I am a fan of Core Knowledge as a concept. I believe in a rich and deep curriculum. I would love to see all students immersed in the study of the great ideas in history, literature, science, mathematics and other fields. I understand that a curriculum doesn’t teach itself. It needs teachers who are well educated and knowledgeable to make the ideas come to life. Some years ago, when I researched the implementation of Core Knowledge, I discovered that many of the most successful sites were applying the concepts in a progressive, constructivist way. Talented teachers were engaging students in real-life projects and activities to make the knowledge into an experience.
I am also an admirer of Robert Pondiscio, who writes wisely and edits the Core Knowledge blog. But I disagree with Robert’s takedown of Carol Burris’s post on this blog. Carol criticized the militaristic style taught to charter teachers by the Relay Graduate School of Education, and Robert for some reason took her post as an abandonment of knowledge. I think that is wrong. Nothing she wrote disparaged the content of curriculum.
If anything, the militaristic style that she criticized is the antithesis of teaching a great curriculum. No one learns Shakespeare by command and by wiggling fingers. No one reflects on history by shouting out answers when called upon.
In my ideal school, students would read, discuss, debate, question, and thirst to learn more. They would take the received wisdom and pull it apart. They would ask why it is wise and why it might not be wise. I don’t see how this kind of lively reflection can happen if a teacher commands obedience and silence at all times. It’s not that classrooms need be noisy. It’s that students need to care. They need to think. Compliance may get obedience, but can it create caring? Do students think on command?I don’t think so.
So while Robert and I are on the same page about curriculum, I think in this case he picked the wrong battle. Burris did not make a case against curriculum. She made a case against a teaching style that does not support the rich curriculum that Robert and I both admire.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I often find real-life projects and activities so dreadfully boring. What, we have to turn away from the book yet again? Why not sink into this poem? Why not spend sometime on this problem?
Not that they can’t be interesting–they can be. But projects in themselves are not necessarily more interesting, exciting, and gripping than a straight-up lesson.
Carol Burris conflates two issues, and that’s the problem with her piece. She equates the RGSE pedagogical style with the principle of filling a student’s head with knowledge. She uses the old metaphor of the empty vessel.
I love it when a good teacher fills my head with knowledge! Then I go play with that knowledge. The problem with RGSE (in my view) is that it makes the knowledge shallow. There’s so much emphasis on process and behaviors (as with many constructivist classrooms, incidentally) that you don’t get to contemplate much. In the “Rigorous Classroom Discussion” video (which I found revolting), it seemed irrelevant WHAT the story was–and that’s part of the problem.
How long would you have survived in a classroom ruled by SLANT? What would happen to you if you took your eyes off the teacher? How would you manage if you were expected to shout out answers to questions on command? You didn’t go to that kind of school. I am sure you are not that kind of teacher. Do you punish children who take their eyes off you?
Have I not made clear enough that I detest that pedagogy? that I would not subscribe to it as a student or teacher? I thought I came close to shouting that point, more than once. I criticize it roundly in my book, too–there’s a whole section on Lemov.
One thing I love about CK is that it does not tll you how to teach. It lays out some things to teach (and interesting things at that) but not the method.
Our entire school read Teaching for Champions. Very few things in there I thought applicable and many I though horrible. Most other teachers and admin loved it and started SLANTing, snapping and shouting. Kids had to track, get it right and must answer. Why? Why is this book held in such esteem?
Just for clarity: I meant “some time,” not “sometime.” Hardly worth an additional comment–but I hate typos like that. Also, in a followup comment, I typed “tll,” which was supposed to be “tell.”
But that actually brings up a larger issue (while I’m at it): that this discussion has gotten a bit confused. I myself wasn’t making my points as clearly as I would like.
Robert Pondiscio, as I understand him, was not objecting to Carol Burris’s criticism of the RSGE pedagogy itself. He objected mainly to her use of the phrase “filling the pail” in a pejorative sense. She wrote: “The ‘filling of the pail’ is the philosophy of those who see students as vessels into which facts and knowledge are poured.” It’s easy to read this as a disparagement of the transmission of knowledge. Many people use the phrase in this sense.
But it seems that Burris meant that students should have room to ponder and discuss the topic, work, or idea at hand. They are more than “vessels” in that they do something with what they learn. They work with it in their minds and together, both in quiet and out loud. A good lesson encourages this.
But you have to be a vessel to some degree in order to have working material at your disposal. Being a vessel is not all bad; it just isn’t enough. If a student is taking a geometry class, he or she will watch the teacher prove a theorem. (O Vessel! O Pail of Angles and Sides!) But while watching it, the student should be trying to make sense of each step. While doing so, he or she may see corollaries or come up with questions. There should be room for these in the lesson (or the next day’s lesson).
As I see it, this RGSE lesson was NOT filling the pail (in the sense of giving students knowledge). It was keeping the stuff in the pail shallow and sparse. Burris would clearly agree.
Nor do standardized tests (especially ELA tests that I have seen) emphasize facts and knowledge. They emphasize general skills and exact following of directions. Sure, you might be asked whether something is an example of alliteration, simile, hyperbole, or onomatopoeia, but such questions make up a tiny fraction of the test.
A good currlculum, well taught, can have lots of information, lots of knowledge, lots of pail-filling, and be inspiring as all get out.
Well said, I couldn’t agree more. in the 1980’s, Ted Sizer’s Essential Schools were all the rage. Since he was based at Brown University, and since I teach in Providence, he was a frequent visitor to our classrooms. Our faculty was always divided over whether knowledge should be contructed (Sizer) or whether teachers should directly instruct. I was always on the side of direct instruction first, then construction through primary and secondary sources. I felt it was my job to lay the foundation, and contextualize information.
That was then. When I look back on it, I was frustrated by Sizer’s ideas, now, with corporate reform, I realize that engaging in conversations about pedagogy was really a golden age compared to fighting for the professions survival.
Many people think there is no place for direct instruction (DI) in constructivism, but there most definitely is. It just doesn’t look like either the original scripted DISTAR program by Bereiter & Englemann or current versions of DI.
A Relay student was quoted in the NY Times as saying, “I can study Vygotsky later”.
That means what she is probably not learning today is social constructivism. This includes Vygotsky’s model for presenting students with challenges which are at their instructional levels, aka within each child’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), which means tasks just slightly beyond their actual level of development, so that they are neither so easy the student will be bored, nor so difficult they will be frustrated and give up. This enables teachers to differentiate, rather than treat the class as if it’s comprised of students who are all at the same instructional level. (Even in homogeneous groupings, there may be a lot of variance.)
Vygotsky underscored the importance of the social construction of knowledge. That includes scaffolding student learning until the student is able to achieve independence. So learning is not just about individual students constructing their own knowledge. The guidance and support of adults and slightly more advanced peers are critical components of development.
Social constructivism is, however, implemented very differently from the environmental engineering portrayed on the Relay videos –which is primarily about controlling and manipulating children.
Waiting to study Vygotsky severely limits the number of instruments in the teacher’s toolbox and, in my opinion, means condemning many more kids to militaristic style teaching. I wish this was something new, but it’s not.
If you only knew how many times in my career I have had to convey that teachers are not in the business of creating soldiers.
You know, I’ve been following the actual curriculum development. It isn’t great at all. It’s monstrous.
There are volumes of accessory gobbledygook, to warrant mountains of new teacher training to “implement” the standards when they are delivered to us. We attend religious exercises in embracing it, without examining its claims at all. It’s a smokescreen for the real content, the endless assessment and accountability to its masters. The ELA Common Core is a guidebook to a proprietary testing regime.
It banishes stories from childhood in the interest of creating marketable “assessment boundaries”. Stories are the old status quo, of course. Older than literacy, as old as human speech, the prehistoric engine for the creation and transmission of human culture. Out with them, says the founder of Microsoft. Replace children’s minds and souls with licensed Windows operating systems. As defects emerge in the program, patches will be issued.
You can’t formulate a great curriculum by command, either.
I conducted a focus group of charter school students in 2008. I noticed signs all over the school telling students to respect each other and the faculty and staff, but I saw not a single poster encouraging teachers to respect students. I asked the students what kind of teacher they found easiest to follow the rules. They said “teachers who we respect.” Then I asked what qualities those teachers had. They said “teachers who respect us.” The formula was clear: students respect teachers who respect them, and compliance to classroom rules was based on mutual respect.
I then asked what teacher behaviors did they interpret as respectfulness toward students? It was an interesting list, flexibility, sense of self-deprecating humor, firmness and fairness. But two stood out in my mind. In black New Orleans culture, the custom when passing an acquaintance is to say “good morning” or “good evening” (evening is any time after 12:00 noon). To not make this gesture of acknowledgement–“to speak” is the term used–was considered a sign of disrespect. The students complained that the teachers “did not speak” when they saw them in the hall, although some of the students defended the behavior by pointing out that the teachers were not from New Orleans and would not know the culture.
When I hear about the silent rule in charters, it makes me wonder what emotional anxiety the students experience and how they behave if, at even some unconscious level, they believe their teachers don’t respect them,
Intercultural communication theory holds that people who are compelled to become bi-cultural know how to follow the interaction rules of the new culture learned, but generally respond internally based on their original culture’s rules, e.g. looking me in the eye is not offensive in your culture and I can learn to do it, but it causes me to be in constant state of anxiety when I am required to do it.
We can get students to comply with just about any behavioral rule, but does the appearance of order mean that they are learning in optimum conditions and if mutual respect is important, how do we learn what students regard as respectful behavior to them which can be based on individual and cultural beliefs? Or, is student respect, as it is with some pedagogies, irrelevant?
Thank you Lance! My dad (from rural Western Kentucky, born in 1930) frequently would comment about someone “who always speaks to me” as if speaking were somehow a virtue. As a shy kid from another time and place, I never understood why speaking was such a big deal. I know a lesson in intercultural communication was not your main point to the post (which I agree with), but your explanation of this similar enactment of respect on New Orleans was a lightbulb moment to me.
The problem with Pondisco is that he is constantly searching for strawmen he can torch for denying the value of content. His argument that progressive educators devalue knowledge is a hammer constantly looking for nails to pound. Very few progressive educators I’m familiar with, who promote constructivist learning principles, argue that *what* you teach doesn’t matter. But Pondisco is always determined to unveil these made-up boogeymen wherever he happens to be looking for them.
I’m curious about how you define Core Knowledge. Whose knowledge is ‘core?’ My research of ED Hirsch who started the cultural literacy and core knowledge movement back in the ’80’s shows me that his focus is on white middle class American culture with a decidedly Christian bent in his core knowledge. A curriculum that has such a clear bias toward one group will fail to educate all students respectfully. Why is it that you still support this program?
I hadn’t seen the acronym SLANT before so I had to look it up. Here it is from: http://www.powayusd.com/teachers/lharvey/path/slant.htm
SIT UP Both feet should be flat on the floor, your back straight, your head up and facing the speaker, and your hands on top of your desk. Sitting with proper posture helps you pay better attention to lessons, and interact more with discussions and activities.
LEAN FORWARD Leaning forward will show you are interested in the lesson and you are listening.
ASK QUESTIONS Stay on the topic and ask meaningful, interested questions about the discussion and activities. Your question might help others understand the lesson better too.
NOD YES AND NO Nodding you head shows the teacher you understand the lesson. It is a non-verbal conversation between you and the teacher.
TALK WITH TEACHERS Communicate with the teacher both during and after class to make sure you understand, get extra help, check on your progress, or get missed assignments. If you are confused about something, ASK the teacher. Also attend tutorials ~ they are there to help you.
At Relay/KIPP, the T in SLANT is for Track, as in always track the teacher with your eyes –and it’s strickly enforced.
In the Relay video, “track” was also used when students were directed to pay attention to another student who was called on.
What you state shows the necessity of clarifying the acronyms we use as they can be quite difficult to decipher, even for us educators and as for non educators probably indecipherable.
I agree with Diane 100 per cent. Core Knowledge — what in France is called “culture générale” should be the birthright of every child. Even the so-called “military” techniques, when applied with good humor to a large groups. I have seen this in Suzuki violin school — where the group leader will put her bow on her head and soon the large crowd of inattentive kids will fall silent and do the same — it is done wordlessly — like a game Not in military style at all. And there are many other trick Suzuki group leaders have. The children love them and it is not disrespectful. And speaking of disrespect: in France as in New Orleans, to pass someone by without saying “Good morning” is considered very insultuing. Young teachers should be schooled in local customs when they work in a new place.
I also think Pondisico’s bashing of John Dewey is very unfortunate and misguided. Dewey’s school, the Chicago Lab School, is an excellent one, and unlike many reformers, Dewey himself was an outstanding human being and above all a conscientious and loving parent to his own children. For this, as well as for his contributions to philosophy, agree with them or not, he should regarded as an American hero, not as a bugaboo. Pondiscio come out looking boorish ant-intellectual when he bashes Dewey. Not very attractive in an educator certainly.
It is also true that the corporate so-called Common Core bears no resemblance to either the French culture générale or to Suzuki, both of which focus on content and put teachers and children (not the testing and software company, administrators, corporate CEO’s, profit, and stockholders) first.
Not to be flippant, but “the sage on the stage” has a hard time letting go.
I know this is a blog about education but it would be nice if we identified the acronyms we use as they can vary from district to district, state to state. I was wondering what CK was and now I assume it means Core Knowledge as used by John above.
Thanks!
Duane
Thanks for the reminder. Sorry for not explaining what CK was.
This is the old Diane Ravitch I learned so much from over many years. After a two year silence, she again publicly endorses the concept of Core Knowledge. How can anyone think seriously and critically about any topic without mastering a lot of factual knowledge?
My kids have attended Core Knowledge schools for eight years. The content has been taught in various ways: Direct Instruction, projects, in-class reading, meaningful homework – the whole gamut. The 8th grade American history my son loved this year was exceptionally well-taught; he knows more about that topic than most college graduates do, especially the students who major in education, business, and Victim Studies. As Diana Senechal points out, Core Knowledge does not prescribe the method used to teach; it’s all about content that hundreds of educators working collaboratively concluded was essential knowledge.
In response to Shannon Ergun: before you speak or write another word about Core Knowledge, please take the time to actually become informed. “My research of E. D. Hirsch…shows me that his focus is on white middle class American culture with a decidely Christian bent in his core knowledge.” The Jewish Hirsch, forcing Christianity on American kids.
Here is a small sampling of topics covered in Core Knowledge K-8: photosynthesis;the water cycle; atoms and molecules; the solar system; the human body; Darwin’s theory of evolution; Aesop’s Fables; Huckleberry Finn; Harriett Tubman; Martin Luther King; the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s; Frederick Douglass; basic beliefs of major world religions such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity; the Constitutional Convention of 1787; the Bill of Rights; the Civil War and Reconstruction; the Ku Klux Klan; Susan B. Anthony and women’s suffrage; ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt, and many more. I suppose none of these topics are appropriate for African-American kids to study to become informed citizens and to be self-sufficient participants in our economy.
Do you have any quick references to this “Core Knowledge” concept. I have not heard of it, at least called that. If you have can you please share? Thanks!!
Duane,
Look on the Core Knowledge Blog to get an initial flavor. In addition, E.D. Hirsch has written four books that discuss the CK philosophy. The most comprehensive is “The Schools We Need”, which along with two Ravitch books has most influenced my own thinking on education.
When I talk to parents about Core Knowledge, I describe it as an outstanding, well-rounded liberal arts curriculum. There are scholars and teachers across the political spectrum that endorse CK, including several prominent African-American professors.
http://www.coreknowledge.org
Thanks for the info from both of you. Will get to it later as I’m going to go pick tomatoes and make some more juice again today.
I wasn’t referring to his own religious ideals but instead to the bent given the “list.” Initially, Hirsch worked with two other academics to create the list. The rather Christian bias to the list could easily have been introduced through the others or simply by buying into the political culture of America. I have read all of Hirsch’s books and I recommend checking out K. Buras for a good analysis of Schools We Need and the neoconservative movement in general. It is the attitude that a list can be made of what knowledge is core and what can be set aside that has brought us NCLB and the Common Core and, most annoyingly, all of these standardized tests used to vilify teachers and education in general.
For a look at how we could focus more on culturally relevant teaching methods and topics that meet the needs of students from all different backgrounds and cultures, take a look at G. Gay and S. Nieto or for a perspective on how the group in power tends to oppress the other members of the society, take a look at P. Freire. Each of these theorists takes a look at how we can make education accessible for all without reducing knowledge to a list. We don’t need more lists or tests, we need a more respectful approach to kids and the contributions of all members of our society.
A “Christian bias” in humanities education in America is unavoidable, if by bias you mean many references to the influence of Christianity on American politics and culture, and allusions to the Bible. Insert “Islamic bias” for middle eastern countries, and the Koran for the Bible, and the same concept applies.
What in my abbreviated list of Core Knowledge topics is not “culturally relevant” for all American citizens? What should black kids not be taught: the human body? Huckleberry Finn? The Bill of Rights? Women’s Suffrage? Plato? Frederick Douglass? Evolution?
The concept of “core knowledge” has nothing to do with NCLB. Actually, if core knowledge – i.e. a strong liberal arts education – were the focus of NCLB, we wouldn’t have the standardized testing mania that plagues us. We wouldn’t believe that reading comprehension is an all-purpose skill that can be measured by multiple choice tests.
The people you cite have their own “core knowledge” that they want to indoctrinate – a far-left wing perspective opposed by 90% of Americans. A perfect way to lessen even further the public’s esteem for K-12 education.
Shannon,
Not sure the tests were originally designed to vilify teachers.
Why was it mandatory to get an impartial, third-party, objective view of how students were actually performing in school? Could it have anything to do with the ubiquity of social promotion and graduating everyone prior to education reform? Most teachers had only positive intentions when they passed everyone on to the next grade or graduated everyone. They either felt sorry for the kids or were honestly trying to help them. But something had to be done to terminate these practices.
For all its negative consequences, for which there are many, NCLB accomplished this necessary and difficult task. It leaned TOWARD impartial, third-party determinations for students from every district across a state. No one likes all the testing and it needs to be streamlined but state tests were necessary. Somehow, from somewhere, parents, taxpayers, and educators had to know how students and schools were really doing.
Even after state NCLB tests were instituted, many states fudged the process, some embarrassingly so. Look at state test results versus NAEP results. Extraordinary differences, again embarrassing.
If Robert is a believer in enriched and challenging curriculum, he will find a great friend in me. This year every 11th grader in my school with the exception of the severely disabled who need life skills training, took IB English….our special Ed students, Black students, Latino students and White students (we are 22% minority). The 16% who receive free and reduced price lunch with the majority who do not, sat side by side, without tracking, to study the rigorous curriculum of the IB. At the end of the year they tool the Regents. All but one (an ELL special education student) passed. 77% reached mastery.
In our IB English classes, No fingers wiggled, no responses were cut off. The conversation focused on analytical questions and challenging literature. I watched many videos on the Relay site and others on Doug Lemovs site. If a teacher used that regimented drill style in my school, they would be asked to leave. If they did a demo lesson like the one on the site, they would not get a job. The idea that the ‘urban’ (which is a polite code for Black and poor) child cannot thrive with respectful instruction that includes thank yous, think time and open ended questions horrifies me. Every prospective teacher deserves an enriched teacher preparation program that exposes them to a variety of teaching styles.
What is it about the IB (again another acronym without explanation-International Baccalaureate) program that is so different than a normal/regular English class. Is it because it is set up to “teach to” the IB exam? Is it something else? If so what is that “something else”. Could it be by teaching to the IB exam you all were teaching to the same set of knowledge base as the Regents exam?
Generally I have not been a fan of these IB and AP (advanced placement) courses as, having been trained in AP Spanish, it seemed to be a lot of teaching to the test.
But then the more IB students the higher the ranking in those nefarious school ranking schemes? Muy importante, eh????
Can someone please explain why I should believe in and or use IB or AP materials, why not just do that on one’s own?
IB is very different from the ELA Regents. There are internal assessments that require students to do oral presentations, a World literature paper written over two years, an oral analysis of a previously unseen passage by the student during a conversation with the teacher during which she queries the student of her analysis. This is taped. Finally two written exams (reading with essay response) called paper one and paper two taken in May of the junior year. These are graded by trained scorers around the world. We did IB prior to rankings and will continue to do so long after the rankings are gone. It is quite different from AP.
Thanks for the reply and quick explanation!
Incidentally, if anyone’s looking for the video, it has (curiously) been renamed “A Culture of Support” (from “Rigorous Classroom Discussion”).
As if renaming it makes it better…..I guess they didn’t think it Warranted being deleted completely. Pathetic!
“Wiggling fingers” seemed to me to be less supportive than suggested. When did that become a positive gesture? It reminded me of voodoo, but worse, it felt like a ticking clock to me.
When you demand so much control over kids’ bodiles, I think students are likely to take advanatege of the few opportunities they have to move and will do so whether their intentions match the teacher’s or not.
Certainly it was renamed so that those who read the blogs about it now cannot find it. I am missing the support…..it must be hidden with the rigor. By the way, when I used the expression, filling the pail, I was referring to the teacher preparation program of Relay as well as the classroom instruction in the video.
“Western” Civilization arose in the Near East (Iraq) and Africa (Egypt). The Greeks and Romans were not Christians until rather late in the Roman Empire. But late imperial, Byzantine and European medieval civilization was predominantly Christian. France has a secular society but it teaches about Medieval Civilization and also about Enlightenment challenges to Christianty. There is not reason we can’t do the same.
You cannot avoid talking about religion in dealing with the art and history of mankind. The great religions should be taught (as culture and history). The bible should be taught as literature and culture. Children are being short-changed if they don’t learn about these things.
Hah,
The “great” religions should be confined to the dustbins of history. No, the bible (at least you didn’t capitalize it) shouldn’t be taught as “literature”. If anything it should be exposed for the fraud that it is. That’s what religion based schools are for, teaching religion. That is not the function of public schools. (And I’m the product of K-12 Catholic education).
Duane,
I’m an agnostic, but I emphatically disagree with you on this. You cannot understand specific cultures without having a grounding in their religious traditions. American society has been strongly influenced by Christianity, and Arab nations are strongly influenced by Islam. You don’t have to accept a religious belief system, but you need to at least somewhat understand it if you want to know why and how it impacts a society. There is a huge difference between education about, and indoctrination into, religion.
The very militant atheist Richard Dawkins made this point in his book “The God Delusion.” Dawkins cited the 1300+ references to the King James bible in Shakespeare’s works, and he endorsed learning about the bible as an essential part of cultural literacy.
Thank you! I was feebly attempting to type a similar response on my iPad keyboard, which has been plaguing me. Now at a regular keyboard, I heartily second what you said. I’d only add that the Bible contains some of the most beautiful literature in existence–such as the Book of Job, the Song of Songs, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes (not to mention the New Testament).
As for learning about Christianity, a student is missing something who never encounters St. Augustine’s Confessions or St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. One doesn’t have to be religious to be moved and amazed by Augustine’s meditations on memory and time. Here’s a deservedly famous passage from Book X of the Confessions:
“And what is the object of my love? I asked the earth and it said: ‘It is not I.’ I asked all that is in it; they made the same confession. I asked the sea, the deeps, the living creatures that creep, and they responded: ‘We are not your God, look beyond us.’ I asked the breezes which blow and the entire air with its inhabitants said: ‘Anaximenes was mistaken; I am not God.’ I asked heaven, sun, moon and stars; they said: ‘Nor are we the God whom you seek.’ And I said to all these things in my external environment: ‘Tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him.’ And with a great voice they cried out: ‘He made us.’ My question was the attention I gave to them, and their response was their beauty.”
I agree with Duane’s comment, and I feel indoctrinated by Diana’s.
When I’ve wanted to learn about different religions, I’ve study them independently. I have also taken college courses about them. I am very glad those were my choices and not required studies.
I am half Jewish, half Christain, and I was raised as a Jew. I am not a religious person, but I’m very grateful to have been raised in a religion that doesn’t recruit. I really don’t appreciate all the times in my adulthood that I’ve had to deal with being proselytized by Christians who think they’ve been tasked to spread the word and save my soul. Thank goodness I didn’t have to encounter that as a child in public school.
One of my favorite anthologies is The English Reader: What Every Literate Person Needs to Know, edited by Diane Ravitch and Michael Ravitch. I have read it cover to cover, day after day, and have memorized long poems within it. Its lively and varied literature includes selections from the King James Bible.
I don’t think Ravitch and Ravitch would for a second claim that they have the last word on what every literate person needs to know, or that there aren’t equally important works that weren’t included in the anthology. Rather, as I see it, they put this together as an act of thoughtful selection and love. And that’s what a teacher and curriculum does.
It is part of a teacher’s and school’s responsiblity to say (and mean) “this is essential”–even if it isn’t the only essential material, and even if people disagree over its importance. In cherishing important and beautiful things, taking time with them, and passing them on, educators make it possible for the student to do the same–and to break intelligently with what he or she received. You can’t question something you don’t know, and you can’t criticize it well if you don’t know it well.
I don’t see that as indoctrination. I see that as preparation for hardy critical thinking, among other things.
Prof. W.,
My last comment (in which I mention The English Reader) was meant as a reply to yours. I’d add that I didn’t quote from Augustine in order to persuade people that God created everything! What I love about that passage is the poetic cadence and the idea of attention as question and beauty as answer. It presents mystery, not dogma.
Diana, I believe very strongly in a liberal arts education, and I’ve been very fortunate to have had a lot of laterality in determining my own curriculum as a classroom teacher. However, I do not feel that I was “missing something” because I was not taught what saints said in my own public school education, and I don’t think religion belongs in P-12 public ed.
Diane can correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect her book was not intended for children in public schools.
Prof. W.,
When I said that “a student is missing something who never encounters St. Augustine’s Confessions or St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae,” I neither meant nor said “a K-12” student. I was replying to your statement that religion should be “confined” to the “dustbins of history”). That was a broad, sweeping statement, and I meant “student” in a broad sense as well–a student through college and beyond.
Whether students should read Augustine in high school depends largely on the course. In a philosophy or theology course, yes. In a course that includes medieval literature, yes. In a course that deals with memory and time in literature, yes. In a course where Augustine fits well, yes.
Including religious literature in the curriculum has nothing to do with indoctrination. If we think we “mustn’t” teach any religious literature at all, we confine ourselves unnecessarily. If I am teaching Moby-Dick or The Mayor of Casterbridge, you can bet your boots I’ll have my students read the Book of Job. This does not violate the separation of church and state, since I am not doing this for church-related reasons.
Prof. W.,
My apologies: the statement about the “dustbins of history” was Duane’s, not yours. The rest of my comment holds.
Diana, I was just referring to Duane’s comment, “that’s what religion based schools are for, teaching religion. That is not the function of public schools.”
I do not agree with teaching about religion, including religious history and the use of religious literature, in P-12 public schools. I think the exclusion of religion from public education is one of the few remaining tenets that levels the playing field for people from the majority (at least 75% Christian) and those from minority religions (and atheism) in this country.
Maybe you have to be in the minority to fully appreciate this. Or maybe you have to feel threatend by another religion that recruits, like the Louisiana legislator who was shocked to learn that the vouchers she voted for, to allow students to receive public funding for attendance at religious schools, included using tax dollars to pay for kids who attend Muslim schools, as Diane noted here:
I oppose public funding of religious schools. But I think you must teach about religion in the public schools or you can’t teach history or literature. How could you learn about the history of art without understanding religious influences? Or the history of art without hearing the great masses of Bach and Brahms and Mozart? How can you learn about the Middle East without studying the history of Islam? How can you understand the history of Europe without studying religious wars and evolution?
Diane, I’m not saying that all matters related to religion should be avoided. I am not opposed to teaching Art History, Music History, History of Literature, etc., though they include strong religious influences. I’m also fine with courses that cover different civilizations, which include learning about religious wars, etc. I think they were covered well, and objectively, in my public education. But I think that’s very different from teaching verses from the bible and religious doctrine, which were not covered in my K-12 public schooling.
Could skirting the actual teaching of different religions in public education leave gaps? Yes, I think it can, as with other areas of the Liberal Arts that might not be covered in great depth. I took courses such as Early Christian and Byzantine Art, Renaissance Art & Architecture, Gustav Mahler etc, which were heavily laden with religious influences, as college electives when I transferred to a public university as an undergrad. I’d had a basic foundation in those subjects and many questions, so I wanted to learn more about them.
We are trying to instill lifelong learning in students, so I would hope that what are sensitive matters for impressionable children are investigated in greater depth when students reach adulthood and are more adept at critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making.
I also think that curriculum that is imposed by people who supposedly know better and ignore where people really are at is callous and hurtful. The people who have created the Common Core are in one point in their lives and think very little about children and their families. They demand “learners” of their curriculum ignore what is really happening in their lives and why because the focus might turn on the curriculum developers themselves and demand an accounting of their power in others’ lives. Lynn
Well, I have long had a problem with Core Knowledge, as well as all the books in the series Hirsch wrote, in which he delineated what kids in each grade need to know. I never understood why a professor of English would think he was qualified to determine curriculum content in all of the disciplines, for students in Preschool on up.
While Preschool teachers who follow Core Knowledge do tend to use a constructivist approach, I think that’s more related to their training in Teacher Ed than to Hirsch, because he’s against progressive education and constructivism. And I completely disagree with his position that skills, such as phonics, are not taught in constructivist classrooms. I certainly taught skills when I taught children to read, including phonoligcal awareness and phonics. I just taught them differently from the drill for skill approach. For example, I used a lot of rhymes and games. I’ve observed in many classrooms but I’ve rarely seen constructivist approaches used beyond Kindergarten in public schools, while I have seen it implemented in many grades in private schools –like the U of C Lab School that Duncan attended and where Obama sent his kids. I had a lot of friends who went to the U of C Lab School when I was growing up and, whle they described having completely different classroom experiences than mine in public school, they were certainly skilled. BTW, Hirsch often cited Diane’s earlier works in some of his pieces, such as this:
http://educationnext.org/romancing-the-child/
When Hirsch’s books came out, I spent many days reading them in a bookstore. I would have bought them, except that I found myself disagreeing with so much. For example, one reason why I had gone to the bookstore was to locate a book of Native American poetry. I recall that he selected one poem for children to learn that was by someone from one Native American tribe, but I had students from a different tribe and I thought it more culturally relevant to find Native American poems representative of my students.
I preferred to follow my district’s standards (which they didn’t call standards then and I can’t remember the exact name they used, but it was before they were called curriculum frameworks.)
My feelings about what HIrsch included and omitted were very similar to Susan Ohanian’s, when she wrote this great analysis of some of the issues around Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know, in 1986:
http://susanohanian.org/show_commentary.php?id=609
“…the militaristic style that Burris criticized is the antithesis of teaching a great curriculum” is a bit misleading.
The first question that begs to be addressed is why this teaching style, and with this (KIPP, etc) population of youngsters? I believe the KIPP founders were much on target when they adopted their “militaristic” teaching style for the population of students they’d be dealing with primarily. Many inner city minority youngsters, young boys especially, are severely lacking in structure in their lives. The KIPP philosophy addresses this issue appropriately with its SLANT approach. It gives many in their classrooms guidance and direction on behaviors too often lacking in their everyday lives. While it may not be for everyone, the KIPP model appears to be working with a number of its students.
The other question that needs to be answered, is there really only one teaching style for teaching a great curriculum? I believe that to be rhetorical for those of us who have been involved in education for most of our adult lives.
I think that Carol Burris’ insights were right on target. Yes, background knowledge is important, but that’s not what I saw kids learning in the Relay video and it did look “militaristic” to me.
I saw a teacher who started off by indicating she wanted “that 100% answer right now” and asking a student if he’d fixed it, suggesting he had erred, she wants perfection and she will get back to him “if” he “fixed it”. I then saw time and energy expended on that student, and then on three other students, because he hadn’t fixed it to the teacher’s liking. Primarily closed-ended questions were posed and very little attention was paid to the actual story they were studying.
The tabula rasa/blank slate/empty pail model IS problematic because it overlooks key cognitive processes. Learners are not sponges that simply absorb information. They play an active role in interpreting their experiences, in trying to comprehend “received wisdom”. They relate new information to prior knowledge and experiences, in order to make sense of it. If teachers don’t take this into account, then what happens when students don’t understand?
Do you put the child on the spot and try to make him correct his error, without helping to further his understanding, while his peers wiggle their fingers and stare at him? Do you give his peers a shot at it? Do you finally come back to the student and ask him to give examples from the story?
The “professor” suggested this was an example of how a teacher does not move on to other kids when a child answers incorrectly, but, in fact, that is exactly what the teacher did. She just eventually came back to the original child after probing other kids.
I don’t think that was a “rigorous classroom discussion”, a “culture of support”, or even quality instructional time. The student was on track when he used the word, ambition, so instead of asking him to define it, I would have asked him to provide an example from the story then. If he couldn’t give one, I’d have provided synonyms or a definition for the word, as a guide to further his understanding and help him to be successful. As suggested, it’s possible the student confused ambition with anxious because he might have been feeling anxiety from that very situation, including from being video taped.
I’m not sure if this was an English class or not, but often, schools that teach Character Education infuse that content in other classes, too, since it’s rather dogmatic. Considering the task to distinguish character traits from feelings and the teacher asked about goal setting in Character Ed class, I would not be surprised if that was going on here.
I’ve worked in inner city public schools with middle school kids who’ve had little structure in their home lives, were subjected to gang influences, etc., and I’ve seen authoritative approaches work effectively with them. I see no need for this “militaristic” approach and it really disturbs me when people don’t recognize that it is racist to suggest that this is what kids “need” just because they come from low income families or because of they are black.
Thanks, Carol and Diane, for bringing attention to these important matters.
Thank you Professor W. You said it far more elegantly than I!
As an elementary student I experienced this regimented militaristic style of teaching. Being a quiet, creative type, I felt constant anxiety and stress. I did not understand why the teacher seemed so robotic and insensitive. The result? I became a great daydreamer. I always considered it divine fortune when I was assigned a seat by the window. I agree completely with others who have commented that this style of teaching certainly isn’t a fit for all students. In some cases, it’s abuse.
Good morning , Diane. Thank you so very much for your warm words and the civil tone of disagreement on your post. It is deeply appreciated. Diana Senchal’s series of responses in this thread cover much of what I would have liked to say, particularly her observation, “Carol Burris conflates two issues, and that’s the problem with her piece. She equates the RGSE pedagogical style with the principle of filling a student’s head with knowledge.”
My object was principally to dismiss the false dichotomy between knowledge and skills (the fire/pail homily that I abhor). I thought I was quite clear in noting that “dichotomies don’t get more false than between knowledge and thinking.”
Thus my purpose was less a defense of RELAY, that a defending knowledge against those who see it as arbitrary, insignificant, or otherwise fail to grasp its fundamental role in reading comprehension, critical thinking, communication and all the outcomes we prize so highly. That said, I do see value in many of the techniques championed by RELAY, especially for new teachers who struggle first and foremost with classroom management. But make no mistake, there is a lot of daylight between “I see value in this” and “I want everyone to do this and nothing else.” I have often quipped about what I call Pondiscio’s First Law of Education, which holds “there is no good idea in education that doesn’t become a bad idea the moment in hardens into orthodoxy.” This is to say I don’t believe in a single correct approach. I believe good teachers vary their
approaches based on the kids, the subject, and lots of other factors.
For Carol Burris, I am indeed, as Diane knows, a believer in enriched and challenging curriculum, and I’m earnestly delighted that I will find a great friend in you. I’m a Long Island native and live probably 30 minutes from your school. May I come for a visit this fall? There are lots of paths to good outcomes. I look forward to learning about yours. Email me at rpondiscio@aol.com
Lastly, I’m sorry (but not surprised) the standard litany of complaints about Don Hirsch and Core Knowledge. Not long ago, Dan Willingham, the brilliant cognitive scientist out of UVA, describe Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy as “the most misunderstood education book of the last half century.” I share that view. I would strongly recommend viewing Dan’s YouTube video, “Teaching Content is Teaching Reading (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiP-ijdxqEc), which isn’t about Hirsch of Core Knowledge, but the cognitive principles underlying why knowledge and vocabulary are essential to comprehension. Seen through this lens, it should be clear that Hirsch’s work is not now and never has been an attempt to impose a canon. It’s an attempt to *report on* a canon–the background knowledge that speakers and writers take for granted their listeners and readers know. As an educator that, in the end, is the alpha and omega of my agenda: to make sure that kids like my former South Bronx 5th graders have access to the knowledge and vocabulary that their more privileged peers have, and which is the engine of language proficiency. I may have some ideas about the best way to achieve that and you may have yours, and that’s fine. Those are honorable differences. What I can’t abide (and this is why the lighting of the pail vs. kindling of a fire metaphor so badly irritates me) is any suggestion that we must choose between the two. You can’t. Knowledge is the kindling that feeds the fire.
Good morning, Diane. Thank you so very much for your warm words and the civil tone of disagreement on your post. It is deeply appreciated. Diana Senechal’s series of responses in this thread cover much of what I would have liked to say, particularly her observation, “Carol Burris conflates two issues, and that’s the problem with her piece. She equates the RGSE pedagogical style with the principle of filling a student’s head with knowledge.”
My object was principally to dismiss the false dichotomy between knowledge and skills (the fire/pail homily that I abhor). I thought I was quite clear in noting that “dichotomies don’t get more false than between knowledge and thinking.”
Thus my purpose was less a defense of RELAY, that a defending knowledge against those who see it as arbitrary, insignificant, or otherwise fail to grasp its fundamental role in reading comprehension, critical thinking, communication and all the outcomes we prize so highly. That said, I do see value in many of the techniques championed by RELAY, especially for new teachers who struggle first and foremost with classroom management. But make no mistake, there is a lot of daylight between “I see value in this” and “I want everyone to do this and nothing else.” I have often quipped about what I call Pondiscio’s First Law of Education, which holds “there is no good idea in education that doesn’t become a bad idea the moment in hardens into orthodoxy.” This is to say I don’t believe in a single correct approach. I believe good teachers vary their approaches based on the kids, the subject, and lots of other factors.
For Carol Burris, I am indeed, as Diane knows, a believer in enriched and challenging curriculum, and I’m earnestly delighted that I will find a great friend in you. I’m a Long Island native and live probably 30 minutes from your school. May I come for a visit this fall? There are lots of paths to good outcomes. I look forward to learning about yours. Email me at rpondiscio@aol.com
Lastly, I’m sorry (but, alas, not surprised) to read the standard litany of complaints about Don Hirsch and Core Knowledge. Not long ago, Dan Willingham, the brilliant cognitive scientist out of UVA, described Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy as “the most misunderstood education book of the last half century.” I share that view. I would strongly recommend viewing Dan’s YouTube video, “Teaching Content is Teaching Reading (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiP-ijdxqEc), which isn’t about Hirsch or Core Knowledge, but the cognitive principles underlying why knowledge and vocabulary are essential to comprehension. Seen through this lens, it should be clear that Hirsch’s work is not now and never has been an attempt to impose a canon. It’s an attempt to *report on* a canon–or more accurately, the background knowledge that speakers and writers take for granted their listeners and readers know.
As an educator that, in the end, is the alpha and omega of my agenda: to make sure that kids like my former South Bronx 5th graders have access to the knowledge and vocabulary that their more privileged peers have, and which is the engine of language proficiency. I may have some ideas about the best way to achieve that and you may have yours, and that’s fine. Those are honorable differences. What I can’t abide (and this is why the lighting of the pail vs. kindling of a fire metaphor so badly irritates me) is any suggestion that we must choose between knowledge and skills, or that knowledge is somehow the enemy of engagement.
Knowledge is the kindling that feeds the fire.
Thank God I never was sent to school
To be flogged into following the style of a fool
William Blake