The Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) is a state-led effort that established a single set of educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics that states voluntarily adopt to standardize and strengthen educational standards and expectations. The nation’s governors and education commissioners, through their representative organizations, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), led the development of the Common Core State Standards and continue to lead the Initiative. The mission of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) reads as follows:

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy. (emphasis added)

The Common Core Curriculum is divided into two main sections: mathematical standards and English language arts standards (ELA). Mathematical standards appear […] Continue Reading…

As we have seen in Part I, education in North America at all levels was an indisputably Christian enterprise from the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 to the early part of the 20th century. The Bible and other books reflecting a biblical worldview were the foundation of American education, that is, the original common core curriculum. In Part II, we will describe the destruction of the original biblically-based common core curriculum by the humanistic progressive education philosophies of John Dewey and others.

The churches were the principal founders of the first colleges and universities in the American colonies and whose purpose was for the training of pastors. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, colleges and universities expanded their academic portfolios, and the cultural ties between the Church and higher education gradually weakened. However, the weakening ties generated little cultural controversy because the explicitly Christian and generally conservative ends of education were understood by the great majority of Americans. Nevertheless, as the end of the nineteenth century approached, “…the breach separating the universities and the churches widened suddenly and culminated in the extraordinarily rapid and dramatic ‘disestablishment’ of conservative Protestantism from North American academic life from […] Continue Reading…

There has been considerable discussion in the press and halls of education with regard to The Common Core Curriculum Standards Initiative, an attempt by the educational establishment to standardize and strengthen educational standards and expectations at the elementary and secondary levels. Quoting from the Initiative’s English language arts standards, “As a natural outgrowth of meeting the charge to define college and career readiness, the Standards also lay out a vision of what it means to be a literate person in the twenty-first century.” In developing core curriculum standards, it would be worthwhile for the curriculum designers to spend some time reviewing what it meant to be a literate person in America from the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 to the beginning of the twentieth century. A few excerpts from such a review will reveal the heart of America’s Original Common Core Curriculum and its role in the creation of the greatest country in the history of the world.

• Harvard University was founded in 1636 under the following Rules and Precepts: “Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life […] Continue Reading…