Our horrid educational crisis in two stories.
Story number one: Look what “Common Core” hath wrought in Louisiana.
Fourth grade students in Vermilion Parish, La. were given a homework assignment that included words like “Po Pimp” and “mobstaz,” but school officials said the worksheet was age appropriate based on an education website affiliated with Common Core education standards.
“I try to instill values in my son,” parent Brittney Badeaux told Fox News. “My goal is for him to ultimately to become a great man, a family man, a well-rounded man. And now my son wants to know what a pimp is.”
Badeaux was helping her 9-year-old son with his homework when she heard him say the words “Po Pimp” and “mobstaz.”
“I couldn’t believe it at first – hearing him read it to me,” she told Fox News. “So I looked at the paper and read the entire article. It was filled with Ebonics.”
The worksheet, obtained by Fox Radio affiliate KPEL provided contextual examples of the word “twist.” It included references to tornadoes and the 1950’s dance craze – the “Twist.”
But it also included a paragraph about “Twista” – a rapper with the group Speedknot Mobstaz who performs a single titled, “Po-Pimp.”“It was really inappropriate for my child,” Badeaux said. “He doesn’t’ know what a pimp or mobster is.”
As usual, the local functionary defends the indefensible.
Vermilion Parish School Superintendent Jerome Puyau told Fox News the “po-pimp” assignment was aligned to a fourth grade English Language Arts standard for Common Core.
“Out of context, this word is inappropriate,” Puyau said. “However, within the Common Core standards, they do want us to discuss real world texts.”
Sigh. Or rage. I can’t decide anymore.
Let’s fast forward a few years. Learning about “pimps” and “mobstaz” is AOK in grade school. Getting a free copy of the US Constitution, however, is not.
Robert Van Tuinen, a student at Modesto Junior College in California, had a theory. He believed that the policies at his college limiting protests and expression were so restrictive that the college would try to shut him down even if he tried to hand out copies of the United States Constitution on September 17–Constitution Day.
Sadly, he was correct.
There’s video at the link.
The school got bureaucratic with Van Tuinen, telling him that he had to stick to the campus “free speech zone,” and that he didn’t have a permit to hand stuff out.
Upon arriving at that office, Van Tuinen talks with administrator Christine Serrano, who tells him that because of “a time, place, and manner,” he can only pass out literature inside the “free speech area,” which she informs him is “in front of the student center, in that little cement area.” She asks him to fill out an application and asks to photocopy his student ID. Hauling out a binder, Serrano says that she has “two people on campus right now, so you’d have to wait until either the 20th, 27th, or you can go into October.” Van Tuinen protests that he wants to pass out the Constitution on Constitution Day, at which point Serrano dismissively tells him “you really don’t need to keep going on.”
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