:: behind an Iron Curtain ::
KOIN TV (CBS affiliate) has been reporting that Oregon State is getting nervous about how few students are electing to take the new Common Core Standards test, administered by the Feds.
If not enough students in a district take the test, loss of federal funds could be a result.
I'm one of those who goes around telling parents that, even if we do need a Common Core, the one they've come up with is probably not the one we want to go with, if at all interested in maintaining the quality of our Silicon Forest economy, largely nano-tech based.
The mathematics purveyed by Pearson, a British company, discriminates against Americans, an inventive people who came up with some twists on EU-style geometry, which the latter suppresses as "verboten" math.
We feel behind some Iron Curtain in that respect, with our designer memes nixed by powers that be, powers out of touch with We the People.
For example, we have a way of valuing volume that anchors to a shape other than the cube (a tetrahedron) and its all 90 degree angles.
No, our memes do not shove the cube off stage or commend it to the ash heap of history, but you'd never know that given the hostility and defensiveness with which Cubists meet what they perceive as defiance. We merely wish to share the road.
Any questioning of the authority of these awkwardly insecure partisans, and the barriers go up, like a wall across New Mexico. The "not invented here" syndrome is very strong among the road hogs. We get forced off the road every time, unless we refuse in some way.
The State of Oregon is not directly a member of NATO, is only dragged along, unwittingly, by an incurious and incompetent Washington DC, which commits us to one disastrous policy after another.
That our core is neglected, theirs always hyped, is a disparity and double standard we (a lot of us) will no longer accept in Cascadia. Taxation without representation has never been our cup of tea.
The loss of federal funding is a relief actually, given all the strings attached. Detaching from the brain dead is a good investment if our purpose is to serve the welfare of Oregonians.
