Reblogged from the Answer Sheet at The Washington Post
Here is a letter to Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s chairman and chief executive, from veteran educator Carol Burris, in response to remarks he made about public schools, which are described in full in the previous post.
The remarks were included in a Fortune magazine story on the Common Core entitled, “Business Gets Schooled,” in which author Peter Elkind chronicles in detail the involvement of big business in the development of the Common Core State Standards, as well as the lengths to which prominent individuals, including Bill Gates, have gone to sell the Common Core to politicians and the public.
In Elkind’s story, Tillerson emerges as a new character in the Common Core battle, one who threatens politicians who do not support the Common Core.Tillerson, who will be mandated to retire within the next few years, refused to speak with Elkind.
Here is the letter Burris wrote…
Dear Mr. Tillerson,
Please leave our children alone. We do not need you to develop them as products. They are neither kerogen nor shale.
Your Dickensian thinking has been “outed” and this holiday season, you are as welcome as the ghost of Christmas past. The common-folk for whom the Core you adore was designed, do not like it—only 24 percent of public school parents want it used in their school. And they certainly do not like to hear their children referred to as “defective products.” Mr. Tillerson, you have made the mommies and daddies mad.
I understand their reaction must confound you. In a world in which your corporation has been declared a person, one might mistake human children for products to consume. When we humanize the inanimate, it is easy for the humanity of the animate to slip away.
But let me make this clear — our children are not products for your purchase.