Watch Out Chicago! Rahm's got a 'curriculum' just for you
The Fixer? In a headline in the New York Times, Nov. 28, 2010 (Emanuel Vows Fix For Math and English) Rahm Emanuel proclaims his role as Fixer. Watch out, Chicago! The curriculum Rahm Emanuel is talking about exists. It has been produced by the Common Core Standards Mapping Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Hey, they brought us the Common Core, so it makes sense that they provide the maps, too. Leave nothing to chance. Assume teachers are stupid. Take charge. This is the mantra of the neo-liberals who are now in charge of education in this country.
According to The New York Times (November 28, 2010), Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emmanuel (above, at the November 16, 2010 UNO anniversary dinner) wants to saddle Chicago with one of the more controversial parts of the so-called "Common Core Curriculum" being developed with Gates Foundation money. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.From the New York Times: "Rahm Emanuel made a campaign promise last week that if elected mayor, he would install a new math and English language curriculum in Chicago’s public schools by the end of his first term.
"Mr. Emanuel said the new curriculum would be geared toward equipping students with the skills to meet the "common core standards" that education officials in Illinois and more than 40 other states have adopted. In imposing the new standards, the state has left up to the districts the question of how to try to meet those standards."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/us/politics/28cncpulse.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=
The curriculum mandates for 8th graders ranges from the outdated to the bizarre. For a complete list, go here:
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=830
The curriculum mappers want regular 8th graders to read Little Women. Advanced students should read James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Here's how this literary work begins: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo
His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.
He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.
High school seniors are required to recite a memorized poem. They can choose "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake, "Ode to Indolence" by John Keats, "In Memoriam" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Deserted Village" by Oliver Goldsmith, or "Tintern Abbey [sic]" by William Wordsworth.
Students are required to introduce their recitation with an explanation of how the poet's ideas relate to the natural world. While the rest of us worry about Global Warming, students following the Common Core curriculum, which is financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and advocated by Ron Emanuel, will worry about 19th century man's relationship to nature.
http://commoncore.org/maps/index.php/maps/grade_12_unit_4/
Watch out, Chicago! Rahm Emanuel wants Chicago to maintain its place as the role model for corporate takeover of the schools.
