Catastrophic Consequences of Common Core by James Reilly

My fellow students,

Allow me to remind you of a familiar experience to many in classrooms today:

As the experienced, loved teacher greets his class, he is required to issue a special Common Core workbook.  This workbook is filled with questions of a caliber that he and his colleagues, three PhDs and one master’s degree among them, could not fathom.  Having to teach the content in this new curriculum is a burden on the teacher.  Struggling to understand the content is death to the student.

Too many high school classes throughout New York have been put in this paralyzing situation.  The wondrous predicted result of Common Core is to have students thinking at a level higher than those of generations before them.  Students given Common Core work at a high school level, having never previously attempted it, will obviously fail.  In New York City this past year, the Common Core Regents examination in Algebra administered to high school kids was updated.  The new exam caused 25 percent more kids to fail.  These kids were forced to retake the class and potentially not even graduate.  How is this beneficial?

High school students are constantly being strangled by the demands of the world around them.  Young people today are forced to suppress the true humanity and individuality developing inside of them simply to work toward their futures.  They are constantly placed under immense, smothering, deadly pressure.  Why is it that society finds this population, crushed by self-motivation, a good group to begin inflicting Common Core standards upon?

Theoretically, the standards of Common Core are good ones.  But in theory, aren’t communist standards good as well?  Just because something has good intentions does not always mean it does good for those it affects.  Any high school teacher or student touched by Common Core is usually annoyed or even harmed by its effects.  There is no person familiar with Common Core who doesn’t groan in annoyance upon hearing its name.  High school kids are perplexed by the constant impossibly complex work handed to them.  High school students are pushed to the breaking point emotionally, physically, and mentally, just to pass a ludicrous examination.  Why is it that the fragile, immature teenage mind, already subjected to inhumane amounts of stress, has to be pummeled even further into the ground?

The answer is very simple: we don’t.  Why should we have to put up with their bull?  If Common Core standards are sensible, implement them from the beginning, Don’t start halfway through.  You wouldn’t write a book from the tenth chapter, nor would you begin construction on a building from the second floor.  It is simply senseless. We need to force the hands of the powers that be to realize their mistakes and attempt to fix them.  They need to realize that the stress on a high school teen is far too aggressive to be enhanced by new, unfamiliar concepts.  We need to urge both the governor and the district to oppose these new policies.  We need to do whatever we can to make sure that if they must integrate their policies on students, they begin at the start of the educational process instead of the high school level.  Until these tests and concepts are no longer integrated into our lives, we must refuse to allow them to become our lives.  We cannot let ourselves stress over the impossible, only work toward replacing the impossibility in our lives with new possibility.  

I hope as we move forward in our educational careers, Common Core integration can change for the better as a result of the work of us and our remarkable minds.

Thank you.