Is “citizenship’ teaching like a new religion?

DON’T FORGET THE THIRD “C” — CITIZENSHIP !

The original documents on Common Core always had three Cs — Career, College and Citizenship Readiness.

The BIG QUESTION is — Why was “citizenship” dropped from much of the narrative when it is really THE MAIN AGENDA of all these 21st C Learning projects?

It’s been dropped, I surmise, because it was taking on an appearance, a perception, of “proselytizing”, and we know that’s WRONG. Public education is supposed to be secular — free of religion — at least in Western developed democratic nations.

So, Marxism (a political ideology acting like a religion), Social Emotional Learning, spirituality, and even the totalitarian “oneness” of certain established faiths are minimized while banging away at College and Career Readiness.

Yet, OBEDIENCE, mass obedience to one central command system — a New World Order — is still the assumption governing these high level conferences, their reports, etc. “Sustainability “ just happens to be the most acceptable excuse around with which to align formation and compliance with a rent-seeking society — citizens enslaved to public-centric jobs, services, and a dumbed-down Grade 6 education. Why Grade 6? Because that’s the target level of slick propaganda. Because Dummies books are at that level. And, because Grade 6 can be monitored and tracked through technology — all our games, phones, assessments . . . Somewhere it was established that a Grade 6 level would be most pliable and manageable! A small, educated elite can thus manage a two-tier populace.

What’s the quality of life in an unfree world? How can one be free when all is programmed? Figuratively, and biblically, why was the Tower of Babel split asunder into many languages and many nations? Doesn’t that make sense, today, when biological, economic, and psychological survival demands diversity and choice? “What shall we do?” I, for one, am seeking counter-measures to this mixmaster education transformation now being engineered.

So, I have a story to tell. Remember how our blog author feels so excluded from all these high level conferences? Well, I got invited to one, and can still register before tomorrow. Here is the item.

EdSource symposium to tackle ‘seminal’ public school reforms (about public ed reforms in California, in partnership with California State PTA — to bring everyone up-to-date with Common Core implementation).
http://edsource.org/2014/edsource-symposium-to-tackle-seminal-public-school-reforms/61134#.U17E_q1dVNK

Now, here’s the clincher, the keystone to make this conference really, really credible. One of the main speakers is Michael Fullan and here is how he’s described:

“ . . .school reform expert Michael Fullan, the former dean at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto who is credited with leading a whole scale transformation of the Ontario, Canada school system. He’ll keynote a session on what it will take to reform education in California.”

Now, I’m from Canada, and a professor in a teacher education faculty asked me a question to something I had written. Now, professors, are in a privileged level of knowledge about things educational, and he said, to this effect: “ I didn’t know Ontario was on board for 21st Century Learning, along with Alberta and British Columbia. Where can I find out about this?”

I pointed him to a document, APRIL, 2014, The Ontario Report is called — Achieving Excellence – A Renewed Vision for Education in Ontario, April 2014

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/about/excellent.html

The irony of this Ontario exercise and this announcement and report is that it’s all PRO FORMA — an accomplished fact. Without real public knowledge or involvement Ontario has a new transformative education plan laid out.

A 1976 OECD report on Canadian education said Canada’s public consultations are largely “pro forma “ exercises, — done as a formality, perfunctory.

This’s how most of 21st Century Learning projects — world-wide — seem to be going. Does anyone feel “used”?