Common core education
By Jim Killebrew

[August 28, 2014]  I heard on the news the other day the new curriculum called "Common Core" left out of its American History section any mention of George Washington. The defender of the Common Core stated that students in this generation of the 21st Century have been hearing about George Washington in their other previous grades and now they don't need to hear it again in the upper grades. She said students need to "go deeper" in their studies and not keep repeating the same stories again and again.

In his farewell address George Washington, the first President of the United States told the people:

"Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions (sic) with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

I have a simple test: Let's ask students who have been through the new Common Core curriculum to read the passage above written and spoken by George Washington for his farewell address to the people, and ask those students, who presumably have studied about George Washington in their school assignments many times throughout their lower grades, to name the person from whom this passage came. I bet not 1 or 2 percent could name the writer while 98 or 99 percent would say they have never heard those words before, nor would they know who wrote them.

In today's educational and political climate have we grown so sophisticated we have no need to even mention the name or works of Founding Fathers like George Washington, even in the upper grades? Further, has the moral state of our Union grown to such a stature of the premise of this speech without the influence of the foundational structure Mr. Washington mentioned in his farewell address? Perhaps if we were really truthful about it we would conclude that our first American President of the United States is being omitted from helping to shape the young minds of today because the folks who produced Common Core think Mr. Washington is just not politically correct anymore.

[By JIM KILLEBREW]