Uh-Oh. The decision by the authors of the Common Core standards to insist on an equal split between nonfiction and literature opens them up to ridicule. Why are they telling English teachers what to teach?
Bad move.
Educated people love literature.
Who are these guys who don’t?
Here is a column in the new issue of Time:
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2130408,00.html
How I Replaced Shakespeare
By Joel Stein Monday, Dec. 10, 2012
I was not worried about the American education system until after I started writing a column, because that’s when I found out there are English teachers who assign my column as reading material. I regularly get e-mails from students asking about my use of anastrophe, metonymy, thesis statements and other things I’ve never heard of. To which I respond, “Transfer high schools immediately! To one that teaches Shakespeare and Homer instead of the insightful commentary of a first-rate, unconventionally handsome modern wit! Also, don’t do drugs!”
I can expect to be sending more of these e-mails thanks to the Common Core State Standards, with which public schools are encouraged to comply by 2014. The new curriculum standards dramatically shift about half the nation’s high school English reading lists toward an emphasis on nonfiction. In a speech last year, David Coleman, the new president of the College Board, who was one of the chief creators of the Common Core, worried about students’ focusing on opinion over analysis in their writing. “As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a s— about what you feel or what you think,” he said. “It is rare in a working environment that someone says, ‘Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.'” I agree with this, but only because no one has ever asked me for a market analysis.
Coleman’s idea is that by reading clear, tightly structured nonfiction, kids will learn how to write clear, tightly structured nonfiction, hopefully without hitting Reply All. And indeed, the first time I write in a new format–travel essay, screenplay, apology e-mail–I read a bunch of examples. But when I want my writing to improve, I read something that forces me to think about words differently: a novel, a poem, a George W. Bush speech. Sure, some nonfiction is beautifully written, and none of Jack London’s novels are, but no nonfiction writer can teach you how to use language like William Faulkner or James Joyce can. Fiction also teaches you how to tell a story, which is how we express and remember nearly everything. If you can’t tell a story, you will never, ever get people to wire you the funds you need to pay the fees to get your Nigerian inheritance out of the bank.
When I asked Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers–which, along with the National Governors Association, created the Common Core–he told me that CEOs and university professors championed the shift to nonfiction. Only a small, vocal group objected. “It upset people who love literature. That happens to be a lot of high school teachers,” Wilhoit said. But students aren’t reading nonfiction on their own, he added, and their history-class assignments tend to be short textbook summaries, not primary sources. “It’s not a good trend, ” he said. “I guess it’s a by-product of the media world we live in.” Students are clearly not getting examples of how to make a persuasive argument by, for instance, avoiding insulting the media world that is interviewing them
.
But if you ask me, that’s a failing of history classes, not English. Among the nonfiction the Common Core curriculum suggests are FedViews by the Federal Reserve of San Francisco. I’ve never read FedViews, but I know that unlike my late-night high school sessions helping other kids parse “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” no amount of discussing FedViews is going to get you to second base.
School isn’t merely training for work; it’s training to communicate throughout our lives. If we didn’t all experience Hamlet’s soliloquy, we’d have to explain soul-tortured indecisiveness by saying things like “Dude, you are like Ben Bernanke in early 2012 weighing inflation vs. growth in Quantitative Easing 3.” Teaching language through nonfiction is like teaching history by playing Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” or teaching science by giving someone an unmarked test tube full of sludge and having him figure out if the white powder he distilled is salt or sugar by making Steven Baumgarten taste it, which is how I learned science and how Steven Baumgarten learned to be more careful about picking people to work with. Something he could have learned by reading Othello
.
But if our nation is going to make this horrible mistake, I’d like to get something out of it, like selling c opies of my book. So I asked Wilhoit if he would consider including my writing in the curriculum, to which he said, “It would be interesting to take your article on a specific subject and compare and contrast it to another author writing about the same subject. That would be ideal. We will use it. I promise you.” Now I just have to find another writer who has written a compelling account of my childhood.
__
And the insanity continues. Seems like humor can hit the spot when all else fails!
Accept that Diane is uninformed about common core standards and she clearly misunderstands what the standards are and how they will be taught. Avoid making knee-jerk reactions from other people’s knee jerk reactions. Common core is not insanity. In fact, adherence to the standards for grades 11-12 will lead to more reading of Shakespeare rather than less, and the literary analysis skill-set students are asked to gain by the time they graduate is more advanced than it currently is in most. I would enourage Daine Ravitch and others to actually look at the literature standards. There is no cause for alarm, and there is no insanity.
Tell us where you will be implementing the common core..what state, school, grade level, subject?
What makes you think readers here have not looked at the standards?
You come off as another policy wonk who demeans educators, doesn’t actually teach or never has and if we do not fully support this new assessment (yes, that is what it will amount to) program we must be
ignorant. Coleman knows best? Not!
Sure, I’ll accept it because… you said so?
“In fact, adherence to the standards for grades 11-12 will lead to more reading of Shakespeare rather than less.” Not me. I just yanked Hamlet next year and none of my non-honors juniors will touch Dickens. You’re good, Jay Dean, but not that good. In fact, if you were saying this in front of 100 teachers, the majority would probably be stupid enough to accept it or, better yet, roll their eyes and not call you on what you actually said.
I have a limited amount of time in a school year. If right now it’s about 80% fiction and 20% nonfiction, then you say to shift it to a 50/50 split, this means that I will be teaching LESS fiction.
What was I told at a meeting by my assistant superintendent about this? She said, “Don’t worry.” Then she went on to another topic.
I’m still wondering what they mean by “informational text” by the way. There is plenty of nonfiction that looks, tastes, and smells just like fiction. If I teach Equiano, Rowlandson, Byrd, Smith, or Hiroshima, Night, In Cold Blood, Roughing It, or some autobiography, am I teaching informational text?
What’s obvious about the Common Core State (sic) Standards is that it sure wasn’t written by educators in the trenches.
The worst part? It assumes that all students are on level and that students with IEPs, 504s, or ELL’s don’t exist.
“There’s a polecat in the hen house.”
An interesting article in the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/common-core-state-standards-in-english-spark-war-over-words/2012/12/02/4a9701b0-38e1-11e2-8a97-363b0f9a0ab3_story.html
The Common Core has many problems related to how it will be operationalized and the values it embodies. I don’t wish to be an apologist for the CC. However, if English teachers are teaching less literature, then those who are telling them they must should enroll in remedial reading. That is not the intent of the CC, and it is stated clearly in the CC. The burden correctly falls to all the other disciplines to teach their content, in part, by increasing the reading that is relevant to that discipline. The works read are not finite–it is not 70% of a fixed number of words that students can read in any one year of school. We don’t need to redivide the reading pie we have always used–what we need is a much bigger reading pie shared by all the disciplines, not just those who teach English-language arts.
As to the 70/30 split. My district already rolled out a new English curriculum for next year, at least the unit shells. Guys- the units go 50/50 for freshmen and the senior level is 70/30.
Hey, I work in Rhode Island. Need I say more? There seems to be two intellectual black holes in this country and one is due east of Dallas,Texas and the other is a bit south by south west of Coventry, Rhode Island. I know this. I’ve taught in both states.
It’s getting to where we will have to be subversive to be effective.
Yes, that’s my plan…subversive.
I also need to start a secret blog under a pseudonym: How to circumvent the new evaluation system, the CCSS, keep your job and laugh all the way home from school everyday.
We also need to start a reformy buzz word dictionary..throw around a few words and they think you buy into the bullsh%#…..close your door and teach.
That’s if they don’t get you with their VAM machine.
There is to much great writing to fit in two lifetimes, much less high school. I don’t know which nonfiction works will be added or which works of literature subtracted, but if the “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock” is replaced by “Letter From Birmingham Jail”, it will not be the end of education in the US.
Very true. I loved this column and its defense of fiction and poetry, but we high school English teachers should be offering great non-fiction, too. Ben Bernanke’s reports may not make the cut.
Stein betrays an inability to read closely. It will be sadly ironic if English teachers are the ones who perpetuate this myth.
Pg 5:
“Because the ELA classroom must focus on literature (stories, drama, and poetry) as well as literary nonfiction, a great deal of informational reading in grades 6-12 must take place in other classes if the NAEP assessment framework is to be matched instructionally.”
I don’t feel like I should have to parse this, but I will. This document makes a core, explicit argument: the work of teaching literacy must be shared across subjects. The science teacher’s job involves more than simply conveying content; it involves preparing students to read and understand scientific writing–its specific structures, lexicons, etc. The same for other subject areas…
To say that the writers of this document don’t love literature, or that they are mandating that teachers abandon fiction, is simply alarmism. It’s disappointing to see it in Time. It’s doubly so to see it from an historian who is so acquainted with the many failed attempts at improving content standards.
That’s what the standards say, but districts have been placing heavy emphasis on “informational text,” even in ELA.
Why? Because they have received word that the new assessments will emphasize such “informational text.”
The standards themselves are one thing. The baggage that comes with them is another.
I have no doubt that the assessment will be as clumsy as you say, but the writers of the standards are not PARC or SMARTER.
The implementation challenges you mention below are also important. There are real reasons to doubt whether Common Core will have any kind of an impact on achievement. We might stick to talking about those instead of fabricating new ones.
Teachers in my state, of all subject areas after grade 5, were already teaching literacy skills via their content area…we had the blueprint for literacy. This is nothing new. It is now spawning another testing industry and essentially, this is an assessment program for students and teachers. It is a way to rank and stack…it is a shame game and a way to manipulate parents into thinking their schools are failing so they can privatize even more. I don’t need Gates and Coleman to tell me how to do something I have been doing quite well for many years. They don’t know my kids. I know my kids. This will be very easy to circumvent.
There may be some just criticisms of Common Core, and if English teachers are teaching less literature because of it, that is a serious problem. However, one positive aspect of it is the increase in rigor and content through requiring “complex texts” and its recommendation to work toward students being able to read and understand them on some sort of grade level. We had moved away from challenging complex literature in my area, and the works being taught–or I should say read–were definitely less challenging–high interest/low level. Only the elite classes–the high level gifted classes were being expected to read classics, for example. It is a shame that all students were not getting access to the greatest works.
We need to do more than increase the test complexity. We have full inclusion with a four and five year ability range in one 45 minute period. They need to learn how to read well before middle school to all of a sudden be able to read the classics. Merely adding “rigor” doesn’t make a student a better reader. Way too many kids keep getting pushed along with the full inclusion and lack of direct special education services model.
I think the classics should be read to children all along–that is part of the rigor and content I am referring to. And yes, you can help them with it as they go and not just leave them on their own to understand them–they should be discussed and enjoyed together, acted out, debated, studied for vocabulary and sentence design, etc.. I don’t think there is a point at which a reader suddenly becomes good enough to read a classic, I think they should be steeped in them all along!
Apparently the term “nonfiction” is the new bad word of our times. I used it at a meeting recently and was corrected. We teach “informational text” now. I am sure that that one change will help my second-graders immensely as they prepare for the careers they will assume in 15 years.
This is nothing more than the accelleration of the dumbing down of Amerika. I spelled it that way on purpose as we are now and have been technically for awhile a fascist state. The defination of fascism is corporations running the government and that is what we have had for quite awhile now. They want the slave population at low wages without many or no benefits and the elite class owning and taking all the profits for themselves. Isn’t that obvious?
The direction our country is heading has become painfully and scarily obvious.
According to L, who are the writers of this document and don’t tell us teachers. I actually don’t give a shit what some guy named David Coleman thinks.
From what I gather about Coleman, his teaching experience amounts to a little bit of tutoring. This is the man who is driving the Common Core. We are in a fine mess, yes sirree!
It appears that these wealthy self appointed know nothings lack some basic social skills. They don’t seem to pick up on the cues that we don’t really care what they think. They have the money and evidently the power, but they don’t control our minds and therefore, they WILL NOT control how we teach. This is doomed to be another eduflop.
Business tycoons often lack basic social skills, and Gates and Zuckerberg are but two examples.
They will not be able to control only if we all join together. This is their worst political nightmare. We just did that in L.A. concerning a $90 billion 1/2 cent sales tax until 2069. We beat them by joining together in less than one month with very little money. It can be done. This was called Measure J. Measure R was $40 billion 3 years ago. With interest we are talking about around $300 billion stopped by just concerned citizens and groups.
This was my understanding as well: the intent is for ALL teachers to teach literacy and writing skills… but this is the second mainstream media column I’ve read that claims ENGLSH teachers replace literature with non-fiction… This is the stuff of urban legend!
We have been doing that for years. Coleman is not an innovator…he wants to use it to stack, rank, shame, close and privatize. Can you imagine the back room conversations that actually took place? Students and learning may not have been mentioned too often.
yes!
L, I think you have really focused on the most important aspect. It is not about teaching less fiction. Of course students should be reading fiction, and that is primarily done in English-language arts classes. However, students can and should read more nonfiction–much of that can be done in other disciplines–social studies, science, even physical education. If this is done well, reading in these disciplines won’t take away from learning, but enhance and improve what students learn there.
A sharp, funny piece. The deadly term is “informational text”; the deadly idea is that an increase in “informational text” (at the expense of literature) will do anyone any good. It is much more likely to bring loss (if there was a literature curriculum before).
Another problem with the standards is that, while they articulate reasonable principles at times, their implementation is bound to be less than reasonable. Students will have to show “growth” in relation to the standards (as opposed to, say, learning something interesting and important). Here’s how it could play out:
http://dianasenechal.wordpress.com/2012/11/10/student-shows-23-percent-growth-in-finding-central-idea/
“A sharp, funny piece.” Exactly what I would say about your blog post. I especially appreciated the hand gesture that led to instant silence. I’ve always wondered why they have never applied the technique at faculty meetings?
The sad reality is the kids would not have been clapping, hooting and hollering. They would have sat stone faced, confused, depressed and numb.
Take a look at the video “Data Is Fabulous.”
http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2010/12/09/data-is-fabulous/
Many schools are trying to get kids worked up into a frenzy over their “growth.” Sometimes it works. Kids can get excited even over things they don’t understand. So can adults, for that matter. Reason and emotion don’t always go hand in hand.
I taught at a school that was part of a pilot program where kids would get paid for their test scores. One day the kids were herded into the auditorium to watch one of the assistant principals give a demo with dollar bills floating around in a big inflated cube (or something like that). It didn’t take long before the kids were shrieking and clapping.
I will watch. It will probably turn my stomach….sad, pathetic and sick!
I tried the link on my iPad and my pc. It says embedding has been disabled by request, try you tube. It is not on you tube. I guess they are now embarrassed. I loved the comments. One person wrote it was like “The Office” for kids…meaningless, busy work. Haha!
It is on YouTube, though. If you click the Watch on YouTube link, it’ll take you there. Here’s the link to the video:
This second-grade teacher is greatly disturbed by this lesson. “Data is fabulous”? Are you sh****ing me? Is this their idea of meaningful and purposeful education? Argggggg!
I know I was horrified watching it and the group think was pathetic. What happened in the class that didn’t make progress…beatings? It made me sick. I am in CT too…do you mind saying what town or city you teach in or we can exchange emails. I have about five years to get to thirty. I was going to stay longer, but I don’t think I will make it and be sane.
Hi Linda,
Let’s exchange emails. (How is that done here?) I’m not sure posting my district here is a good idea: I get in enough trouble without having my postings here attributed to me!
The video link didn’t show up in my last reply, because the text area was so narrow. Here’s another try:
I watched this on youtube. This is what it must be like to work in a Chinese factory. The bosses set the goals for the worker bees, then they have a big meeting where they applaud politely. Love the teacher on the side nodding her head while silently thinking, “this is such bull**it!. As soon as this neocon leaves, I’ll rip that idiotic chart down and continue teaching my kids critical thinking skills.”
The school must be near a Kimberly Clark factory. I have never seen so many boxes of Kleenex in one room before! As for the classes that don’t make their goals…”The floggings will continue until morale improves.”
This is all about the purposeful dumbing down of our youth and to create the worker bees and the elite. This is no accident. If you have people who do not know history how will they understand the simple minded games the politicians play now. Read Sutonious and you will see real intrigue or the history of the Roman, Persian and Chinese courts. How about “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” for a lesson or two on political tricks and power and failure as a result of what we are now doing that they also did which led to their demise. Can’t have that then they will understand and reject. We are going to reap what we sow, it is always that way and humans are high level predators who if uncontrolled will self destruct and with the chemicals and hydrogen bombs in MIRV missles with 10-12 warhead per missle we can have a total tragedy so fast it will make your head spin until you are vaporized. How many of you have seen a picture of a test of a MIRV missle? All you need to do is see it once and you will rapidly understand.
A similar view of NCLB from the late Andy Rooney:
Generation Of Cultural Idiots?
April 9, 2006 9:14 PM
Is the new emphasis on reading and math in schools coming at the expense of other subjects? Andy Rooney wonders whether we are raising a generation of cultural idiots.
Reading, Writing, Arithmetic
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/07/60minutes/rooney/main1480988.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1483055n
Mr. Coleman believes everyone is entitled to HIS opinion. That’s all it is; his opinion.
In MY opinion, the Common Core Standards are only marginally relevant. Once the PARCC and SMART dolts finalize their weapons of mass destruction, the Common Core Standards will be totally irrelevant. Just like typhoid Mary’s parents.
David Coleman is the Grover Norquist of education.
There was a video posted a long time ago on this blog. He was chanted down by
NYC parents at a public meeting. He walked off the stage.
The AP Lit folks I hang out with have decided that they don’t have to change a thing in their courses because the amount of reading of “informational text” expected by the Common Core State [sic] Standards applies to the whole curriculum, not merely to English classes, or as we say in educationese, the English Language Arts.
Jersey Jazzman captures my attitude…small excerpt..do click on the link…great graphic.
You people need to back the hell off. When you’re able to do your own jobs, you’ll have earned the right to criticize us. But you politicians can’t even balance the budget without cutting medical care for old people. You posers couldn’t even run your own school districts (talking to you, Rhee and Klein). You wonks can’t even keep your flavor of the month reform straight. You pundits can’t even get the basic facts of the argument right. Fix your own messes before you come after us.
Shut up, go away, and let us teach. You have nothing to say to us we don’t already know. You’re useless. Go away.
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/12/atrios-nails-it-teachers-are-sick-of.html
My thoughts exactly!
I’d add that they can’t even teach, either. Rhee was in the classroom for three years, and the results of her test scores are quite debated. Klein never taught at all.
The dreaded “informational text” ……even more dreaded is the fact that instead of teaching my first graders to READ, I am now teaching them the difference. Seriously, shouldn’t a 5 or 6 or 7 year old just be READING???
I looked at the actual CCSS document last night and it does indeed say that 12th graders in ELA should be reading 30% fiction and 70% nonfiction. It’s a 50/50 split for 4th grade. So………to the ELA teachers out there – you can believe that 70% is across the curriculum, but when the National PARCC tests come out and you’re evaluated on their performance on the ELA TEST – it’s YOU who will hang, not the Science or History teachers. That is, until there are PARCC Science and History tests!!
Exactly rural teacher. We are all responsible for literacy but only the ELA teachers will hang for test scores…lambs to the slaughter. What incentive do the SS/Science teachers have if they are off the hook? In
CT we were told by our union only 23% of the teachers statewide will be tied to test scores. The rest WILL not. So sure…feel free to focus on literature and pray the rest follow the Coleman doctrine. No worries…just your job, your livelihood, your profession, your life.
What we have done at our small rural school ( that probably could not be done in a larger district) is adopted “district wide” VAMS based on the tests the students already take. So, expect for 9 of our 40 or so teachers – we all hang together based on their ELA and MATH scores. This hasn’t been approved by the state as part of our APPR yet, but there are plans like this that have been approved. So,for us, it DOES weigh on everyone. Our thinking was that our kids didn’t need to take any more TESTS! If not for this idea, we would be giving pre and post tests in every subject and every grade – another waste of our instructional time.
Our students need the analytical and evaluative skills to decide whether writing like this is credible and worth paying attention to. Is there enough evidence presented to give creedance to opinion and speculation or are the ideas presented simply knee jerk reactions to change and reform with only a surface level of understanding. This is why reading articles like this and understanding the difference between opinion and information is important especially in a world where blogs, Facebook and other social media platforms seem to have become the new “informational” platform millions of tomorrow’s citizens. Thus the focus on informational text not in place of literature but in support of an increased understanding of the culture that produced the text.
Yeah, so maybe Gates and Coleman should have followed that advice as well. Research, evidence and deep reading is recommend for everyone but them. I will say it again: I don’t give a shit what Coleman thinks….it is merely HIS opinion. He doesn’t know my kids. I know my kids.
Yes….and that is done. What we are despondent about is the takeover of literature in order to over analyze, assess, evaluate….whatever Bloom said. What we are despondent about is reading for enjoyment, emotion, the amazement of the brilliance of Shakespeare and Hemingway. This is what is being taken away.
To Diane S and RL,
I just watched the video. What a waste of time…they could have been reading, writing or computing. Let me tell you middle schoolers would have been bored silly. I wonder what happened in the class that didn’t make progress: shaming, belittling, crying, time out, dunce caps?
What a pitiful display of mind numbing, pointless drivel. Yeah, they will be ready for college or career someday because their progress was on a chart and people clapped and cheered.
If students are reading informational texts in their science and history classes, as they should be, why can’t we allow English teachers to keep their poems, plays, and novels? We need to allow for emotion and creativity somewhere in the curriculum. Lord knows I torment my students with enough informational texts and analytical writing in my history class.
While I agree that some of the “informational texts” being suggested sound dreadfully boring, and I am loathe to defend the Common Core, there’s a crucial fact missing from this analysis: kids like nonfiction. Boys especially, research tells us, are more likely to read if given nonfiction options. And for those of us whose main concern is getting kids to want to read, not to use words well enough to land a job writing a humor column at Time magazine, this matters. If the author here had, oh, I don’t know, maybe, some TEACHING EXPERIENCE, he might understand this. I have as many concerns about the Common Core as the next guy, but I also have a PhD in education and teaching experience in high-needs school. I’m so freaking sick of every layperson believing he knows about education because he went to school. P.S. I’m a voracious reader who has always adored fiction and Shakespeare bores me to pieces.
Yes, I agree completely. However, I have been able to get my middle schools boys hooked on a fiction that was a good match with a non-fiction, such as Ghosts of War and Purple Heart (both Iraq war) or Never Fall Down and a Cambodia/Khmer Rouge non-fiction (can’t remember the title off the top of my head) and one more combo – The Boy Who Dared or the Boy in the Striped Pajamas or the Book Thief and Susan Bartolett’s Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow.
These are free reading choices presented to them AND they READ!
I agree with you Kerri. Non-fiction is a magnet to many boys AND girls. Even in first graders, I see the attraction to non-fiction. My 27 years of teaching experience tells me that most non-fiction written at a first grade level is dreadfully boring. So, my challenge is to give my students what they WANT – colorful, enlightening and interesting non fiction AND to use it as I teach reading. Since I am now “required” to “prove” that I’m doing a 50/50 split per my observation rubric, it’s taken the fun out of non-fiction.
And, my son was once reprimanded for reading too much non fiction, so it’s not that I want non fiction to go away. I want KIDS who are reading (not learning to read) to have freedom of choice!!
Stein’s article cracked me up. Thanks for the laugh and the critique of the continued insanity. It all seems like more of the same from the reform dolts…treat children and adolescents as little (boring) adults rather than as human beings in specific developmental stages of life that should inform how and what they are asked to learn. Even if this were all about adult learning, there is such a strong bias towards dry, STEM, hedge fund-y, corporate, masculine ways of being, which isn’t really much of an existence for the caring, feeling, artsy, creative types.
What does the common core dictate re: fiction v nonfiction for elementary aged students (and how different is it by grade level)? I really hate that we miss the best opportunity for engaging young children when we remove their most comfortable form of communication…play, stories, pretend.
Kerri,
Boys, and girls, can and do read nonfiction. I am worried about the “dreadfully boring” aspect of this, and I appreciate anyone, teacher or not, weighing in with concerns about what all these non-teachers are deciding in education. Teachers need more voice, for sure. But it can be hard to write for TIME on top of all their other duties. We need all the help we can get from those bold and smart enough to question the deformers who are in it for their own industry, not for kids.
“School isn’t merely training for work; it’s training to communicate throughout our lives.”
Common Core Coalition intends to turn education into training/filtering
Coleman: “As you grow up in this world, you realize people really don’t give a s— about what you feel or what you think,” he said….Who the hell is David Coleman, and who’s sock-puppet did he have to be that we now have to care about the crazy crap HE says, feels or thinks? When and where did he teach, for how long did he teach, and when has he ever had to carefully consider how a child FEELS when deciding whether to move a seat, call the principal, call home, call a counselor… Arrogant putz.
I love you. And I’m straight.
Lehrer – I too have heard that nonfiction is no longer the term of choice. Nonfiction and informational text are not synonymous. A phone book is informational text as is a dictionary. A biography is often written narratively and therefore is not informational text, but is nonfiction. In my library(PreK-5) I have collected massive amounts of nonfiction (for curricular purposes and for my boys who love to read!) for every reading level. A lot of it is contains informational text, having captions, tables of content, indexes, glosseries, headings and sub headings, and bulleted text. I teach my students that these are tools to help them locate information in the text. Even my younger students grasp that informational text is peppered with information they can more easily access if they know which tools to use. Informational text is nonfiction but not all nonfiction is informational text so go on and use the term. To heck with the Common Core Eduspeak!
Disclaimer: This response was written with the uninvited assistance of my cat;^)
I will do so, just to rankle the higher-ups! I remember when we adopted a controversial reading series, we were instructed to call it an anthology and not a basal. I continued to call it a basal reader for years just to watch the assistant superintendent twitch. I’m waiting for EduShyster to write about the new “n word” in the way that only she can!
In fact, it is much stranger than that. The range of reading standards for “informational text” in 6-12 define it as “literary nonfiction,” which is in turn defined as “Includes the subgenres of exposition, argument, and functional text in the form of personal essays, speeches, opinion pieces, essays about art or literature, biographies, memoirs, journalism, and historical, scientific, technical, or economic accounts (including digital sources) written for a broad audience.” In short, close reading reveals this document to be an internally inconsistent mess.
Is there any change from how public school was taught and managed twenty years ago that would not be an unmitigated disaster, hastening the coming zombie apocalypse?
Bill Daggett has for many years ridiculed English language arts teachers for teaching Shakespeare, fiction, and (gasp) poetry, when what students need, he says, is skill in reading and writing technical manuals. (That’ll motivate them, don’t you think???) He wants schools to be all about job preparation and economic development. Twice in his audience, I objected to his narrow view of education and his lack of understanding of why literature is important. He publicly ridiculed and mocked me and then alleged that I was too lazy to teach what kids need. I just taught, he said, what I liked. Well. . . . no! I do love literature, but I didn’t choose to teach it because I was too lazy to teach anything else. Years later when I was working for a private company after retirement from K-12, one of my colleagues asserted in a meeting one day that the only reason for taxpayers to invest money in public schools is for economic development. He now understands that citizenship, parenting, quality of life, critical thinking, and other knowledge/skills are also reasons to fund public education.
The mockery of foolishness and avarice is a pretty good antidote to them, and abroad public mockery a prerequisite for their repudiation. Perhaps we can take heart that this fine satire appeared in the mass media, representing a marker toward the eventual return of sane, informed, non-self-seeking voices to the discussion.
It’s simple they want people to be stupider than they already are and totally ignorant of real thought or history. If they know how to think and know history they will not fall for their simpleton thinking. When you look at politics and intrigue through history what is happening now is very stupid and simple not advanced it is just that they have lowered the bar so much through time that they are now getting away with it and do not forget that Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act which eliminated a free press. Now we are getting the results. These people have had patience and the only reason they might lose in the long run is that the idiots at the head of the right wing have out of patience and are pushing it to the limit in one move. We need to use that to their disadvantage.
I’ve already been chopping really great fiction from my curriculum for next year. I teach at a small school so teach 10th, 11th, and 12th. I moved stuff to independent reading for honors kids. I cut Hamlet on the senior level. I made a poster explaining the new curriculum.
HERE IS THE POSTER I MADE:
The new curriculum for next year aligns itself with the *Common Core State (sic) Standards.
This curriculum will prepare you for the *PARCC (Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) Tests which will replace the NECAP.
WHAT’S NEW
• More nonfiction
• Less literature
• More shorter pieces
• Each unit will have a set of concepts to be learned and skills to be used
• Each unit will ask a set of essential questions
• Open Responses will be grounded in these essential questions
• Four-week units instead of six-week units
• Each unit focuses on only one piece, genre, subject, or extended task
• More recitations
• Fewer independent research papers on the honors level
• More novels on the honors level (to be read independently)
• Time taken out of the year allotted for assessments
• Major essays and tasks will be based on the Curriculum Frameworks
• Words for the day will be Greek and Latin roots
• Word for the day quizzes will be every eight weeks
• Grades:
25% Minor grades
50% Major grades
25% Major assessments (this will be end of course assessments for now and
then the PARCC tests when they are implemented)
*Pushed by big money (the Waltons, Bill Gates, and Eli Broad) and special interests (bankrolled by the Waltons, Gates and Broad, as well as corporations like Pearson [they make tests- surprise]), rather than the democratic process and academic research.
The Waltons (Walmart), not to be confused with those happy hillbillies on the Hallmark Channel, who don’t seem to mind selling junk from China and paying their employees slave wages while not providing health insurance. They also crush any hint of unionization.
Bill Gates (Microsoft) who spouts schools need to educate its students for high-tech jobs but has no problems shipping his hi-tech jobs overseas.
Eli Broad (KBR Homes, which built low-quality houses while promoting all-white subdivisions of tacky suburban sprawl all over the South and Southwest during the housing boom on the backs of non-union, undocumented laborers, and Sun America, which he sold to AIG for billions so AIG could turn around and have a big loot fest on granny’s retirement).
I’M WAITING FOR AN ADMINISTRATOR TO TELL ME TO TAKE IT DOWN.
I ALWAYS put a (sic) in the Common Core State (sic) Curriculum. I stole this from Susan Ohanian. I even did this on my formal assessment documents.
Of course, I’m counting that everything I do will end up being scrapped anyway for a Pearson prefabricated curriculum that will tell me what I have to teach from day to day.
My days are numbered. I might as well go out fighting. I’ll be in nursing school the same time my older son will be getting his undergrad in one of the hard sciences.
Oh my! I love it! Diane…please make this into a separate post.
You could make money selling these nationally and then retire early or just buy books..lots and lots of fiction. Very creative!
Thank you. But, seriously, I’m going to be burned for the stuff I do. My colleagues will pat me on the back for “keeping it real” but they cower like dogs when our masters walk by as they roll up their newspapers for the next nose beating.
My colleagues: Cowering dogs, zombies, and ostriches, with a small cadre (cohort, coven) of true believers.
I’m just thinking of ways to classify Burroughs and Bukowski as informational text.
Finding ways to circumvent while smiling will be fun. It could be a new national teacher pastime.
Here’s to you Gates, Coleman, et al. We don’t give a shit what you think. Flip them the bird as we close the door to TEACH.
You could call them sociological metaphors of social mores and stratification.
We have our own unions fighting against us and for CC too. Randi Weingarten doesn’t give a sh$t what we think either.
Randi Weingarten is calling for “a rigorous professional exam for K-12 teachers.” It is expected that she will announce the plan today!
If they want accountability for teachers I say how about administrators? Wouldn’t that be interesting? If the child abuse laws were applied, as per the California law, many administrators would be in jail and lose their jobs. Nothing could make me happier. The new L.A. County D.A. told me and those at a recent fundraiser before she was elected that she would enforce those laws. Now I want to see that happen. What do you think of a superintendent with a phony PHD, that is John Deasy of LAUSD. What do you think of a superintendent, Deasy, and board president, Garcia, who recently testified at a California Select Committee, that LAUSD only has $4,800/student when according to the California Dept. of Ed. (CDE) website in 2010-11 there was $11,233/student? Is this accountability? How can you balance your revenue and expenditures when you do not know your revenue? Can you balance your checkbook that way? Remember, “The Fish Rots from the Head.”
Great responses I agree with all of you. Stick it too them.
More unfortunate evidence
for the
dumbing-down of the populace,
but if
“The Crucible,”
“1984,”
and “For A’ That” are not read,
then for man’s soul we’ll weep,
’cause we’ll all be dead.
Sigh.
I just can’t take it! I have written so much about this that I am numb. The Common Core standards are not getting rid of Lit. Where can I shout this? What mountain? Come on Joel. Read those standards before you write something like this. The standards would be a good piece of Informational Text for you to take a look at. Shakespeare is IN THE STANDARDS.
“Don’t Throw out Baby MacBeth!” –My blog on this who situation–I would love your feedback:
http://www.rozlinder.com/dont-throw-out-baby-macbeth-common-core-says-think-bigger-better-and-beyond-the-book/