PrisonPlanet.com is reporting that the assignment was given to sixth graders from the Bryant School District in Arkansas who were told to throw out two amendments of the Bill of Rights and revise others.
The worksheet reads:
“The government of the United States is currently revisiting The Bill of Rights. They have determined that it is outdated and may not remain in its current form any longer.”
Students are then asked to “prioritize, revise, omit two and add two amendments to the Bill of Rights.”
One of the parents, Lela Spears, told Justin King of the Digital Journal that this was her daughter's first assignment concerning the Bill of Rights and the Constitution.
“After she brought it home and explained her assignment to me, it made me question exactly what she was being taught,” Spears said. “She didn’t even understand what the Amendments meant. How can she make an informed decision when she doesn’t understand what she is ‘throwing out’?”
The Bill of Rights is comprised of the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States and guarantees pivotal rights such as the right to free speech, to trial by jury and the right to bear arms.
The students were asked to revise the Bill of Rights under a special “task force” but never informed students that the only way to amend this document is with a two-thirds majority of the House and Senate.
Spears used the faulty assignment to give her daughter an important lesson on the importance of the rights enshrined in the document and how the amendment process works.
Common Core State Standards is backed by the Obama administration and is now supported in 45 states; however, it has received widespread criticism from parents and educators.
Some of the program's other flaws include teaching children that the Second Amendment only gives people the right to keep and bear arms in a state militia.
Among the many complaints concerning the programs is a report by one parent that the Algebra curriculum which was full of misspelled words which the publisher had to correct.
Mark Rice, professor and chair of the Department of American Studies at St. John Fischer University in Rochester, New York was appalled at the shoddy and unsuitable math lessons being assigned to his third grader.
"What I mean by math problems unsuited to third-graders are ones that go something like this: Two kids are served brownies. One kid, 'Julian,' eats one-half of a small brownie and the other kid, 'Debbie,' eats one-eighth of a big brownie. Julian claims that he ate more than Debbie (because one-half is more than one-eighth). The students are asked to explain why Julian's claim is false, using words and pictures, and then use words and pictures to make that supposedly false statement into a true statement. . . . (B)ut without knowing the size of each brownie, there really isn't enough information to determine which brownie piece is bigger."
Rice asks in frustration: "How in the world is that problem supposed to help a third-grader learn fractions?"
Thousands of parents share his frustration, many of whom are banding together to get the word out about the inferior quality of the Common Core curriculum, such as this blog maintained by three mothers who have had enough of the program.
Catholic schools have also been impacted by the curriculum since it was embraced by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), a move that has riled even more parents such as the Pittsburgh Catholics Against Common Core. This group has a very informative website which gives parents good information about how they can work together to rid the nation's schools of this sub-standard new "standard" for our children's education.
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