[ExI] common core educations standards, was: RE: far future

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 10:41 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> I hope Common Core is a step in the right direction.
>

I rather doubt it will be. First, It means there will be ONE way to educate
children instead of 50. That means whatever we get wrong will be wrong for
EVERYONE. If we had 50 states deciding on their own, at least a few would
get each thing right, preparing students to be good at different things,
which is what we need.

Since Bill Gates' foundation is behind Common Core, we can assume everyone
going through it will likely be good at using computers. Who will fix cars
or weld pipes or become doctors or do other REAL things if everyone is good
at computers?

Second, the federal government rarely gets anything right, so why should we
expect it of them this time? Our great experiment in democracy is supposed
to have 50 minor experiments in democracy happening within it at all times.
If common core is adopted, there will no longer be new experiments in
democratic education, and we'll stagnate. It's like saying "All dinosaurs
should be sauropods." Not much evolution for a while from that starting
point.

It may be a minor point, but it's not constitutional. That hasn't stopped
anyone else lately, but there are still some of us that care about that.

I think EVERY school should teach things their own way and compete in an
open marketplace for students. Not the most popular idea, but it would
result in more free thinking out there.

I find it most encouraging to hang out on Extropians, since this tends to
> be a most creative-thinking group.
>

Thanks Mike! I think so too!

-Kelly
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20140120/8d844440/attachment.html>