Conformity vs. Creativity
I confess to having lots of doubts about Common Core. This is a serious issue, and the push back and vitriol leveled against those who do not favor the CCS Standards is not conducive to a civil debate. In any debate a good question was always something that was encouraged not reviled. This issue is not cut and dry, for if we know anything about human development we know that different people develop at different rates. So when you talk of standards you must give broad latitude to the criteria that you seek to raise as the standard. Academic knowledge, is but one attribute of an individual’s persona, and academic success is dependent on success in other attributes such as emotional and physical development. So when I hear advocates for CCS Standards say that I seem to be confused about the difference between standards and curriculum, I shake my head in wonder at the just how off base this argument really is in terms of the research that has been done on psychological development.
Have CCSS Standards been field tested? No they have not. So how then can CCSS be raised as the “Holy Grail” in Education. You need not look far for an example why standards don’t mean much in terms of success. Bill Gates, who stands to gain monetarily from CCSS implementation, the prodigy who founded Microsoft, was a college dropout. His Foundation was a big player in the introduction of CCSS and in the push for implementation in 2010.
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Education should never be about conformity to a Standard, it should be about the creating an “enlighten” person. In the rush to incorporate technology and metrics in the classroom we are about to make an expensive mistake, one that will have a pronounced impact on our ability to innovate. My greatest fear, is that we confuse, the computer with a teacher. A computer is a tool, a teacher is a mentor that understands the student, his shortcomings and works to help them overcome his deficiencies. That type of success and progress cannot be measured by a number or percentile.
I highly encourage you to read Erick Erickson the psychologist, not the talk show host. His work in Psychological development is still held in high regard. For Erickson, instead of focusing on cognitive development, he was interested in how children socialize and how this affects their sense of self.