Readers Write: Common Core doesn't dictate teaching style

Letters for the Editor for the June 24, 2013 weekly print issue: 

The US Common Core education standards are simply a description of what students should know and be able to do at each grade level. They are not a curriculum. How these skills are taught is decided by individual schools and districts.

President Obama must do more than 'call China out' on cyber-espionage and theft. China's cyber-theft violates trade agreements with the US. When the Chinese have to start paying a price for their state-supported economic terrorism, they just might take action to stop the cybertheft.

Common Core isn't a teaching style

As a first-grade teacher, I am finding my way around the new US Common Core education standards. I found the May 20 article "The next big learning revolution" on the standards to be timely but a little misleading. The beginning describes a math class in which the teacher is asking probing questions of students instead of giving answers. The article seems to imply that Common Core brings with it a certain way of teaching.

The standards are simply a description of what students should know and be able to do at each grade level. They are not a curriculum. How these skills are taught is decided by individual schools and districts. Some may choose a more direct approach and some may choose a "discovery-based learning" approach, as this math teacher highlighted in the article was using. I appreciate the high standards Common Core gives us educators, and I also appreciate that there is no hidden agenda in the Common Core telling me how to teach.

Sally Bergquist

Olympia, Wash.

Obama must not tolerate China theft

Since President Nixon's historic 1972 trip to China, which opened diplomatic relations with Beijing, Washington has largely ignored China's disregard of copyright and outright theft of US intellectual property as The Monitor's View of May 20 points out ("China's cyber thievery"). The Chinese have stolen US goods – physical and cyber – for so long, they see it as an industry. The US government has only "jawboned" about this diplomatically with little or no penalties. So the theft continues.

President Obama must do more than "call China out" on cyber-espionage and theft. China's cyber-theft violates trade agreements with the United States. A possible short-term solution to China's state-sponsored cybertheft is to levy a cybertheft tariff on all Chinese goods imported into the US and a cybertheft tax on all US goods exported to China. When the Chinese have to start paying a price for their state-supported economic terrorism, they just might take action to stop the cybertheft.

James Patterson

Member, American Foreign Service Association

San Francisco

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Readers Write: Common Core doesn't dictate teaching style
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Readers-Respond/2013/0624/Readers-Write-Common-Core-doesn-t-dictate-teaching-style
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe