“Currently, it is the schools that are majorly responsible for socializing, instilling values, moralizing and instructing Black learners. I believe that in handing near total control over to the education system, we are allowing for the systematic annihilation of our intellectual and therefore future potential. We are inviting people whose best interests it is to keep us ignorant, docile and complacent to have control and dominance over our minds. We are permitting our children to be systematically and purposefully prepared to be “larger” society’s worker ants.

Why do we do this? Because during the civil rights movements we naively and ignorantly fought to assimilate our education along with those who did not want us on their school property let alone in their classrooms. Those who never intended “formal” education be extended to us and furthermore, we put the control of our “mind building” into the hands of people who did…

Dear Diane,

As an outgrowth of reading your new book, “Reign of Error” and reading your blog, I have written the op-ed piece below to the Connecticut Post.

Thank you for all you do in your support of public education.

Regards,

Joe Ricciotti

The Developmental Inappropriateness of the CCSS for Kindergarten Children
Ricciotti, Joseph

To:
edit@ctpost.com
To the Editor,

I recently had an opportunity to talk to a kindergarten teacher who taught in an urban school district in Connecticut immersed in implementing the Connecticut Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and was amazed at the changes that have occurred with kindergarten education over the years. As a former elementary school principal, kindergarten was always my favorite grade level as I enjoyed the innocence, naturalness and spontaneity of young kindergarten children and how much they loved school. Most amazingly was how impressively gifted and talented the kindergarten teachers were in accommodating to…