Common Core is an education initiative sponsored by the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the purpose of which is to establish consistent education standards across the states as well as ensure that students graduating from high school are prepared to enter college or the workforce.
Common Core is much criticized. Its mathematics program is needlessly and nonsensically convoluted. See my post of March 25, “Bizarre Common Core math.”
But it’s not just math.
Even more egregious is a Common Core workbook used by seventh-graders at Grant Middle School in Springfield, Ill., which presents the Second Amendment to the United State Constitution as guaranteeing the right to bear only arms that are registered.
The Second Amendment as written in the U.S. Constitution states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
But the Common Core workbook (see below) says the Second Amendment “states that people have the right to certain weapons, providing that they register them and they have not been in prison.”
Jason Howerton reports for The Blaze, March 24, 2014:
Bob Hill, the superintendent of Springfield Public Schools, told 970 WMAY that he doesn’t plan to remove the workbook, despite the outrage it has generated among parents.
Hill said the workbook is not the only resource that provides a definition of the Second Amendment and that the interpretation found in the material teaches students “what happens with the right to bear arms in the context of 2014” because “in reality,” some places do require the registration of firearms.
Hill also claimed the material is not “proselytizing” a certain political point of view and said removing the material at this point in time is “pretty unfair relative to what the teacher has going on.” Micromanaging teachers in the district by reviewing all material they want to teach, he said, would be insulting to educators.
The material was created by a teacher who is now retired, but it continued to be used. Hill said several parents have asked him to remove the material, “which I’ve told them I wouldn’t do.”
Listen to Hill’s full interview with 970 WMAY here.
Here’s contact info for Superintendent Bob Hill:
Superintendent Robert C. Hill
Robert C. Hill
Interim Superintendent
Springfield Public Schools
1900 West Monroe St.
Springfield, IL 62704
Phone: (217) 525-3000
Email: district@sps186.org
H/t Patriot Action
~Eowyn