'Creatively bankrupt!...' Tennessee Students debunk Common Core on videos
High school students at Farragut High School in Knox County, Tenn. are receiving widespread attention for eloquent speeches they made against Common Core at a school board meeting. Two students' speeches were presented on You Tube. One was Ethan Young. Also was Kenneth Ye, who gave a rousing speech before the Knox County school board. Both urged it to drop the Common Core standards because they make learning joyless and, in fact, turn American schools into something approaching Chinese sweatshops.
Kenneth Ye in a video of his speech, blurry because it was captured from the video.“Our schools are being turned into data-run factories,” Ye charged around the 4:30 mark in the video, “factories based on speedily-approved standards that are now being implemented around the country.” The URL for Kenneth Ye is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPlB7KGVSD8 .
The URL for Ethan Young is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDJTJTAXx7k .
Ye observies that he has been a student of both the American and Chinese education systems.
“The policies being put in place here are leading us toward the American equivalent of the Chinese entrance exams,” he predicts. He calls those exams — and the ones under Common Core — “high-pressure, standardized exams that plague students’ lives.”
He goes on to say that Chinese culture is technically proficient but creatively bankrupt.
The YouTube user who posted Ye’s speech, SaveOurSchoolSystem, noted that Knox County Board of Education chairwoman Lynne Fugate refused to allow Ye additional time to speak despite offering extra time to people who disagree with him.
Late last year, Ethan Young, a senior at Farragut High, made an impassioned argument for dropping the new national education guidelines, which he called “a glowing conflict of interest … that illustrate a mistrust of teachers.” (RELATED: Watch this high school senior’s epic takedown of Common Core)
The Common Core State Standards Initiative is an attempt in 45 states to standardize various K-12 curricula around the country. Implementation has been spectacularly shoddy across much of the country.
