Michigan Senate should resist Common Core

The Michigan House has approved the Common Core State Standards for education, as have 43 other states. But as is also happening in several other states as well, the Michigan Legislature is sowing seeds of revolt against them, asserting that the CCSS are little more than another intrusion by the federal government into state areas. Education has traditionally been a local rather than national issue in these United States.

But dare we ask: what's wrong with national standards in education? Surely math is math and science is science; history and literature do not vary, do they?

Not as such, perhaps. But indeed there is some variance: which history do we teach, and whose literature do we read seem valid questions. Still, there are core values beneath them. History teaches us cause and effect no matter which history we deign to enlighten students with, and good literature inspires in myriad ways no matter the source material. Even in the hard sciences and mathematics, it isn't necessary to teach everyone with the exact same problems and questions, is it, so long as the principles involved are understood?

Yet is that the issue? Truth is truth no matter the font from which it springs. But who controls, or ought to control, the flow of information? Does that matter?

Of course it does. Truths from a parent matter more to a child than those from a teacher; truths from afar less than truths from a neighbor. The source is important. Even if the essential truth is the same.

The Michigan Legislature ought to resist the Common Core initiative. Not because it may be all that wrong in content; it probably isn't terribly bad for our kids in that sense. It ought to resist it because it does, or attempts to do, exactly what the state legislature fears. It takes learning away from the near and dear and thrusts it into the abyss of the all knowing yet shimmering mass of the far off. It makes education something from on high rather than from the personal and intimate.

Education should be personal and intimate. After all, it's meant for the person, isn't it?

Act Locally

One of the most basic axioms a conservative should have in his arsenal is known as the Principle of Subsidiarity. Plainly stated, it says that things should be done on the most local level possible. Why? Because that it the surest way to get necessary things accomplished in the most efficient manner.

The closer we are to a problem the better we ought to be able to understand it. We will see it more clearly, and indeed, particularly with issues and events nearby, we will likely have a greater interest in it. Schools, for example, should by and large be run within the local community because it is the locals who have the greatest interest in the education of their kids. Their kids are the ones who are generally going to hang around and run things when the current generation cannot anymore.

As a rule, the closer to a problem the less money which must be spend alleviating it. This is in part due to localized control, again as issues should be seen more clearly but also as there would be no added layers of bureaucracy which would otherwise have to be paid for by the electorate. Perhaps this is why, try as she might, Washington cannot get a grip on poverty: too much money which is supposed to help the poor in fact keeps bureaucrats at a desk.

There are of course many factors to consider when deciding what job should be done where in a national scheme. A nation as a whole must take up the defense of its people: could Detroit reasonably be expected to ward off an attack by a large foreign power on its own? If we were to leave Detroit to its own devices (a prospect many folks out there may not mind, but let's set aside jokes right now) we would hardly be a nation in the best sense of the word.

As a rule, conservatives would argue that few powers would be nationwide in scope. Military protection, the necessary and proper federal judicial arrangements, coinage, and issues of commerce (to varying degrees) come first to mind. State power would be wider than that of municipalities, perhaps, while communities would see to the bulk of day in and day out tasks: police and fire protection, trash pickup, and to the schools, among other chores.

We could go on all day discussing particulars, but you get the point. Local control is the best remedy for most ills. It is a point which should be discussed, if you'll excuse the irony, on a wider scale.