Reprint­ed with per­mis­sion from Jacobin magazine.

Partisans of the Common Core like to crow that the standards will prepare students to 'compete and lead in the global economy.' An emancipatory, democratic education, in contrast, pushes students to examine those very relations of work.

The Com­mon Core, the edu­ca­tion establishment’s cher­ished set of nation­al edu­ca­tion­al stan­dards, is under attack.

Glenn Beck and Karen Lewis, state’s rights pro­po­nents and Gates crit­ics, anti-stan­dard­ized test­ing skep­tics right and left — all are lin­ing up to pil­lo­ry a pol­i­cy that counts Ran­di Wein­garten, Jeb Bush, and the Nation­al Par­ent Teacher Asso­ci­a­tion among its sup­port­ers. Oppo­nents, if one can draw par­al­lels between the griev­ances of prud­ish con­ser­v­a­tives, mil­i­tant union­ists, and Louis C.K., fret that the Com­mon Core cir­cum­scribes cre­ativ­i­ty and reg­i­ments school­ing. Con­ser­v­a­tive detrac­tors are skit­tish about gov­ern­ment indoc­tri­na­tion, left­ies about cor­po­rate domination.

So severe is the scorn that even the Gates Foun­da­tion, a finan­cial backer of the stan­dards, is backpedal­ing; last week, it said schools should hold off on using test scores to eval­u­ate teach­ers and pro­mote stu­dents until the two-year ini­tial imple­men­ta­tion process is complete.

The Com­mon Core debate is impor­tant not sim­ply because of the stan­dards’ imme­di­ate effects on pupils, but because it offers us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to ask the biggest ques­tions about our edu­ca­tion sys­tem: What should be the guid­ing ethos of pub­lic edu­ca­tion in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety? What are we prepar­ing stu­dents for, oth­er than par­tic­i­pa­tion in eco­nom­ic life? And how should school­ing be struc­tured to reflect demo­c­ra­t­ic values?

The short answers: Increduli­ty, not docil­i­ty, is the trait to incul­cate, along with a cit­i­zen­ry dis­posed to ques­tion­ing received wis­dom and ortho­doxy and a less hier­ar­chi­cal teacher-stu­dent rela­tion­ship. In each instance, the Com­mon Core is an impediment.

The avowed pur­pose of the Com­mon Core is to ​“ensure that all stu­dents grad­u­ate from high school with the skills and knowl­edge nec­es­sary to suc­ceed in col­lege, career, and life, regard­less of where they live.” The bench­marks for math and Eng­lish are intend­ed to achieve a uni­for­mi­ty cur­rent­ly miss­ing in the patch­work of state stan­dards. Fourth graders in Iowa, advo­cates say, should be able to com­plete the same com­plex math prob­lems as fourth-graders in Mississippi.

The Com­mon Core doesn’t direct­ly set cur­ric­u­la. Keep­ing with the Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of local con­trol in edu­ca­tion, that’s left to states and school dis­tricts. (Crit­ics argue that fideli­ty to the stan­dards ends up shap­ing cur­ric­u­la any­way.) After their devel­op­ment in 2009 by the Nation­al Gov­er­nors Asso­ci­a­tion Cen­ter for Best Prac­tices and the Coun­cil of Chief State School Offi­cers, 45 states quick­ly adopt­ed the stan­dards — vol­un­tar­i­ly, but with mon­ey dan­gled from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion through its Race to the Top ini­tia­tive. That num­ber is now drop­ping, with three states hav­ing recent­ly backed out and sev­er­al oth­ers threat­en­ing to fol­low suit.

If the sub­stance mat­ters, so does the process. Par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant is the role of the Gates Foun­da­tion — absolute­ly crit­i­cal, as the Wash­ing­ton Post’s Lyn­d­sey Lay­ton has exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed. In 2008, nation­al stan­dards had numer­ous sup­port­ers but lit­tle chance of wide­spread pas­sage. Then Bill Gates got involved, and every­thing changed.

The bil­lion­aire show­ered mon­ey on the Cham­ber of Com­merce, the nation’s two major teach­ers’ unions, and state and local play­ers. He bankrolled research and advo­ca­cy alike. In just two years, after $200 mil­lion in Gates mon­ey had been dis­pensed, all but five states had lent the stan­dards their impri­matur. Most states adopt­ed the stan­dards via unelect­ed state offi­cials, with­out pub­lic input.

From a democ­ra­cy stand­point, there’s much to ques­tion here. First, the vir­tu­al omis­sion of civic edu­ca­tion, an area already treat­ed as an after­thought in many pub­lic schools. The civic edu­ca­tion we do have tends to be san­i­tized, fact-heavy regur­gi­ta­tion that casts demo­c­ra­t­ic par­tic­i­pa­tion more as a duty than as a vehi­cle for emancipation.

The Com­mon Core, through its aligned stan­dard­ized tests, push­es non-test­ed sub­jects like civics to the periph­ery. It looks at a pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem sat­u­rat­ed with stan­dard­iza­tion — wit­ness the increase in boy­cotts and opt-outs — and pre­scribes more test­ing. In their res­o­lu­tion oppos­ing the stan­dards, the Chica­go Teach­ers Union right­ly object­ed to this: ​“Com­mon Core assess­ments dis­rupt stu­dent learn­ing, con­sum­ing tremen­dous amounts of time and resources for test prepa­ra­tion and administration.”

Final­ly, the Com­mon Core seeks to fos­ter com­pe­ti­tion among stu­dents and coun­tries. Beat the Chi­nese, it sub­tly implores. There’s no place for col­lab­o­ra­tion under glob­al cap­i­tal­ism. In short, the Com­mon Core omits and con­stricts: It shunts to the side vital­ly impor­tant areas of inquiry in favor of more high-stakes testing.

The adop­tion process was also anath­e­ma to demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues. Gates was instru­men­tal, prob­a­bly deci­sive, in reshap­ing the con­tent of edu­ca­tion in near­ly every state. He used his finan­cial pow­er to, in Layton’s words, ​“over­come the pol­i­tics that had thwart­ed every pre­vi­ous attempt to insti­tute nation­al stan­dards.” It’s unpro­duc­tive to impugn the billionaire’s motives. The extra­or­di­nary arro­ga­tion of deci­sion-mak­ing pow­er to one man sim­ply because he excelled at com­put­er pro­gram­ming — this is what’s unseemly.

The sup­port of nation­al teach­ers unions and civ­il rights groups for the Com­mon Core gives some left­ists pause, and their goal of equi­ty across state bor­ders is indeed desir­able. Some of the prin­ci­ples of the con­tro­ver­sial stan­dards are unob­jec­tion­able, even pro­gres­sive. There’s a con­scious effort, for instance, to dis­pense with rote learn­ing. But any pol­i­cy approach that doesn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly ratch­et down stan­dard­ized test­ing mil­i­tates against edu­ca­tion­al justice.

Par­ti­sans of the Com­mon Core like to crow that the stan­dards will pre­pare stu­dents to ​“com­pete and lead in the glob­al econ­o­my.” An eman­ci­pa­to­ry, demo­c­ra­t­ic edu­ca­tion, in con­trast, push­es stu­dents to exam­ine those very rela­tions of work. It pri­or­i­tizes the inter­ro­ga­tion of received knowl­edge rather than sim­ple acqui­si­tion. Cap­i­tal­ism, the struc­ture which most shapes our exis­tence, comes out into the open as a sub­ject wor­thy of crit­i­cal study. The mantra for this form of edu­ca­tion could be cribbed from the old man him­self: ​“a ruth­less crit­i­cism of all that exists.”

Cur­ric­u­la changes would be wel­come. No more white­washed MLK, labor his­to­ry ele­vat­ed to the promi­nent posi­tion it deserves, civic edu­ca­tion that bor­rows more from Ella Bak­er than Char­ac­ter Counts. Above all, demo­c­ra­t­ic edu­ca­tion enshrines self-gov­er­nance as schooling’s guid­ing ethos. Uncrit­i­cal accep­tance would dis­si­pate as stu­dents assessed whether the com­mon sense of the day actu­al­ly made sense.

Stu­dents can only devel­op into self-deter­min­ing cit­i­zens — active agents, authors of his­to­ry — if they can assess the mer­its of the present sys­tem of social, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic rela­tions. Is it just? Whose inter­ests are served and who suf­fers? Are its insti­tu­tions and mores in line with their val­ues? Is tin­ker­ing or broad-based change nec­es­sary? This would be the new civic edu­ca­tion, in which the order of pres­i­den­tial suc­ces­sion would take a back­seat to dis­cus­sions about the moral­i­ty of capitalism.

Some stu­dents would come away as staunch pro­po­nents of exist­ing social arrange­ments, con­vinced that there’s noth­ing abhor­rent about a prof­it-dri­ven soci­ety based on wage labor. They’d be wrong, in my view. But such a deci­sion would be the con­se­quence of active inquiry and inten­tion­al reflec­tion. This is what sep­a­rates demo­c­ra­t­ic edu­ca­tion from mere indoc­tri­na­tion. Knowl­edge trans­fer­ral and easy assim­i­la­tion would give way to search­ing examination.

For left­ist crit­ics of the Com­mon Core, it’s impor­tant not to appeal to some ide­al­ized past in which pub­lic edu­ca­tion was sup­pos­ed­ly inoc­u­lat­ed against busi­ness influ­ence. The demo­c­ra­t­ic promise of pub­lic schools has nev­er been a real­i­ty. If pri­va­ti­za­tion and stan­dard­iza­tion have quick­ened, it’s less a whole­sale depar­ture from the past than a pur­er form of corporatization.

K‑12 pub­lic edu­ca­tion, as Samuel Bowles and Her­bert Gin­tis argued decades ago, has long func­tioned to social­ize stu­dents into the cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my. Most provoca­tive­ly, Bowles and Gin­tis showed, ​“the con­tri­bu­tion of school­ing to cog­ni­tive devel­op­ment plays lit­tle part in explain­ing why those with more school­ing have high­er earn­ings.” Stu­dents learn, both through instruc­tion and the top-down struc­ture of school­ing, that get­ting ahead means acced­ing to authority.

This pat­tern of rela­tions mir­rors the boss-work­er rela­tion­ship in the cor­po­rate work­place (the ​“cor­re­spon­dence prin­ci­ple,” as the two called it). The ​“peo­ple pro­duc­tion process” tak­ing place in the nation’s schools is thus gov­erned ​“by the imper­a­tives of prof­it and dom­i­na­tion rather than by human need.”

This isn’t to say that our pub­lic schools are a site of whole­sale indoc­tri­na­tion — they still impart valu­able skills and, in work­ing class com­mu­ni­ties espe­cial­ly, serve as a vital com­mu­ni­ty space — or that pri­va­ti­za­tion is the answer. No, the prop­er response is a deep­en­ing of democ­ra­cy in the class­room. Fol­low­ing Paulo Freire, the ​“bank­ing” con­cept of edu­ca­tion — edu­ca­tors as depos­i­tors of knowl­edge, stu­dents as pas­sive recip­i­ents — should be sup­plant­ed by an active, less hier­ar­chi­cal learn­ing process.

Edu­ca­tion is nev­er neu­tral. For rad­i­cals and pro­gres­sives, the met­ric should be whether school­ing active­ly sus­tains or unset­tles the sta­tus quo. Unre­flec­tive­ly ingest­ed infor­ma­tion is nox­ious for future cit­i­zens of the body politic. This is what the Com­mon Core encour­ages. As one might expect from a pol­i­cy endorsed by the Cham­ber of Com­merce, the Busi­ness Round­table, and Bill Gates, it shores up the sta­tus quo.

And it leaves intact the long­stand­ing ethos of Amer­i­can pub­lic edu­ca­tion: what’s good for cap­i­tal is good for the student.

It’s an ethos that doesn’t suit a soci­ety that calls itself democratic.