Bill Gates
Common Core, the Bill Gates-funded initiative to standardize education benchmarks across the country, is one of those issues that's drawing strong opposition from both left and right. Critics from the left, like Diane Ravitch, oppose Common Core as increasing
corporate control of education. Opponents on the right ... well, here's
what's behind a planned "Don't Send Your Child to School" day of protest:
“This is Big Brother, George Orwell, 1984. We are living in it,” Wilson told The Huffington Post over the phone, referring to Orwell's dystopian novel depicting a sinister totalitarian government. “If we don’t speak up now, federal education will be the beginning of the end of this country as we know it.”
Wilson is part of what she sees as a growing movement of parents speaking out against the Common Core Standards. Groups like Americans For Prosperity have sponsored previous anti-Common Core efforts, but [upstate New York mother and activist Janet] Wilson is operating on the grassroots level. She hopes that the protest she has planned—in which 4,000 people have said they will participate, according to the event's Facebook page—will make these opposing voices known.
“It’s God uniting his army," she said. "That’s how we feel about it.”
Wilson plans to homeschool her child anyway, so Common Core isn't exactly her only problem with public schooling. But it's a telling misdiagnosis that, faced with a program funded by "philanthropy" from a corporate billionaire and requiring schools to buy all sorts of corporate-produced texts and tests, the far right is griping about the federal government's role in education.