She Almost Had Me

        She almost had me! A recent Phyllis Schlafly rant,  entitled  "Crimes Against Your Children," caught my eye since, as  a former public school teacher, I care about kids.  I read her diatribe, based on a recent book by Samuel Blumenfeld, with some interest, as she seemed, at first,  simply to be addressing the lack of reading skills evident to some significant degree in today's children.  Blumenthal in "Crimes of the Educators" (a rather harsh indictment, I felt for people who had no intention of being or becoming criminals) indicts  the public education system in general and Common Core specifically as failing to teach children in early elementary grades to read properly, and, apparently, by a grand master design hatched up 117 years ago by one John Dewey.

  
        In Ms Schlafly's  own lunacy, here's how it happened.  "Blumenthal's book details the process by which this happened, and it wasn't any accident. It was planned that way by the Socialists who believe that the way to undermine the US capitalist system is to get rid of high literacy and independent intelligence so that the younger generations will accept Big Brother in the driver's seat of our economy"  Wow, who knew that in 1898, those pesky Socialists were so prescient?

        An actual reading of Dewey's  "My Pedagogical Creed", in  addition to causing extreme drowsiness will yield one salient point which also  reflects his philosophical  point of view, and that is that schools and the educational process are social systems and that being educated also means understanding the operation of the greater organism, society, as well as rote learning.  Schalfly (and Blumenfeld) make the absurd leap, replete with downright falsehood , to assert that the social skill set learning is done at the expense of  basic skill teaching. While Dewey did feel that teaching specific skills was done too soon (as in before socialization and apart from it) the hugely misleading allegation that public schools both:  1) do this as a plot to dumb down children, and 2)  teach reading "wrong," is not reflective of reality, but rather shows both Blumenfeld's and Schlafly's bias against "Common Core" which  Blumenfeld calls an "educational fraud"

        What falls by the wayside, of course is objective analysis.  While Dewey was probably a Socialist, even he would be stunned to find out that he had willingly plotted the downfall of America's market economy via dilution of reading skills. So let's do a rather more objective analysis of Schlafly's allegations.

       First she, non-educator that she is, alleges that reading is being taught "wrong" on purpose for the above paranoid reasons. She cites Common Core as just another in a long line of "anti-phonics" approaches to reading .   Below are the exact words from Common Core, note the blatant appearance of and reference to phonics.

" Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words."

"Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant."

"Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels."

"Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does)."

"Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ."   

        Of course all the above standards are specifically , (guess what?)  PHONICS! By the way, all these standards are repeated for every grade through grade six in Common Core. Is she blind?

        Schlafly then goes on to write what is almost a "Hooked on Phonics" infomercial.  Along the way she actually brushes on, but ignores one of the  actually valid reasons that some children don't read well today, and it has zip to do with John Dewey. It is rather simply an underutilized   parenting practice -  reading to one's children. There was a time when many kids entered kindergarten with the basics of reading already onboard thanks to  mom, dad,  grandma, or grandpa via Uncle Wiggly or some similar child literature.  With computers et. al. assuming a larger role in the media  bombardment of kids, and with fewer referees (adults) to foster understanding, we are, lamentably,  moving farther from the early childhood reading mentoring of yore.

        Of course, Schlafly is critical because  the Common Core standards also recommend reading material appropriate to the subject area in areas other than language arts. I guess she would rather see Hamlet read in a history class that the Declaration of Independence?  Below are the Common Core standards, edited for brevity, not content, for reading in Social Studies grades 6-8; the parenthetical statements are mine:

"Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources." (critical thinking.reading)

Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions. (distinguish source fact from inference)

Identify key steps in a text's description of a process related to history/social studies (e.g., how a bill becomes law, how interest rates are raised or lowered).

Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies. (reading for comprehension)

Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (what makes the writer think as he does, is it valid?).

Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts. (critical to information synthesis and processing)

Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text. (critically "drill down" the information to data, not opinion)

Read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

        If this is an effort to dumb kids down, it's fairly sophisticated. Interestingly enough, this is very like the Florida "Sunshine State Standards"  which we have had for more than a decade. Oddly enough our governor, Rick  Scott, dislikes common core, but endorses the clone like Sunshine State standards - go figure.

Now for the hook. Compare the level of literacy and reading facility set forth in Common Core with the standards (if you can even find them) in any Far Right wing or Christian conservative, or worse yet, home school, curriculum. Good luck with finding much. Still think this is a plot?

        The huge irony here is that while Schafly natters on about this heinous , apparently Socialist,  plot, the greatest real threat to dumbing down curriculum are the efforts,  prevalent in several Red States, to not only avoid the critical thinking required to analyze theses and antithesis (the Klan vs Civil Rights , "Good Indians and "Bad" indians, women's rights vs paternalism, Robber baron Capitalism vs worker's rights, and the list goes on.  Current states efforts to "clean up" (censor) student texts is not happening because "socialists" wish it so, believe me.  

        Amazingly what Ms Schlafly and Dr Blumenfeld have done is to blame Common Core for issues unrelated  to it and then paint them as part of some great Socialist conspiracy, with the aim of reducing the ability to critically think, analyze and express one's opinion. Along the way we are treated to a great and not unexpected  blathering of anti-intellectual rhetoric.  This is the exact antithesis of reality in this instance.

        Those in the US who would quash social  critics and hammer children into good compliant  workers with just enough mental agility to do the job, are, as they have been since Horace Mann, the moneyed class who benefit the most from a smoothly functioning society free of original thought and social conscience. You want to see the source of the "dumb down education" vibe? They're the same persons who want to censor texts, eliminate discussion of controversial issues in class, crush unions,  reinstitute prayer in schools, teach Creationism, and overturn Common Core. And they are sooo not Socialists! Ms. Schafly not only misinterpreted the words, she doesn't even know the tune.