The Bible As A Common Core

Because of the issues related to the adoption of the Common Core across the country, it is helpful to delineate as clearly as possible the dangers and benefits of this kind of philosophical shift. There is a fundamental need to reaffirm that the Bible is the Common Core. In order to clarify in detail the ramifications of what is going on around the country, I want to answer a few simple questions related to the implications of this new Common Core strategy.

The Common Core is a way of perceiving curriculum and generating outcomes. It involves identifying and teaching what some people believe to be the essential components, content, and skills in select subject areas. In some respects, this is new terminology to an idea that has been around for decades: Outcome-Based Education. OBE is a process where curriculum decisions are made to produce outcomes. It is essentially part of a systematic and intentional revamping of both academics and morality in America. Although there are national standards, each State chooses what part of the Common Core to adopt.

Since it is CORE material, it naturally EXCLUDES some of the traditional content one might expect to find in any given subject area. The intent is for the student to obtain mastery and depth of the core, not comprehension of the breadth in a given subject. It is this curricular component that drives delivery system changes, which will in turn can be used to modify core values. Education as we know it in America is changing to conform to a new model. That model brings with it a process that can be easily used to redefine culture.

Outcome-Based Education (OBE) is a deliberate process of societal reform that mixes academic standards with moral expectations. Once a system of accountability is in place, curriculum changes produce a child that conforms not only to academic standards, but moral codes determined by educational innovators. This is very dangerous ground.

Who determines the CORE or the OUTCOMES? Well, that is the problem Christians will face all across America as definitional issues begin to filter into the curriculum. Relationships, notions of family, morality, and basic questions of right and wrong are woven into the process.

It is imperative for Christians to define biblical outcomes, not yield to the pressure to conform to state standards. The Common Core becomes a distraction from what we need to be doing, which is producing a biblically literate individual.   It is clear that what the world defines as ‘core’ or essential, is not what God deems important.

There is, as a diabolical consequence of this exclusionary curriculum philosophy, a reduction in the arts, and to some extent, a destruction of a child’s innate desire for discovery. We want to have love of learning, not the pressure of benchmarks. We do not want to kill innocence or motivation. We feel a mandate to protect these commodities in our kids.

A truly educated person is a broad minded individual exposed to a wide variety of subjects. If God created the whole world, shouldn’t we attempt to capture the magnitude of what God is doing? God may call our children to something outside the normal scope of what a Common Core educator in Texas feels is ‘essential.’

We understand that some Christian schools will adopt the Common Core in a wholesale manner, but others will almost certainly be forced to compromise in small increments.   It has been our historical position to teach purity and character, not to set aside our values to pass a test. We do not want to force our children to affirm notions about life origins, the diminished value of the unborn, alternative models of the family, unbiblical notions of human sexuality, and a host of other problematic theological and character issues.

There is such pressure to conform to state standards, Christian schools will have to decide whether or not they intend to have their children participate in state-related testing. If a Christian school spends 45 minutes a day teaching the Bible, this may in fact hurt students’ test scores in math because a 6 hour day cannot sustain a focus on the core; after all, we are not educating to the core.

So, how can we thrive in an increasingly anti-Christian, systematically aggressive culture that wants to dismantle biblical values?   Knowing that our relevance and viability is at stake in this debate, we need to reaffirm that the Bible is the Common Core.

We feel that now is the time to clarify and justify the value in Christian education. We must continue to advance biblical worldview integration and reaffirm Christian models of education. Our children will be taught to love God with all their heart, love their neighbor as themselves, defend the faith, and live in a world with grace and relevance.

If we make the Common Core our Benchmark, with a capital ‘B,’ we have failed. Jesus has established the ‘anchors.’ He is the ‘Benchmark.’ Our task as is to align to Him, not to state standards.

Alignment and the frantic readjustment to a set of criteria conceived in the minds of educational masterminds cuts across the priorities laid out for us in the scriptures. “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Knowledge.” We must readjust to the reality that Christ is our Wisdom.

In the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:30-31, we learn that the western tradition of objectifying wisdom, defining a set of superior academic qualities, and reducing learning to a predetermined canon is quite fruitless. The Savior oriented us to the way of weakness and dependence on Jesus who becomes all our glory and praise:

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.