Massive Censorship as Common Core Kills the Mockingbird; Expect Silence from the American Library Association

Common Core censors out
To Kill a Mockingbird

Common Core.  The supposed nationwide standard for what children will learn in public school.  With respect to reading material, Common Core standardizes sexually inappropriate material.  Organizations like the American Library Association [ALA] need not work so hard to ensure children retain access to sexually inappropriate material.  Common Core will do that for them now:

• "Pedophilia, Incest, and Graphic Sex:  Excerpts from a Common Core Reading List Book for 11th-Graders That Will Make You Blush," by Mike Opelka, The Blaze, 22 August 2013.
• "(WARNING: Graphic) Common Core Approved Child Pornography," by Macey France, PolitiChicks, 20 August 2013.

Indeed, ALA supports the proliferation of Common Core:

• "Keep Calm with ALSC and Carry on With the Common Core," by Starr LaTronica, ALSC Blog, 1 September 2013.
• "Getting to the Core: Librarians and Common Core State Standards," by American Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), American Library Association, 13 March 2013.
• "Position Statement on the Common Core College- and Career-Readiness Standards," by American Association of Schools Librarians (AASL), American Library Association, 1 March 2010.

But worse, way worse than standardizing sexualized books, is the massive censorship at the heart of Common Core.  To Kill a Mockingbird?  Gone.  The Great Gatsby?  Not so great.  "Squeezed off the syllabus."  From all schools.  Nationwide:

• "Out with 'The Great Gatsby' and In with 'The Glass Castle'?  Florida's English Teachers Adjust to New Standards," by Sarah Carr, The Hechinger Report, 15 October 2013:

In Chris Kirchner's freshman English classes at Coral Reef Senior High School, novels like "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Great Gatsby" have been squeezed off the syllabus to make room for nonfiction texts including "The Glass Castle" and "How to Re-Imagine the World."  For the first time, students will read only excerpts of classics like "The Odyssey" and "The House on Mango Street" instead of the entire book.

• "Rotten to the Core (Part 2): Readin', Writin' and Deconstructionism," by Michelle Malkin, Townhall.com, 25 January 2013:

Under Common Core, classics such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are of no more academic value than the pages of the Federal Register or the Federal Reserve archives -- or a pro-Obamacare opinion essay in The New Yorker.  Audio and video transcripts, along with "alternative literacies" that are more "relevant" to today's students (pop song lyrics, for example), are on par with Shakespeare.

English professor Mary Grabar describes Common Core training exercises that tell teachers "to read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address without emotion and without providing any historical context.  Common Core reduces all 'texts' to one level:  the Gettysburg Address to the EPA's Recommended Levels of Insulation."  Indeed, in my own research, I found one Common Core "exemplar" on teaching the Gettysburg Address that instructs educators to "refrain from giving background context or substantial instructional guidance at the outset."

Another exercise devised by Common Core promoters features the Gettysburg Address as a word cloud.  Yes, a word cloud.  Teachers use the jumble of letters, devoid of historical context and truths, to help students chart, decode and "deconstruct" Lincoln's speech.

In contrast, ALA opposes the "censorship" of To Kill a Mockingbird.  Here are just a few examples:

• "Teenage Rebel With a Cause: Why I Love Banned Books Week," by Kelly Dickinson, YALSA The Hub, 23 September 2013.
• "Timeline Entry for 1995: To Kill a Mockingbird," by Office for Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association, OIF Blog, 18 September 2012.
• "50 Years of To Kill a Mockingbird," by Melissa Rabey, YALSA Blog, 10 August 2010.

Think about this.  ALA supports Common Core but ostensibly opposes censorship, something Common Core now does on a massive scale.  So ALA rightly supports To Kill a Mockingbird while Common Core wrongly "squeezes it off the syllabus."

Will ALA now drop its support for Common Core?

I predict it will not, given its promotion of sexually inappropriate material for children is real and its opposition to censorship is only for show.  Here is just the latest example of ALA censorship and even blacklisting:

•  "YALSA Board of Directors Meeting via Conference Call, August 29, 2013; Intellectual Freedom Committee Report," by Michael Giller, YALSA Board of Directors, American Library Association, August 2013.

Hat tip to Diane Ravitch for making me aware of this massive Common Core censorship.  "Education reformer Diane Ravitch says that the standards have been adopted 'without any field test ... imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.'"

Teacher: "I have to give up the teaching of whole novels..." Common Core. http://t.co/JB02f2gSHg
— Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch) October 16, 2013

NOTE ADDED 17 OCTOBER 2013:

Updated a link to the correct link for the Sarah Carr story.

This just in, as another example of another national group addressing that odd case where a school "bans" reading material. And again I predict silence about Common Core's censorship of the very same book nationwide, this time from the NCAC:

• "Set 'To Kill a Mockingbird' Free in Plaquemines PSD English Classrooms," by Blog of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), Blogging Censorship, 17 October 2013.

URL of this page:  safelibraries.blogspot.com/2013/10/CommonCore.html

Follow @SafeLibraries