Ethan Young, of Farragut High School

Credit The Blaze for the following student video going viral.  Speaking at a local school board meeting earlier, a Tennessee high school senior issued a brief and incredibly insightful address on problems with Common Core standards.

Ethan Young, a student at Farragut High School in Knox County, Tenn., believes the school district should drop the new national education standards, a set of guidelines that were never voted on by Congress, the Department of Education nor by local or state governments.

“The president essentially bribed states into implementation via ‘Race to the Top,’ offering $4.35 billion taxpayer dollars to participating states, $500 million of which went to Tennessee,” Young said. “And much like No Child Left Behind, the program promises national testing and a one-size-fits-all education, because hey, it worked so well the first time.” The audience appreciated the sarcasm.

“If nothing else, these standards are a glowing conflict of interest and they lack the research they allegedly received,” he said adding, “Standards based education is ruining the way we teach and learn.”

“The task of teaching is never quantifiable.  If everything I learn in high school is a measurable objective then I haven’t learned anything. Creativity, appreciation, inquisitiveness are impossible to scale,” Young said.

“Somewhere our Founding Fathers are turning in their graves — pleading, screaming and trying to say to us that we teach to free minds. We teach to inspire. We teach to equip, the careers will come naturally.”

Young also argued that Common Core standards display a “mistrust of teachers,” a line that prompted applause from the audience comprised, in large part, by teachers.