Enfoncer les États-Unis dans la stupidité, objectif des républicains? (NY Times)

Texte très dur de Bill Keller dans le New York Times de ce matin. Il dénonce principalement les attaques de plusieurs républicains contre un programme visant à mieux préparer les jeunes américains à la vie universitaire et au marché du travail. L'initiative The Common Core a été endossée par 45 états américains. Vise-t-on à embrigader les jeunes en précisant ce qu'ils devraient savoir ou en élaborant les objectifs à atteindre? Une vision réductrice...

 "This is an ambitious undertaking, and there is plenty of room for debate about precisely how these standards are translated into classrooms. But the Common Core was created with a broad, nonpartisan consensus of educators, convinced that after decades of embarrassing decline in K-12 education, the country had to come together on a way to hold our public schools accountable. Come together it did — for a while.

The backlash began with a few of the usual right-wing suspects. Glenn Beck warned that under “this insidious menace to our children and to our families” students would be “indoctrinated with extreme leftist ideology.”

(Beck also appears to believe that the plan calls for children to be fitted with bio-wristbands and little cameras so they can be monitored at all times for corporate exploitation.)

 Beck’s soul mate Michelle Malkin warned that the Common Core was “about top-down control engineered through government-administered tests and left-wing textbook monopolies.” Before long, FreedomWorks — the love child of Koch brothers cash and Tea Party passion — and the American Principles Project, a religious-right lobby, had joined the cause. Opponents have mobilized Tea Partyers to barnstorm in state capitals and boiled this complex issue down to an obvious slogan, “ObamaCore!”

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/19/opinion/keller-war-on-the-core.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130819