Hannah Emmanuele
With 7,000 schools nation-wide, the Catholic Church is a major player in US education and Common Core backers have a vested interest in bringing Catholic schools on board to the new standards. Amid a rising flood of concerns being raised across the country, Catholic scholars are now weighing in, urging US Catholic bishops not to adopt the Common Core program.
From Valerie Strauss of the Huffington Post:
The letter was sent by Gerard V. Bradley, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, to every Catholic bishop in the country, with 132 scholars from various disciplines and institutions signing on. It blasts the standards, saying they are “contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation,” and accuses Core proponents of seeking to “transform ‘literacy’ into a ’critical’ skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature.” (That last part is a reference to what Core opponents say is a cut in the amount of literature teachers are to make in favor of more works of non-fiction.)
