An open letter to our education department from a white suburban mom

JENNA GLATZER 

Jenna Glatzer is the author or ghostwriter of 22 books, including Celine Dion's authorized biography, Bullyproof Your Child for Life with Dr. Joel Haber, and My Stolen Son with Susan Markowitz (the true story behind the movie Alpha Dog). Please visit Jenna's website at www.jennaglatzer.com to learn more about her work.

NEW YORK - Politicians are excellent at saying deeply stupid things.

Recently, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was defending the much-hated Common Core when he said, “It’s fascinating to me that some of the pushback is coming from, sort of, white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were, and that’s pretty scary.”

Hi, Arne. Thought I’d give you a little educating of your own.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I prayed what lots of people might consider a strange prayer: “Please let her be smart, but not too smart.”

I was on the verge of “too smart” in early elementary school. I was the smartest in my class most of the time, and I did feel isolated and different. I didn’t want that for her. Intelligence is great, but there’s a reason valedictorians have higher suicide rates than the rest of the population. It’s no fun feeling like no one understands you.

Now let me tell you what I got: a child who is far more gifted than I ever was.

She asked me to teach her to read when she was 2 and to teach her algebra when she was 4. Her preschool director told me that she needed to be skipped a grade. I refused. Didn’t want her to be any more “different” than need be. Then her kindergarten principal called in reading and math specialists to do weeks of testing on her, and at the end of it, he sat me down and said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. The assistant superintendent has never seen anything like this. In all our years of education, she is the most gifted child we’ve ever seen and we’re in uncharted territory trying to figure out how to educate her.”

He suggested I skip her, and then still do enrichment on top of that. I said no. He suggested I find a school more geared toward gifted programming. I scrimped and saved and the following year, I did get her into the only public school in my area known for gifted programming. Within two months, I was again sitting down with the superintendent and hearing that she needed to be skipped. She was 6 years old and reading at a 9th grade level, with 8th grade comprehension. Even in this school, she was just too far ahead. I finally gave in and allowed her to move up a grade. She’s doing just fine. Do I think she’s going to cure cancer one day? Heck yes, I do.

I tell you all this, dear Arne, because I’d like to blow up your stupid perception of why we parents and teachers hate the Common Core.

I’m a white suburban mom. Do you think “their child isn’t as  brilliant as they thought they were and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were” applies to me? Let’s get it straight: You can throw any test you like at my daughter. She’s going to do wonderfully. Her school is excellent. And I think you can stuff your Common Core where the sun don’t shine.

I will be opting her out of the tests.

Of course, Arne, you’re not alone in your willful ignorance of the real issues. You have cronies like Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, who said, “While American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the  results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking  at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children do better.”

Let’s deconstruct that in two parts.

First, again, I’m clearly not pulling my kid out of the tests because the results will make her feel bad. I’m pulling her because this curriculum and these tests are wrong for everybody, even the kids like mine who will do well on them.

Second, you’re delusional if you think that people in other countries are looking at our Common Core results and asking themselves how to help their children do better on a curriculum that is failing. Yes, it’s clear: The curriculum is failing. You may want to say that our kids are failing, but when we’re looking at only 30% passing grades, then it’s obvious as anything that it’s the Common Core standards at fault– and you set them up for this intentionally, which is a crappy thing to do.

Open your ears and hear this, Arne and your ilk:

I don’t believe that every second of every school day needs to be filled with dancing and laughter.

I do believe that young children should be allowed to be young children.

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I don’t believe in sheltering our children from every one of life’s disappointments.

I do believe that they should not be made to feel like failures every day of their formative years before their self-concept is even formed.

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I don’t believe all testing is evil.

I do believe that the amount of testing you’re now expecting is counterproductive and unhealthy. Children shouldn’t be vomiting and wetting their pants and crying in class because they’re in fear of these all-day tests.

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I don’t believe we need to bubble-wrap our kids.

I do believe that if you can read my previous statement about the kids vomiting and wetting their pants and then respond to it with any comment about how parents today just want to “bubble wrap,” then you are a shitty person.

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I don’t believe that our education system was perfect before and didn’t need some work.

I do believe it was irresponsible and negligent to unleash an entirely new curriculum on our children that had never been field-tested, was not approved by educators, without properly training teachers about how to implement it, and without first figuring out if the material was developmentally appropriate (hint: it isn’t!).

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I don’t believe that teachers should not be held responsible for how well they teach.

I do believe that it’s short-sighted to tie teacher’s evaluation scores to how well their students do on standardized tests, which creates an environment where teachers may resent students who don’t learn as quickly, even if they’re trying their best.

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I don’t believe we should have low educational standards.

I do believe you’re using a straw man argument to even pretend that American parents want lower standards. You know damn well that we want our kids to succeed, we want them to be as well-educated as possible, we want them to learn the value of hard work, and we want our country to measure up globally. We just know you’re going about it entirely wrong, and then sticking your fingers in your ears when we tell you how it’s affecting our kids and our teachers.

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I don’t believe the entire academic day should be freewheeling and unscheduled.

I do believe my child’s teacher’s exasperation when she tells me that she is unable to teach the class about what Veteran’s Day is because there is no time in the curriculum for that, now that every minute of her day is taken up by the new requirements.  >>MORE<<

While I love and agree with almost everything that was written in this letter by Jenna Glatzer, I have to completely disagree with her views and praise given to Bill and Melinda Gates.  They are EVIL they are a huge factor in not only Common Core Education, but they are also behind Monsanto, GMO's,  Vacainations World Wide  

Biotech Wants to Experiment on Aussies - GMO Cholera Vax

image source

Eve Hillary
Activist Post

Many Australians were outraged last week to find out that the California based company, PaxVax, had applied to the Australian government for a licence to use 1000 Australian adults and children as guinea pigs to test its experimental, genetically modified, live bacterial cholera vaccine.

In only a week, the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator had received so many emails from troubled Aussie citizens that it added a post to its website assuring the public that it had not yet issued a license to the company.

But if history is any indicator, the Aussie gene regulator will probably grant the license to PaxVax, just as it approved a license, in 2003, to the Australian Commonwealth Serum Laboratory (CSL) to release its genetically modified cholera vaccine, Orochol, into commercial use. The gene regulator declared, in its risk assessment document, that the risk of releasing the live genetically engineered cholera organism was ‘very low’ or ‘negligible’, despite several public submissions the regulator had received objecting to the release of the GMO vaccine into the Australian population and environment.[1] and now Common Core Education.    

Not to mention Melinda  Gates thinks that Americans are spoiled and should live in little boxes while she lives in a 66,000 square foot home and eat like an Africans  In walks The UNs  Agenda 21.   

Once again Jenna what you wrote was brillant except  for praise on the Gates Foundation.

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