Common Core: The Cost of Uniformity

Outcome Based Education: From Goals 2000, NCLB, RTTT, to Common Core

Well intentioned school reformers have been pushing the idea of outcome based education for decades. What is outcome based education? It's the idea that educating kids is like building a product on an assembly line. The idea that you get predictable quality controlled equality of outcome from every student by an equality of inputs. This has created a paradigm shift in education. Viewing the education of children in an unnatural way and transforming classrooms through the one-size-fits all standardization of education. 

It is not surprising that this idea got teeth after the creation of the Federal Department of Education. Consistent with the compulsory regulatory nature of government, the DOE began it's work by "encouraging" uniform regulation compliance in exchange for federal education dollars. This pursuit of equality of inputs has pushed all the education "reforms" that parents, teachers, and students are fed up with, including the newest, "Common Core". Each "reform" gets progressively more controlling as each one fails to attain the equality of inputs/equality of outputs that is desired.

I believe those who continue to push this idea have a warped view of reality that is seriously dangerous in practice. I struggle to understand their confused thought processes that are coloring everything our kids are taught overt and subliminal. They carry with them a strange dichotomy that pushes "equality" through uniformity, and simultaneously teach the relativity of multiculturalism that supposedly celebrates diversity. These competing messages make for messy minds and kids ill equipped to make sound judgments about themselves and the world around them.

They will not stop pushing their outcome based education philosophy because it is rooted in their misconceived notions of what "equality" is. They keep trying newer forms of "quality control" because in their view the obvious failures are the fault of never quite reaching the equality of inputs (making everyone the same). They say there are still too many schools doing things in too many different ways. Basically we don't have the conveyor belt model down to a science yet.

The pressure this has put on teachers (and by extension students) has changed education from the "lighting of a fire to the filling of a pail" and prompted schools to shift their mission from extending educational opportunity to all, to a promised "guarantee" of success for all" (Thus "No Child Left Behind) -- which of course fails not only because we are all different but because there is not one singular definition of success.

My sons middle school principle once explained it to me this way as he defended the paradigm shift -- because of the failures of parents "now days", schools have a greater responsibility to ensure students succeed in a more direct way. Instead of providing opportunities and then leaving it to the student, aided by their parents, to take hold of those opportunities, school today must “guarantee” that their students will learn. He said, In education today it is “no longer the mind set to give students opportunity,” but it has become, “I’m going to make you learn it.”

My school district’s mission statement exemplified this thinking. The statement said the mission of our schools “is to guarantee that each student develops the character traits and masters the knowledge and skills necessary for personal excellence and responsible citizenship…” Can schools guarantee that children will develop character and master knowledge? How is it done? It is done as my principal suggested, by taking the attitude, “I’m going to make you learn.”

There has always been a certain segment of society that has believed you can guarantee a certain outcome through compulsory means. Whether or not that is true, I believe it is a dangerous way to be teaching American children. John Adams said that, “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” How can we instruct them in the principles of freedom through compulsion?

This changing paradigm is moving us into an era where children are not empowered to pursue excellence, and largely because they are no longer free to manage their own success or to suffer the consequences of their failure. How do the character traits of responsibility and self-motivation develop without experiencing failure and true life consequences? Can any lasting life lessons be learned in a controlled, sterile, forced environment?

The lofty plans of these "reformers" to transform education may achieve the result of universal C-level proficiency. But at what cost? At the cost of highly motivated, self-disciplined, hard working, creative, ambitious, happy children.

If we force “learning” – which in this new philosophy means successfully regurgitating information on standardized tests – we will teach children far more damaging lessons. We will teach them that they are not free. Or even worse, we will teach them that freedom is dangerous because it allows for failure. We will teach them that failure is an unacceptable part of life. Therefore, freedom must also be unacceptable.

This loss of freedom and failure teaches a twisted reality and confuses and harms our children. It removes true accountability and ultimately teaches them that they are weak and reliant on others for their success. In this climate, we raise lazy, entitled children who are unsatisfied with themselves and others and are far more likely to fail in the real world and be unable to recover from it.

We ought to remember the wise words of Abraham Lincoln, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If the philosophy of the school room in our generation is to seed mistrust in freedom and accountability then Lincoln's words are a true prediction of calamity for our government in the next.