Common Core Conundrum - "a head-scratcher"

This week CBN.com ran an article entitled “Parents Protest National Common Core Standards.”

I posted a comment.

It was removed.

I received this in my inbox from the censors at CBN: “The comment you posted was flagged by CBN moderators and deleted for violating our Terms of Use policy.”

This is what I had posted:

“How is it that descriptions of pedophilia, incest and graphic sex and exposing impressionable teenagers to illicit sex, sensual descriptions of nakedness and foreplay, violence toward women, anal sex, and total disrespect for the individual and raunchy language, as revealed in excerpts from two suggested texts for reading by 11th graders, can find their way into the Common Core Standards?”

That was what was deleted.

The two books in question are “The Bluest Eye” and “Dreaming in Cuban” hyperlinked to their respective articles that I’ve written about previously. 

Recent articles posted here in this publication provided links to national headlines concerning a furor over the explicitly sexual nature of two books that are suggested reading for 11th graders in all 295 school districts in Washington as well as 44 other states, three territories and the District of Columbia all of which have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) – “a set of consistent state standards for proficiency in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12.” 

CBN.com decided my comment failed to live up to their standards – evidently the sexual references were too sexually explicit. 

Makes me wonder whether had I posted the actual excerpts from the books themselves – rather than descriptions of what readers would find there - if CBN.com would have banned me for life. 

So I changed my comment to a more bland, somewhat blasé, largely benign version and at last check it’s still up on the site. 

Common to what Common Core has done. 

“The Bluest Eye” and “Dreaming in Cuban” are among books to be found in Appendix B of the Common Core State Standards where the section on “publisher’s criteria” introduces them as examples “of high-quality literary” works.  As if for emphasis this commendation is repeated: “The quality of the suggested texts is high — they are worth reading closely and exhibit exceptional craft and thought or provide useful information.”   

Common Core then provides excerpts from the two books.   

But the portions Common Core posts are the kind you might find in a lovely, romantic, windswept, flowering hillside a la “The Sound of Music.”   

You can read what Common Core extracted from “The Bluest Eye” and “Dreaming in Cuban” in their back-to-back “exemplars” – “one that is worthy of imitation; a model” for 16-17 year olds - in “Appendix B” by clicking here and scrolling to page 152.   

However, unlike the malignant and graphic descriptions of intercourse with children  as found in “The Bluest Eye,” Common Core’s chosen passages are, in conundrum-like fashion, most certainly innocuous.

Now why do you suppose that would be? 

To avoid scrutiny?  Red flags?  Parental angst and anger?  Deletion of their post for violation of decency? 

Granted Common Core is not CBN.com. 

The latter has standards.   

If you want to order your copy of “Dreaming in Cuban” for yourself you can get it at the link provided here for all of $.01 (one-cent).   

Evidently it’s not worth the paper it’s written on.