In many countries a comparison can be made between the written constitution of the nation and the charter of the U.N. . . The idealism of youth should be appealed. . . and the social studies provide particularly good opportunities for courses of this kind ¹

Who will be the depositors of knowledge, if the Common Core State Standards are ‘content and culture free’? If they are culture free it stands to reason they would be suitable for any culture or country. If they are content free, then they are “skill-based only” as reported by two academic experts on the CCSS Validation Team² If they were state-wide, led by the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, why were there 3 validation members from beyond our borders?

Always having an insider’s view of the future, Oregon Environmental Literacy Plan reveals some answers. The plan lists one resource as the US Partnership³, whose stated mission is to support the United Nations Decade for Sustainable Development. Version 3 of the National Education for Sustainability K-12 learning Standards (EfS) spells out more than an Education for Sustainability ‘guidepost’ for educators. It is replete with specific aims for teaching an international social, economic and environmental curriculum.

Grades K-4: Setting Goals Students assess their own learning by developing criteria for themselves, and use these to set goals and produce high quality work.
Grades 5-8: Resource Distribution Students compare the distribution of a common resource (e.g. money, food) of different groups of people in their own community, region, nation, or world and explain how this resource distribution affects sustainability.
Grades 9-12: Human Rights Students examine the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human rights, comparing this document to the United States Bill of Rights, answering the question, “Which rights from the U. N. Declaration are included in the U. S. Bill of Rights, and which are not explicitly addressed?

Let’s write a standard that compares the standards between the United Nations 1949 ‘Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks & Teaching Materials as Aids to International Understanding⁴ to the more recent National Education Sustainable Standards for K-12, 2009. This might erase the reformists’ position that the existing body of knowledge is so vast, students need to learn how to learn, rather than what to learn. (The 1949 UNESCO recommendations from the Handbook are in italics.)

A. That all teaching should help to develop a consciousness and understanding of international solidarity.
Grades 5-8: Democracy Students participate in a simulation to devise a national energy policy through negotiation, collaboration, and coalition building among three groups that make a democratic society; the state, civic organizations, and business.
B That life in all educational institutions should be so organized as to interest young people in the problems of the world of tomorrow.
Grades 9-12: Poverty Students explain the history, causes and potential solutions to poverty in the U. S. and around the world through using the context of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
C. That a sense of duty towards the world community be developed.

Grades 9-12: Local to Global Responsibility Students describe the difference between a local and global problem, how the problems might be connected and how a potential solution to each could require different actions (at different levels-ranging from the local to the global). Students then take a least one action and analyze the results and lessons learned for future actions.

D. In social studies courses, special emphasis is placed on the purpose and functioning of the UN and its agencies.
Grades 9-12 Multilateral Organizations Students research and compare the goals and programs of three multilateral organizations, one economic (OPEC), one environmental (Greenpeace) and one social (UNESCO), that promotes education, social and natural science, culture, and communication as a laboratory of ideas and a standard-setter for forge universal agreements on emerging ethical issues.
E. Courses in history, geography and economics can help to throw light on such matters as standards of living, economic rivalries, living space, labour problems, minority questions and large-scale economic planning, none of which are matters of purely national concern.

Grades: 5-8: Carrying Capacity Students will provide an example of the maximum population that an environment can support indefinitely.

A fifty year span between these standards, reveals the ever-changing standards process in the states, has been based solely on the eventual imposition of the UN never-changing standards. The EfS standards are clearly not limited to environmental issues. A new nomenclature of academics is forth coming from vendors, eager to provide engaging course work and lessons on social, economic and environmental issues. Ecoliteracy, Ethnomathematics, Ecological Economics, Real-world math, simulation activities in ‘village groups’, calculating your carbon footprint, perfect critical thinking skills and perform service learning activities, mobilizing students to become community organizers.

“Therefore, we regard it as a matter of first importance for social and international living that educators should be more concerned with the child, and the healthy development of his body and mind, than with the content of the various subjects which go to make a school curriculum”.
Towards World Understanding; UNESCO, Vol II, 1949

Gee, I was getting worried. I thought the students had to learn this stuff from the standard-setters.


—————


1 – All standards recommended by UNESCO taken from Turning of the Tides, Paul W. Shafer, John Howland Snow, The Long House, Inc. Publishers, 1962. http://www.scribd.com/doc/37817636/The-Turning-of-the-Tides

2 – “Fair to Middling” report; James K. Milgram, Sandra Stotsky, No. 56 2010 http://pioneerinstitute.org/download/fair-to-middling/

3 – EfS standards Version 3 2009 http://www.uspartnership.org/main/view_archive/1

4 – http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0006/000630/063011eo.pdf