re: #141 wheat-dogghazi

As for the first part of your comment, there are dozens of ways to do arithmetic, but in primary school each of us oldsters was taught only one method for each operation. The people complaining about Common Core math think There Can Be Only One way to do arithmetic, and that way is what they learned in school. Maybe it has something to do with the conservative tendency to be authoritarian. “This is what *I* learned in school, so you have to learn the same thing! Anything else is subversion of American values, etc., etc.”

Ditto about the RW kerfluffle about AP US History, which I wager most of them never took. APUSH is not the typical American History course many people took in high school, but its detractors don’t seem to realize that. They want every American History class to be just like the one they had in high school. Well, except for the revisionists fantasy writers like David Barton who want to rewrite history to fit their agendae.

Actually, I separate the two. Common Core is to a good extent a case of “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” It’s real problem for most opponents is its association with Barack Obama. Some of the governors who are now opposing it are doing so to play to the peanut wingnut gallery, which is why attempts to ditch CC have run into so much legislative resistance. The legislators know the program is good, and they are for the most part less ambitious than the governor.

My views on the AP History Standards can be found here.