Monday Musings: Tongue and Cheek, CCSS Style

While the Common Core Machine (the Standards and all that is connected) mocks our freedom, liberty, education, and our intelligence; today, we’re going to turn the tables. We’ve been fighting the CCSS for so long, we might be weary. Weary warriors don’t fight as well as those who’ve been able to re-group. So, consider today’s post in that spirit, one to laugh a bit, to re-group, to poke a bit of sassiness to the very thing we want to see die an ugly death. C’mon, it’ll be fun!

CCSS dissed the Bard, the Bard ‘bites’ back:

I love Shakespeare, and there are times the insults he created are so clever, so fitting for the offense, that they are tremendously better than curse words. So, because CCSS has ruined classic literature and because I can, here are the top fitting insults I hereby invoke.

To the Standards themselves:
“I do desire that we would be better strangers.”  (modern translation, ‘I want no part of you in my life.’)

“A fusty nut with no kernel!” (modern translation, ‘you aren’t worth much at all.’)

“Away with you, you musty rogue!” (modern translation, ‘get out of my sight.’)

“Thou art unfit for any place other than hell.” (modern translation, ‘CCSS is so bad the only place it belongs is in Hell itself.’)

 To those who are profiting off CCS and what we’d like to see happen:

“To die a beggar.” (modern translation, ‘those billions in profits made by the CCSS giants needs to dry up and blow away, or maybe given back to the families hurt via educational fraud.’)

“There’s small choice in rotten apples.” (modern translation, ‘all those logos with rotten apples, especially full of worms, will now be placed with the right people.’)

“Hoy doy, what a sweep of vanity comes this way.” (modern translation, ‘all the swelled up pride, conceit, and deceit will catch up to those involved.’)

“Were I like thee, I would throw myself away.” (modern translation, ‘hundreds of students feel like this, so why not those profiting?’)

For every time a CCSS-created  assessment which measured a child unfairly, I do say to you,

“I do find it cowardly and vile.” (Julius Caesar)

“God and good men hate so foul a liar.” (Richard II)

For all those students who now hate learning thanks to CCSS, I call you,

“Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile.” (Richard III)
“Thou are more deep damned than Prince Lucifer.” (King John)

For all those lies we’ve been told as truths, I say,

“So vile a lout.” “Thy detestable  bones.” “Thou odoriferous stench, sound rottenness.” (King John)

“Four of his five wits went halting off and now is the whole man governed with one.” (Much Ado About Nothing)

“He did not flow from honorable sources.” (Pericles Prince of Tyre)

“Away, thou art poison to my blood!” (Cymbeline)

Some final words:

Shakespeare wrote many different affronts/abuses (what we refer to as ‘insults’). Hundreds more could be applied quite fittingly to the current fight we’re in. Truth doesn’t have to vulgar, it just needs to make an impact. So, I hope you continue to find other examples from great literature to help you re-charge your spirits, or at least have a bit of tongue-in-cheek fun for a little while! Tomorrow, we pick up our CCSS battle weapons in earnest. But before we do, see if you can find at least one more fitting phrase you’d like to apply to any of the areas seen above: