Math as Indoctrination
Eagle Forum - April
One area where Rethinking
Schools has it right is their view of Common Core standards. Although the
mainstream media relentlessly insists that Common Core disenchantment comes
only from far-right and Tea Party groups, the current issue of Rethinking
Schools magazine reports on the progressive group’s displeasure in an
article titled “The Problems with the Common Core”:
The standards were drafted
largely behind closed doors by academics and assessment “experts,” many with
ties to testing companies. . . . [It is] a massively well-financed campaign of
billionaires and politically powerful advocacy organizations. . . . Rethinking
Schools has always been skeptical of standards imposed from above. Too many
standards projects have been efforts to move decisions about teaching and
learning away from educators and schools, and put them in the hands of distant
bureaucracies and politicians. (ReThinking Schools, Winter 2013-14)
Since states began
implementing Common Core, all sorts of social justice math teaching has popped
up in classrooms. It seems that if a lesson plan is labeled Common
Core-aligned, no matter how misguided, it may be taught to students. Standards
that “change how math is taught” leave classrooms wide open to adding social
justice content.
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