While the battle may get depressing, there is hope when it comes to crushing the deeply unpopular Common Core standards and what they represent, says a prominent educator who for years has been travelling the nation warning about the Obama administration-backed takeover of education. That hope is concerned parents — mothers and fathers waking up in large numbers and taking charge of their children’s education — according to Dr. Duke Pesta (shown), who serves as academic director for FreedomProject Education (FPE), a Common Core-free online K-12 school and an affiliate of this magazine. Homeschooling may be the best way to achieve that, but it is not the only way, and there are resources to help.
One of the biggest problems encountered by people fighting back against Common Core is “how ultimately depressing it all is,” Pesta said in a new video on beating Common Core produced by FPE, which provides classical education with a Judeo-Christian foundation. “Most moms and dads were going about their daily lives, educating their kids, taking them to soccer practice and ballet, not paying much attention. In fact, that’s our problem — isn’t it? — that, for a long time now in this country, we have turned our kids over to the federal government, to government schools.”
The consequences of that are becoming clearer every day. “We had to have known — we certainly had to have known — that sooner or later the government was going to spend more and more of its time promoting its aims, its ambitions, its view of the world, its view of the country, over yours — your family’s,” continued Dr. Pesta, a university professor who has given seminars exposing Common Core all across America and has testified in state legislatures about it.
“So we’re in a situation now with Common Core where the news is very depressing, for lack of a better word. But there is hope,” he said. “We’ve got to get moms and dads aware, and that’s where the depression comes in. Point out to them — for a lot of moms and dads this is shocking — that the federal government, the Department of Education, teachers unions, do not have your kids’ best interests at heart. They have their own interests at heart. It’s predictable, and it’s sad.”
But despite all of that, there is still hope, Dr. Pesta said again, emphasizing the point. “That hope comes from the fact that more and more moms and dads are now aware of the problem. In my lifetime, I have never seen an issue that has galvanized more parents than Common Core,” he continued. “Parents who have been asleep are now suddenly paying attention to what’s coming home — and not coming home — from their kids’ public government schools.”
And that, he suggested, is a crucial step in the battle to take back education. “The answer I think — the only real answer short term and long term — is for moms and dads to realize that there is no higher calling, no higher responsibility placed on them as parents, than the education of their children,” said Dr. Pesta, whose presentations on Common Core have gone viral on the Internet. “Think about it: From the moment your babies are born, even in the womb, you’re talking to that baby… As parents, we are constantly educating kids, even before they are born.”
Americans must recognize that education “is not something we can farm off to government,” and it “is not something we can farm off to professional educators who go through these big state schools of education for four years where they’re learning, not how to sensitively and imaginatively teach your children, but abstract theory and indoctrination, political correctness, social justice theory, absolute non-sense,” Dr. Pesta said. “Until we as moms and dads take back our kids, commit ourselves to educating them first, we’re not going to fix this problem. But that’s happening now.”
So Dr. Pesta and the activists that he has spoken with have now reached a point where they are determined to homeschool, or at the very least take full charge and properly oversee their children’s education. For parents who may not be ready to make the full plunge from government school to home education, Dr. Pesta recommended trying out family-centered schooling resources such as FreedomProject Education, where he serves as academic director, or any of the similar organizations currently proliferating across the nation.
“We work with parents to provide an education that you want them to have,” he said about the work of FPE. “Even if you can’t pull your kids out of public schools right now, find a way as parents to give them information to balance out what they’re learning in the public schools…. There are over 3 million homeschool families in this country right now, and I have never in my experience with homeschooling for years and years and years, I have never met a single homeschool mom and dad who regretted doing it.”
