Lecturer Ann Robertson Speaks Out on Common Core

COUNTERPUNCH -- Philosophy Lecturer Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer write an opinion piece about how Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has failed in introducing the Common Core educational standards to schools nationwide. “Excellent teaching is surely an art, requiring not only a love of rationality in general, but the love of a particular field of expertise more specifically, and an ability to communicate clearly,” Robertson and Leumer write. “Even more, however, it requires a love of one’s students. Excellent teaching only emerges when all these elements are properly mixed together. Like some magic brew, good teaching percolates up as the result of some unanticipated interaction between teacher, students and the learning process. It does not lend itself to mechanization, nor can it be coerced. Yet these are exactly the preferred weapons of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan when introducing policies into our public schools.”