By Wilson Love
A few months ago, a young man printed his name on the signature line of a sales ticket in my store. I didn’t think much about it until a retired schoolteacher told me that many children are not taught handwriting in school now.
“What?” I said, “That’s crazy”.
But my friend was right. Something called the Common Core State Standards was adopted by North Carolina and 41 other states back in 2010. Now we’re living with the results of that wretchedly bad choice. Those promoting this widespread standard claim, in essence, that young children need their training focused on learning to communicate by technical device (keyboarding, etc.).
That’s brilliant.
Let’s teach fish to swim and birds to fly while we’re at it. Let’s instruct kids in school to do something they are already doing twenty four/seven. Am I missing something here? Could you possibly prevent a child from learning how to operate gadgets that speak, buzz and light up? Our grandchildren were clawing for our cell phones before they could walk or put two syllables together.
By the way, Common Core also minimizes learning multiplication tables, history, social studies, art and music, as if these are obsolete or inconsequential. You can’t know who you are if you don’t know where you came from. Ignore the past and the future will ignore you. It seems unfathomable that so many leaders signed off on policy that promotes average achievement and ignorance of needed instruction.
To move back in the right direction, new law was enacted in our state in 2013. It requires schools to teach cursive writing to third, fourth, and fifth graders. But compliance reportedly varies (a lot). It’s a greater effort to pick up the ball you dropped than to hold on to it in the first place.
Why am I making a big deal out of this? Because value is attached to ability, and like it or not, poor handwriting or no handwriting is associated with illiteracy. Communicate poorly and watch opportunity pass right on by. A restaurant owner told me today that many of his job applicants cannot count change – a minimum entry level skill. A banker said that some of their applicants ask, “What’s that?” when told a signature is required.
If we choose to, we can sit still for the far-left-of-center dumbing down of America. Or, we can set our own higher standards by home schooling or whatever means become necessary. Personally, I’m going to make sure my family and employees can sign their names and do simple math without a calculator. And they will know the difference between your and you’re, sell and sale, there and their. Internet slang may be cool and quick, but it will not serve you well when you are face to face with someone you really want to make a good impression on.
As usual, a bigger picture overshadows the obvious. Many who read this won’t get it and some who do get it won’t believe it, but here is a simple truth.
There are (and always have been) evil forces operating in high places (Ephesians 6:12). If the elitist can manage to make the rest of us dumb enough and complacent enough, then they can run their totalitarian game on us. Their desired result is complete control over our lives. By God’s design, this approach ultimately fails every time (Isaiah 5:20-21). It didn’t work for the slaveholders and it didn’t work for Hitler. But evil has a way of bouncing back for another try.
Don’t fall for Common Core or anything like it that reduces us all to the same low level. There is nothing common about excellence. Make sure your children are reading, writing, and counting cognitively. Doing their very best is the goal, not being the best, – and certainly not being like everybody else. It’s our job to inspire them, not to teach them what they already know.
Wilson Love is Owner/Operator of The Practical Outdoorsman, a retail and consignment store.