COLORING
THE COMMON CORE GREEN
PART 1
By Sam
Anderson
December 30, 2014
NewsWithViews.com
Mother Earth’s Agenda in the Common Core Standards
The counter Common Core culture war variously misses the ultimate reason why the Common Core styled standards were drafted and so ferociously pushed by the powers that be. A cursory inspection of the CC Language Arts standards, even by an untrained mind would find no controversial content per se, nor report any non-academic concepts.
The No Child Left Behind Act discharged a decade long culture war, while masking The No Child Left Inside act. Fifty states have adopted the North American Association for Environment Education’s Plan, Illinois, Iowa and Florida first signing up in 2010. With 16,000 members in North America and influence in 30 countries, the NAAEE touches on every level of education formal and non-formal. Since 1992, with EPA funding, the US Partnership and the NAAEE have had a free reign rarely mentioned in the social media's Common Core culture war.
Connecting National Environmental Education Standards to Common Core Standards
“Education must equip students with knowledge, skills, understanding, attitudes, and values compatible with a sustainable society. It goes beyond the “green” agenda to raise awareness of the complexity and dynamism of issues. It builds capacity for collaboration and creativity in problem-solving, critical reflection and systemic and futures thinking, a trans-disciplinary orientation, and motivates action for environmental sustainability.” (NAAEE)
The US Partnership’s mission is to “Leverage the United Nations’s Decade to foster education for sustainable development in the United States.” Their goal “acts as a convener, catalyst, and communicator working across all sectors of society”. The links to Partner Resources on their site are no longer listed. Previously the list included 103 resources inclusive of: California School Garden Network, the Center for Ecoliteracy, the Cloud Institute, Facing the Future, Learn and Service America, the North American Association for Environmental Educators, the SEED Center and the Sustainable Schools Handbook. Naturally they still exist to water the seeds they have planted.
Fair to Middling: A National Standards Progress Report concludes that the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are “skilled based only, content and culture-free”. Sandra Stotsky and James K. Milgram as expert members of the CCSS Validation Team, elected not to sign on the dotted line, rather report the bottom line of the CCSS.
If standards, any standards are content and culture free, then they are suitable for any country or culture. The Common Core State Standards are ‘instructional-based’ standards. They instruct teachers how students are to learn, not what to learn. The CCSS standards are ripe for content covering social justice, ecological economics and environmental literacy. All this comes from various quarters, one being the US Partnership Sustainability Standards for Grades K-12, and two, the North American Association for Environmental Education.
Most Americans would have no reasonable objection to incorporating conservation or environmental education in schooling, nationally or globally.With tongue in cheek, teaching children about the environment can change wasteful habits and are comfortably fit in a science or health classes. Education for Sustainability (EfS) however is not about protecting the birds, the bees, the flowers and the trees. EfS changes habits of mind: values, behavior, principles, loyalties, a child's world view; habits that can be observed and stored in databases. The US Partnership Sustainability Standards for Grades K-12 are posted next to the Common Core standards.
1) For Grades K-4: Students assess their own learning by developing criteria for themselves, and use these to set goals and produce high quality work.
2) For Grades 5-8: Students compare the distribution of resources between two or more economic classes, and ethnic and cultural groups within their own community and afar.
3) Middle School: Students participate in a simulation to devise a national energy policy through negotiation, collaboration and coalition building among the three groups that make a democratic society; the state, civic organizations and business.
From these three one can learn that children are to assess their knowledge, distribute resources equitably and people will need to join a coalition or a non-profit to have a voice.
4) Students perform effectively on teams that set and achieve goals, conduct investigations, solve problems, and create solutions by using consensus-building and cooperation to work toward group decisions.” (Standard 2.4 Social and Cultural Systems)
5) Grades 9-12: Human Rights – Students examine the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human rights, comparing this document to the United States Bill of Rights, answering the question, “Which rights from the U. N. Declaration are included in the U. S. Bill of Rights, and which are not explicitly addressed?
The EfS standards are clearly not limited to environmental issues. The 4th standard is a perfect description of the way students are to learn described in the Common Core. Self-discovery exercises from Kindergarten on formulate a personal value (attitude) on the subject. The critical thinking skills emphasized in the Common Core delineate these steps as Determining, Analyzing, Synthesizing and E-value-ating. The 5th Standard fails to mention the condition on obtaining these rights. “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.”
6) Personal Responsibility: Grade 9-12- Students identify and commit to a personal sustainability action and they write about the results of that action. (e.g.: using public transportation, reducing and recycling).
7) Personal Responsibility Grades 5-8- Students know the difference between actions that they can take themselves and those that require the involvement of other people, organizations, and government. They identify and carry out a personal action that will enhance quality of life in environmental, social/cultural, or economic sectors.
8) Making a Difference: Grades K-4 - Students take an active role in their community and feel a locus of control or self-efficacy. Students understand that everyone has the ability to affect change or impact a system, community, and self.
9) Learners (Grades K-8) will describe and analyze examples of tensions between individual rights and benefits and the societal good. (NAAEE guide)
Performance of these sustainability standards requires students to take action (agency), become agents of change, community activists. On September 24 2014, Mother Earth Day/May Day Mobilization [1] for ‘climate change’ found hundreds of students of all ages marching the streets of New York City, many bussed in from out of state. Germany's Reich Nature Protection Law (Reichsnaturschutzgesetz) grew from a Volkischyouth movement born in the 19th Century, nourished by botanists and biologists at Jena University. Today volkisch youth are now professors at our major universities.
Note on the US Partnership site, the K-12 NANS (National Associations Network for Sustainability), needs mentioning. The impact of the listed members has transformed the study of history to social science to the ‘science of socialism’, steered more children into green jobs, certified more International Baccalaureate Schools, collectivized teachers and changed schools into Community Learning hubs for all citizens.
In the realm of how science affects society, the Partnership posted National Wildlife Federation’s new report “on how climate change will affect the state of mental health among Americans”. We can be assured, however as the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan,[2] guarantees that“education and sustainability are the keys to our economic future and our ecological future”. Will it also sustain or determine our mental health, Mr. Secretary?
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A new nomenclature of academics is forth coming from vendors, eager to making knowledge a commodity. They provide engaging course work and lessons; Ecoliteracy, Ethnomathematics, Environmental Economics, Real-world math, simulation activities in ‘village groups’, calculating your carbon footprint, perfect critical thinking skills and service learning activities to mobilize students to become community activists. . The Common Core’s empty set of standards had been prepared for the perfect storm of persuasion for changing our cultural inheritance. Read how one state infused Agenda 21’s sustainable education into their schools.
“Therefore, we regard it as a matter of first importance for social and international living that educators should be more concerned with the child, and the healthy development of his body and mind, than with the content of the various subjects which go to make a school curriculum”. For part two click below.
Click here for part -----> 1, 2,
Related Article:
1 - Pennsylvania Citizens Call for Moratorium on Data Collection
Towards World Understanding; UNESCO, Vol II, 1949
1. Citizens for Objective Public Education, Inc. (COPE) Alleges that the Kansas Board’s adoption on June 11, 2013 of a “Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS will have the effect of causing Kansas public schools to establish and endorse a non-theistic religious worldview”. Earth Day was changed to Mother Earth Day. (Resolution A/RES/63278).
2. Presidential Taskforce on Sustainability
� 2014 Sam Anderson - All Rights Reserved
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As a student, a teacher’s aide and then as a teacher Sam Anderson have always loved the flavor of a classroom. Graduated from Southern Oregon University with a B.S. in Elementary Education, endorsed in Mathematics, subsequently teaching 6th grade and middle school math. Sam began her research on the transformation of our educational institutions in 1995, the advent of Goals 2000. It was a privilege to share her research with a national research group on education issues for 3 years and write for a newspaper. More recently, Sam has given presentations in Southern Oregon and appeared several times as a guest on local Bill Meyer's KMED radio show in Medford Or.. Sam resides in the Rogue Valley, of Southern Oregon.
E-Mail: dlandy414@gmail.com
