More Discretion Advised, Part II

Quite evidently there’s more to the new Common Core state educational standards than meets the eye and if parents are asleep they’ll miss it. 

The books “The Bluest Eye” and “Dreaming in Cuban” are both on the Clover Park School District’s (CPSD) – and on every school district’s in 46 states - exemplar (“one that is worthy of imitation; a model” for 16-17 year olds) Common Core reading list for 11th graders this year.   

“The Bluest Eye” is alleged to be a purveyor of “pedophilia, incest and graphic sex.”   

“Dreaming in Cuban” is charged with 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.” 

The attributions to “The Bluest Eye” were found here in the Lakewood Patch published on August 23rd and a complaint registered that same day with Ready Washington - this state’s Common Core coalition. 

Twenty-one days – and counting – later, there has been no response from Ready Washington. 

The latest revelations about “Dreaming in Cuban” were exposed by Donna Garner writing in today’s (September 13, 2013) Education Views.   

Garner reports that Sierra Vista school administrators in Arizona “yanked (the) book from classes this week following parental complaints of sexually graphic material.”   

Meanwhile the CPSD, along with 294 other school districts in this state, is fully implementing the K-12 learning standards in math and English language arts at every grade level in the 2013-14 school year. 

According to the CPSD’s “Board Review” for August, delivered to computer in-boxes just today (Sept.13), “the new teacher academy (has) started with more than 30 educators participating in a week of training to orient them to the district’s initiatives, curriculum, (and) Common Core State Standards.” 

Given the entire State of Washington is on board with Common Core, along with 45 other states in the nation, similar “orientation” of teachers to the new Common Core “standards” is taking place across the country. 

An excerpt from “Dreaming in Cuban” - what Garner calls “a Common Core porn novel” - is, like a portion of “The Bluest Eye,” found on page 152 of Appendix B of Common Core’s recommended reading.  However, as with the passage chosen for public consumption from “The Bluest Eye,” the Common Core folks selected a most bland portrayal from “Dreaming in Cuban,” one that is not sexually explicit in nature.   

But why isn’t it? 

Since Common Core’s list of recommended books declares the texts “are suggestive of the breadth of texts that students should encounter,” then why are the suggestive portions of the suggested books not included? 

Author Cristina Garcia claims in defense of her book “Dreaming in Cuban” that “students shouldn’t be deprived of a broader, cultural experience.”  

Ok then. 

Why didn’t Common Core evoke those steamy, erotic passages as their selected excerpts? 

Why can’t those students’ parents benefit from the anal sex “experience” in the bathtub depicted on page 80 of “Dreaming in Cuban” so that together with the students - the public, the school administrators, the teachers, the politicians, and the school board members - we can all be thus enlightened and “culturally broadened”? 

Provided of course any of us even knew to look in Common Core’s Appendix B, let alone page 152, only to find, if we got that far, that the portion on oral sex so necessary to expanding our horizons was not to be found.   

Debbie Stoner recommends that concerned citizens should do what she did by going to her local high school – in Stoner’s case, Sierra Vista, AZ - to voice her outrage, even filing “a formal child abuse complaint with the authorities based upon Arizona law which indicates that exposing minors to pornographic literature is a legal offence.”   

That action resulted in a visit to the school by the police department.    

Additionally the Arizona State Superintendent of Schools called Stoner personally, Garner reports, and while he said he would not take Common Core Curriculum out, he was removing two books which have come to his attention (“Dreaming in Cuban” and “The Bluest Eye”).  He said he was going to additionally check out “Like Water for Chocolate.” 

Given Ready Washington is evidently not yet ready to respond to our complaints, perhaps your school board members will.