More than 130 distinguished Catholic scholars have
signed a letter denouncing the Common Core State Standards document, a
U.S. education initiative that seeks to bring diverse state curricula
into alignment with each other. The scholars claim the text does “a
grave disservice to Catholic education.”
One of the instigators of the letter sent to US
bishops is Professor Gerard Bradley who teaches at the Notre Dame Law
School. “We believe that implementing Common Core would be a
grave disservice to Catholic education in America,” the letter reads.
“In fact, we are convinced that Common Core is so deeply
flawed that it should not be adopted by Catholic schools which have yet
to approve it, and that those schools which have already endorsed it
should seek an orderly withdrawal now.” The Common Core initiative was
introduced in an attempt by the National Governors and the Council of
Chief State School Officers to establish standardised educational
criteria across all states in the Union. The Bill and Melinda Gates
foundation provided most of the funding for Common Core pumping more than $160 million into the programme. The Obama administration is a big supporter of Common Core.
Over the past 3 years, more than 100 Catholic
dioceses decided to implement Common Core, along with 45 other States
and the District of Columbia, including Washington. The letter calls the
Core “a recipe for standardized workforce preparation” which
“shortchanges the central goals of all sound education and surely those
of Catholic education.” The programme reduces the study of “classic,
narrative fiction” in favour of “informational texts”. This transforms
“literacy” into a “critical” skill set, at the expense of sustained and
heartfelt encounters with great works of literature. “Rather than
explore the creativity of man, the great lessons of life, tragedy, love,
good and evil, the rich textures of history that underlie great works
of fiction and the tales of self-sacrifice and mercy in the works of the
great writers that have shaped our cultural literacy over the
centuries, Common Core reduces reading to a servile activity.”
Signatories include Robert George of Princeton
University, Anthony Esolen of Providence College, Scott Hahn of
University of Steubenville, Patrick Deneen of the University of Notre
Dame, David Schindler of the Catholic University of America, and Janet
Smith of Sacred Heart Major Seminary. The letter’s authors complain that
Common Core lacks America’s Catholic schools’ rich tradition of
helping to form children’s hearts and minds. In that tradition,
education brings children to the Word of God. It provides students with a
sound foundation of knowledge and sharpens their faculties of reason.
Education in this tradition forms men and women capable of discerning
and pursuing their path in life and who stand ready to defend truth,
their church, their families, and their country.”
Sister John Mary Fleming, the executive director of the Secretariat of Catholic Education
of the U.S. stated that Common Core should not be seen as a ceiling but
as a floor, adding “we see the Common Core as a minimum, just as we’ve
seen other state standards in the past as a minimum, and we intend to go
way beyond that.” But the debate is very much open and heated, partly
because only maths and English Common Core standards have been released
for now. But standards in other areas will likely “promote the
prevailing philosophical orthodoxies,” including a “materialist
metaphysics” incompatible with Catholic spiritual values.