Hillary discusses Common Core in Iowa:
“Iowa has had a testing system based on a core curriculum for a really long time, and you see the value of it. You understand why that helps you organize your whole education system. And a lot of states, unfortunately, haven’t had that so they don’t understand the value of a core, in the sense, a common core that then you can figure out the best way to try to reach,” Clinton added…
“But your question is really a larger one. How did we end up at a point where we are so negative about the most important non-family enterprise in the raising of the next generation which is how our kids are educated? There are a lot of explanations for that I suppose, but whatever they are we need to try to get back into a broad conversation where people will actually listen to each other again and try to come up with solutions for problems because the problems here in Monticello are not the same problems that you’ll find in the inner city of our biggest, you know, urban areas. That’s a given.”
As Shane Vander Hart notes, Hillary tries to make the argument for Common Core — about unifying the education standards for all children, everywhere, to make them the same – by emphasizing local control and the fact that different schools will have different needs. She’s effectively saying, because everyone’s problems and requirements are different, we need to treat everyone the same.
I’d just note that with defining education as “the most important non-family enterprise in the raising of the next generation,” she’s speaking as if home-schoolers don’t exist in Hillary’s mind; about 1.5 million American children are currently home-schooled; some research puts the number above 1.7 million. Whether you prefer home-schooling or not, it’s obviously much more popular than it was in the 1990s, and there’s some evidence suggesting that concerns about Common Core are driving some families to try home-schooling.
Obviously, for a lot of households, teaching the kids is a family enterprise! But beyond that, how many parents think of their child’s school as ”non-family enterprise”? Who speaks like that?