We wanted proof Common Core has serious shortcomings, and now we have it. A professor of Renaissance English Literature and the Development of Western Civilization at Providence College has begun the process of dissecting student essays promoted as examples of what CC strives for in its standards and subsequent influence on curricula. Anthony Esolen says the best essay of the bunch has no integrity, just a mechanical spouting of information that contradicts itself. And this essay was subject to teacher reviews. The professor says his disagreement with the essay doesn't have to do with organization or style as these are done well, but with the truth. He asserts that the more "mechanical" writing becomes, the closer it moves to providing an incubator for lies. From Esolen's article in Crisis Magazine: Yet the writer of the best essay in the CCC lot violates these moral directives all the time.  He pretends to know what he cannot possibly know.  He affects certainty...(Read Full Post)