfried Leibniz and their ilk to take their crazy education ideas back where they came from.
Charles Barone has more than 25 years of experience in education service, research, policy, and advocacy. Prior to joining Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) full-time in January of 2009, Barone worked for five years as an independent consultant on education policy and advocacy. His clients, in addition to DFER, included the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, the Education Trust, The Education Sector, and the National Academy of Sciences. Read more here.
Mac LeBuhn is a policy analyst at Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Before joining DFER, Mac was a fourth grade teacher at Rocketship Si Se Puede, a charter school in San Jose, CA. He became interested in education policy through internships at the offices of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Colorado State Senator Mike Johnston.