To the Editor:

It’s getting easier to understand why concerned parents are increasingly pushing back against the Common Core agenda being imposed upon their kids. Academic standards would be dumbed down as independent thinking is squashed in favor of left wing, politically correct orthodoxy.

Common Core promotes nation-wide uniformity in primary and secondary education. Its proponents would have you believe that there is no threat to local schools’ curriculum, or its academic rigor. In reality, there is top-down pressure from Washington to standardize lowered educational content nationally through its curriculum models, student testing and corresponding teacher evaluations. Parents, educators and students are being subjected to government intervention reminiscent of Soviet-style central planning and thought control.

The academic-lite standards of Common Core were designed to align more with problematic inner city schools than our local New Hampshire schools, which were ranked in the top 300 country-wide. For example, Common Core delays teaching of algebra courses until later grades. This negatively impacts the ability of students in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) areas to gain admittance into the colleges and universities of their choosing.

STEM is not alone in being diminished. Common Core’s English standards applied in Massachusetts have reduced students’ reading of classic literature, poetry and drama by 60 percent as compared with the state’s former standards, according to the non-partisan Boston based think tank, the Center for School Reform at Pioneer Institute. Classic American literature is being replaced by reading lists promoting politically liberal agendas.

Centralizing and controlling education has historically been a strategy used by dictators, including Hitler and Stalin, to ideologically indoctrinate youth. In his Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx stresses the importance of controlling education to advance political goals. The greatest danger of Common Core is relinquishing to government the power to mold the minds of our youth. Early in his presidency, Mr. Obama made clear his objectives to control not only the health care and energy industries, but also education.

The president’s fingerprints are already evident in Common Core’s emphasis on preparing students to be “citizens of the world” within a “global community,” and in its reading materials that rewrite American history as a tale of shame. One of the most widely used historical texts, “The American Experience: 1900 to Present,” brainwashes students with trash America themes remarkably similar to “Dreams From My Father,” written by Barack Obama in the 1990s.

Mr. Obama was never a fan of American exceptionalism, but he has embraced the United Nations as a potential one world government. His Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, openly admitted cooperating with the UN to create what he called a “cradle-to-career education agenda”.

Allowing the UN, sometimes referred to as the “Dictators’ Club”, to help the U.S. revamp education boggles the mind. And yet multi-billionaire Bill Gates, an ardent longtime supporter of the UN, is helping to fuel the coordination. Could software sales also be fueled?

Critics claim that Washington, D.C.-based sponsors have forced Common Core top down by circumventing the democratic process and weaving a web of deception. They may be correct. The marketing message intended to mollify local parents and educators is, “if you like your curriculum, you can keep it.” Sound familiar?

JOHN FERLINS

Hollis