The hackish and biased Bob Unruh turns another lazy performance in an April 2 WorldNetDaily article, coming right out of the gate to attack Common Core educational standards:
Students subject to the federal Common Core curriculum spreading in public schools nationwide will be fed “world citizenship mush,” charges an expert on education and cultural public policy.
It’s not far afield from what communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wanted to do when he said, “Give me four years to teach the children … and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted,” writes Carole Hornsby Haynes in a WND commentary.
From there, Unruh transitions to a describing an anti-Common Core film released by anti-Common Core homeschoolers that he wants us to believe really isn’t anti-Common Core:
A new documentary, “Building the Machine,” has been released by the Home School Legal Defense Association to examine that very question.
While HSLDA has opposed Common Core since 2009, the group said it wanted a fair evaluation, so people will know the truth about Common Core.
Mike Smith, president of HSLDA, said homeschooling “has shown us that an individualized education is the best thing for a child.”
“Common Core is the complete opposite of that,” he said. “Our hope is that the film will cause a ‘great awakening’ and that parents will question the one-size-fits-all education reform being implemented behind closed doors.”
So filmmaker Ian Reid spent a year traveling the nation and interviewing education experts, including several Common Core Validation Committee members.
“We’ve been very clear from the beginning that our goal is not to produce a hit piece against the standards,” said Reid. “Rather, our goal has always been to explore the strongest arguments on both sides of the debate. In fact, we asked Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute, an ardent supporter of Common Core, to fact check the film, and he thanked us for fairly and accurately presenting what he believes about the Common Core.”
Of course, the HSLDA would never have released the film if it didn’t ultimately attack Common Core. And Unruh is so determined to parrot pro-homeschooling propaganda that he can’t be bothered to offer any balance to the story.
Thus, WND readers will never know that the Fordham Institute has put out a fact sheet addressing the film’s errors:
The creators of this movie would like you to think the Common Core State Standards were created in a cloak of secrecy by a small group without the input of teachers, parents, or the public. They also falsely assert that state and federal governments broke laws in replacing old state standards. However, the process—organized by governors and state education chiefs—included many of the most accomplished educators and academics from across the United States, was thoughtful and deliberative, incredibly inclusive, totally transparent, and completely legal.
That runs counter to Unruh’s pro-homeschooling narrative, so you’ll never read about it at WND.