The Council Has Spoken!! This Weeks' Watchers Council Results

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and we have the results for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

"So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there’s no way you’re gonna find out what it means." -Frank Zappa

"Give me four years to teach the children and
the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." -Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent." -John Dewey, one of the founders of American public education.




This week's winner, The Right Planet's Journey to the Center of the Common Core – Pt. 1 is great analysis of something few of us know much about, but should because of the radical effect it will have on society. Here's a slice:

There has been a lot of talk and news lately about Common Core (CC)—specifically, the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), i.e. national standards for education. Whether you have children in school or not, CCSSI affects every American, in one way or the other. One could say Common Core represents a radical bureaucratic “revolution” in education. Although proponents claim Common Core is a States’ or local initiative, it is, in many ways, a great “bait and switch” that flew underneath the radar of many Americans.

There are several reasons I decided to write on the subject of Common Core standards. The primary reason was to ask the who, what, why, where, when and how. I know a number of people don’t know much about Common Core. As a matter of fact, the other night I heard Bill O’Reilly say on his show on Fox that he didn’t know much about Common Core standards. Ironically, O’Reilly was also discussing the possibility of Jeb Bush as a potential presidential candidate in 2016. Jeb Bush is a prominent figure behind Common Core, which I will get into later.

A well-informed and educated populace tends toward a well-informed electorate. A sick culture will produce a sick body politic. Teaching children and young adults how to think, and not what to think, is what I believe the goal of learning and education should be. But the very paradigm and definition of “learning” is being redefined in the Common Core standards. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” The authors of Common Core understand and comprehend Lincoln’s words quite well.

Secondly, I discovered quite a bit of interlock in my research into the philosophy and ideology of Marxism with the current proposed Common Core standards. Additionally—and some would say, naturally—I experienced this same interlock phenomenon in examining the aims and goals of the United Nations—specifically, the goals of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), among other U.N. initiatives, particularly those concerning “climate change” and “environmental sustainability,” i.e. Agenda 21.




The interlock between Common Core and educational goals and initiatives laid out earlier in the Twentieth Century by progressive educators like John Dewey, Charles Hubbard Judd, George Counts, Stanley H. Hall—and even Soviet psychologist Lev Vykotsky, whose theories on learning are based on the communal process (now lovingly referred to as “collaborative learning“)—is quite compelling.

Writing this article has been challenging on several fronts. Not only are there numerous educational issues surrounding CC, there are also a plethora of social, cultural and economic issues swirling around the debate on Common Core. Many of these social, cultural and economic components have already been folded into the Common Core curriculum, hence the controversy.

When one studies who the major players are behind Common Core, I would say more on the left support CC than on the right. But you really have to throw out the right-left paradigm, in my opinion, when it comes to CC. Common Core is not a right-left thing, per se; it is a progressive, globalist, collectivist thing. There are members from both the right-side and the left-side of the aisle who have a stake in pushing Common Core standards, for various reasons and motives. Some of them might be described as the “usual suspects,” but others might surprise you, as we will see later in this article.



Since my intent is to try and provide a detailed, yet concise, overview of the who, what, where, when, why and how on Common Core, while exploring a bit of the philosophy and historical origins behind CC standards, and the corroboration of CC standards with the aims and goals of Marxists from my own research, I decided it might be best to structure the article by stepping back into time from the present to the past—meaning, by first looking at the who, what, where, when, why and how of Common Core, and then exploring its origins, aims and goals.


Much more at the link..read and be informed.

In our non-Council category, the runaway winnerr was Mark Steyn with The slow death of free speech submitted by The Noisy Room. It's Steyn at his best, tslking about how big government and progressive fascism is encroaching on our traditional liberty, a subject he knows about first hand.

OK, here are this week’s full results. The Independent Sentinel, Simply Jews and Rhymes With Right were unable to vote this week, but only Rhymes With Right was affected by the mandatory 2/3 vote penalty.:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 1/3 votes! –The Right Planet – Journey to the Center of the Common Core – Pt. 1
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes –Joshuapundit-The Serpent's Tongue - An Open Letter To Catherine Ashton, EU Policy Chief
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes –The Independent Sentinel – Agenda 21, A Plan to Take Your Land and Give It to Tortoises and Pagosa Skyrockets
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes –Simply Jews – The wondrous stutter of Andrew Sullivan
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote –Bookworm Room – Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: a petition to denounce and condemn billionaire Tom Steyer
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote –The Noisy Room – The Western States: A Return To Sovereignty
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Colossus of Rhodey – Most Laughable Attempt at Skewing the Facts of the Day
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote –The Razor – The Spark In Nevada

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 3 2/3 votes!-Mark Steyn/The Spectator –The slow death of free speech submitted by The Noisy Room
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes –J.Christian Adams/PJ Media -A New, More Sinister IRS Scandal submitted by Nice Deb
• Third place *t* with 1 vote -Charles C.W. Cooke/NRO – The Problem with Cliven Bundy submitted by Liberty's Spirit
• Third place *t* with 1 vote-Bob Owens/Bearing Arms – The Cancer, The Militia, And Cliven Bundy submitted by Joshuapundit
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote-Jacobinism – Prepare For Integrism! Radical Jew Hatred & the Decolonial Shakedown submitted by Simply Jews
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote-Doug Ross @ Journal –Rahm Emanuel At It Again: Chicago's crime rate reportedly doctored to hide Democrat policy failures submitted by The Independent Sentinel
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote- War Is Boring – Russia’s Fearsome New MiGs Could Be Lemons submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote- Walt Mossberg/ReCode – Why Apple Is Like a Movie Studio submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote-Daniel Schuchman/WSJ – Thomas Piketty Revives Marx for the 21st Century submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote-Hen Mazzig – An Israeli Soldier to American Jews: Wake up! submitted by Watcher
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote-American Thinker/David Archibald-Say Goodbye To Egypt submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 1 vote-The Ron Paul Institute –Nevada Standoff a Symptom of Increasing Authoritarianism submitted by The Razor

See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.....'cause we're cool like that!