E.D. (Don) Hirsch, Jr., submitted the following essay to the blog. He is the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum and has written several books explains the ideas behind it, beginning with “Cultural Literacy,” and including “The Schools We Need,” and “The Knowledge Deficit.”
He writes:
Diane kindly offered me a blog slot on her site – a great opportunity to explain what I’m about. I intend to exploit her generosity only this once.
I’m inspired to do so, because just now I had an exchange on Diane’s site with a teacher (TB) who observed that my granddaughter Cleo – a new teacher in the Bronx – didn’t need the Core Knowledge materials on the American Revolution – there were plenty of good New York State materials up for free on the web.
This sort of exchange with an undertone about the money nexus, and the underlying sense that someone was going to be making money by selling Core Knowledge materials, also characterized the prior discussion about the Core Knowledge literacy program – until it was revealed that the only completed grades – of the Core Knowledge program — pre-k through 3 are up for free both on the Core Knowledge website and elsewhere. The suspicion is very understandable. I’m quite familiar with the money nexus in schooling and its corrupting influence. But let’s be clear regarding the context for this post. I don’t make any money from any of this, and I’m far too old to go out garnering dollars for speaking engagements.
So let’s get back to Cleo and her 7th-grade students who have to learn the Revolutionary period. It was said by T B, (the experienced NY social studies teacher) that Cleo could find out what background knowledge about American history the students already possessed by consulting the social studies standards for prior grades. I looked. Since grade six did not cover American history, Cleo’s students most recent exposure would have been in grade 5, where one finds content guides for “History of the United States, Canada, and Latin America”: They aren’t long, and I quote them in full:
Different ethnic, national, and religious groups, including Native American Indians, have contributed to the cultural diversity of these nations and regions by sharing their customs, traditions, beliefs, ideas, and languages. # Different people living in the Western Hemisphere may view the same event or issue from different perspectives. # The migration of groups of people in the United States, Canada, and Latin America has led to cultural diffusion because people carry their ideas and ways of life with them when they move from place to place. # Connections and exchanges exist between and among the peoples of Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. These connections and exchanges include social/cultural, migration/immigration, and scientific/technological. Key turning points and events in the histories of Canada, Latin America, and the United States can be organized into different historical time periods. For example, key turning points might include: 18th-century exploration and encounter; 19th-century westward migration and expansion, 20th-century population movement from rural to suburban areas. Important historic figures and groups have made significant contributions to the development of Canada, Latin America, and the United States. Industrial growth and development and urbanization have had important impacts on Canada, Latin America, and the United States.
That’s the complete “content guide.” The general themes are admirable but the section is mis-titled. They are thematic guides, not content guides. It’s not even clear where emphasis should fall or time spent as between Canada, Latin America, or the United States. To know what my 7th graders already knew, I’d need to have more specific guidance. So after inspecting this, I’d have to disagree with “TB.” Looking at this document is not going to help Cleo know what her students already know.
I’ll not waste time on more and more examples. This document is fairly typical of the DOE guides found throughout the USA.
The fat Core Knowledge Teachers Guide for grade 4 that I sent to Cleo was different. It summarized the relevant knowledge that Core Knowledge students had already learned about American history in grades K-3. It laid out what sequence of unifying and organizing topics would be useful for units in teaching the Revolution, and it also laid out some detailed historical knowledge and sources that it would be useful for teachers to have above and beyond what they would be teaching their students, along with suggested books for students who might want to take some topics further. The guiding organization for this material was the list of topics in the Core Knowledge Sequence for grade 4, which follows:
Teachers: In fourth grade students should undertake a detailed study of the causes, major figures, and consequences of the American revolution, with a focus on main events and figures, as well as these questions: What caused the colonists to break away and become an independent nation? What significant ideas and values are at the heart of the American revolution?
A. BACKGROUND: THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR
• Also known as the Seven Years’ War, part of an ongoing struggle between Britain and France for control of colonies in various regions around the world (in this case, in North America)
• Alliances with Native Americans
• The Battle of Quebec
• British victory gains territory but leaves Britain financially weakened.
B. CAUSESAND PROVOCATIONS
• British taxes, “No taxation without representation”
• Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks
• Boston Tea Party
• The Intolerable Acts close the port of Boston and require Americans to provide
quarters for British troops
• First Continental Congress protests to King George III
• Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
C. THE REVOLUTION
• Paul Revere’s ride, “One if by land, two if by sea”
• Lexington and Concord
The “shot heard ’round the world”
Redcoats and Minute Men
• Bunker Hill
• Second Continental Congress: George Washington appointed commander in chief of
Continental Army
• Declaration of Independence
Primarily written by Thomas Jefferson
Adopted July 4, 1776
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
• Women in the Revolution: Elizabeth Freeman, Deborah Sampson, Phillis Wheatley,
Molly Pitcher
• Loyalists (Tories)
• Victory at Saratoga, alliance with France
• European helpers (Lafayette, the French fleet, Bernardo de Galvez, Kosciusko,
von Steuben)
• Valley Forge
• Benedict Arnold
See also Language Arts 4:
stories by Washington Irving,
and speech by Patrick Henry,
“Give me liberty. . .”
John Paul Jones: “I have not yet begun to fight.”
• Nathan Hale: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
• Cornwallis: surrender at Yorktown
II. making a Constitutional Government
Teachers: Examine some of the basic values and principles of American democracy, in both theory and practice, as defined in the declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution, both in historical context and in terms of present-day practice. In examining the significance of the U. S. Constitution, introduce students to the unique nature of the American experiment, the difficult task of establishing a democratic government, the compromises the framers of the Constitution were willing to make, and the persistent threats to success. In order to appreciate the boldness and fragility of the American attempt to establish a republican government based on a constitution, students should know that republican governments were rare at this time. discuss with students basic questions and issues about government, such as: Why do societies need government? Why does a society need laws? Who makes the laws in the United States? What might happen in the absence of government and laws?
A. MAIN IDEAS BEHIND THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
• The proposition that “All men are created equal”
• The responsibility of government to protect the “unalienable rights” of the people
• Natural rights: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
• The “right of the people … to institute new government”
B.MAKINGA NEW GOVERNMENT: FROM THE DECLARATIONTO THE CONSTITUTION
• Definition of “republican” government: republican = government by elected
representatives of the people
• Articles of Confederation: weak central government
• “Founding Fathers”: James Madison as “Father of the Constitution”
• Constitutional Convention
Arguments between small and large states
The divisive issue of slavery, “three-fifths” compromise
C. THE CONSTITUTIONOF THE UNITED STATES
• Preamble to the Constitution: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a
more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United
States of America.”
• The separation and sharing of powers in American government: three branches
of government
Legislative branch: Congress = House of Representatives and Senate, makes laws
Executive branch: headed by the president, carries out laws
Judicial branch: a court system headed by the Supreme Court (itself headed by the
Chief Justice), deals with those who break laws and with disagreements about laws
• Checks and balances, limits on government power, veto
• The Bill of Rights: first ten amendments to the Constitution, including:
Freedom of religion, speech, and the press (First Amendment)
Protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures”
The right to “due process of law”
The right to trial by jury
Protection against “cruel and unusual punishments”
Note: The National Standards for Civics and Government recommend that students address the issue of power vs. authority: “Where do people in government get the authority to make, apply, and enforce rules and laws and manage disputes about them?” “Identify examples of authority, e.g., the authority of teachers and administrators to make rules for schools, the authority of a crossing guard
to direct traffic, the authority of the president to represent the United States in dealing with other nations.” “Identify examples of power without authority, e.g., a neighborhood bully forcing younger children to give up their lunch money, a robber holding up a bank, a gang leader ordering members to injure others.” Available from the Center for Civic Education, 5145 Douglas Fir Road, Calabasas, CA 91302;
tel. (818) 591-9321.
Let me define what I’m trying to sell in a single word: specificity. (It certainly doesn’t have to be the Core Knowledge version of specificity — any similar teacher-created sequence, as ours was, will do.) Specificity in turn leads to coherence, and cumulativeness in teaching from grade to grade.
Now specificity is an easy target. People (unfamiliar with cognitive science) will accuse you of wanting to teach a laundry list, not true understanding. Once you get specific you leave yourself open to a hundred caricatures and gripes. So I guess, along with the virtue of specificity, I’m arguing for the virtue of standing up to the inevitable attacks that will greet any group of teachers who decide to get specific.
The alternative to specificity is vagueness, which sounds virtuous, because it imposes nothing in particular. But vagueness in early grades really leads in later grades to hugely difficult teaching tasks, and a continued uncertainty about what students know and need to know. In Core Knowledge schools, specificity leads to a great deal of cooperation between teachers at different grade levels. Moreover, along with the idea of specificity, I’m also trying to sell its ethical corollary, the idea that vagueness is not a virtue.
My problem is this- Are 4th graders cognitively developed enough to grasp the meaning and significance of the specific content stated above for U.S. history? I’ve taught 5th grade for 27 years and I believe that’s early enough. Hell, most adults in the U.S. don’t have a good grasp on our evolution as a nation. In summary, I’ll say we’re pushing the curriculum down too far.
I’ve taught all of this in third grade and much of it in second. Kids devour this stuff – at least here in Massachusetts.
So why not 2nd grade?
In Belmont and Weston? Or in Roxbury and Lowell?
What’s wrong with just keeping it in 5th grade and covering more? I just wonder if it really matters. In my state this stuff was taught in a spiraling curriculum and was taught in more depth in later grades. I just wonder if it really makes that much of a difference.
Maybe they devour it, but do they fully comprehend the implications of the ideas behind the American Revolution?
By high school, kids should be outraged at how our government fails to fully abide by the separation of powers in government. They have no idea that their future is in jeopardy simply because they just don’t really “get it.”
It also depends on whether English is their first language.
Let me define what I’m trying to sell in a single word: specificity. (It certainly doesn’t have to be the Core Knowledge version of specificity — any similar teacher-created sequence, as ours was, will do.) Specificity in turn leads to coherence and cumulativeness in teaching from grade to grade.
Specificity, significant content, is also ENGAGING. And in the course of that engagement, a lot of skill is attained incidentally.
Now, I can anticipate a couple of objections to what Dr. Hirsch has written.
One would go something like this: Are you kidding? Fourth graders can’t read Thomas Paine. Hell, I have difficulty doing that. The same sort of comment has been made, a lot, on this blog about teaching kids about Hammurabi. But of course one can approach these subjects at all kinds of levels of sophistication. No one is saying, here, give your fourth graders Paine’s Age of Reason to read. I can think of some extraordinarily interesting and valuable stuff that I could do with fourth graders on the subject of Hammurabi–stuff that wouldn’t be at all “developmentally inappropriate.” We might just create a stele and some laws of our own.
Another would go something like this: Why so little, in that curriculum, on the various Indian tribes, on class dynamics as they affected the build-up to the Revolution, etc? Doesn’t this look a whole lot like not history but national mythos? There I am A BIT more sympathetic, though my own knowledge of this history is not what it should be. However, I hasten to point out the Dr. Hirsch has clearly said here that he has no desire to mandate an invariant curriculum but rather wishes to show what a rich curriculum looks like.
Good answer, but I’ll rephrase my question, at what ages can kids comprehend and then process major ideas? Where’s Piaget in all of this?
Again, these matters can be approached at all kinds of levels of sophistication. Suppose we are studying Hammurabi, and we build our stele in the classroom, and we cover it with our Code for the class, and then we try to live by that stuff. A lot to be learned, there, about the making of laws. And because we have done something very concrete, and because it becomes part of a lived experience, it’s accessible.
And my kids whose parents are 21 years old, don’t provide them with 3 squares should learn the Hammurabi code, because? Shit, half can barely spell their own names, know their times tables to 4 and are just happy to leave home for half a day. Seriously, there is a major disconnect here, between reality and idealism.
Is your argument that kids this age are developmentally unable to learn this, or that children of wealthy parents have a stronger background in their learning and are more receptive to difficult curriculum? Careful. You cannot argue that rich children have different brains from economically disadvantaged ones.
Children with bigger deficits in their learning need more support. Teaching a haphazard curriculum with zero content and a lot of “fun activities” will not make them more successful.
You admitted a few times already that this curriculum would work only with privileged children.
Great points, Tuppercooks! Piaget provided very important insights into children’s development. For individual children, development is variable, because each child develops at a different rate. Subsequent research has indicated that in some ways, Piaget over-estimated capabilities for older students and under-estimated for younger children. Instead of recognizing that this reflects ranges of development for individuals at different ages, due to both biological and environmental influences, “reformers” seized the opportunity to discount Piaget.
Those who suggest that providing background knowledge is enough and a simple task with young children who are at-risk have probably not worked in primary and pre-primary education. In my experience, implementing meaningful learning experiences that provided background knowledge was very time consuming.
For example, when I was teaching a combined Kg/1st Grade class, it was readily apparent that learning ancient Middle East history was beyond my students’ zone of proximal development. I cannot detail all of the background knowledge that children had to learn, so I will provide a brief description of what I had to do, in order to engage students at their levels, just in regard to reading understanding maps.
it’s important to begin where children are. Thus, I collected many key resources, such as globes, a poster size photo of the earth taken by astronauts when they went to the moon, many maps, including a 3D map of our city, a floor plan kit, floor plans of my classroom and school, numerous map puzzles and related books. Not necessarily in chronological order:
I labeled each wall and every corner with the appropriate geographical directions, i.e., North / NE etc.
I created an index card for every child with their name, address, phone number and birthday.
Students were directed to look up the entries for their families in the phone book and I had them call home on a real phone.
Students wrote their address on an envelope and a short note to themselves which we mailed on one of our neighborhood walks
We took walks around the neighborhood so students could take note of address patterns on buildings etc (my city also had street numbers on lamp posts)
I let students know that we would be redecorating and rearranging the classroom and enlisted their input and assistance
I created a decorating prop box (consisting of real items)
Students drew pictures of items in the classroom, learning centers, furniture, etc. which they labeled and hung in corresponding areas around the room
I spotted each child as, one by one, they stood on furniture and surveyed the classroom, in order to help them understand what a bird’s eye view is.
I had each child draw a floor plan of our classroom based on their bird’s eye view observations
I asked students to recreate our floor plan with blocks. (Floor plans were made anew after redecorating and rearranging the classroom and child created labels were newly hung in the appropriate places.)
I hid small prizes around the classroom, marked an X on every child’s floor plan indicating where their prize could be found, oriented each student in the doorway and one by one sent them on a map reading treasure hunt.
Children also engaged in school treasures hunts using a school floor plan.
When we went on walks and field trips, we took our 3D map of the city along with us and located where we were on the map.
It was not enough to just focus on space. Children needed a lot of background knowledge in order to understand time:
Students lined up according to their birth month in a real bar graph. I took a photo of each child holding the name of their birth month and these were compiled on a symbolic birthday bar graph that was hung on the wall and referred to at the beginning of each month, as well as on every child’s birthday.
I stood in the center of the classroom holding a large yellow ball representing the sun. I had each child hold a globe and circle around themselves, to help them understand what a day is. Then, while circling around themselves, I had each child circle around me one time for every year old they were, to help them understand that being 6 years old means that the earth has circled around the sun 6 times since they were born.
These kinds of learning experiences went on and on and on… As it happened, invariably, students expressed a lot of interest in learning more about their city and, being a strong believer in emerging curriculum with young children, I encouraged their investigations.
I very much believe in the importance of Piaget’s contributions to our understanding of child development. I also know all too well that it’s not enough to just “tell” young children the background information necessary for comprehending advanced concepts, such as regarding time and space. They need to be engaged in hands-on, active learning experiences, many of which require one to one, personalization and differentiation for students at difference levels of development –and all of that is very time consuming when you are the only adult in the classroom, though I did include cooperative learning activities whenever feasible.
To Cosmic Tinkerer, Your students are so fortunate to have a teacher like you. You exemplify what real effective teaching means. You must be able to see and think from the view of your students so that you know how to make the material truly meaningful to them. Otherwise it’s just flotsam and jetsam.
Thanks so much, Sheila! I was not taught that way, when I was growing up, so I didn’t understand maps myself for a long time –even though I traveled a lot with my family, because in those days, we flew or took a train. I recall often wondering what maps had to do with the weather, since it was on TV weather reports that often saw maps. It was on a family driving trip when I finally connected the dots, from watching my parents use maps and then noticing how we were in different places on the TV weather report maps.
I think that, these days, being able to see satellite images from Google Maps and Bing Maps make learning about maps a lot easier, especially combined with all the hands-on activities.
“Careful. You cannot argue that rich children have different brains from economically disadvantaged ones.”
Actually, I very much can argue that because it’s true. The brain of a child who has received proper physical, mental and emotional care is going to be significantly healthier than the brain of a child who suffered prenatal or perinatal brain damage due to his mother’s lack of medical care, who has faced frequent hunger/malnutrition, who has suffered from untreated illness/disability, and/or who has suffered severe trauma and insecurity such as witnessing violence, experiencing abuse, neglect or homelessness.
Now, granted, not all children in poverty have experienced any of those things, and some affluent kids have experienced one or more. But the scales are strongly tilted against children growing up in poverty.
Cosmic tinkerer
You are so creative…I would think that all of the parents asked for you to be there teacher.
You had to be Teacher of the Year !!
Great Post!
Thank you, Neanderthal100! I really appreciate your vote of confidence!! As it happened, the reason why I taught combined Kindergarten/1st Grade was because of the parents who didn’t want their children to move on after completing Kindergarten in my class.
I actually was Teacher of the Year at my school, but I didn’t win the state competition. I was also included in Who’s Who in American Education one year, though I never found out who nominated me for that.
fwiw I blogged about the issue of ‘developmentally appropriate” lesson plans
http://www.danielwillingham.com/1/post/2013/08/what-is-developmentally-appropriate.html
and wrote a more detailed piece
Click to access willingham.pdf
“fwiw” Dan, it’s not worth much to me. I previously read what you wrote at both of those links, and I even quoted you here from the first link the other day. I do not agree with your assumptions or your conclusions.
I think that development does not appear to have discrete stages or seem to be pervasive if you are looking for tidy distinctions, when learning is complex and development is just not that neat.
Generally, cognitive development occurs when a child has learned a rule. The child needs to learn to apply that rule, needs to learn to apply the rule consistently, needs to learn to generalize the rule to other similar situations, and also needs to learn the exceptions when the rule does not apply. There’s nothing neat and tidy about all of that.
Most teachers know the importance of systematic observations for identifying patterns of behavior and I think this brings valuable insights into children’s development, which can be very useful when planning for children. I believe that denying this amounts to “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”
@Cosmic tinkerer Great! We agree. Stage theories hold that development occurs in tidy distinctions—that’s what I argued against. (And maybe it got lost in the hierarchy of comments, but I posted this in response to tuppercooks questions “where is piaget in all this?”
Dan, I believe you are interpreting stage theory rather rigidly. As with the attainment of developmental milestones in other domains, I have always thought of the age groups identified by Piaget as having confidence bands. I think the stages give us general ideas about cognitive processes, behavior, and development likely to occur then, not growth criteria etched in stone, progress devoid of transitions nor indicators of quantum leaps from one stage to another.
Many thanks to Prof. Hirsch for his patient communication and willingness to answer questions/criticisms, and to Diane for her typically generous sharing of her platform with a diversity of view, setting an example for democratic discourse in society. For Prof. Hirsch, I’d like to question items chosen, first. There is “normative” history we can pass on to anyone but rather a selection of what the selectors think “matters.” Many items on the list do indeed matter; others less so; some that matter are missing. In this brief space, forgive me if I don’t detail the particulars but rather open up the general issue of “content selection” as a debate rather than as a normative list. Secondly, it may be that “teaching the conflicts” is a more productive way to approach iconic events like the Amer Rev or Civil War or Dec of Ind or Constitution. There are dominant views on these iconic items and there are dissident views, which I’m sure Prof. H and others here are well aware of, so taking a “conflict of interpretation” and “conflict of interests” approach to history would oblige us to teach multiple points of view concerning any event, document, or figure(Prof. Graff’s book about teaching conflicts, 1992, is one source of this approach but I and others like Prof. Don Lazere and Prof. Gerda Lerner among others have also proposed various critical pedagogies for this approach.) Lastly, can we consider an experiential as well as problem-posing method for teaching history? Suppose, we invited each grade to construct various exhibits concerning events they were studying, appropriate for their age/level. This would make the halls and open spaces of the school a student-constructed, teacher-coordinated gallery and participatory space. Students would walk through the historical constructions various classes made, which would include readings, posters, graphics, music, dance, food, costumes, enactments, etc. K-8 kids would especially benefit by this construction model for studying history, I think. I would also suggest outdoor education through field work at local historical sites and trips to places like Plimouth Plantation, etc. Thanks for your kind patience in reading these few alternative approaches to the textual/verbal transfer of information from teacher to students.
Students would walk through the historical constructions various classes made, which would include readings, posters, graphics, music, dance, food, costumes, enactments, etc. K-8 kids would especially benefit by this construction model for studying history, I think.
A lot of that sort of thing happens in Core Knowledge schools. Kids in those schools tend to end up having astonishingly rich notions of what it was like, say, to get through a day in Iron Age Britain. Nope. You don’t get a plow. But here’s a digging stick.
On the subject of debate about content, about anyone’s list being, unavoidably, normative: Yes. Let’s have that debate, by all means, and by all means, let’s have kids participate in it! I happen to think that we ought to be ALL OVER that idea as a theme throughout K-12 schooling. Perhaps by Grade 11 or 12 we can even teach about Jainism and the doctrine of Anekantavada.
But let’s agree that rich content matters
Rich content is the hook!
Robert, I don’t see how Hirsch’s laundry list in any way overlaps this delightful, John-Dewey-style fantasy you spin:
” Students would walk through the historical constructions various classes made, which would include readings, posters, graphics, music, dance, food, costumes, enactments, etc. K-8 kids would especially benefit by this construction model for studying history, I think.”
I saw Core Knowledge being “taught” in a Kipp middle school i visited two years ago. There were worksheets on the Smartboard, and kids had to guess what words would fill in the blanks. There were clapping chants, but no food, costumes, enactments, or even picture books. It’s a rote and superficial laundry list of pedantic assertions.
Whether its the Tigris or the Delaware, great rivers are just identical squiggly black lines. The kids were bored out of their minds.
Yes, we should teach the history geography of our world and its people again, as you describe it. American progressive teachers did that for generations.
Chemtchr saw Core Knowledge being taught in a Kipp school. For how long – maybe two hours? I’ve seen Core Knowledge taught for grades K-8. I’ve overseen my kids’ homework and been involved with their schools. My knowledge of the CK curriculum is based on personal observation and familiarity with what’s covered. We can all safely bet our lives that Chemtchr’s evaluation of CK is merely preconception that confirms her ideology.
Actually, Chemtcher’s description is consistent with how many people have described the primarily didactic approach to instruction implemented at KIPP schools.
If “no excuses” schools like KIPP, that use military style methods, with drill sergeant teachers, and which focus mostly on rote learning, can adopt Core Knowledge, I think that demonstrates how a mile wide curriculum can be readily reduced to being an inch deep.
Ira, I would love to be a fly on the wall for a long conversation between you and Don Hirsch on these topics! Good stuff!!!
Oops, a typo–I meant to write–There is NO normative singular history we can pass on to our children or others…
I thought that’s what you meant. I don’t lose any sleep over typos, but i wish this format had a feature where you could pull it back and edit it, don’t you?
It’s a very fine post. You should paragraph it.
I would like to see so called reformers have a go at teaching this to fourth graders ( they are still watching The Power Rangers for crying out loud). In theory sure you can teach this to fourth graders, but not in practice. The danger is that the powers that be don’t practice…the art of teaching. All theory and no practice make Jack an unhappy boy.
Special thanks to Diane for offering her blog for the explanation and to Don Hirsch for his comprehensive outline of this material.
My question for Diane: Do you still support the CK curriculum, K-8, to the point where you would recommend it to a school district anywhere in the country?
I would love to hear the answer to this and a list of other curricula that Ms. Ravitch approves of.
It was nice to have this explanation. The subject matter for 4th grade looks like the typical info that would be taught about basic American History. I was wondering what would k-3 look like. I was wondering how the children would be taught info that would lead to learning about the Revolution, etc.
I’m confused about this statement in Mr. Hirsch’s piece:
“This sort of exchange with an undertone about the money nexus, and the underlying sense that someone was going to be making money by selling Core Knowledge materials, also characterized the prior discussion about the Core Knowledge literacy program – until it was revealed that the only completed grades – of the Core Knowledge program — pre-k through 3 are up for free both on the Core Knowledge website and elsewhere.”
However, this press release http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/amplify-partners-with-core-knowledge-acquires-rights-to-new-language-arts-program-1780494.htm explains that a Rupert Murdoch company Amplify (which used to be Wireless Generation) has “signed an exclusive license agreement with the Core Knowledge Foundation for 20-year rights to its widely respected Core Knowledge Language Arts program for grades for K-3.” Furthermore, Amplify has also won a contract to develop Common Core tests: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/03/17/rupert-murdoch-wins-contract-to-develop-common-core-tests/ The Amplify CEO is Joel Klein.
I take Mr. Hirsch at his word that he is not making money from Core Knowledge but it seems obvious from the above that someone is indeed going to be making money from the Core Knowledge program and that the program is not separate from the corporation-driven standards-and-testing juggernaut that is laying waste to our schools.
🙂
Connecticut’s NEA and districts have devoted zero funding and training to Common Core. It must be because we’re on the Atlantic Ocean, because it’s sink or swim in the Nutmeg State!
🙂
Off topic, but thought you’d like to know: Broad “grad” and DISD superintendent Mike Miles has put his house on the market in Dallas. His wife and child have already moved back to Colorado.
He says he’s moving to an apartment by the DISD headquarters, which is in a pretty dicey area. It seems fishy.
The results of the investigation into allegations of corruption against him are due Friday.
Just wanted to correct your Nathan Hale quote. It’s “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country”, not lose for my country.
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/dont-let-rhee-cheat-the.fb27?source=c.fb&r_by=6414286
I’m still confused. Hirsch says “The fat Core Knowledge Teachers Guide for grade 4 that I sent to Cleo was different. It summarized the relevant knowledge that Core Knowledge students had already learned about American history in grades K-3.”
“…had already learned…”
Had they?
Did Cleo determine that what they had already learned, NOT by “consulting the social studies standards for prior grades,” but by actually talking with her students? By giving them a teacher-created pre-assessment?
We don’t determine what our kids know (facts, schema, etc.) by looking at a Teachers’ Guide or a set of standards.
Wait a minute. I think Mr. Hirsch is purposefully misleading readers about the question of money changing hands. Let’s be clear that money (a lot of money) is changing hands.
Is there some subtle trick of wording, by which this isn’t an outright lie?
Hirsch claims, “I’m quite familiar with the money nexus in schooling and its corrupting influence. But let’s be clear regarding the context for this post. I don’t make any money from any of this…”
His evidence for this baffling claim is that “This sort of exchange with an undertone about the money nexus, and the underlying sense that someone was going to be making money by selling Core Knowledge materials, also characterized the prior discussion about the Core Knowledge literacy program – until it was revealed that the only completed grades – of the Core Knowledge program — pre-k through 3 are up for free both on the Core Knowledge website and elsewhere.”
They’re “up for free” because we, the people, paid the Core Knowledge Foundation millions of dollars for them. Here’s the press announcements of the grant:
“EDUCATION DEPARTMENT AWARDS
CONTRACTS FOR DEVELOPMENT OF
ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS AND MATH CURRICULA”
“The contracts, valued at $12.9 million, will be funded from New York State’s federal Race to the Top (RTTT) funds.”
“Core Knowledge Foundation was awarded the pre-kindergarten through grade 2 curriculum contract in English Language Arts (ELA) & Literacy and will be responsible for building Common Core aligned curriculum materials and associated professional development resources as well as associated professional development. ”
http://www.oms.nysed.gov/press/ELAMathCurricula.SEDAwardsContractsForDevelopment.htm
So what is the purpose of all this gobbledygook? You tell me, Mr. Hirsch: what are you selling?
As is your practice, you are accusing Hirsch of corruption because you don’t agree with him, no doubt because you live in a far Left ideological bubble that is impermeable to other views. Even Paul Thomas, to his credit, corrected a blog posting several months ago that hinted at Hirsch advocating a curriculum for the money. Mr. Thomas credited Hirsch with sincerity of conviction, and exonerated him of any mercenary motives.
I don’t expect you to have the same integrity; in your narrow worldview, anyone who disagrees with you is evil and corrupt.
I absolutely said nothing whatsoever about corruption, but I pointed to the undeniable fact that the Core Knowledge Foundation has raked in a huge amount of public money.
It’s distasteful that Hirsch apparently denied that his foundation has contracted with the State of New York, for millions of dollars, to supply professional development to teachers for his Common Core aligned Core Knowledge curriculum. That kind of information is public record, and should be discussed.
So, there is the link to the actual money nexus. Your attack on me for posting it is crude and ugly, and I hope Hirsch didn’t set this up to give his supporters the chance to call people names for telling the simple truth.
I don’t know how or why Hirsch could have denied that the CK Foundation received funding from New York. I knew about that many months ago, because I keep up with what CK is doing and base my views on facts, not ideology. The CK blog announced the funding, and took it as a compliment to their work.
You again, as always, are inferring a lack of integrity on Hirsch’s part. How could Hirsch “set this up” to give his supporters a forum? Diane Ravitch invited Hirsch to contribute his posting. Maybe you have information that Hirsch held Ravitch hostage at gunpoint and forced her to let him contribute to her blog; maybe you know that Hirsch is somehow blackmailing Ravitch. I disapprove of men abusing women in any way, so if Hirsch is doing something cruel or illegal regarding Ms. Ravitch, I’ll willingly report him to the proper authorities.
Hirsch did not deny, nor did he discuss, in his post that the Core Knowledge Foundation received money for licensing its curriculum. He denied that he, personally, was making money from this, and that denial was prompted, I believe, by comments on a different post on this blog, yesterday, that suggested that he, personally, was profiting financially from the deals with New York state and with Amplify. That’s my understanding of this. It is not at all shocking to me that the foundation has licensed its curriculum. What becomes of it in hands other than his very capable ones will be interesting to see.
I can understand honest disagreement with Hirsch regarding the shapes that curricula should take, but ad hominem attacks like these are uncalled for. He’s an honorable man who had many opportunities to enrich himself, personally, via his curriculum but who chose, instead, to turn the earnings from many of his books over to the foundation he created in hopes of getting traction for that curriculum in the schools. Hirsch pointed out yesterday that he doesn’t draw a salary or any other sort of compensation from the Core Knowledge Foundation. Disagree with him if you like, but don’t accuse him of profiteering. Exactly the opposite is so. He has given considerably of his own earnings to the cause of promoting this curriculum because he cares deeply about kids. Hirsch’s books have done well. But he’s an academic. He’s not some sort of industrial tycoon. For him to put his money where his mouth was bespeaks a commitment to civic duty, to the commonweal, that is extraordinarily rare and should be admired.
The discussion above of the Core Knowledge Curriculum in action was interesting. Terrible teachers can turn this stuff into a laundry list of facts to be memorized. Good teachers can use it to engage children in really transformative ways.
There’s a lot of stuff that I would change in the Core Knowledge Sequence, and I agree with Ira Shore that both teachers and their students should be suspicious of any suggestion that there is a SINGLE normative history to be passed down to the next generation. But those suspicions should be entertained in the context of a rich, substantive curriculum in music, art, history, literature, mathematics, and the sciences. The Core Knowledge Sequence is such a curriculum, and it does not, as Hirsch points out, attempt to spell out everything we should do in our classrooms. Does the Core Knowledge Sequence contain material on Black Elk? on the Ramayana? I don’t recall. If it doesn’t, it probably should. But it’s a great start on which I, for one, would be happy to build.
Shor, not Shore. Of course.
🙂
I’m mostly troubled by the philosophy that specifying the content our kids are expected to know is beneficial/ edifying. Specificity? More like giving too much power to a bunch of old white dudes, who will never specify that we teach events like the murder of Fred Hampton in US History.
Fred Hampton is much less than a footnote in U.S. History. Kids in Core Knowledge schools learn about Martin Luther King, Booker T. Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Harriett Tubman, and other figures of African-American history because their actions and ideas made a difference.
Right, so who decides if ones ideas/ actions are “worthy” of being included in your “core knowledge”? Obviously you deem the orchestrated murder of a Black Panther leader by the FBI as less than a footnote, so I’m not sure what that says about your historical perspective.
What it says about my historical perspective is that I focus on events that had a major impact on American society, i.e. “I Have A Dream”, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Brown vs. Board of Education, the Emancipation Proclamation, Dred Scott, and much more.
Fred Hampton died in 1969. The only people who obsess over him are simpleminded ideologues who reduce history to questions of race and identity politics. Most black Americans in the real world are too busy getting on with the current world to spend much time on old grievances, however valid such grievances were at the time.
I think that the answer to the question “Who decides?” is that you, the teacher, should. The Core Knowledge Curriculum is, according to what Hirsch said on this blog yesterday, material for a PORTION, not all, of the school year. If it were up to me, there would be no top-down, invariant mandates. Teachers would have real tenure and real professional status and it would be EXPECTED and ENCOURAGED that their classes and approaches and worldviews would differ considerably. And kids would be able BOTH to get some shared substance from their education AND to drink from many different springs. There’s a totalitarian movement afoot in this country that would replace empowered teachers with canned, approved curricula coming via a single portal of student responses that would serve as a gateway for “products that can be brought to scale,” as Secretary Duncan’s chief of staff so chillingly put it. I don’t believe for a moment that Hirsch is part of that.
Booker T. Washington but not W.E.B. DuBois? Now that’s telling.
Since you insist on being pedantic, yes, DuBois is also included, as he should be. I just read his great book “The Souls of Black Folk.” We need more people like the DuBois of that book, and none of the Al Sharptons or the racist Black Panthers.
Not sure that being an “old white dude” has much to do with anything as I’m most certainly an “older” white dude who would like to see a much more varied teaching of American (sic) history that included more discussions of the multitudes of atrocities committed by those of European descent on the native populations and the ensuing loss of very “human” knowledge.
I would be participating in this discussion but am overloaded with other things. I’ll just say that a curriculum like CK gives students all kinds of interesting things to think about–which in turn helps them develop independent thought. You don’t have to “teach the conflict” in order to get children to think on their own.
In addition, the CK sequence lays out what students should learn, not how teachers should teach it. The pedagogical choices (which involve some secondary decisions about content) are left to the teacher. CK has many materials, but a teacher with strong background or interest in a particular topic could easily build on what’s there. It’s like saying, at the college level, “Teach Dante and Chaucer” and leaving it to you to design the course. Would I feel my freedom was taken away because I was asked to teach Dante and Chaucer? By no means! That just opens the doors.
In the CK Sequence, fourth graders start learning about medieval European art, Islamic art and architecture, the art of Africa, the art of China, and the art of the United States. Let’s say you have studied calligraphy or have noticed your students taking interest in the shapes of letters. You could bring in examples of medieval, Islamic, African, and Chinese calligraphy, thus linking the topics in a memorable way. You could lead discussions on the meaning of calligraphy–the reasons for putting such care into the formation of letters and words. Students could practice calligraphy themselves. That’s just one of thousands of possibilities within the curriculum.
As for what is or isn’t “developmentally appropriate,” I agree with Robert D. Shepherd that you can teach a given topic at many levels. Of course you have to use good judgment, but there’s no reason why fourth graders can’t learn something about Thomas Paine, for instance. I wish I had learned about him in fourth grade.
Diana,
Thanks for your lucid explanation of how CK is actually taught in CK schools. That’s pretty much how my kids’ teachers taught it, contrary to the uninformed and ideologically-based stereotypes posted elsewhere on this comments’ thread.
For anyone with a mind open to actual evidence, I invite you to review the topics that CK covers across grades K-8. On the margins, we all would include a few other things and maybe exclude a few things. But look at the U.S. History content that Hirsch included in his posting. What should an American citizen NOT know on that list of topics? An even more important question: why do so many college graduates have such weak grasps of this most basic civics knowledge? What does that say about K-12 and college educations?
And the biggest open question on this thread: does Diane Ravitch still support the CK curriculum as she did for at least two decades?
Diana, in the real world this curriculum has been packaged to “align” with the Common Core assessments, and sold to New York state.
The PARCC assessments are will effectively constrain teachers from exploring comparative calligraphy. The Core Knowledge Foundation has contracted to provide professional development and materials for teachers. Has anybody seen them?
Diana:
Nicely said. I am still struggling with what the real objections are here. States have curriculums – some good, some not so good – some specific, some vague.. Presumably they have standard curriculum to coordinate learning across schools and across grades to reflect the need to build a coherent knowledge base and set of skills and to minimize redundancy. The curriculum is either explicit as in CK or implicit in the form of the organization of a textbook. It certainly does not appear that CK is really any more prescriptive than current textbooks?
I can see arguments about the age appropriateness of some material – but surely that will evolve over the next few years?
The issue of who gets paid for this work seems really pretty petty. One can argue about whether the format is useful or not for classroom teachers or whether too much money is being wasted on materials that will be soon discarded – but that requires more specifics than are being discussed here.
I can understand the issue of testing far more readily than this discussion about CK.
After posting this comment, I thought of better examples than the calligraphy one–but a more important point is that rich implementations of CK exist in the real world, not only in the imagination (though the intellect and imagination are as real as the most humdrum worksheet).
It is a shame when CK or any good curriculum is implemented poorly. As I see it, that happens primarily when teachers are given too many directives about how to teach–and when tests are used to rate them.
If I were a principal (which I probably will never be–administration is not my forte), I would have PDs about the content of the curriculum–both to foster intellectual life at the school and to open up possibilities in the classroom. Then again, under current conditions I wouldn’t have much say over the PDs I offered….
Murdoch bought the Core Knowledge based on millions related to current and future profits. It’s very simple. If there’s no money to make, Murdoch and Klein are not involved. Murdoch believes public education will provide financial cover for his empire’s lost profits as a result of the UK hacking scandals.
Post Murdoch’s Core Knowledge contracts and financial disclosure forms using social media. Parents will determine who’s profiting and who’s volunteering.
Follow the money and don’t be fooled with smokescreens. Keep Murdoch out of the classroom and don’t allow him to use children and teachers as ATMs.
🙂 🙂
LLC1923:
I am interested in your strong viewpoint on this aspect of CK.
Do know of any evidence that Pearson’s has behaved illegally in acquiring CK or leveraging their investment? Education publishers have always made and sold textbooks to school districts to make a profit. What is new in the way Pearson is doing it?
“The alternative to specificity is vagueness, which sounds virtuous, because it imposes nothing in particular.”
That sounds like a false dichotomy. The alternative to specificity is not vagueness. You could outline a curriculum that is sharply defined and crystal clear, yet structured at a higher level of abstraction. This would allow more room for teachers and students to co-create the learning experience.
Let’s assume, however, that specificity is the key to writing a curriculum. One could write a very specific curriculum for third graders that is based on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. There’s no question the list of topics, concepts, vocabulary, and so on would pass the specificity test. But would they pass the political acceptability test? And might that very specificity make it difficult for many teachers to use effectively?
The idea that the key feature of the curriculum unit referenced above is specificity seems a little disingenuous. The specifics listed appear to conform with standard received notions of American history. The specifics that are left out, some of which you’d find in Zinn’s book, indicate that the Core Knowledge curriculum has been shaped according to a particular viewpoint, just as a specific Zinn curriculum would be.
I’m favoring neither the Core Knowledge version of American history nor the Zinn version. I’m saying that the more specificity the curriculum “imposes,” the more political it becomes. If the curriculum guidelines were written at a somewhat higher level of abstraction it might allow teachers more leeway in building the lessons, and more opportunity for meaningful inquiry by the students. The less specific, the less political, but potentially the more engaging. If you don’t lay out ahead of time all the specifics to be learned, you give the students and teachers a chance to dig more deeply and find out things that aren’t “common” knowledge.
KIPP and Core Knowledge are NOT synonymous. Apparently some KIPP schools have adopted the Core Knowledge curriculum, but most CK schools are not KIPP schools. The CK school I visited was pretty loosey-goosey and kids’ projects did line the edges of the classroom.
The felon Murdoch and fraudster Klein bought Hirsch’s Core Knowledge? Talk about a deal with the devil!
Have any commenters here actually read HIrsch’s “Cultural Literacy,” which is the foundational piece for Core Knowledge?
If so, were any concerned that there is virtually no research base for it? No research citations in it?
And does that matter?
It wouldn’t matter if people were just teaching it, or happy little well-resourced schools or districts were just adopting it, or belligerent old pedants were just holding forth against contrary theories of education. Pundits are even within their punditry rights when they demand the adoption of this laundry list as a remedy to all their false characterizations of constructivist learning theory, based on no research whatsoever.
Instead, it’s being imposed by force of law through an unresearched system of centralized control, in a secretive power drive based on illegal and undemocratic manipulation of our legislative and executive branches.
Hirsch would show respect for this forum if he did elucidate the actual money nexus behind the drive. Instead, he evaded it, and his supporters use this space heap more venom on those who dare to point it out.
This man is proposing to bring some version of his curriculum into our classrooms, and put his heel on the necks of children and teachers to hold them accountable to tests based on it. There is a lot of money changing hands. He should justify that.
Chemtchr:
It would be interesting to see the budgets for materials and textbooks over a period of time for districts adopting CK. Then at least you would have some factual basis for your assertions.
This is about as incorrect a statement as I’ve seen recently. Much of the book (esp ch 2) is a review of the then latest pyscholinguistic research. It was praised by the then top cognitive scientists of the era: Herb Simon and George A Miller. More recently a scientist said about it: “it was taken as a book about ideology, but it was really a book about cognitive psychology.”
My apologies to Professor Hirsch.
It’s been while since I read Cultural LIteracy, and I retrieved my copy and Chapter II is indeed a review of research in reading and schema.
I should have checked the text before commenting.
Here are some quotes from this thread regarding the money nexus:
“I don’t know how or why Hirsch could have denied that the CK Foundation received funding from New York. I knew about that many months ago, because I keep up with what CK is doing and base my views on facts, not ideology. The CK blog announced the funding, and took it as a compliment to their work.”
“The felon Murdoch and fraudster Klein bought Hirsch’s Core Knowledge? Talk about a deal with the devil!”
“Murdoch bought the Core Knowledge based on millions related to current and future profits. It’s very simple. If there’s no money to make, Murdoch and Klein are not involved. Murdoch believes public education will provide financial cover for his empire’s lost profits as a result of the UK hacking scandals.
Post Murdoch’s Core Knowledge contracts and financial disclosure forms using social media. Parents will determine who’s profiting and who’s volunteering.
Follow the money and don’t be fooled with smokescreens. Keep Murdoch out of the classroom and don’t allow him to use children and teachers as ATMs”
Here’s my response:
Let me first deal with this thread about money, so I can revert to the actual subject of my piece, which was its real challenge – vested ideas and the lack of courage to resist them.
Core Knowledge won a contract with the state of New York to produce ELA for pre-K to 2 materials that could be put up online, and given away for free. These are fantastic materials (No Murdoch or Klein involved, nor could they be, this material having been paid for by NY.) The competition for this job was open to all publishers, but most publishers choose not to participate, because they could not earn money from it. CK will not earn money from it either, but we are not a publishing company. We have used all money from NY to pay the artists, writers, designers who created these materials, which are by common consent the best available anywhere. Anyone is free to use them, improve them and so on, under “creative commons license” just like this blog, so long as they are not commercialized.
No person at CK gained an extra penny from this effort. The artists and writers were paid for their work. The members of the CK staff were paid their normal salaries, no more, no less which also went for me, my salary being zero.
But there’s more. When we were negotiating with Amplify (and other publishers) for funding and distribution of rest of the project:– grades 3, 4 and 5, no other publisher would agree to our demand that grade 3 (not in the NY contract) also be put up for free under creative commons. All balked except Amplify, and while many in CK had trepidations about just the kind of Murdoch-Klein attack above, we decided that the other publishers were balking at our demand because they had their own materials to hawk, and the public would get by far the best deal from Amplify which was new to the game, and needed content. Amplify was willing to meet our stipulation that grade 3 also be given away for free – where it can now be found in the CK web site.
I’ve been asked: “Where then are Murdoch and Klein going to make any money? Mostly in the future. They have a standard publishers’ 20-year contract to fund the development, and provide royalties on grades 4 and 5, which don’t exist yet. Pre—K, K, 1, 2, and 3, the critical early grades we care about most will remain up for free to anyone who cares to make use of those resources. Amplify may also make a small amount of money from selling printed versions to any system that doesn’t want to print themselves. But that’s entirely up to the district or school.
I don’t underestimate the ability of conspiracy experts to weave more complex theories even from these facts. But it should at least challenge their ingenuity.
******
But here’s the key issue, as I see it. The whole thread about the cash nexus in this blog makes an assumption about the American educational scene that is somewhat at odds with my view – the theme that corporate interests trying to run and profit from American schools, and that’s what’s wrong with the system. There’s truth in this. But there’s also truth – and a greater truth – in what John Maynard Keynes said about this kind of issue: “I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas … Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”
Now ideas are also vested interests, of course – in ed schools, among teachers who have been influenced by ed schools, and that too is a vested-interest battle. The vested idea I have been fighting against unsuccessfully for 30 years is against the idea that schools should teach critical thinking skills, deep understanding, 21st-century skills, plus social skills. My claim is that this idea is inconsistent with what we know about learning and the mind. I made the further claim that the view perpetuates social injustice for the following reason: Children from advantaged homes have already picked up much of the factual knowledge and conventions that enable them to continue to be in the top group. (Income is highly correlated with vocabulary size, which is correlated with breadth of knowledge.)
The how-to version of schooling in which the specific content of first grade, second grade etc is left up for grabs, perpetuates this social inequity. Hence grade-by-grade specificity regarding at least a core of factual knowledge is important not only in making the teacher’s job more coherent and manageable, but also for narrowing the knowledge gaps among students.
I’ve seen in this thread denial of this thesis (we need themes not facts), but I haven’t seen any coming to grips with the main claim that the critical-thinking, how-to approach has perpetuated inequality, made the classroom incoherent for teachers, and is inconsistent with what cognitive science says about the particularity, “domain specificity” of human skills. I also claimed that part of the reason people haven’t been willing to get specific is that they know there’ll be a chorus of objection. But Just as this web site is an excellent locus of dissent against vested interests. I’d like to see a sub-section also resisting vested anti-fact ideas.
So, hello Mr. Hirsch. I’m the vested interest you keep attacking and demonizing. I teach chemistry in a Title I public high school, and I have to walk in that door in less than 80 minutes. You are fighting a straw man argument, but you’re attacking me and my life’s work.
You called the idea that students actively construct knowledge a “vested interest”, and launched your own pogrom against it. In so doing, you outlaw powerful teaching. Here’s what you’re railing against.
Yesterday, in my classroom, my students studied the nature of fire. I taught 60 sixteen-year-olds how to light a bunsen burner, and adjust the air vents at the bottom. In an old-fashioned, constructivist activity, they made a prediction about the hottest part of the flame, and then tested that with a steel wire. They predicted the effect of sealing off the air supply to the barrel, and tested that.
They had to wrap their own minds around it. Over extensive discussion and exploration, they played a game, passing the marker from student to student for each term of their first chemical equation.. They went from
fuel + air -> fire
to
Methane + oxygen -> carbon dioxide + water + energy
to (wait for it)
CH4 + O2 -> CO2 + H2O + ATP
I corrected the ATP to 891 Kj/mole.
So, I’m your constructivist bogey-teacher. You attack us as an ideological vested interest for our commitment to powerful teaching.
The Twenty-first century skills crowd, like you, aren’t teachers. They’re hawking a different different brand-name to package the corporate control drive, and they’re you’re competitors.
I gave up breakfast and lunch to post this.
Game, set and match to chemtchr.
Love it
I admire this kind of teaching. It wasn’t any particular “constructivist” pedagogy I challenged — it’s the kind I use myself — rather its the absence of any definite year-by-year curriculum that would make such pedagogy even more effective for more students. Core Knowledge has never advocated any particular pedagogy. So be clear: I just want to make your devoted and energetic teaching more likely to reach all the members of the class
Chemtchr fancies herself as a well-informed expert on all things education. She really needs to read the Hirsch books that present the case for Core Knowledge, especially the cognitive science that underpins it.
CK is a K-8 curriculum that doesn’t deal with high school chemistry, so Chemtchr is safe from its tentacles in her classroom. CK also needs only about 50% of classroom time, so there’s plenty of time for teachers and kids to do other things in school. Of course, I only base these statements on having been an involved parent who has seen the CK curriculum in practice. Chemtchr and the like read what Alfie Kohn says about CK, uncritically believe his deliberate distortions, and leave it at that.
I’ve seen the type of teaching that Chemtchr described used a lot in CK schools. I’ve never seen a dreary regurgitation of facts. Yes, there is some Direct Instruction; it’s more efficient to tell kids that the First Amendment protects free speech and give examples than have kids spend ten hours interviewing lawyers and re-inventing the wheel.
But I’m dismayed at how authoritarian Chemtchr really is. She had a lesson planned for the class, and there is factual knowledge that I presume she wants kids to master. Did those kids get to “vote” on what to do? Isn’t the idea that water is composed of H2O just a Dead White Male construct?
I’d like to engage a panel of 20 chemistry professors to compare Hirsch’s ideas about education vs. those of extreme progressives. I wonder how much critical thinking those professors would regard as possible in the absence of a huge amount of factual knowledge about chemistry?
“It wasn’t any particular “constructivist” pedagogy I challenged”
Was it all constructivist pedagogy then? –as in your firm “No” when asked, “Should Schools Adopt a Constructivist Approach to Education?” From Reality’s Revenge: Research and Ideology, American Educator, Fall, 1996:
Click to access Constructivism%20Debate.pdf
As an Early Childhood Educator who’s spent a lot of time teaching social skills and conflict resolution skills to young children, I am “resisting” your “vested anti-fact ideas” that schools should not teach these skills. The following is from the abstract of a meta-analysis of 43 studies on social skills training for children:
“…Social skills training produced significant improvements in children’s levels of social interaction, sociometric status and cognitive problem solving abilities.”
References
Erwin, P. G. (1994). Effectiveness of social skills training with children: A meta-analytic study. Counseling Psychology Quarterly 7(3), 305 – 310.
I agree. It’s actually in the CK curriculum! My allusion to “how-to” approaches comprise chiefly “critical thinking skills,” “inferencing skills,” “”questioning the author”. The research says that a little of this (maybe six lessons) is as effective as 2 years worth. Willingham, Winter 2006–2007 • Ask the Cognitive Scientist: The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies . A more subtle issue is the way these and other “21st century skills” are used to substute for curriculum topics in the disciplines.
I was referring to this statement that you made above, “The vested idea I have been fighting against unsuccessfully for 30 years is against the idea that schools should teach critical thinking skills, deep understanding, 21st-century skills, plus social skills.”
Sorry, I can’t wrap my brain around why you included social skills in what you said you fought against “for 30 years,” if it’s in your curriculum.
Prof. Hirsch:
Bravo!!
The cat is now among the pigeons!!
It seems you hedgingly (“somewhat [?] at odds”) acknowledge at least the partial truth (“there is truth in this”) of what your critics are saying — namely that corporate interests are ruining education i among other things, by ignoring the economic inequality issues that are at the root of our educational problems :
“The whole thread about the cash nexus in this blog makes an assumption about the American educational scene that is *somewhat at odds* with my view – the theme that corporate interests trying to run and profit from American schools, and that’s what’s wrong with the system. There’s truth in this.”
But then you go on and justify yourself by rationalizing that the alleged ideological battle against “dangerous ideas” that you are fighting justifies any means and the alliance with any allies, no matter how corrupt (even if they are currently under indictment and sitting in the docket!): “But there’s also truth – and a greater truth – in what John Maynard Keynes said about this kind of issue: “I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas … Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.”
And who is the source of these these evil and dangerous ideas in your mind? Not Herbert Spencer , or Ayn Rand, but … wait for it … John Dewey. (Talk about conspiracy theories). Please, Mr. Hirsch, this is beneath you. Open your eyes, can’t you see what is happening?
I appreciate Hirsch’s emphasis on historical chronology (and thus, hopefully, eventually, causation).
But as an archaeologist with admittedly no training in primary education, I am confused as to why Whig history (from either the “left” or the “right”) is deemed more appropriate for the under 10s.
Can anyone explain?
Unfortunately, as for causation, all I see is a French & Indian War without the Prussians; a US constitution without the Magna Carta; migration and colonisation without smallpox…etc etc
When do children find out the stork didn’t bring them?
Poppy, you hit the nail on the head. I teach in rural, upstate NY. These kids need to master basic skills first. Why an 8, 9 or 10 year old needs to study ancient Sumatra, the Universe, or the beginnings of life befuddles me. Look at the greatest minds to come out of the last 150 years, Edison, Ford, scientists at NASA, Jobs, Wosniak and on and on, they didn’t have state/national mandates make them college and career ready (if they even went to college). Creativity comes from letting kids create, not spending 120 days a year prepping for a meaningless Pearson test. If you don’t think the majority of teachers around the country aren’t concerned more about test results than anything else, think again. I’m in the thick of it.
Pedantically, I think you meant Sumeria, although ancient Sumatra might also be interesting.
I would be careful with those historical examples since they might also suggest that 8th Grade is a good stopping point.
Which simply raises the issue of how a coherent multi-year curriculum gets built and by whom.
As far as I can see, you are going to have a hard job persuading many to sign on to a curriculum that does not look a lot like Hirsch’s CK. Can you point to a K-12 curriculum of similar scope that you would be happy with?
“Can you point to a K-12 curriculum of similar scope that you would be happy with?”
Nope- I just like common sense. Assess the kids you have, see what they can digest and teach accordingly. The problem with any of these CCS, state stds. or otherwise is that they assume every kid has the same tools and learning set. C’mon, I can run a 5 min. mile, you should all be able too.
tuppercooks
So there is no need for a curriculum in any school for any subject? Sounds sub-optimal to me.
I guess I’m interested in definitions of “the how-to version of schooling” and “vested anti-fact ideas.” Also, I’m wondering if there are any teachers who don’t believe in helping kids build vocabulary. And who was it that said we don’t need facts? There are so many assertions in the final three paragraphs above that don’t make sense to me based on my own learning history and teaching experience. I realize this is an off-the-cuff response to a question about money, but there’s a certain lack of “specificity” and “coherence” here. I guess I would have check out Professor HIrsch’s books to get a clearer idea of what he’s talking about.
“I’d like to see a sub-section also resisting vested anti-fact ideas.”
Not to get into the tit for tat exchanges above, which are fascinating and tiresome at the same time, I would like to focus on the last statement by Hirsch. Hopefully, I would be considered as part of that sub-section of “resisting vested anti-fact ideas.” Actually, perhaps my main beef with a lot of what we do in public education, the educational malpractices that cause harm to many students, i.e., educational standards, standardized testing and the sorting and separating process of those two and the grading of students might best be considered a sub-set of the sub-section.
I’m glad to see Hirsch call his work “curriculum” and not “standards” as standards imply measurement and, in practice, are attempts to measure the unmeasurable-the teaching and learning processes. Noel Wilson has proven the “anti-fact ideas” of educational standards, standardized testing and the grading of students to be so fraught with logical error that these practices are completely invalid and any resulting conclusions “vain an illusory”.
Call my subset of the subset the “Quixotic Quest”. I challenge all to read, understand and if you disagree with the conclusions to rebut and refute the “‘anti’-anti-fact” ideas of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Duane, you wrote, “I’m glad to see Hirsch call his work “curriculum” and not “standards” as standards imply measurement …”
Remember, he has sold his curriculum to Murdoch, and also taken public Race to the Top money from New York, to align it to the Common Core tests. Apparently, he’d like to distance himself now, from the damage Murdoch and Klein will do when they use their measurement machine to smash any alternative vision of American education.
You make numerous valid points, but your last sentence veers off into absurd conspiracy theory. Your obvious assumption is that independent, critical, and free thinkers will all be very left-wing. Anyone who reads widely knows that there are independent thinkers across most of the political spectrum, and that the most left-wing institution in America – academia – permits little to no dissent from prevailing orthodoxy.
I’ve worked in educational publishing, for just about all the big companies in the industry, for about thirty years now. How dearly I wish that I had a nickel for every insipid, useless, content-free lesson I’ve seen on “inferencing skills” and “Themes in Literature: Courage.” If I did have, I would be able to buy Amplify and the like many times over. The opportunity cost of that river of skills-based instruction as been very, very high.
The lessons on “inferencing” tend to be written in complete obliviousness of such facts as these: a) that there are many different kinds of inference (generally, deduction, induction, and abduction) with their own associated formal and informal techniques, modes of operation, truth conditions, and usefulness for highly distinct purposes; b) kids’ brains are inference-making machines, and explicit instruction and metacognitive thinking often actually gets in the way of the operation of those just as thinking about where to put one’s foot next when walking gets in the way of one’s walking; c) skills are procedural knowledge and can be effectively taught only to the extent that they operationalized and so become knowledge of a set of procedures. On this last point, it’s often best to instantiate the procedure in materials and have kids become familiar with it while they are engaging themselves with exciting content rather than to have them be concentrating on thinking about the skill per se.
I have seen, in my work, on an almost daily basis, the dumbing down of lessons due to skills-based and vague theme-based approaches. A case in point:
Look at an American lit book from one of the big basal publishers. Turn to the units on, say, the Puritans and the Transcendentalists. Ask yourself, how much does the student actually learn from this unit about what happened during that time and what those people actually thought? The answer is, precious little. The emphasis is not on learning about the thoughts and behaviors of the Puritans and Transcendentalists but on learning some abstract set of skills. The content is WAY down the list of concerns in each lesson. The result: These units are, in current texts, incredibly dumbed down. The student who does the unit on the Puritans does not come away knowing about original sin, election, predestination, salvation through Grace, local governance, individual responsibility, the Protestant work ethic, the direct relation without intermediaries between people and God, the significance of the Word as a direct pipeline between people and the divine. But all of these were incredibly important to the development of American thought. Much in our current culture is a direct consequence of this stream that has run through our history, and if people don’t understand it, they won’t understand a lot of why things are as they are today. One can’t understand how the culture produced, say, Rick Santorem, why the right is BOTH about local governance AND about building more prisons without following that stream back to its source. (And, BTW, no Transcendentalists, no hippies a hundred years later.)
If one goes back to textbooks written twenty years ago, all that stuff about the Puritans that I listed above is dealt with in the unit on them. Now, that stuff is considered too difficult, and besides, the emphasis is supposed to be on this or that set of abstract skills described by this or that subset of the state standards or, now, the CCSS in ELA. That’s what will be one the only test that matters–the high-stakes test. It will be a test of isolated “skills.” And the entire take-away from the unit on the Transcendentalists will be something like they liked trees.
cx: I say, above, that “One can’t understand how the cultural produced, say, Rick Santorerm, why the right is BOTH about local governance AND about building more prisons without following that stream (American Puritanism) back to its source. Of course, there are other ways to this learning, but those, too, involve mastery of content. One might, for example, learn about Jonathan Haidt’s work on moral modes (care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation) and their clustering.
Robert, I like this point, “If one goes back to textbooks written twenty years ago, all that stuff about the Puritans that I listed above is dealt with in the unit on them. ”
So, as a publisher you’ve seen skills-approach products replace actual content. You hate that as much as “progressive” teachers always have. But your model text on the Puritans is organized along a theme, rather than as “facts”. The failure of the Hirsch curriculum to find or develop such themes is the reason I keep calling it a “laundry list”.
Hirsch and his diverse “followers” have somehow blamed John Dewey for the “dumbing down” and “anti-fact” fashion that’s overtaken the textbook publishing industry since “A Nation at Risk”. In fact, Dewey’s movement was the dominant paradigm that drove the magnificent expansion and achievements of American public education in the 20th century.
You and I both oppose some of the tendencies Hirsch condemns, but his main work in education is to oppose the teaching of any kind of connected thought. In the sciences, it’s very obvious we can’t let that happen. “Facts” become “knowledge” when the student builds something with them. Knowledge-based teaching isn’t “anti-fact”, and Hirsch’s attack on teachers becomes dangerous when he allies himself with corporate partners like Murdoch and Klein.
Chemtchr in her invincible ignorance keeps saying that the CK curriculum fails to find or develop themes. That’s what Alfie Kohn says, and what her ideology tells her, so no matter that it’s not true. I have eight years experience as a parent at Core Knowledge schools, so unlike a driveby and mindlessly ideological observer, I know that’s not the case.
Rodgers, please try not to insult other readers of the blog. It is uncivil behavior and might get you kicked off permanently. First warning.
Turn to the current American lit books from the ig publishers and look at that unit on the Transcendentalists, and all it conveys is that they wrote about “the Nature theme.” One would gather from this dumbed-down garbage that Emerson was the Joyce Kilmer of his day.
Another correction to the post above:
skills are procedural knowledge and IF THEY ARE TO BE TAUGHT EXPLICITLY can be effectively taught only to the extent that they operationalized and so become knowledge of a set of procedures.
To be more precise: Skills are internal schemata of a principles (hardwiring) and parameters (implicit learning) variety and/or procedural knowledge, which can be implicitly or explicitly taught,
and IF THOSE SKILLS THAT ARE PROCEDURAL KNOWLEDGE ARE TO BE TAUGHT EXPLICITLY, they can be effectively taught only to the extent that they operationalized and so become KNOWLEDGE of a set of procedures
Robert,
All well said. Any overemphasis on skills will kill interest in learning. I’ve also often thought most English teachers do far more to destroy any potential love for literature than they do to inspire it. There’s usually way too much emphasis on literary techniques than on the greater ideas in the story. “How does the author use allusion and metaphor most effectively, etc.” Add in political correctness and kids want to run away. “Was Steinbeck protesting White Male hegemony that leads to economic depression and oppression of the marginalized?” Dull, dull, dull. Talk about the big ideas that kids are interested in, and leave the arcane literary analysis for post-grad. study or obscure publications.
I’m sure the oppressed don’t find oppression, dull, dull, dull.
It’s interesting to me that these conversations always turn to the merits are lack thereof of “constructivism.” Yes, at birth we fall into a world ready-made. Yes, we are surrounded by constructs that a lot of people think of as immutable instantiations of natural law. Yes, de Beauvoir was right. There is a genuine, useful, powerful distinction to be made between sex and gender. But if we are to learn about those constructs, we have to engage with substantive content. If all we’re listing in our “standards” (see, for example, the CCSS in ELA) are skills, and if that’s all we’re measuring, then we’re not going to produce kids who understand those constructs at all. That’s the irony in all such discussions as these.
And no, I am not calling for more measuring of a summative kind. Far, far from it. That way lies disaster. Measurement is a useful tool diagnostically and formatively. But this current standards-and-testing mania, the latest reform ride on the education carnival midway, is dangerous, extraordinarily so. We shall look back on the current “reforms” as a particularly dark era in American K-12 education.
Great posts on this thread, Robert.
I’m glad somebody is pointing out that the CCSS standards are a content-free wasteland. We content (science and history) teachers are being “professionally developed” to train our students to spit our “critical thinking” essays for machine scoring. A required feature, believe it or not, is that stimulus texts must be presented to them without “scaffolding”, that is, in no context whatsoever, so students can succeed on the coming CCSS tests.
You may therefore think it progress that Murdoch has bought a laundry list for his accountability juggernaut, so teachers will be allowed to teach any background knowledge at all.
I think Hirsch is struggling now, trying not to understand what he has actually sold out to. He faces an existential crisis here, but his mind is at least moving out of its previous ruts.
When all is said and done, the proof is in the pudding.
Theory after theory, bla after bla bla, has produced the society we live in.
If any of the bla bla theories work to provide economic opportunity, equality, justice, or political awareness, WHY do we have the current income distribution, poverty, class stratification, or POLITICS, of today?
The “Theories” either continue or disrupt the economic or political order.
If you want to talk power politics, then by all means, let’s do. Scientia potentia est. (It’s a lot of other things to, but I won’t go off into that.) The more knowledge the poor, oppressed, and disenfranchised have, the more difficult it is to keep them that way. But mandated standards and high stakes summative testing are not how to get them there. Models of rich curricula and strong pedagogy–competing models–are.
Which brings me back to the theology of invariant standardized testing to invariant standards. There are some in the reform crowd who believe that poppycock. And then there are others who frankly think that education is for the wealthy and training is for the poor. The former are deeply confused. The latter are the enemies of all decent men and women.
too, not to, of course. My kingdom for an edit feature!
Robert, dare I instruct you in computerdom? There is an edit feature in your word processor. You write. You read. You ponder. You edit. Then you copy and paste to the little square. Voila!
@ E.D. Hirsch. You clearly don’t have this blogging stuff down. One is supposed to spew. Then think. Then wish one hadn’t said what one said. Or so it seems.
The reform crowd is just after the MONEY, with all their bla bla
theories. They WON’T stop the training disguised as Public Education, they will continue it.
In order for the mandated standards and high stakes summative testing, to compete with a model of rich curricula and strong pedagogy
rich curricula and strong pedagogy would have to exist!
If rich curricula and strong pedagogy DID exist, the economic
and political order would be dispupted.
The more knowledge the poor, oppressed, and disenfranchised have, the more difficult it is to keep them that way.
Do Public Schools “Train” or “Educate”?
The proof is STILL in the pudding.
A wonderful thread of thought-provoking ideas. Bravo, Don
I’m really glad to see you following this, and also calling Hirsch by his first name. Can you follow up with him in conversation, and then examine the Hirsch/Murdoch conjunction in a serious, journalistic report?
I would think exclusive rights to the K-3 curriculum couldn’t be sold to Murdoch, because New York had already paid handsomely for it, but the money trail is indeed eclipsed by Hirsch’s declaration of war on dangerous ideas held by teachers.
“Now ideas are also vested interests, of course – in ed schools, among teachers who have been influenced by ed schools, and that too is a vested-interest battle.”
Hirsch just tried to close some of the breach with real teachers, which he’s spent the last 30 years establishing. I would recommend this example to explore the issues raised in this thread. Two third grade Colorado teachers are trying to develop the concept strands from the Colorado framework, using Hirsch’s content list.
Click to access Earliest%20Americans.pdf
This thread shows there’s a lot to discuss about the actual teaching involved in this effort, but I’m afraid we will never get that chance. Hirsch has allied himself with Murdoch and Klein, to use their accountability juggernaut to finally crush all the vested ideas he disagrees with, and destroy the education departments which still adhere to progressive “anti-fact ideas”.
It’s interesting he claims now to favor constructivist learning theory, while demanding the extermination of the university departments that teach it. I think there is no spoon long enough, though, for him to sit at our table while he sups with Rupert Murdoch.
Talk to him, okay? And then, please, report.
Once again, inferences of corruption against anyone she disagrees with. Hirsch is on solid ground if he wants to destroy the intellectually vacuous education departments, the academically weakest area at almost all colleges and universities. Professors in other departments say this among themselves all the time, and lots of K-12 teachers admit that most of their School of Education courses were huge wastes of time and money.
Rodgers12, the complaints against teacher education are longstanding, but I ask you: should people be allowed to teach who have no professional preparation? who know nothing of child development or of psychometrics? who know nothing about curriculum or classroom management? who know nothing about teaching children with special needs? who have had no student teaching? Will the colleges of liberal arts teach those courses?
Teachers should learn all those things, but is that what they are actually getting?
I agree that the areas you cited should be studied by future teachers. But almost all the teachers I’ve ever talked to, especially all the intellectually strongest ones, were dismayed by how weak their process courses in education were. All of them support much stronger and longer mentoring, i.e. student teaching of at least a year.
I regard teaching as a profession, where practitioners usually get better with experience, and where good mentorship is part of professional development. TFA is a noble sentiment, but completely unrealistic – nobody, no matter how smart she is, and no matter how good she is with kids, can teach effectively with only five weeks of preparation. I’m obviously very critical about some things in K-12, and I find the education establishment to often be as self-serving as other American institutions. I’m an educational conservative who emphatically parts company with most political conservatives on school finance issues. I don’t like local property taxes funding schools, and I’d like to see K-12 teachers much better paid, especially in the early years.
That IS what teachers have been getting in my courses, Harlan. And no one in my Educational Psychology classes can claim that, “we never got to child development,” because I consider that to be a very critical component of Ed Psych. In my own training, I took an additional separate course in child development, as well as another course in adolescent development. So, when Ed Psych is the only required course in which teachers are learning about child and adolescent development, as it is in many programs, I think it’s very important to underscore that content.
Most of the Teacher Educators I’ve worked with in the past quarter of a century have had lengthy careers working as P-12 classroom teachers themselves, so teacher bashing is a double whammy for us. First, we are accused of being dimwits who come from the bottom 30% of the barrel of college graduates –which is a claim that’s actually based on SAT/ACTs, i.e., high school scores, of a cohort of teachers in the 90s– and then we are accused of being “intellectually vacuous” etc.
As for the other rumors, I have taught at several colleges and, fortunately, I’ve encountered nothing but respect from faculty in different departments.
I don’t think it’s really relevant that my 10th grade ACT scores were in the top 90% or that I graduated from college summa cum laude. What I believe does matter is that I’ve had extensive training, degrees and experience in a number of areas in education and related fields, such as Liberal Arts, Early Childhood Education and Neuropsychology, and I try to stay current on research and policies.
Years ago, I did have one a student accuse me of using “$50 words,” so since then, I have been providing comprehension asides (synonyms, brief definitions etc.) to facilitate understanding of sophisticated vocabulary, as I do with children. However, I have never heard any students describe me as “intellectually vacuous” or heard my students characterize their courses as “huge wastes of time and money.” In fact, many have been practicing teachers who noted how immediately applicable their studies have been. (BTW, I’ve never had 60 students in any of my classes –45 tops, but more typically, 30 or less)
cx and clarification: I had one student who complained about my advanced vocabulary, but it was not an “a” (“A”) student (I also pointed out that, when I was in college, I carried around a dictionary with me, because one should expect to learn new words in college.).
Just out of curiosity, what percentage of your dtidents earn an A? At the Ed school at my university, the mean grade is an A-.
TE:
Have you seen this:
http://www.aei.org/article/education/k-12/grade-inflation-for-education-majors-and-low-standards-for-teachers/
My experience as a teaching fellow at a Grad School of Ed was a little different – although giving a C to anybody was almost unheard of.
I have seen that material. I posted a link to the working paper that it was based on some time ago. It was the paper written by a University of Missouri economist.
Duh!! That’s where I may have found it. Sorry.
I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that students fail my courses all the time. I don’t happen to like it, but that’s what happens when students don’t do the work, don’t follow directions and the rubric, and/or turn in whatever they feel like, such as the student who submitted a major paper in another language and alphabet, just as the course was ending.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt as an ELL student and an opportunity to resubmit, but he didn’t take it. This is not unusual where I work, because my school promotes mastery learning. So, if students aren’t understanding concepts or are doing poorly, we will work with them until they demonstrate competency, within certain limits. This means students may be given opportunities to revise and resubmit their work, though not typically for an A after the first shot. Few undergrads actually seize the opportunity though. Grad students are at a higher level, tend to be more diligent and responsible, and are more likely to put forth the extra effort, but those who didn’t have failed my courses as well.
Diane, I’m afraid Hirsch has declared war on the strengths of the teaching departments, rather than their weaknesses. Here’s his list of dangerous ideas:
“The vested idea I have been fighting against unsuccessfully for 30 years is against the idea that schools should teach critical thinking skills, deep understanding, 21st-century skills, plus social skills. ”
The academics who study child development, psychometrics, curriculum, classroom management, and children with special needs never disagreed with Hirsch’s “discovery” that background knowledge is essential to reading comprehension. The search for ways to develop deeper understanding isn’t “anti-fact”. The “21st century skills” nonsense isn’t coming from any schools of education I know of.
The argument for this attack does boil down to “most people I talk to think…” When you say, “The complaints against teacher education are longstanding,” you add to the general fuzziness of Hirsch’s witch-hunt for anti–factists among teachers who know more than he does about their content areas.
Also, take a moment to realize the wealth of wisdom and experience in the American academic tradition of education. Would you really want to destroy our rich heritage in theory and practice?
https://www.google.com/#q=university+school+of+education
Chemtchr, I don’t think I was joining the witch hunt against teacher educators. Quite the opposite. I wrote that we can’t have a profession without teacher preparation institutions.
Would you rather buy your learning prepackaged from a big box Facts R Us store, or go browsing in the Global Flea Market of Ideas, select the items that show the most promise to you personally, take them home and tinker with them, perhaps in collaboration with other members of your community? I know I made my own choice a long time ago.
Off-the-shelf products can be valuable, but like any other aspect of schooling, if they’re relied on too heavily, the usefulness reaches a point of diminishing returns. Any program can be successful if a team of talented, dedicated, empathetic teachers gets behind it. The key, though, is the teachers and how they mediate between the curriculum and the learners. Whenever I used a set program (like a basal reading system) or an assigned text in my teaching, I spent a great deal of time, modifying, supplementing, writing my own complementary materials, and selectively ignoring the teacher’s manual. The more experience I gained, the more I realized how important it was to invite kids to bring their own special talents and intellect to bear on the subject matter, and to create evidence, in their own fashion, of what they were learning.
In the absence of a canned program such as the one that’s being “sold” here, no teacher worth the name would subject students to a “content-free” curriculum. Even the most “progressive” teacher would try to strike a balance between learning about science and actually doing science (which could be severely limited in a strictly “fact-based” approach, by the way). He would strike a balance between presenting the standard American history for kids (which at times may border on the Parson Weems variety) and asking children to question the “facts” and maybe even helping them learn history techniques by becoming historical investigators, resulting in meaningful, age-appropriate projects.
You can see where my bias lies, but it’s an article of faith with me that every good teacher will develop a unique approach that makes her a valuable part of a teaching faculty. From my experience, I’ve come to believe that it takes at least ten years of teaching experience and continual study to achieve that end.
The good news is that whether it’s a “fact based” or an “inquiry based” school program, a good teacher will get to know the students and adapt the content and the pedagogy accordingly. Either way, there are no bars to challenge or knowledge building for the learners. And a good teacher is not going to dismiss the counsel of researchers who have dedicated their lives to studying how children learn. Her understanding of concepts, such as schema theory will inform her teaching, and her experience will refine her knowledge and allow her to adjust her practice accordingly. For me, it’s the teacher that makes the difference. That’s why teacher autonomy is a key. Teachers should be so constrained by standards, testing, and programmatic curricula that they lose any say in what they do in the classroom.
This is by way of resisting some of Professor Hirsch’s more accusatory rhetoric. I’d like to get into cognitive science and the research from the 1980s on reading comprehension, but I’ll save it for another time.
Mr. Merrow, still waiting for you to post the real story behind the veneer of the sham “New Orleans ‘rebirth.'” Here’s some reality for you to muddle through: the Walton-funded OneApp parents must complete to get their “choice” (tongue-in-cheek) of school:
Another for Mr. Merrow regarding the New Orleans “Miracle”:
It’s a one-hour radio interview– no commercials:
Have any of you on this thread read Lisa Delpit’s Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, and/or “Multiplication is for White People”: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children? She provides a deeply informed, brilliant, and impassioned description of how to engage ethnically diverse children and provide them with a challenging curriculum while drawing from and empowering their heritage. This approach is counter to a laundry list of ideas to be mastered and tested on. This is true and valuable learning.
I’m a great admirer of Lisa Delpit, and she’s a firm supporter of Core Knowledge, which as you know is based on the idea: why should the haves know these things and the have-nots be “protected” from them? I once had a nice mutually admiring lunch with her in Atlanta. I’m not sure if your “laundry list” means lists of standards followed by second-rate tests. If so I’m in wholehearted agreement with you. If “laundry list means Core Knowledge, then I’d say you were identifying the index of the book with the book itself. As you might have gathered from this thread the Core Knowledge Sequence is carried out in hundreds of schools with thousands of enthusiastic students and hundreds of enthusiastic students is anything but laundry-list like. Just the opposite. But I think you must have meant standards and tests. And as you may not know, I’m on the warpath against VAM – terrible tests based on terrible standards.
Do you have any data on educators who tried Core Knowledge and found it to be a poor match for their students and them?
cx: and themselves
(Can’t see using a word processor for a single question.)
Thank you for your response, Mr. Hirsch. I have to admit that I’m not familiar with the Core Knowledge materials, but I am very glad to know that students are enthusiastic about working with them. Enthusiasm and engagement are key to real learning, as Lisa Delpit described in her books. I am very concerned that the Common Core, while claiming to provide “rigor” and critical thinking, will degenerate into covering knowledge in only an academic sense and not be truly meaningful to students’ lives. Mass administered standardized tests are not a valuable way to find out what students actually know, especially when the students are English language learners or have special needs. My career has been as a teacher of the deaf, and this kind of testing is particularly inappropriate for deaf students. To use students’ scores to evaluate teachers is completely misguided. Thanks for your stand against Value Added Measures. We need people who have actually worked with children to speak out against the juggernaut of policies that undermine teaching and learning in the name of promoting high quality education.
In order to demonstrate that something “bad” is happening here you are going to need to demonstrate that the textbook and material spend by school systems is clearly higher with Amplify than it would be with other textbook publishers. I know of no publisher who publishes textbooks and educational materials without the intent of making money.
So that there is no misunderstanding, I think textbooks are generally way over-priced and e-book versions are even more outrageous. I do not know the K-8 market but I am familiar with the ESL HS/College textbook prices where 200 page paperback books of readings consisting largely of repackaged Smithsonian and National Geographic articles cost students $40 and up.
Pan out for the bigger picture, Bernie:
Mercedes:
I think I am looking at the big picture. What leads you conclude that I am not?
The post you pointed me to simply reinforces my point about textbook publishers. I see nothing sinister in what Murdoch says: He needs to justify his rather large investment of essentially other people’s money. He is investing in and building what he believes is a better set of tools to meet the demands of a large, fragmented and, in his opinion, poorly served market and expects to make money based on what will be a significant investment. If I was an investment banker I would have been a bit more cautious in spending $360 millions in cash for Wireless Generation. But that is for New Corp shareholders and the market to decide.
The size of the k-12 textbook market in 2011-12 appears to be over $18 billion which for the roughly 50 million k-12 students amounts to $350 per student per year. (Somebody may need to verify this estimate for the textbook market.) The costs of CK books, materials and assessments should be considered in this context. It is quite feasible for Amplify to make significant profits by lowering the total cost per student and simply displacing weak and ineffective publishers. If the do, is that a bad thing?
http://www.aepweb.org/aepweb/?p=3261&option=com_wordpress&Itemid=68
Another way of thinking about the issue is to ask who would you rather acquire the rights to Core Knowledge or Wireless Generation’s tool set and IP?
As an HS English Teacher, do you use a textbook or anthology? If so, who is the publisher? Did you have a choice of which one to use? If so, would you choose a different book? How much do the books cost? How do you determine what is a reasonable price?
Dr. Hirsch (or anyone else who knows), Could you please point me in the direction of data on the standardized test scores of students in schools where Core Knowledge is implemented?
Specifically, I would like to know about students in New York who recently took the assessments aligned to Core Knowledge. Do you know if that data has been disaggragated by CK schools, or are Core Knowledge students in schools and/or grades that were not tested? Thanks!
CT:
Good question.
Here’s a start on CK results generally:
http://coreknowledge.org/mimik/mimik_live_data/view.php?id=1833&record_id=66
There’s a vast random assignment study going on in Colorado.
As to the recent notorious NY tests, they are definitely not aligned with CK — nor any curriculum — which is one big thing that’s wrong with them. Nonetheless the incomplete data we have shows that CK schools did outperform their demographics on that NY test, That includes regular schools and charter schools. But that fact had nothing to do with the character of the new tests. But don’t get me started down that road. It had to do with the fact that students in CK schools are gaining general knowledge systematically, and in the end, reading comprehension tests are tests of general knowledge. But such tests are very scattershot and non-valid in the early grades. That issue I fear is a thread longer than this, and I promised Diane that I’d not be like the man who came to dinner.
Thank you.
Blech: http://mashable.com/2013/08/29/news-corp-education-tablets/
very creepy–Among other ideas disturbing to me is this: “According to the U.S. Department of Education, ‘technology-based instruction can reduce the time students take to reach a learning objective by 30 to 80%’. ” In the first place, how could they possibly know this? In the second place, is that what we’re after–high-speed learning of objectives?
Sheila, I know of no research showing this, not even from the US DOE
“technology-based instruction can reduce the time students take to reach a learning objective by 30 to 80%”
The DoE does make this claim in a couple places, including in its justification for Obama’s proposal to establish an Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in Education, based on the Department of Defense’s ARPA model (and apparently hijacking their research as well. See below):
Click to access arpa-ed-background.pdf
I tried to locate the source but I’ve been sick and the best I could determine is that it was reported originally in this presentation at a conference,
Cohn, J., & Fletcher, J.D. (2010). What is a Pound of Training Worth? Frameworks and Practical Examples for Assessing Return on Investment in Training. Proceedings of the InterService/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Annual Conference. Arlington, VA: National Training and Simulation Association.
I could not find info about this research published in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. What I found were Defense Department documents regarding research on military training, not children in schools (and not the 80% reduction of time mentioned, but maybe others can find that), such as this Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) document at the Defense Technical Information Center:
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA533830
This is the most curious all, presented by Fletcher, the IDA author, at a 2011 Early Education and Technology for Children Conference:
Click to access JohnDexterFletcher_EETC_2011.pdf
His actual presentation is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8ss1a_SnRU
The focus is on reducing both time and costs, and characterizing computer assisted instruction as our best shot at “individualization” in education (Did they try this with the Seals???)
Talk about creepy, It’s quite literally a marriage between the military industrial complex and the education industrial complex.
Cosmic Tinkerer,
In regards to the “research” purporting to show that children learn more and learn faster with technology, it does not exist.
This claim is made in a statement put out by Jeb Bush and Bob Wise called “Digital Learning Now!”
I looked at the footnote and it refers to a U.S. Department of Education study that concludes there are many studies of the value of computer-based learning for adults, in business and in the military, but very few for children. It calls for more research before making policy decisions.
I’m just watching Fletcher’s YouTube video now
and I guess he’s referring to research on DoD schools and students, which is not what I took away from reading his written presentation alone: http://2011.eetcconference.org/wp-content/uploads/JohnDexterFletcher_EETC_2011.pdf
Sorry, I have a high fever.
Thanks for the info about “Digital Learning Now!” I couldn’t find any info on their website regarding a research base.
I didn’t get very far into the Fletcher video because I’m still feeling sick and am thus more intolerant than usual of know-it-alls. He lost me once he started extolling the virtues of drill for skill. As someone who has taught many online classes over the years, I can readily imagine what they are promoting for kids. People who have not taught a lot of courses online themselves cannot convince me that online classes are the most optimal learning environments for students, especially children. E-books alone are problematic. Since we went to e-books exclusively, I’ve heard numerous complaints about them from many students –most of whom prefer real books.
They can’t sell me on the virtues of online tutoring either, when the two sigma effect is due to the very kinds of human interactions and low student-teacher ratios that are typically lacking in online learning environments,
I’m guessing there must be a profit motive for those pushing this initiative, too.
Most interesting on this thread is the validation of one of the more contemporary reforms in public education – choice. You’re free to send your children to the school of your choice and likewise, the same for me. Up until a few years ago, choice was available only to families of wealth. With the cap being lifted on charters in most states, choice is finally becoming a reality for many more than in the past. That, I would contend, is a good thing.
I agree that choice is a good thing, but I would go beyond just a good thing.
Choice is essential if you want to create a system that allows teachers to construct schools in the ways that the teachers think best. As long as students are assigned to schools within a district by geographic location, the local school district will be obligated to ensure that the schools are relatively uniform in facilities and approach to education.
TRANSLATION: “Ignore the fact that in virtually any school district in the country, people are entitled to request admission to any of its schools, regardless of their street address.”
“You see, this way, I can continue to lambaste our public schools and get paid for my work as an obedient shill. It’s a sweet gig I have here and I don’t want to screw it up…”
I am aware that one may request permission to transfer from the schools. My youngest son did that for middle school. That does not create the flexibility needed to allow public schools to specialize in teaching approaches. It is only choice schools that can become Montessori schools or progressive schools or Waldorf schools.
I am unsure why you think I get paid to argue in favor if school choice. Do you have any evidence that this is the case? I can assure you that it is not.
How does baselessly impugning the motives of others move the discussion forward? It would be more productive to ask teaching economist a question.
We’ve been down this road already, TE. Neighborhood schools that are magnet schools or which have magnet programs within schools typically have a variety of curricular choices, including Montessori and progressive.
I certainly agree magnet schools and programs can do this.
In what sense are they neighborhood schools if they draw students from outside the neighborhood to the school, and other programs draw students from the neighborhood to schools outside the neighborhood? They seem like choice schools to me.
I have been arguing in favor of since I began posting here. My criticism applies to the kind of public schools and programs to be found in my district: all and only traditional geographically zoned schools. The only way the school district can maintain that system is by ensuring that the schools are as uniform as possible.
I kind of chuckle when the “choice”debate comes up. Here in Northern NY, there is no choice. We have a public school system and the closest public schools are 20 miles away. I think the “choice” argument is singularly an urban discussion. Don’t forget about those with no choice.
I think the communication revolution brought about by the internet will be a great help to rural students.
Many schools with magnet programs are just neighborhood schools with special programs and they automatically take all kids in their catchment area, but they accept students from other neighborhoods in the district, too.
Just because your district handed you a line about uniformity doesn’t mean that goes on everywhere –or even that it’s set in stone where you are. Unless your state has a law against districts setting such policies, it’s school boards that usually have the power to make those determinations.
It is the uniformity that I am, and have always, criticized on posts here. I like magnet schools precisely because of the ability for schools to specialize and I have argued against positions that would eliminate choice schools like the magnet programs you describe. I often end up criticizing some of the arguments about charter schools precisely because they are also arguments against magnet programs.
Co-locating magnet programs in traditional neighborhood schools would seem to face many of the same objections that co-locating charter schools in traditional schools face concerning use of shared space, division of students, etc. Do you think there are some of the same problems?
Magnet programs in schools are not co-locations. They are typically programs for some designated grades or for all grade levels and everyone enrolled in those grades is involved in the magnet program.
I am confused by your statement that “everyone enrolled in those grades is involved in the magnet program.” Do you mean all students in a local school’s catchment area (and presumably some additional students outside of the catchment area) are automatically enrolled in whatever magnet program is assiciated with the school or do you mean something else by “everyone”?
TE:
Do you think life would be easier if CT asked more questions as to the précises situation in your school district – and accepted your responses as accurate since he has no basis to assume otherwise?
Yes, TE. That is what I mean.
My only experience with magnet programs was as an elementary school student in one in the early 70s. The students in that program were drawn from all over the district to a local elementary school and we took all our classes together in a set of three classrooms in that school. That seems to me to be something close to co-locating a separate program in the local school.
Looking at, for example, the elementry school language immersion programs in Montgomery County, it appears to me that there must be much the same structure. Classes taught partly in Chinese must be exclusive to the students from the district who have won the lottery to enter the program.
TE, to clarify, yes, in regard to this, “all students in a local school’s catchment area (and presumably some additional students outside of the catchment area) are automatically enrolled in whatever magnet program is associated with the school.”
BTW, TE, schools can have more than one magnet program and they might have different criteria for enrollment, such as an open enrollment IB program and a Fine and Performing Arts program determined by performance/portfolio assessment. One high school in my area has both of those programs AND a selective enrollment co-located military academy.
In the early 70s, magnet programs were brand new and their primary purpose was to promote integration. This didn’t always occur though and what you described sounds like an example of that –bringing in kids from other areas but providing separate classes for those students and not integrating them with the neighborhood children at the school. That often occurred back then because many magnet programs required that everyone interested apply. In my experience, that policy was confusing to parents, who didn’t realize their kids attending neighborhood schools would be excluded from the program at their schools if they didn’t apply.
Magnets have evolved a lot over the decades and there are many different kinds of configurations available today. For example, in my area, neighborhood schools with World Languages magnet programs may designate certain grades or all grades in the school for that program. No one in the catchment area attending the school need apply to the program today, because schools typically include in the program all neighborhood students in attendance. Only students who live outside the catchment area are required to apply to be included. Classes are integrated. They do not have separate classes for populations from different areas.
Give me an example of this inner city school where teachers are constructing meaning. I don’t see the connection between geography and uniformity. Quite a leap there!
Do you think a parent would allow their street address to determine if their student attends a Waldorf school, a Montessori school, a progressive school, a Mandarin immersion school, a French immersion school, a fine arts immersion school, a Stem immersion school, etc.?
In my little school district the only way to attend a Montessori school or Waldorf school or progressive school is to pay private school tuition. Traditional public schools can not offer specialized education in different buildings because it will create an overwhelming desire for parents to place their students in schools outside of the catchment area.
“Choice”? What “choice” is that, Paul? Between a less than perfect neighborhood school where a child can still get a good education and where you and your family can become connected with the other families in your community OR an ersatz charter “school” where the untrained, stressed out and ineffective 24 year old “teachers” are there for 24 months while the “CEO” makes a million dollars—literally!—in 3 years and gets another $500,000 as a “Golden Parachute” if their “school” fails or if they’re ever fired— all paid for with taxpayer dollars.
However, I’m ecstatic to know that according to you, I now have the “choice” to send my child to Lakeside Academy, Sidwell Friends, Exeter or the Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago!
I was despondent prior to reading this, Paul, naively thinking that only those of a certain class and income level could go to these schools. My kid will be jumping for joy, knowing he now has the “choice” to go where “until a few years ago, choice was available only to families of wealth.”
Now—according to you, Paul—with the cap being lifted on charters in most states, any child can go anywhere, just like the isolated wealthy elite. Whoopee!
Oh wait…what’s that you’re saying? It’s not REALLY “choice” like it is for the wealthy elite?
But I was hoping that maybe you had an inside track to these “choices” that we “little people” just don’t know about? But no, you don’t?
Oh, I see. Okay, so you’re admitting, in effect, that this “choice” nonsense was just a ploy, an advertising slogan designed to fool people so that your benefactors can get what they want—control of our public schools and the dollars that go with them.
Now it all makes sense, Paul. Thanks for clearing all that up.
Wow Great Information! Now, can you make an outline for every grade! 🙂 will you consider running our school?!
There are some events here that are important, but not certain why we need to build on prior knowledge and determine who knows what from previous years. Many of the things taught are facts with no or little context, are exact dates important? What is missing are the ideas of the founding fathers that generate this revolution. Can’t we just read about these events without memorizing them?
Recently, my own community was going through real political changes and I began researching quotes on the internet from the founding fathers to protect our liberty at the expense of outside economic entities.
Current history makes the Revolution seem like so long ago. If it can be made real in children’s lives, then parallels can be made with “taxation without representation” and the continuing cost of purchasing learning programs that are questionable.
We must keep in mind that more than 90% of the population was literate at that time without Core Curriculums or even public schools, and that every colonist had a copy of Common Sense (not Common Core) by Thomas Paine. Sales records show this. The American Revolution should be a “living” learning experience where prior knowledge is not drawn from commercial programs over the previous 12 months. The research on the Core Curriculum indicates that children are being dumbed down without authentic literature but by text books. Fifth graders at the end of the 19th century were reading James Fenimore Cooper. As we espouse the American Revolution as core, why is there no civics available in these new programs Mr. Hirsch.
Joseph:
I am not sure why this is an either or issue.
Literacy in the 17th and 18th Century was driven by the reading of the Bible.
A great textbook is a wonderful resource. A lousy textbook is a waste of money. No textbook, per se, limits access to other books. Expensive textbooks need to be truly outstanding given funding levels.
Textbooks are what teachers use and outside material is created by the publishing companies and is not challenging. We no longer support libraries. As a teacher I brought in authentic books from the libraries and students worked together with them in groups, where facts and ideas were one. Having completed my doctoral work in literacy studies I began to realize how bad my catholic school education was, memorizing questions and answers and I never wished to write or read on my own. Your approach to learning reminds me of this banking model of learning. As soon as it’s over, it’s forgotten. How many adults today. who studied these events, can speak with authority about the environment in which they occurred or even identify each of the Bill of Rights?
I visit the schools today and I see the drivel that passes for textbooks along with the materials from publishers. I agree that the Bible was a great resource, but they also had hundreds of periodicals and even de Toqueville admired their engagement in political affairs.
Like today, the wealthy were able to hire tutors, but then the uneducated trained for a skill at an early age such as Ben Franklin. That opportunity is no longer with us. I have seen so many more engaging ways of learning that bring meaning, individually and cooperatively. Thank you for getting back to me. Unlike the on line schools of today, all learning and literacy is social.
Joseph,
I agree with you about the vacuousness of most textbooks, especially the ones covering history. That’s why I chose the charter high school that my kids attend. They do lots of reading of primary sources, and discuss the readings in Socratic seminars. The neighborhood public high school offers excellent AP courses, but I regard the Socratic-style classes as better learning environments when combined with worthwhile writing assignments.
The biggest problem other schools would have with the Socratic approach is that so many unmotivated kids refuse to do ANY homework. Not my statement – lots of teachers say this all the time on education blogs. One other point – good Core Knowledge schools – that’s almost all of them – don’t promote mere memorization of isolated facts. The facts are taught in appropriate context, as I’ve seen with my own kids.
Amazing since many schools do 2-3 periods of math and 2 of reading in the city. To me writing is the most important of subjects within the context of curriculum. Your charter school is unique if the administrators do not move in that direction. Socratic methods become the victim of these high stakes environments. Where is your school and are teachers and administrators judged on these scores? How are your school’s scores compared to the local public school?
Joseph:
I do not know whether testing will or will not change the way good teachers teach.
High stakes testing is not automatically a bad thing: It depends on the nature of the tests. I grew up in the UK and in England and Wales O-levels and A-levels played a significant role in defining the curriculum and determining whether and where you went to university. My O-levels (15/16 year olds) were all 2 hour exams in 8 subjects – no multiple choice tests. A-levels (17/18 year olds) were even tougher (6 hours for Math, 3 hours for Physics plus 2 hours to set up, run and write up an actual experiment, and 6 hours in Geography including interpreting physical features from Ordinance Survey Maps plus generating maps of countries. These were definitely high stakes. I did not have such great teachers, so in a real sense these exams helped me structure my own education.
As to a test changing a teacher’s approach, I simply cannot imagine that an effective teacher who can effectively use the Socratic method would adjust his or her teaching style because of a test. I doubt it very much.
It would not be the teacher’s choice.
Welcome to America.
My kids’ charter is located near Minneapolis. There is very little test-prep done, other than to familiarize kids with the format of a standardized, computer-based test of the type Minnesota requires for all public schools, district and charter.
Test-prep for a math test means having a solid math curriculum that aligns with what is tested. The alignment issue is precisely what’s the problem with reading comprehension tests. The most basic tenet of the Core Knowledge philosophy is that reading comprehension is NOT an all-purpose skill. Comprehension depends heavily upon the prior knowledge you bring to your reading. If you know a lot about, say, chemistry and economics, you’ll be better able to comprehend passages on chemistry and economics. Cognitive science has clearly validated this tenet. So does common sense. If you’re not an architect, how much are you likely to understand when you read a highly technical article in a magazine about architecture?
E.D. Hirsch has never, never advocated memorizing lists of facts, disconnected from context. How could he have? He was a professor of English and a literary theorist, who obviously would say a student needs to read the whole book to achieve the most understanding.
The bottom line, DR blog readers: before making judgments on Hirsch, actually read at least one of his books and understand what he’s saying. Set aside Alfie Kohn and what your ed. school professors said, and think for yourselves.
I’m a professor of history and I’m baffled by anyone who thinks knowing exact dates is unimportant. It makes understanding history much simpler than any alternative. Historical events are influenced by what came before, while clearly they are not influenced by events that came after. Therefore an understanding of chronology is essential. One can learn relative chronology for each event separately (the American Revolution came after the Glorious Revolution and before the French Revolution). But as complexity grows, these chronological relationships must all be relearned separately. Exact dates offer a very simple shorthand. We know that an event in 1776 came after every event before that date, and before every event after that date. We can then work out causation and influence from there. The bizarre allergy to learning something as simple as a date to go along with an event makes learning history far more difficult than it needs to be.
Alvin, I agree.
I support correct spelling and grammar and understanding chronology in history as well as correct dates.
*
Rodgers 12
That is the way it used to be here in Lake Wobegon. I am not sure that you or Mr. Hirsch have been in an urban school recently. I was one professor who actually taught in a classroom. Books from professors are nice in Lake Wobegon, but there is no evidence that Prof. Hirsch is in touch with real teachers and corrupt testing protocols. You will have to memorize facts for the future of on line testing. Virtual learning is not Socratic and the results are manufactured on a Bell curve. I would agree with you totally before the year 2000.
Joseph,
Again, read what Hirsch actually says and set aside preconceptions. You, he, I, and everyone else on this blog oppose the gross overuse of standardized tests. I give my own kids’ state-mandated tests only a cursory glance, because I know their day-to-day schoolwork is the true indicator of how they’re doing.
who cares what Hirsch says if it is not relevant. Nice that you have the luxury of controlling the exposure to testing. Come back to the monstrous activities taking place by administrators across the country for their own survival. You are so out of the loop.
Joseph,
You need to read what people actually write before flaring into righteous indignation. All of us here including Hirsch oppose the excesses of testing. I’m in the loop, well aware of what’s happening, and I disagree with it. I have no control over the standardized testing that my kids are exposed to. If you would bother to read what I actually wrote, I stated that my kids have to take all the required standardized testing in my state. Fortunately, it’s not way overdone like in other places.
This thread needs to end. So I’ll ask all the experts out there. How many successful people in business, education, industry, sports, technology, etc., made it because they did well on a friggin’ “High Stakes Test?” Seriously, enough blather, tests don’t mean jack, you know it, I know it. Time to talk about the weather.
Nobody “makes it” on the basis of a test result. For many, great test results can change the opportunity set to which they had access, especially if they come from poor families with few connections.
Elaborate Bernie. Like a good test score will improve upward mobility? Give it up.
Good test scores could get you into an elite university. That seems to have a large impact on student’s lives.
tuppercooks:
In those simple and simplistic terms, absolutely. In Europe exams (tests) were used to make sure that key civil service positions were filled by very smart students from relatively poor families. The same is true in the Royal Navy which was test driven and evolved as a meritocracy rather than the Army where rank was bought.
In the US, high SAT scores will get you into colleges that your GPA and charm on its own will not. For many top flight schools good SATs are necessary though not sufficient. You can moan and whine that they do not measure anything, but that is the reality.
Please note that I am not saying that all testing is legitimate. As I have said before, it depends on the purpose of the test and the design of the test.
If by High Stakes Tests you mean the current in-school standardized tests, you’re right.
But in the non-school world, there are many types of High Stakes Tests. The CPA exam is very difficult, and test-takers have to be well-prepared to pass its four sections; doing well means that you have a lot of knowledge about accounting that you can build on with experience. Same with Professional Engineers exams. Same with IT certification exams. It’s true, of course, that many professions don’t have such exams, and experience and on-the-job performance are the critical factors in career success.
So Rodgers, we need to test 3rd graders?
tuppercooks:
For me, the answer is “No”. But as I said the legitimacy of and usefulness of a particular test depends on its purpose and the design of the test.
So why do we test 3rd graders, and 4th graders and 5th graders who barely know anything. I’m in the trenches, are any of the experts? Be nice to see the your resume’s. Walk a year in my shoes….. And you evaluation depends on it.
tuppercooks:
I just said “no” to third grade testing. What more can I say?
Read my comments, and it’s clear that I agree with you.
Excellent points. Indeed I think part of Gates’ excessive enthusiasm for standardized tests is based on the fact that he knows that such tests essentially function as designed for numerous IT jobs that involve MS software. It would be interesting to hear from those who have actually achieved various MS certifications.
Have we left the school world? Thought that this was about education.
By high stakes tests do you mean SAT, SAT subject tests, GRE, AMC 19, AMC 12, Putnam? If so, I have to believe the leaders in the academy at least did very well on these high stakes exams.
TE:
I keep making the point about successful test results being necessary but not sufficient</b?. Any thoughts?
I agree, though I ought use the word helpful rather than necessary.
Does it really need to end without your authoritative response to these ideas?
The tests are being created by monsters in it for the buck.
“Necessary but not sufficient” does not scratch the veneer of corruption and fraud
by publishers.
Joseph:
I feel sorry for the students of teachers who allow their cynicism about high stakes testing to adversely effect the motivation of the students. One can be perhaps right in principle, but it is the students who pay a big price in terms of reduced options. I guess I see “Stand and Deliver” as an empowering movie, you undoubtedly see it differently.