Missouri Mom Discovers Common Core Can Erode First Amendment Rights

I received this from Missouri mom Stacy Shore on our Truth in Education email alert system.

This is absolutely worth spreading far and wide.  I know I don't have to tell anyone reading this blog that you can't POSSIBLY research ANY topic if you only have a specific parameter in which to search.  This is truly the kind of thing I think opponents of the Common Core are all afraid of.  

After Stacy's story, please continue reading to find what Mary Byrne, (an education consultant with a doctorate in education - she's also a mom and a grandmom who sees defense of liberty in this nation an avocation) says about the term "Academic Freedom" - it's an EYE OPENER! 

STACY'S STORY: 

My daughter told me a story a few weeks ago about doing a research paper for one of her classes this past Spring.  (She was a freshman at the time).   She told me that it was particularly difficult to do since she had to use the "common core approved" search engine "SIRS" for 4 of her 6 sources as required by her teacher. I found this to be very troubling, as did she since she said it was almost impossible to support her point of view by being forced to use that search engine to do her research.  

She said that at the top of the search engine site it shows a "Common Core Approved" banner.  

So, I found this information on SIRS:

Targeted resources for student research;

SIRS Knowledge Source (SKS) provides a portal to relevant, credible information carefully hand-selected by our SIRS editorial staff. When students use SKS, they receive best-of content designed to support student research, study, and homework in key curricula subjects. Databases cross-searchable within SKS will vary based on subscription. SIRS Knowledge Source offers National, State, Province and Common Core Standards aligned to content.

Use SKS to search these SIRS resources at once, or to link to each SIRS collection:

o    SIRS® Issues Researcher—Covering the pros and cons Leading Issues most studied and debated by students

o    SIRS® Government Reporter—Historic and Government Documents, Directories and Almanacs

o    SIRS® Renaissance—Current perspectives on the arts and humanities

SIRS® WebSelect—Collection of editorially-selected reliable and credible educational website covering all curriculum topics

You will find this web site here

"Hand selected" and "Credible"? How do we know something is credible that has been hand selected?  Those ideas are some that really bother me in this context. Research should not be relegated to "Common Core Approved".

We must put a stop to this madness.  When our children are not free to do research from any credible source they choose in order to get a grade, yet they are directed to a site where the message can be controlled in order to indoctrinate we have real problems. 

Okay, now read Mary Byrne's discussion on Academic Freedom: 

It looks like evidence of government control of information and freedom of speech for legislators to know about.  You may be interested in some information about academic freedom that refers to control of research as creation of a police state. Hmmmmm:

Academic freedom was first introduced as a judicial term of art (a term with a specific legal meaning) by Supreme Court Justice william o. douglas. In Adler v. Board of Education of City of New York, 342 U.S. 485, 72 S. Ct. 380, 96 L. Ed. 517 (1952), the Supreme Court upheld a New York law (N.Y. Civ. Service Law § 12-a) that prohibited employment of teachers in public institutions if they were members of "subversive organizations." In a scathing dissent joined by Justice hugo l. black, Douglas argued that such legislation created a police state and ran contrary to the First Amendment guarantee of free speech.

Justice Douglas equated academic freedom with the pursuit of truth. If academic freedom is the pursuit of truth and is protected by the First Amendment, reasoned Douglas, then the New York law should be struck down because it produced standardized thought. According to Douglas's dissent, the New York law created an academic atmosphere concerned not with intellectual stimulation but with such questions as "Why was the history teacher so openly hostile to Franco's Spain? Who heard overtones of revolution in the English teacher's discussion of The Grapes of Wrath? and What was behind the praise of Soviet progress in metallurgy in the chemistry class?" Douglas conceded that the public school systems need not become "cells for Communist activities," but he reminded the court that the Framers of the Constitution "knew the strength that comes when the mind is free."

ROPE has said time and again that Common Core is MORE THAN STANDARDS.  We have said time and time again that this is about creating FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN AMERICA.  I think this article is a really great place to go to get an overall idea of how far Arne Duncan thinks America needs to go.