David Brooks, "When the Circus Descends": Should Common Courtesy Be Part of the Common Core?

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "When the Circus Descends" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/18/opinion/brooks-when-the-circus-descends.html?ref=opinion&_r=0), David Brooks discusses opposition from both the right and the left to Common Core education standards. Brooks writes:

"On the right, the market-share-obsessed talk-radio crowd claims that the Common Core standards represent a federal takeover of the schools. This is clearly false. This was a state-led effort, and localities preserve their control over what exactly is taught and how it is taught. Glenn Beck claims that Common Core represents 'leftist indoctrination' of the young. On Fox, Elisabeth Hasselbeck cited a curriculum item that supposedly taught students that Abraham Lincoln’s religion was 'liberal.' But, as the education analyst Michael J. Petrilli quickly demonstrated, this was some locally generated curriculum that was one of hundreds on a lesson-sharing website and it was promulgated a year before the Common Core standards even existed.

As it’s being attacked by the talk-radio right, the Common Core is being attacked by the interest group left. The general critique from progressives, and increasingly from teachers’ unions, is that the standards are too difficult, that implementation is shambolic and teachers are being forced into some top-down straitjacket that they detest.

It is true that the new standards are more rigorous than the old, and that in some cases students have to perform certain math skills a year earlier than they formerly had to learn them. But that is a feature, not a bug. The point is to get students competitive with their international peers."

Right? Left? Kind of meaningless to me, today.

I am the product of the University of Chicago's required "Common Core" studies, and I recently cleaned the dust off a copy of Thucydides's "The Peloponnesian War," which has accompanied me throughout the years and served as a poignant reminder of my college days. Will I ever return to it? That's the plan, but I also want to teach myself to play the piano sometime before I die. We'll see which, if either, comes first.

Common Core? How about teaching common courtesy? It might be of more value to young people and society in the years to come.

Concern over American students losing ground to international peers? In a December 2013 Telegraph article entitled "OECD education report: Korea’s school system a pressure cooker for children" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10491289/OECD-education-report-Koreas-school-system-a-pressure-cooker-for-children.html), Andrew Salmon wrote from Seoul:

"It has been praised by President Barack Obama and delivered top-five results for South Korea in global literacy and numeracy tests, but among Koreans themselves, the education system is so controversial that hundreds of thousands become educational emigrants.

The regimented by-the-book teaching system leaves nothing to chance.

. . . .

But intense focus on exam scores creates an irony: knowledge is often eschewed in favor of test preparation.

. . . .

Scholastic pressures are so great that suicide is the number-one killer of South Koreans under 40 (compared to traffic accidents in other developed nations), while educational cost burdens are so colossal, they are cited as a factor in the declining national birth rate."

Emulate the South Korean education system? Thanks, but no thanks, even it means a mid-level managerial position at Samsung, LG, Hyundai or Daewoo. I still vote for common courtesy . . . and lower suicide rates.

Thomas Friedman, "A Wolf, a Sheep, or What?": What the Heck Is Friedman Saying This Time?

Thomas Friedman is the sort of person who attaches importance to almost any random thought that arises in his head. And so, some two weeks ago, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "The Man With Pink Hair" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/opinion/friedman-the-man-with-pink-hair.html), Tom described for us how, shuffling down Schifflaube Street on a mission to buy nectarines, he encountered . . . a cashier with neon pink hair. Wonder of wonders!

Today, in a New York Times op-ed entitled "A Wolf, a Sheep, or What?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/friedman-a-wolf-a-sheep-or-what.html?_r=0), Tom would build upon his successful "Man With Pink Hair" op-ed and toss at us some more horse apples regarding developments in Iran. Asking whether Iran is "content to be a big North Korea or does it aspire to be a Persian China," Friedman writes:

"But Iran is not North Korea. It’s a great civilization, with great human talent. It can’t keep its people isolated indefinitely. In theory, Iran’s regime does not have to keep the world out and its people down for Iran to be powerful. But do Iran’s leaders accept that theory? Some do. The decision to re-enter negotiations is a clear signal that crucial players there do not think the status quo — crushing sanctions — is viable for them anymore."

Does Friedman really want to tell us that Iran is a "great civilization," but Korea, North and South, is not? That Korea, which is home to Samsung, Daewoo, Hyundai and the LG Group, does not have great human talent?

Moreover, since when did Iran decide to "re-enter negotiations"? Hassan Rouhani, who is subordinate to Iran's hardline Supreme Leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, refused to shake Obama's hand at the UN, but was finally persuaded to accept a 15-minute call from Obama on his way to the airport.

This was a major breakthough? This is Friedman's basis for claiming that Iran has agreed "to re-enter negotiations"?

In fact, as reported by the Tehran Times (http://www.tehrantimes.com/politics/111233-irans-right-to-enrichment-non-negotiable-rouhani-) this past week:

"'The people should be assured that the right to nuclear technology and the right to enrichment in Iran are not negotiable,' Rouhani told reporters after a cabinet meeting on Wednesday when asked about U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent remarks in which he said the sanctions could be eased if Iran took certain measures, including signing the additional protocol to the NPT and reducing the level of its uranium enrichment.

'We hold negotiations on details, but we never regard our principles as negotiable,' Rouhani stated."

Sounds like a non-starter to me.

But more to the point, Iran thrives on so-called "negotiations," intended to allow them to continue with their nuclear weapons development program unmolested. In a pre-election interview, Rouhani, all smiles, bragged how he had lulled the West into complacency while radically expanding Iran's nuclear weapons development program (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbrqPK-BBg). Of course, he would never dare attempt to deceive a weak-kneed but personable Barack Obama . . . not.

Friedman fails to mention that on the basis of his 15-minute phone call with Rouhani, Obama is already asking Congress to delay implementation of additional sanctions against Iran (see: http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-state-congress-iran-sanctions-20131003,0,1909747.story). I can only ask myself if this decision to take the pressure off Iran without any quid pro quo is based upon cowardice, idiocy or naivete.

May God have mercy on us.