A professor at Granite State College and chair of the history department at the Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire admitted to writing the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts in order to end white privilege. According to the response heard on the video, Dr. David Pook shocked the audience at an event at New Hampshire Institute of Politics when he made the following statement:
The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason why I am here today is that as a white male in society I am given a lot of privilege that I didn’t earn[.]
Dr. Pook went on to say all kids deserve an “equal opportunity to learn how to read” and the same advantages he had. However, according to Campus Reform, the Derryfield School where Pook works considers the CCSS inferior and does not use the Common Core State Standards, not to mention that the school has a student body that is 91 percent white. In addition, Campus Reform notes that the “Standards” have been especially hard on black and Hispanic students, who have seen their test scores plummet since the introduction of Common Core.
According to Dr. Pook, not all children have equal opportunity to learn to read. He never stated what advantages he, as a white male, had over other students. What specifically is prohibiting children from having equal opportunities to learn? What has changed over the past 50 years? Perhaps the real problem with public education is caused by liberalism.
