How many decisions do you face in a day? Probably more than you care to look back and reflect on.
Fear is the most common thing that gets in the way of quality decision making. Fear of failure, fear of making the wrong decision, and fear of our own inadequacy all affect the actions we take and decisions we make. Add maybe the lack of information to the mix with your fear… You have a combination plate for making some weak decisions.
Today in Arizona, the Arizona Board of Education voted to repeal common core standards from public schools. Ever look at the comments of any post on common core and you sense the lack of information that most people have about what common core truly is. Many just want to say it is too difficult for their children. Have you seen the questions? Most parents can’t answer them. For me, I am not ever in favor of any program that was designed to get some people rich from it. Education is one of the foundations to our future. Fear paralyzed many on the issue of common core. The Superintendent of Education ran on the only platform of removing the standards. She won because of just that fear of common core. I don’t want to argue that common core is good or bad… It has it good and bad… We need education standards that insure that our youth are taught to think, collaborate and have high expectations for the future.
Many folks have commented that they want to go back to what they learned when they were growing up. Now that is scary… The world is not the same as it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago. When I was working as a manager with a fortune 50 company, we did some basic reading and math testing of the employees – and the results were not good. The company invested plenty to attempt to get some of the employees to a 10th grade level in reading and math. High tech companies need an education workforce. The new economy is completely different – and not having fundamental education – people will struggle. The workforce of tomorrow needs more than what we did back in the day!
Fear… We should maybe fear the future? Hopefully the repeal decision will work out… I do know one thing, we have upset the apple cart and have no standards at the moment. Our schools have spent plenty of money – for what amounts to about nothing. Now we get to spend some more, which we are complaining that we do not have enough of.
I feel strongly that many folks lacked the level of information necessary to understand the pros of common core. They focused on the cons (and the fear from others).
Simple fact: Our kids have lost out. They will be thrust into yet another program… That could be the third one in 4 or 5 years. How many will fall thru the cracks? Are parents ready to pick up the pieces? Some will, many will not.
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