An open letter to Gov. Bill Walker

America’s former colonies achieved economic and educational greatness through foundational principles such as local control of government and education.

Out of this fertile soil sprang forth arguably the greatest collection of geniuses in human history. Our original disparate, geographically isolated, and economically diverse 13 colonies united under one flag under these local principles and in the God-given rights of individual freedom and personal privacy.

Through unflinching loyalty to these principles of local sovereignty, personal freedom and individual privacy, the 13 red stripes on our nation’s flag grew into 50 white stars and the most prosperous and successful nation the world has ever known and perhaps will never know again.

Common Core is the dark shadow opposite to these sacred American principles as applied to public education.

Common Core violates our First Amendment freedom in education for parents, students, teachers, and school boards. Common Core data mining of students and teachers violates the Fourth Amendment privacy clause.

Common Core circumvents federal statutory prohibitions on writing educational standards and curricula by using federal money enticements and regional shell organizations that effectively nationalize public education standards — and ultimately curricula and textbooks.

Instead of bottom-up education which is based on maximum individual freedom and privacy, Common Core quashes both of these inalienable American rights with top-down Soviet-style centralized planning using intensive testing controls to forcibly align students and teachers in controversial areas such as wealth redistribution, historical revisionism, and teaching students to question all absolutes in society up to and including Western religious values and mathematics.

Common Core employs “adaptive” computerized tests that ask different questions and ranks answers differently based on student race, which are discriminatory and in violation of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause.

Common Core violates the 10th Amendment and Alaska State Constitution where our state legislature is specifically charged to set up a system of public schools.

Common Core was backdoor-ed into Alaska through political deceit and subterfuge in order to get Federal Race to the Top funds and a waiver to No Child Left Behind by the current Alaska Commissioner of Education Mike Hanley. I say “deceit” because the name was changed to Alaska Standards with some minor alterations using synonyms so that the Commissioner could lie to the governor and populace that Alaska has not adopted Common Core, but then apply to receive federal money and waivers and fully implement Common Core under a different name.

This sleight of hand resulted in the executive branch circumventing the state legislature’s constitutional authority in education and an outright violation of the Alaska State Constitution by the executive branch.

Common Core must be completely eradicated in Alaska- like termites laying siege to our most sacred foundations that eat away at the very roots of the Tree of Liberty itself for the next generation. Educational freedom and privacy, along with our other inestimable and unalienable American rights, must be defended at all costs.

Educational standards, curricula, and textbooks should be selected at the lowest possible level and at no higher level of authority than locally elected school boards. The state legislature has a constitutional mandate to establish a system of public schools. It should not however replicate the federal mistake by trying to centrally administer them like a Soviet-style bureaucracy but protect their individual free and autonomous operation like the U.S. Constitution protects our free and autonomous lives.

It is my request that you, Governor Walker, make every effort with the authority of your executive office to end Alaska’s involvement in Common Core and its cloaked incarnations through executive action and by working with the legislature to pass legislation banning all forced Alaskan involvement in Common Core.

I would also request that you ask for the resignation of all those who brought Common Core into Alaska through serpentine deceit- like the forbidden apple in the Garden promising to make one wise but only bringing about the death of freedom and privacy once partaken.

Our forefathers gave all for our sacred freedom and privacy — from their personal treasure to their selfless toil, to the last gasp of their very lives, with their love of country and freedom never dimming in their American hearts. Let us not dishonor their memory by blowing out the candle of educational freedom for the next generation while under our watch.

Daniel Hamm lives in Palmer.