This article by JaKell Sullivan we have entitled Common Core Crony Capitalism On Global Scale is courtesy of Joanne Yurchak
By JaKell Sullivan
Ezekiel Emanuel, the architect of Obamacare, bragged earlier this year in a New Republic article about Obamacare’s intent to kill the insurance industry, nationalize health care and collect data on every person in order to track and control personal lifestyle choices. He condescendingly wrote, “Be prepared to kiss your insurance company goodbye forever.”
A logical correlation can be drawn that the federal intent behind recent education reforms is the same. What’s in it for crony capitalists?
In 2004, Microsoft signed a technology contract with the United Nation’s education arm, UNESCO, to globalize education. This profit-venture started a chain of events that dismantles our 10th Amendment right to control education, realigns the world’s entire education system on the backs of U.S. taxpayers, and endlessly profits elites. The U.N. announced that the joint venture would foster “web-based communities of practice including content development and worldwide curricula reflecting UNESCO’s values.” Did local parents vote on these curriculum values?
This year, Microsoft joined with the Obama administration’s ConnectEd Initiative to provide one-to-one devices for every child in order to replace textbooks. Meanwhile, legislators across the country are working with groups like Jeb Bush’s Digital Learning Now to implement this federal agenda which profits conservative and liberal foundations joined at the hip with government. Foundations profit from federal “turn around” school mandates that turn public district schools into public charters based on data controlled by assessment companies receiving federal grants.
The implications behind this reality are obvious. Big data becomes the new global commodity. Technology turns teachers into facilitators, local districts into administrators and students into social activists working to improve “democracy” and solve “global issues;” poverty, health rights and global warming — using governments as the solution. Collectivism in, individualism out.
UNESCO’s values rise as one-to-one technology puts real-time, updatable curricula and tests outside the review of parents. Federal privacy laws, stripped in December 2011 now allow the federal government and third parties to collect information from children’s class work and tests (tying existing databases together for third party research, health data, workforce data, criminal data, census data and family information). America is being prodded toward a skills-based economy where education control is further centralized, test scores slot children into workforce tracks, elites pool taxpayer money into global coffers and crony capitalists benefit from cheap labor by standardizing our children’s educations.
Politicians claim that “education should be aligned to the needs of the workforce” and that “the future of our economic prosperity” requires us to align education to jobs. Renowned author Hugh Nibley wrote that scriptural principles reveal “when the Economy becomes the main and engrossing concern of a society — the economy will self-destruct.”
Do Utahns have the fortitude to change course? Most recognize that the family is the fundamental unit of society, yet our politicians tout the economy as the fundamental unit. This gives rise to early childhood education initiatives that undermine and harm childhood attachment to family. Workforce aligned education systems make children beholden to, and fearful of, test scores that decide their future. The state becomes master and parents are marginalized.
Charles Krauthammer said that insurance companies are “becoming wholly owned subsidiaries” of the federal government. And, as federal education reforms turn local school districts and boards into wholly owned subsidiaries, families will suffer the loss of local control over what children learn — and taxpayers will watch our savings dwindle while crony capitalists reap the rewards of big government.
JaKell Sullivan graduated from Utah State University and is an advocate for parental rights in education. She is a mother of two and resides in Sandy, Utah. This article originally ran, Tuesday, in the Deseret News of Salt Lake City
Common Core Crony Capitalism On Global Scale
Common Core Crony Capitalism On Global Scale
Common Core Crony Capitalism On Global Scale
Common Core Crony Capitalism On Global Scale
Common Core Crony Capitalism On Global Scale
