Dumb Adult says of Common Core: "Kids are giving up, are being made to feel like failures."

The following story is so preposterous that I had to give it a little space here.

The overly dramatic reaction of the author over what most of us would consider "normal" whining by a kid that doesn't like homework is truly surreal. Tell me the same thing couldn't also be said about non-Common Core homework?

These are the same people that complain sports isn't competitive enough, and shouldn't reward every kid equally. Even though I personally never understood my own son's math homework, I didn't stamp my feet, pout, scream that my kid was being demoralized and demand easy assignments.

Sadly, the Huffington Post originally featured this absolute fiction:

When I saw my 11 year old niece recently I asked her how school was going. I was prepared for the standard kid response—“fine.” What I wasn’t prepared for was the sudden sound of defeat in her answer. “So, how’s school, fifth grade this year, right?” I asked. Kim’s face fell, all the bounce—and light—went out of her. “I’m not an A student,” she whispered and looked down at the floor.  It took a lot to extinguish her usual enthusiasm about life, including school. She loved her teacher, the school, the interesting projects they had been doing.

And like my conservative friend in Milwaukee is always telling me, it's those personal partisan stories by dumb parents that shape his views, not those liberal facts:

“It’s that damn Common Core Curriculum,” her mother told me after Kim went off to play. “It’s killing her. It’s killing a lot of the other kids too. She’s working hard and I’m getting her extra help but she’s so down on herself.” We talked about the frustration she and other parents were having with the new imposed standards, standards that baffled them.

Because the parent wasn't in the classroom learning the new method of problem solving?

I was haunted, disturbed and saddened by that young girl’s answer, “I’m not an A student.”

It was painful enough to see the shame on Kim’s face. But when I thought about it further I realized that her experience wasn’t an isolated one. Kids across the country are faced with that same sense of personal failure. Today’s kids know that their personal academic performance affects not only themselves but also their teachers, their principals and ultimately the fate of their schools. What other generation has grown up with that kind of pressure, that kind of fear? I’m afraid that we are losing kids by the day. Kids are giving up, are being made to feel like failures because they can’t jump through the shape-shifting hoops of the latest educational reform. If we don’t do something soon we are allowing the love of learning with which children are born and which will flourish with proper nurturing to be trampled as America races to the top—of what?

Because kids never hated their homework before, and parents were always smarter than our best teachers.