Although Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush, the New York Times, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Exxon Mobil have done their best to create an air of inevitability about the Common Core (the train has left the station), parents and teachers continue to object to the imposition of these untested standards written mostly by non-educators.
In this article, which appeared in the Journal News in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York, Melissa Heckler and Nettie Webb–veteran educators– explain their objections to the Common Core.
They insist that what matters most in education is the interaction between teachers and students, not a scripted curriculum or higher standards.
They write:
Through the knowledge of subject content, teaching strategies, and brain research, teachers strive to reach and teach every child. The scripted modules undermine the essential teaching relationship by preventing the individualized exchange between teacher and student, the hallmark of active learning. Student interest should be a salient feature that helps develop and drive curriculum — something not possible with prescribed modules.
Good teachers embrace change but not change for the sake of change:
Veteran teachers recognize what we did yesterday is not necessarily good for today. Teachers embrace processes that produce meaningful, constructive change that moves education forward in our country. However, teachers recognize that Common Core is not research-based and there hasn’t been the opportunity to define and refine the standards in this chaotic collapsed time frame for implementation. Common Core is causing students to suffer. This is why teachers reject this change so vehemently. Stress has caused these reactions: students reporting they hate school, regressive behaviors like toileting mishaps, crying, increased aggression, sleeplessness and stomach upsets before and during the tests. This is what has occurred under Common Core. This is meaningless, destructive change.
Why do teachers resist the mandates of Common Core?
We suggest money spent on the development of these major unresearched and unfunded mandates to implement CCSS be used to alleviate the lack of resources — unequal staffing, support services, and restoration of school libraries, music and art classes, as well as enrichment programs in these schools. Research has shown that this is the way to help even the playing field for the districts in poverty.
Teachers are mind-molders. When they embrace, create and implement meaningful change with their students, they are helping every child reach his or her potential. Teachers embrace constructive, researched change that result in better, meaningful learning. Resistance to the Common Core standards should be understood in this context.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We can’t overlook resistance to common core as an active defense against the tyranny of a “free” market that has not really promoted freedom, but instead creates profit for the few by exploiting and restricting the social/educational and economic mobility of the many. The mythology of “choice”, “college ready” and “jobs of tomorrow” needs to be set aside to promote the very real and more immediate needs of poverty and social decay.
Well said! The framers and promoters of CC would have education more firmly in the suffocating grip of capitalism and its needs as a system of inherent inequality and exploitation. Upon that rotten foundation (or, around that rotten core), all sorts of myths are propagated to hide the deeply inhuman nature of the changes being steamrolled forward.
This.
The proof of the pudding is in the tasting… as they say.
Well, here’s some pudding to taste. It’s an official Common Core training video for Kinder teachers:
This creeped me out. How about you?
The clapping and response reminds me of dog obedience training, but perhaps I’m overstating it. Would NY Ed. Commissioner John King, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Arne Duncan be okay with their own kids being taught…. er excuse me… “trained this way?”
Creepy indeed, but not Common Core. That is an illustration of NYS lousy education policy. Truly disheartening.
These seal training techniques happen nationwide at many charter chains. When you can’t teach/inspire, you control. This is not limited to NY.
Bad education policy and strategy are definitely not limited to NYS. But it is state (and, as you point out, charter chain) policy, nothing to do with the standards employed. Charters have taught this way for years.
“… not common core…”?
Look again. It says “Common Core” with some aqua-colored logo near the lower right corner.
If what’s in the video is the same as the pre-Common Core pedagogy, then why did they have to switch to Common Core?
Jack,
Go to the standards and see if you see the requirement for this kind of deadening scripted teaching strategy. I’ll save you the trouble: you won’t find it.
Many other states have not found this necessary. And, as someone else pointed out, this is a strategy used in many charter schools much before CCSS.
A state like NY is reduced to this kind of scripting when it is running the good teachers out with punitive testing and privatization and replacing them with TFA and other inexperienced teachers who don’t know any better.
Both the children and the teacher look so bored.
I was waiting for her to start tossing goldfish in the air, so they could catch them in their mouths like the seals at Seaworld. Sad and joyless.
Here’s some MORE pudding to taste.
My favorite grade to teach is 3rd Grade.
An article BELOW shows actual 3rd Grade
Common Core Math questions—the ones
that the parents at the “community forums”
complained were driving their kids to cry
and hate school.
Until now, I could only speculate as
to what kind of questions the parents
complaining about were talking about.
Well, speculate no more:
http://www.southbronxschool.com/2013/12/all-e4es-evan-stone-cares-about-is.html
If I ever have to teach this, I’m going
to protest formally.
This is a follow-up to a post slamming
E4E and their New York honcho, Evan
Stone. In the prior post, SouthBronxTeacher
called out ex-TFA dilletante Evan for his
well-paid advocacy of Common Core:
http://www.southbronxschool.com/2013/12/evan-stone-of-educators-4-excellence.html
A parent read this first post and
immediately sent in some of Common
Core’s “Go Math” homework
that her child is being forced to do.
It’s totally inappropriate for 99% of
3rd Graders… the ones who aren’t
natural geniuses.
This parent is totally livid that Evan
is praising something that he has ZERO
first-hand knowledge of, and if Evan
had a 3rd Grade child of his own, he
would be equally outraged by this.
In truth, however, Evan’s $200,000
salary will allow him to keep his own
kids—if he and his fellow E4E leader
& significant other, Sidney Morris,
one day have them—in a high class
private school and thus, figurately as
far away from Common Core as
possible… just like John King, Bill
Gates, and countless other
corporate reformers have done.
Why would they do this to kids?
So said a man who was hated by the “authorities.” I have to think that he had given the Declaration of Independence a good reading and felt he had to rebel against the condition of the society in which he lived. He, of course, was a rebel.
“The university is the place where people begin seriously to question the conditions of their existence and raise the issue of whether they can be committed to the society they have been born into. This is part of growing understanding among many people in America that history has not ended, that a better society is possible, and that is worth dying for…” Mario Savio quoted in Seth Rosenfelds Subversives, pg. 219).
As an American institution of education, as members of the educational community that exists to uphold the American creed, perhaps we should consider whether it is the Mario Savio type that stands as the proper graduate of an American educational institution or whether it is the obedient worker who should be our model student. I would say, considering the Declaration and the Constitution, that it would be un-American to consider the latter a graduate with a proper education.
This is directly tied to the debate concerning the CCSS and, again, while I understand that there is reason to distrust the creators and pushers of the new standards, I ask that people consider about how what they call for, particularly at the secondary level, give teachers opportunity to teach student real rebel skills. And again, while rebel may have negative connotations within the context of our present American paradigm, it is that paradigm that many comments on this site say needs changing, a paradigm that circumscribes the many to being serfs working for the few who use their wealth to buy enough power to prevent most from getting a decent education and decent remuneration for the work they do.
Read “Common Core: 10 Colossal Errors” by Anthony Cody to gain insight into the technical issues.
Then Google around and see what experiences parents are having with their kids who live CCSS every day. Watch some pissed off NY parents on Youtube. Hear psychologists describe “Common Core Syndrome” in kids as you as 5.
Next stop, look into the notion that there is hidden left wing agenda in the standards.
Once you have a 100 or so hours into CCSS you will know why we teachers hate CCSS.
Melissa and Nettie have hit the nail right on its head. This is the reality the NY Times should be tooting. But even if the leadership who is driving the CCSS agenda (or should I say shoving it down our throats) should read this information, they would dismiss it as drivel. The reality tampers with their master plan. We wouldn’t want the truth to get in the way of their version of progress.
“But even if the leadership who is driving the CCSS agenda (or should I say shoving it down our throats) should read this information, they would dismiss it as drivel. ”
Perhaps we could return the initiative but from the opposite direction . . .
Sounds like a plan!
Great post! I wrote a piece just yesterday, reflecting on the Common Core through the lens of Howard Gardner’s insights, available here: http://wp.me/p2pjQs-60
Although I don’t agree with all of Gardener’s assessments, I am a true disciple of the seven (eight) intelligences. The main problem with the high stakes testing and CCSS is the emphasis on book smart. All other learning styles and intelligences have been thrown under the bus.
Teachers are mind-molders. When they embrace, create and implement meaningful change with their students, they are helping every child reach his or her potential. Teachers embrace constructive, researched change that result in better, meaningful learning. Resistance to the Common Core standards should be understood in this context.
To which I would add that as such, teachers cannot be scripted nor “trained” in any narrow sense, but rather need to be mentored, grown, encouraged and facilitated to become unique, caring, capable individuals and then appreciated for the distinct talents and abilities that they have developed.
“To which I would add that as such, teachers cannot be scripted nor “trained” in any narrow sense, but rather need to be mentored, grown, encouraged and facilitated to become unique, caring, capable individuals and then appreciated for the distinct talents and abilities that they have developed.” Molding, shaping, training of anyone is inhumane. But I must say that the CCSS have helped me argue against such as I push for a teacher education program that is about the intellectual process of determining what must be taught and how it should be taught. My colleagues do tell teachers what to teach and how using “research based” tools that are rarely questioned, questions rarely invited, those asked met with a phrase such as, “research says.” This research bullshit line was made incredibly powerful by the mandates of NCLB and produced a generation of teacher educators who really do believe that such things as a KWL and the eight sentence paragraph and the hero’s journey are good ways to teach because research says so. We should be about human growth and development and we should be growing and developing ourselves in ways that are worth sharing with others who can take advantage of being in the presence of people who, as Freire would have it, are incomplete, know they are incomplete, and always pushing themselves toward completion. The standards, and some on this site have criticized them as being “too abstract” are abstract because they do not quantify or qualify what it is that individuals might make of or do with what they learn. The standards only point to the kinds of understandings people need in order to think for themselves, put what they think into action, and to be able to understand the consequences of their actions so as to continuously learn from life what one needs to do to make life better.
Here are three CCSS standards. They are not, in and of themselves, reasonable goals of a decent curriculum? Explain, please. Again, quibble with what you will and for whatever reason, but I see students attaining these goal to be prepared for taking on the monsters who are destroying the American democracy.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.5 Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
Amongst those who are so adamantly opposed to the CCSS, is it opposition to the substance or something else? How many of the people so critical of these standards would, for instance, have students study the eight sentence paragraph or the five paragraph essay and believe that they are doing students a favor?
What should be the topic of conversation is what, standards or no standards, students should be learning to be able to participate in the decision making processes of their society effectively, as individuals able to make sense of what is going on who have the skills, knowledge, and disposition essential to playing this role. Argue to the proper means as you argue against what you sense to be the improper, always with the ultimate goals of good education serving as the basis for the arguments.
Consider how much time is spent on this site and elsewhere arguing against and arguing against what may be least important, who wrote, who supports, who is pushing. Resist by getting at the specifics and, as Obama continues to argue about the health care plan, one needs consider what it replaces and whether it is a replacement that helps or hurts people, makes their lives better or worse.
An example of a CCSS lesson as taught in an in service where we were given a nonfiction passage, 2 pages long. (I found the article boring). We had to read the article three times, locating different focal points each time based on the given standards. After the first read through I was more than done. I skimmed through once more to find the rest of the info, not caring if it was correct or not. I don’t call that education. It was even worse than the in service on direct instruction. (These in services were simultaneously conducted at various sites throughout the district to the ENTIRE staff body led by administrators from downtown.)
There is lousy nonfiction writing and there is fantastic nonfiction writing. John McPhee, who has written for the New Yorker, has written some very engaging nonfiction pieces. Some of his pieces are on topics I thought I had no interest in, but found his writing about the topic made me want to keep reading.
Chris – you are right. There is some great nonfiction out there, but they are not on the reading list.
lafered, thank you for your thoughtful comments. I will try to give you a thoughtful reply.
But first a word about your question. Imagine that a Common Culinary Standards organization had mandated that everyone was to eat rice and beans every evening. Then imagine that, when someone objected that there were many, many other things that one might have for dinner, the response was, “But what’s wrong with rice and beans?”
These matters are complex, so I am not going to tear into every part of all of these standards that you have listed. I just want to give you a sense of the unexamined assumptions that they make in almost every phrase. I will look at ONE of the three standards that you listed a few days ago on this blog.
RL.11-12.5 Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
First, this standard [sic] flies in the face of a century of work in hermeneutics, the theory of interpretation, in its assumption (big assumption!) that an author’s choices are a proper object of study. This is an extremely controversial position, but it is taken for granted in the standard [sic]. E. D. Hirsch stood almost alone, throughout much of the past century, in his heroic defense of the author’s choices, or intentions, as proper objects of scholarly attention. During that time, many scholars and critics, perhaps most professional literary people, contended that the author’s choices, or intentions, were irrelevant or irrecoverable or both and that we must attend, instead,
• to the text itself (Ransom, Tate, Empson, Brooks, Warren, Wimsatt, Beardsley, and others of the New Critical school; Propp, Jakobson, Stith Thompson, Levi-Strauss, and other Formalists and Structuralists);
• to the reader’s construction of the text (in their various ways, Barthes, Fish, Rosenblatt, Derrida, and other Reader Response, Postmodernist, and Deconstructionist critics); or
• to historically determined responses to the text and differences in these over time (Heidegger, Gademer, Foucault, Greenblatt, and other Historicist and new Historicist critics).
It’s fairly typical of these standards [sic] to be worded in complete obliviousness of the fact that people have thought pretty seriously about literature over the past hundred and fifty years and have, in the course of all that, learned a few things and in complete obliviousness of the fact that there are alternative approaches to literary study that take as fundamental the notion that the author’s choices are not a legitimate subject of study. This is a very controversial notion, a notion that was CENTRAL to the raging debates over approaches to literary interpretation (over hermeneutics) in the twentieth century. Who decided that David Coleman and Susan Pimentel had the right to overrule every scholar, every teacher, every curriculum designer, every curriculum coordinator, who belongs to one of those other camps? Are we to have a central committee deciding what IDEAS are acceptable?
Second, why, at this level (Grades 11 and 12) are students being asked to concentrate, in particular, on the structures of specific parts of a text? Would it make more sense, instead, to address overall structure at these grade levels, building upon analyses of structures of specific parts of texts done at earlier grade levels? Was this possibility considered? Certainly, there is much that we know about structure in texts that is quite important to the interpretation of works of all kinds, literary and otherwise, that is never addressed anywhere in the standards [sic]. Unfortunately, the standards [sic] do not build in students, over time, familiarity with many extremely common structural patterns–episodic structure, cyclical structure, choral structure, the five-act play, the monomyth, the three unities–one could make a long list.
Shouldn’t this be the time, at the end of the K-12 program, to sum up what has been learned in earlier grades about specific literary structures, to draw some broad conclusions about common overall literary structures and their determinative influence on the making of literary works? Do we want to make sure, before they graduate, that students understand the basics of conventional plot structure? Shouldn’t we review that because it is so fundamental and because this is our last chance to do so before we ship kids off into their post-secondary colleges and careers? Shouldn’t a school system or a planner of an instructional sequence be free to decide that such an approach would be more preferable in grades 11 and 12? Did someone make Coleman and Pimentel the “deciders” (to use George Bush’s unfortunate phrase) for everyone else in this regard? Were such questions considered by the authors of these standards [sic]? I doubt it.
Third, aren’t the relations of specific structure to a) overall structure, b) meaning, and c) aesthetic impact quite distinct topics of study? Why are they lumped together in this standard [sic]? Don’t these require quite a lot of unpacking? This is a common fault of the standards [sic]. They often combine apples and oranges and shoelaces and are ALL OVER THE PLACE with regard to their level of generality or specificity,. Often, there seems to be no rationale for why a given standard is extremely specific or extremely broad or, like this one, both, in parts.
Fourth, does it make sense, at all, to work in this direction, from general notions about literary works as expressed in a standard [sic] like this, rather than from specific case studies? Wouldn’t real standards be encouraging empirical, inductive thinking, beginning with specific works, with study of patterns of relationship in those works, and then and only then asking students to make generalizations or exposing them to generalizations made by knowledgeable scholars who have thought systematically about those patterns of relationship? Wouldn’t that be a LOT more effective pedagogically? Isn’t that what the Publishers’ Criteria say? Isn’t the overall approach taken in these standards [sic] antithetical to the very “close reading” that they purport to encourage? Isn’t it true that by handing teachers and students nationwide a bunch of implicit generalizations like those in this standard [sic], the makers of the standards [sic] are encouraging uncritical acceptance of those generalizations about texts rather than an empirical approach that proceeds inductively, based on real analysis, to build understanding?
Fifth, what is meant by this word structure in the standard [sic]? The examples given (where the piece begins, comedic or tragic resolution) suggest that students are to analyze narrative structures, but there are many other kinds of structures in literary works. Are teachers to ignore those and concentrate on narrative structures? Was that among the “choices” that the authors of the standards made for the rest of us? What about rhetorical structures? metrical structures? logical structures? imitative or derivative structures based on forms in other media (e.g., John Dos Passos’s “Newsreels”)? Are teachers to ignore those? Is it unimportant for 11th- and 12th-grade students to learn about the reductio (Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan or Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King); the thesis, antithesis, synthesis structure, or dialectic (Rebecca Goldstein’s Mazel); choral structure (The Book of Job, Antigone); metrical structures like formulaic oral composition (the Sundiata, the Iliad) or terza rima? The standards [sic] are shot through with such glaring lacunae. One asks oneself, reading them, why are students studying this, in particular, and not that? Why at this grade level? Why is this and this and this and this left out?
One could do the same for most of the other CCSS ELA standards [sic].
And, did anyone involved in drafting these standards stop to think for one moment about the fact that they are ALL descriptions of abstract formal analysis skills and that there is a LOT more to instruction in literature than that? See my notes, above, on the dire consequences for the English language arts of having curricula designed SOLELY to have it instantiate standards [sic] so conceived.
And here’s another general point: Now, why weren’t these standards [sic] subjected to nationwide critique of the kind that I have given here, for this ONE standard? And why should we not be continuously subjecting proposals for standards, frameworks, pedagogical approaches, etc., to revision and critique? Why shouldn’t there be MANY voices as opposed to this one, the voice of a couple people chosen by Achieve to dictate to the rest of the country?
Now, I happen to be one of those literature teachers who thinks that the reports of the “death of the author” (the phrase comes from Roland Barthes) were exaggerated, but it is not for me (or Coleman or anyone else) to make that decision FOR EVERY OTHER LITERATURE TEACHER IN THE COUNTRY. After all, that notion was fundamental to many schools of literary criticism developed in the twentieth century, and the authors of the standards betray, in their reference to analyzing the author’s choices, what has to be either complete ignorance of that or complete disregard of the opinions of thousands and thousands of scholars.
But who are we mere mortals to argue? After all, the masters at Achieve have appointed David Coleman and Susan Pimentel, by divine right, absolute monarchs of English language arts instruction in the United States, and surely, as Hobbes argued in the Leviathan, monarchy is best, surely, in his words, we all need to live under “a common power to keep [us] all in awe,” and as Queen Elizabeth I wrote in 1601, “The Royal Prerogative [is] not to be canvassed, nor disputed, nor examined, and [does] not even admit of any limitation.”
I am reading through your comments and want to study them a bit more before responding fully. I do understand that there is always going to be disagreement over what it means to read “well” and what reading “well” has to do with author or reader and how much a reader should read an author to get meaning from text. That said, at some point on who will teach must teach and something must guide that teaching that is based upon what one assumes teaching in a given discipline should teach. This, of course, leads to even more questions regarding how one comes to know of legitimate goals for instruction in a discipline (or outside one or beyond), and how to do what is most effective in moving students toward those goals. Honing the world down to be able to derive from it a manifest for the development of proper goals that contribute to a proper education is something the complexities of world and life in the world is rather impossible and anyone who thinks that he or she has found the proper answer to proper education is foolish, at best. On the other hand, there are many approaches to education that are truly foolish and highly improper IF one considers the hard to evade truth that it is the individual who ultimately makes whatever sense of the world, the universe that he or she is going to make and the best thing a good educational program can do is help students to acquire certain skills, knowledge, and, this last perhaps the most important, dispositions that allow for one to engage effectively in the process of decision making. All theory aside regarding the proper reading of literature or anything else in the world that needs to be read and read well, it does seem to me that literature and every other form of communication must be read for understanding and that it is one goal of a sensible language arts curriculum to help students develop the ability to understand “what is there” as well as “what is meant” to understand how to make the decision as to “what to do with it.” If I read the standards that have been published for what they mean in regard to activities they sponsor, I find these standards to be less restrictive than other sets of standards I have read. That said, why standards at all? Well, because without the is likely to be, has been for quite a while, curriculum that deprives students of instruction that leads to growth in the kind of thinking abilities that allow them, as individuals, to make sense of things for themselves. Too much teaching has been about controlling minds, filling heads with subject matter with very faint attention to growing the thinking abilities that allow one to really understand what the subject matter is, what it means, and how one should make good use of it.
I too have problems with the Colemans and the Pimentels and the Broads and the Gates, but, if I look at the standards and consider what can be done with them, what can be legitimized under them, I find them to be a guide to teaching things that will allow students to do better than the current “public” does at engaging in a sensible sense making process.
More later.
We have to realize that the existence of CCSS make these things – the structured lessons, the testing, all this – easier to implement.
But even without CCSS, they would still be there – the corporate and data-driven school.
CCSS is just one of the Hydra’s heads.
We have to be careful not to make CCSS the scapegoat and forget the other stuff.
Peter, in a way we have ourselves to blame. We went along with changes we didn’t like, tests which whose passing rate moved up as the kids improved making mastery an illusive goal, and yet we put up with the nonsense.
Then CCSS came along and the result was an exponential increase of the angst we were already experiencing. It was the last straw, it hit our last nerve, it literally pushed us over the edge.
When administrators, teachers, and parents join together in protest – you can hear the cry – “I’ve had enough, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
Don’t blame me, or the tens of thousands of other teachers (probably including yourself, Ellen!) who have been shouting from the wilderness for YEARS that all of this hurts kids. Just because no one is listening to us doesn’t me we haven’t been talking.
True – 1803 – it’s not like we didn’t complain, but many of us were way too complacent. I know we worked around the edges to make it our own, but we still were caught in its web. And, in Buffalo, lockstep started over five years ago with the new reading program which was supposed to improve reading levels (and didn’t). Nazi like tactics were used to keep us in line with groups of 5 administrators randomly descending on unlucky teachers throughout the district dissecting their every move. The after effects of this Gestapo measure, still can be felt in the schools, even though this practice has ended (to be replaced with APPR). The after effects of totalitarian are definitely stifling to a “free” education system.
lafered- at what age are those literacy standards expected to be mastered? The simple fact is not every person is going to achieve that level of skill in literary analysis-no matter how much they are drilled. I know adults-some with college degrees-who believe every tabloid headline they read at the check-out counter is true. They say “conversate” instead of converse. They read a directive that is deliberately vague and don’t recognize it as such or question the writer of her intent- I have seen five different people interpret a direction-not a poem-in five different ways.They came through the same school system I did. The higher level thinking skills that the CCSS say must be attainable by every student will NOT be attained by every student.
“…no matter how much they are drilled.”
In fact, the drilling is part of the problem. People don’t learn through being drilled. They learn through relevant experience. If you want kids to grow up to be good readers, give them good material to read and have rich discussions (with plenty of room for their own observations and understandings) about the material. If you want them to grow up to understand math, help them see how math is a way of understanding their world and how it’s relevant to their lives. Short clips of longer works or worksheet drills are boring for pretty much everyone and that’s only going to turn kids off to reading and math, which, in turn, is going to hinder skill development.
That any graduate of an American high school still believes that the material in the tabloids reflects reality tells one of failure, of a system that fails to prepare people for dealing with the responsibilities that come with citizenship in a democracy. If there is not way to deal with the problem of uneducated graduates, then we probably need to rethink not only the whole school system but the possibility of a democratic state.
You could same the same thing about people who believe the world is 5000 years old and one day there was nothing and seven days later there was the Garden of Eden. There are many such people in Congress crafting our laws.
The people who these recent notes are depicting, the religious, the tabloid readers, those in congress who believe that the generation of electricity by wind will deprive us of the summer breeze, those who vote these people into office, most are graduates of our schools so some kind of reform seems necessary, unless one can still think that the schools are just fine, no teachers in classrooms who do and believe in the vary things that are being righteously criticized here. Perhaps it is time to honestly review the situation, make sure that the teachers who teach in our schools are ALL able and ready to do what is necessary to grow human intelligence and, of course, be willing and capable of arguing for what is good for intellectual growth and repelling all that can interfere with doing that kind of good. Some teachers are excellent, some are even better. But it is these teachers who suffer greatly when others do not back them when they do what is right for students but wrong to the fools who wish to make sure that ignorance prevails so they can insure that future generations will believe in the kind of crap they promote.
Margi, even worse, they believe man and dinosaurs co existed (and some of those people are on textbook committees). Our social studies textbooks are riddled with misleading narratives and sometimes downright lies. Revisionist American and World History. No wonder we are in the mess.
“Perhaps it is time to honestly review the situation…”
“If there is not way to deal with the problem of uneducated graduates, then we probably need to rethink not only the whole school system but the possibility of a democratic state.”
An honest review of the “Situation”, or to connect the dots between
the “School System” and the “Democratic State” should or
could, bare the “Emperor” for all to see.
The Emperor established the school system as well as the military.
A reliable soldier of the State exists to serve the State, PERIOD.
That is, and has always been, the nature of enlistment.
Conditioning, or order, has ALWAYS been the objective or intent.
We have more “Educated Graduates” today, than ever before,
along with income concentration of historical significance.
If the “Proof is in the Pudding”, is our “Condition” the result of
“Conditioning”, or is our “Condition” a random, by chance, event?
Random doesn’t pick favorites AFAIK…
Why don’t we all, just Surrender to Mediocrity we created, accept it, and encourage MORE “Big Government” to be involved in our personal lives, and keep on paying school taxes, for mediocre results.
THIS is what people seem to want.
Are we bystanders to child abuse?
What is causing happy healthy children, bubbling with sparkling laughter and glowing with vibrance and inborn talents of creative imaginative play, to become sullen, withdrawn, and moody? What is causing these once happy well adjusted children to become anxious, and fearful: Fearful of making mistakes, fearful of displeasing teachers or parents. What is causing their suffering….mental and physical burn out, exhaustion, sleep problems, stomach aches and somatic disorders., learning disabilities, and psychiatric disorders on such a grand scale?
It is called “institutional child abuse”. It has become systemic, epidemic, and a modern plague of Medieval proportions. It is the gathering force of a mental health tsunami that will be the most destructive force in American History. It will be more destructive to American society than any war or natural disaster on record. Neither our health care system nor our prison systems will be able to contain it’s devastation. It will invade every group, family, business, and government. In fact, it already has….and we are the silent bystanders, looking the other way, and forgiving it.
This is the kind of forgiveness that comes from ignorance and denial …….it is the kind of forgiveness that allows the cycle of abuse to continue….it is this kind of forgiveness that causes us to be submissive and obedient to an invisible voice of authority……a way to console ourselves for being “good little boys and girls”…….we are trusting that invisible voice of authority, while our children are being lead ever so gently into this violation of their spirit…….this collective institutional rape of our children’s spirit’….while we remain silent and obedient and forgiving.
What is the sinister exploitative force that is driving this system of abuse to our children……and why are we so helpless to make it stop?
Where is the anger? Where is the anger that is needed to drive the impostors out?
Where is the anger that is needed to identify the perpetrators who are creating the punishments?
Have we become so submissive that we cannot feel the anger when we see our own children being abused? Do we not recognize abuse because it is being done behind closed doors? Do we not recognize these signs in our children that are telling us they are suffering? Do we think cruelty and permanent damage to children is OK? ? Have the changes been so gradual we don’t notice them? Can we not ask ourselves, “What caused those changes in our children”? Is it our fault? Have we participated in their abuse by allowing the schools to bully us into using the same punitive methods? Do we blame ourselves, do we remain ignorant and stay in denial because we are ashamed and think we did something wrong? Is that safer, less threatening to “us”? Have our emotions become so repressed that we sit in silence while our children are tormented daily in ways that will erode their greatest gifts and best tools for their future? Do we remain silent because we were also conditioned as children to be obedient to this same invisible voice of authority. Are we now the robots our children will become?
We can observe our children’s physical environment, and we can see when it is not healthy. It is much harder to observe our children’s “psychological” environment. That can often be masked by the physical environment, and it can also be masked by deception. It can look good on the outside, while being destructive on the inside.
That is the deception and ambivalence that tells us we cannot trust the schools.
The schools are telling us publicly they are doing what is best for our children, but internally they are doing the opposite. They are abusing our children.
Our children are not in good hands. The driving force behind this epidemic is sinister. It is the frightening portent of bullies by another name called “child predators”. This deviant behavior is caused by immature leaders who intentionally inflict pain on others to maintain their alpha male status. The most vulnerable victims of these perpetrators are children, since teachers are also used to participate in the abuse. The invisible voice of abusive authority has caused parents to be drawn into this systemic abuse of their own children by becoming obsessed with performance ratings and hours of mind numbing punitive homework.
Here are vocabulary words that will help parents recognize dysfunctional dynamics in schools, and punitive methods used by child predators. This is your homework:
Grooming: The school administrator requires absolute control. Even if it appears that others share responsibility for decision making, that is usually influenced by the administrator’s charisma, and skills of manipulation, coercion, and gaslighting. Parents, children, and teachers are gradually “groomed” to develop a relationship of trust, and to think the administrator knows what is best for the children’s learning and development. The parents are conditioned to ignore their own feelings and to focus on pleasing the invisible voice of authority. The administrators use data and statistics to deceive the parents into thinking they know what is best for the children, and to think they are giving them what they need and are helping them. The parents become submissive to the school’s authority, and encourage their children to become obedient and submissive, never questioning or challenging that authority. The children work hard to please their parents and teachers, and to repress their feelings of victimization. The children learn to be submissive to the invisible voice of abusive authority just as their parents. For young children, this becomes “normal”. Schools have come under the leadership of people whose mental health is in question. They are child abusers. They get pleasure from hurting children. These perpetrators need to be exposed and stopped. Get Angry!
Here are vocabulary words to educate yourself about school policy makers dysfunction:
Obsession: Compulsive preoccupation with performance ratings and data.
Gelotophobic: School policy makers and administrators who fear laughter. They are bullies and workaholics who were shamed as children. They create a school culture that is emotionless, stern, and punishing, without joyful learning, spontaneity, humor, and creativity. They disguise cruelty with a name such as rigor. They pretend to know what is best for children, while actually punishing children for their own dysfunctions.
Deviant: Behavior that is different from normal or morally correct. School policy makers who get satisfaction from punishing children have deviant behavior.
Dysfunctional System: A school or educational system that punishes children.
Bully: A “disturbed” adult who bullies a child can be called a “child predator”.
What can parents do when they know their children are being abused? Do they remain silent bystanders, or do they take action?
Your comments very nicely identify the abusive environments that have evolved in schools to accommodate the requirements of the corporate reform movement. It is a tragedy and a sad commentary on how we treat (or mistreat) our children in the name of compliance and federal, state and / or local mandates. It is too often avoided or evaded, yet remains an essential element that must receive greater attention.
“What can parents do when they know their children are being abused? Do they remain silent bystanders, or do they take action?”
Your question need be asked not only of parents, but teachers, administrators, politicians and those pushing for inappropriate and abusive environments. And if we don’t speak up, act, or complain, aside from the risk of losing our jobs, what have we become?
Thank you for sharing your insight and outrage on this blog.
Bernie, I don’t feel we have reached the dystopia you described, but we are easily on our way. Orville’s SF novels weren’t as scary as the world you described.
I have hope. I think the outrage amongst parents is growing. I think the teachers and administrators are trying their best to create a nurturing environment within the chaos, at least as much as they can. The pendulum will swing the other way, eventually. We just want it to turn around sooner rather than later.
Bernie, with your permission, may I read this at our next BOE meeting? I will be happy to cite you as its author.
I wonder what would happen if we all reported to our local police station and turned ourselves in as child abusers. I wonder if the media would pay attention?
“We suggest money spent on the development of these major unresearched and unfunded mandates to implement CCSS be used to alleviate the lack of resources — unequal staffing, support services, and restoration of school libraries, music and art classes, as well as enrichment programs in these schools. Research has shown that this is the way to help even the playing field for the districts in poverty.” I have no qualms with spending money in for the things listed here. But what is to be done with these resources, to what effect will they be used, for what outcomes? The standards, if treated properly, should cost little to implement if the people who are responsible for education are prepared to educate. Yes, these standards really ask nothing much of excellent teachers who have probably been trying for the whole of their careers to move the schools to accept truly meaningful goals that come not from research, but from deep thought and sound reasoning regarding what it is that human beings need from an education to live decent lives as human beings. You might want to tell me that these goals are not derived from research, and I guess you would be right. The principles of the Declaration and the Constitution are not research based, but they make sense to most sensible people who possess even a dollop of humanity. Research itself, if it wished to preserve its dignity, would ask that the many using its name refrain until they knew how to use it as a tool to determine best practice. Best practice, of course, is only best if it is good enough to be best, necessitating work to give best a proper and meaningful definition.
Libraries, understood, but only if they have good materials in them and are used to produce meaningful outcomes. Staff development, too, is a hoax as it is currently manifest in the school system, most often coming in the form of an inservice program that is intended to “shove down teachers’ throats” some well researched new method that proves itself to be bullshit in such a little while as to cause need for another research inservice intended to help teachers find the cure for the damage done by the last research based inservice program.
As for Margie, this notion that it is kind to have different expectations for different people seems humane, and it is when the proper effort is put into insuring that ALL are capable of doing what they need to do to be able to live decent lives. The idea that drill is even an option reflects a way of thinking about education that is old enough to stink to high heaven. Anyone can learn, must learn, for example, to understand point of view, no matter what their life goals are, that is, if they are going to have a good enough understanding of what is real to make sensible choices. Since this is indeed a most basic skill, to find ways to argue that proper education for some can negate study of point of view and its effects on thought and decision making is not only absurd, but leads to a kind of cruelty that is so harmful as to make what is called education something this student should avoid at all costs. Someone is making the decision for him or her regarding ability to think as free humans have to think if they are to maintain their freedom.
I am really sick of what has resulted from a stupid notion of compassion, compassion that serves to solidify the positions of the weak and the strong in the society by relegating a good many to a category used to excuse education for them that has nothing to do with real empowerment. This horrendous way of thinking is exactly what leads to students of color and those from low SES families being mistreated, being treated inhumanely, in the schools. And, truth be told, many who have a say in how schools are run like it exactly this way, the strong helping the weak but enjoying too much being strong against the weakness of the other. What a horrible way to boost ego and at what an expense to those who simply “cannot”! Back to Freire again, this is exactly what he calls “false charity,” charity that serves the “giver” by keeping him or her in the position of giver while keeping the other in the position of taker. It might feel good, but the toll on humans and humanity is terrible.
Differentiation is a positive when the differences are something more than convenient labels that give “partitioners” a sense of what treatment, taken from a book of research based treatments, should be given to all individuals of a type, a stereotype that prevents the practitioner from engaging the other with humanity to understand the particulars of the reality the other person is experiencing. Speak of standardization, consider all those exercises taken from books and websites that offer up the latest treatments for ailing students. Wow! We did something right and we know it is right because Ravitch or Lafer or someone else says it is and they know their research!
It is time to redefine the nature of the work, to think about humanity as humanity is understood in those documents that argue for the equality of all, not the sameness, but equality of all, that argue that it is having opinion that makes human beings human and is is the humane government that allows each the opportunity to learn what is necessary for developing, thinking through to respectable opinions that become a part of the societal debate by which people in a democracy make decisions that really are FOR the people.
I think our focus on what is actually possible, even with the standards in place, would take us a long way to eliminating much that holds us back from doing the work necessary to create a more perfect union.
Lafered-did you read what I said? The people I am talking about came through the same school system,had the same standards and the same curriculum as me. Some of my classmates went on to be doctors and scientists. I am a teacher. Some dropped out of high school. Some are dead. My point is that simply deciding that every student is capable of achieving a high level of skill in every academic subject is unrealistic. That doesn’t mean they don’t have other skills and can’t live a decent life. I can’ t sing a tune, sew a stich, or change a flat tire-but I found a career path that was right for my strengths. Any set of standards that sets “proficient” at a skill level that is unreachable for a significant number of students is what is inhumane. Expecting a kid with an IQ of 80 to master trigonometry and to attain R1.11-12.6 is inhumane. Depriving a budding painter of art classes and a future musician of orchestra so there is enough $ for test prep is inhumane.
CCSS does not have to be scripted.
The core goals are good ones, but they are incomplete compared to NY state’s much more comprehensively designed standards from just a few years ago.
Also, CCSS demands that we gather more things to be learned in a shorter amount of time.
Finally, some of the standards are just NOT developementally appropriate for the ages they are given to. The CCSS also ignores children with severe IEPs and ELLs.
Worst of all, no matter how you feel about CCSS (because standards and curriculum have always been in flux, always been contrverted), CCSS is now tied to APPR and your employability. This is absolutely NOT acceptable on ANY level whatsoever.
Foolish is as foolish does.
And just look what the bigger teachers’ unions have done about this. They are not the answer; they are part of the problem’s cause . . . . .
I disagree that the goals are good ones. The goals, particularly at lower grade levels, are ridiculous and do not fit what we know about how children’s brains develop. We are pushing children into adulthood at lower and lower levels, and I blame, as least in part, the CCSS>
LP, I did mention what you wrote.
Yikes! Read too fast! Sorry. Still disagree that the goals are good, but agree with you on developmentally inappropriate.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Sad:
That was pitiful, how embarrassing.
And this video should get a grade of … ? 😦
Gadfly says “Status quo has got to go”. I sure hope he’s not talking about the real Status Quo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEV55fCkW80
Making music videos in the mental asylum. Looks like fun therapy for the patients. 🙂
White man can’t sing, dance nor has he ever taught…an edufraud in one package.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on my profession Mike. I have a few questions and thoughts on stereotypes about teachers for you to ponder this holiday season.
We are VERY well paid? Really? My 2 teacher household lives hand to mouth. My kids have never been on a real vacation. And we drive clunkers.
We are ungrateful? Do you overtly show your employer gratitude for paying you to do your job? Should we hand write thank you notes to each tax payer in our districts thanking them for paying us 1/2 – 2/3 of what private sector professionals earn with the same level of education?
We use our access to the child’s pliable mind to push our own political views? No, but fortunately for people like you Mike, we do teach open-mindedness, tolerance, and respect for others.
We “generally” prey on our “charges” sexually? Sorry friend, but with between 1 and 5% of humans being afflicted with pedophilia, this accusation is unequivocally false.
Some may not make special “contributions”, but many do have a profoundly positive impact on their students.
I’m sorry that someone, and not likely your teachers, taught you that the faults of a few members of a group define that group. They did you a grave disservice, for it has resulted in YOUR reality being “quite different” from actual reality.
Happy holidays Mikefromlongisland631,
JonBoy
Mr. Mike really deserves no response but JonBoy’s was right-on if there had to be one.
I am a parent, not K-12 teacher. When I hear Common Core encourages the increase of students reading of non fiction, I regard this as improvement. When I read that Common Core will further intensify pressure on students to perform on the high stakes tests that No Child Left Behind rttt mandate, I perceive this will make more students think they are stupid and cannot succeed in school. I saw this happen with a child of mine and fellow classmates. If you hate K,12 teachers Mike, ignore them and talk to parents about high stakes testing. Yes, there are some rotten teachers that unions have protected, but high stakes testing isn’t effective at identifying them. The hard working smart teachers in the building resent them as much as the parents. It seems to be pretty easy to fill in correct answers after students have lefy the room. The subset of dishonest teachers can inflate the scores making the bubble tests ineffective at identifyng the bad teachers.
Left the room, not lefy the room
Mike, in order to make decent money I had to work all day at my job, then tutor children for home instruction after school hours. I left the house at 7:00 AM and got home between 7:00 PM and 9:00 PM And I couldn’t do this until after my kids were old enough to take care of themselves. That’s why I’m still paying off my credit card debt.
Two of my daughters are professionals, both working in the city. One, taking into consideration her work experience, is making over $10,000 more a year than if she had stayed in teaching. My oldest is 35 and is close to making six figures – she’s way beyond what a Buffalo teacher will ever see. I had more education than both of them.
Now tell me again I was overpaid.
My experiences as a parent and grandparent are long and varied with the local school district and I have years of doing this. One of my grandchildren has high functioning Autism and my son (single father) and I have battled like two pit bulls trying to get the things the IDEA Law sys he is entitled to. Common Core is a real problem for all school children but especially Special Needs kids. We do not need a socialist style of teaching in our schools, regimented classes, unified tests, all this smacks just too much of what the Communist countries do in their schools and children are treated as commodities. Common Core is being used to create a worker bee for the wealthy and if you don’t believe it, go and read what the people behind Common Core have to say about it. Rich people who have never been poor have no use for the average person except as a tool.
Why we despise the Common Core is the fact that it is developmentally inappropriate for many kids.
Common core standards imply that kids should be able to master certain skills in that year, because it spirals into the next year. God forbid kids don’t reach mastery, because teachers will pay the price by being ineffective and kids, well, they’ll just have to be retained another year or two. It also implies that all kids progress to a certain benchmark at a certain time. If so, why are we putting kids into grade levels by age. Why not put them into grade level by ability to give them an equitable start. Why start kindergartners if they’re not ready by 5 years old and set them off to fail from the get go. So what the creator of Common core implies is that all kids are created equally and thinks he’s a genius for making that assumption.
We learned that hares and tortoises can’t be in the same contest, because of different abilities unless the hare gets distracted. To make the race fair, the finished line has to be achievable for the players. We could give the tortoise a head start or we could create more than one finishline to accommodate participants with different timed speed. But here’s the catch. The paths to the finishline may be different too.
Common core is a bad prescription. It only comes in one dose for all with a lot of side effects. To make matters worse, it is made by only one manufacturer that don’t test their products.
The title of this post should be, “Why New York teachers don’t like the New York Common Core, the worst implementation in the country.”
Funny. Right after posting this comment, I saw this from a NYS superintendent: http://feedly.com/k/19FqJb2
Bill, NY is a little taste of what is to come. When these tests roll out nationwide, and when people get a load (a @&@%#@#* load) of the terrible curricula being spawned by the CCSS in ELA, the villagers are going to grab their pitchforks and shovels and track the deform monster to its lair.
No one who has a clue about teaching would be crazy enough to think that a single set of invariant “standards” is appropriate. A few reasons why:
a. The standards on which the new tests and evaluation schemes are based are badly conceived. The CCSS in ELA, in particular, seem to have been written by amateurs with no knowledge of the sciences of language acquisition and little familiarity with best practices in the various domains that the standards cover.
b. Having national standards creates economies of scale that educational materials monopolists can exploit, enabling them to crowd out/keep out smaller competitors.
c. Kids differ. Standards do not.
d. Standards are treated by publishers AS the curriculum and imply particular pedagogical approaches, and so they result in DRAMATIC distortions of curricula and pedagogy.
e. Innovation in educational approaches comes about from the implementation of competing ideas; creating one set of standards puts important innovation on hold.
f. Ten years of doing this stuff under NCLB hasn’t worked. The new math standards are not appreciably different from the preceding state standards, and the new math tests are not appreciably different from the preceding state high-stakes math tests. It’s idiotic to do more of what hasn’t worked and to expect real change/improvement.
g. In a free society, no unelected group (Achieve) has the right to overrule every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer with regard to what the outcomes of educational processes should be.
h. High-stakes tests lead to teaching to the test–for example, to having kids do lots and lots of practice using the test formats–and all this test prep has significant opportunity costs; it crowds out important learning.
i. A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs kids to be variously trained, not identically milled.
j. The folks who prepared these standards did their work heedlessly; they did not stop to question what a standard should look like in a particular domain but simply made unwarranted but extremely consequential decisions about that based on current practice in state tests.
k. The tests and test prep create enormous test anxiety and undermine the development of love of learning.
l. Real learning tends to be unique and unpredictable. It can’t be summarized in a bullet list.
m. We are living in times of enormous change; kids being born today are going to experience more change in their lifetimes than has occurred in all of human history up to this point, so they need to be intrinsically, not extrinsically, motivated to learn; high-stakes tests belong to the extrinsic punishment/reward school of educational theory.
n. If we create a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth, that is a first step on a VERY slippery slope.
o. The standards-and-testing regime usurps local teacher and administrator autonomy, and no one works well, at all well, under conditions of low autonomy.
p. The standards and the new tests have not been tested.
q. The standards and the new test formats, though extremely consequential in their effects on every aspect of K-12 schooling, were never subjected to expert critique; nor were they subjected to the equivalent of failure modes and effects analysis.
r. The legislation that created the Department of Education specifically forbade it from getting involved in curricula, but as E. D. Hirsch, Jr., pointed out on this blog a few weeks ago, the new math standard clearly ARE a curriculum outline, and the federal DOE has pushed this curriculum on the country.
And these are just a few general observations. I haven’t even begun, here, to speak of problems with specific standards and guidelines within the standards, but see my analysis of one of these amateurish “standards,” above.
And some of the new standards were put in place of old standards which were much better conceived and already implemented, such as in NYS. If we are going to have standards, why not look at what is already out there in the states, and use the best of those standards as a starting point.
Oh, that’s right. The “creators” have never heard the term “best practices” or “competence”.
One of my primary concerns about specific CCSS standards in particular ELA domains is that they are focused on explicit formulations of abstract skills and that the tests encourage cutting to the chase and teaching of the skills per se. Let me give you some examples:
George Miller, the great cognitive psychologist and linguist, estimates in his The Science of Words that the average 18-year-old has learned about 60,000 words, or roughly 10 per day throughout his or her life to that point. Estimates of vocabulary vary enormously based on how one does the estimation–are the various compound, inflected, and derivative forms separate words? But the point is that people acquire a lot of vocabulary and almost none of that acquisition is the result of explicit teaching. Here’s how people learn vocabulary: They encounter related new terms in a semantic context that is meaningful to them and that requires them to use those terms. You take an art class offered by your local Parks and Recreation Dept., and in the course of a few weeks, you learn about filbert brushes and gesso and chiaroscuro and tableaux and stippling–and these terms stick because they are related and because you are actively using them. So, the way to teach vocabulary is to have kids do extended work in particular knowledge domains that are important to them and within which they will encounter and use new, related terms. Now, the CCSS in ELA do say that vocabulary should be learned in context and even call for extended work within knowledge domains, but they also contain lots and lots of specific vocabulary standards that call for teaching of lists of suffixes, affixes, and roots and of a list of context clues strategies, and these have almost no impact on actual vocabulary acquisition. But they will generate a lot of test questions and test prep.
The CCSS contain a lot of language standards that describe explicitly learned grammatical forms and rules (e.g., “Explain the function of verbals (gerunds, participles, infinitives) in general and their function in specific sentences.”) and completely skip over–ignore–the fact that we humans have internal language acquisition devices for acquiring grammars–that we are born with hardwiring for principles of language and that we set the parameters of our grammars based on the ambient spoken linguistic environments that we encounter as kids. Early exposure to syntactically rich spoken linguistic environments–ones that contain the full syntactic richness of the language–is essential to formation of grammatical competence–the grammar in the head that the speaker uses irrespective of his or her ability to state, explicitly, the principles of that grammar–the functions of parts of speech, for example. Teaching kids how to identify parts of speech (underline the gerunds) has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the acquisition of an internalized grammar allowing for production of those forms in the student’s speech and writing and ability to comprehend sentences containing those forms. Kids enter our schools from vastly different ambient linguistic home environments. Some of those environments are extremely impoverished syntactically and semantically. It is extremely important, given how grammars are actually acquired, that those kids be exposed to compensating syntactically and semantically rich spoken language environments so that the innate acquisition device can do its work. Find THAT in the CCSS in ELA! But instead of creating those compensatory spoken language environments–we expose them, instead, almost exclusively, to written language environments that are INTENTIONALLY SYNTACTICALLY AND SEMANTICALLY IMPOVERISHED (leveled reading) and then we try to teach them explicit formal grammar rules. In other words, we teach “grammar” not in the way in which minds are built to acquire grammars but in the ways instantiated in the CCSS.
The literature standards in the CCSS are ALMOST ALL descriptions of abstract, formal analysis skills (Identify two themes and explain how these relate, identify common types of figurative language). Fine. But all that skips over the literary experience. When one reads a work of literature, one enters into an imaginary world and has an experience there. One HAS TO TAKE THAT TRIP. Literary works MEAN in a unique way. One has an imaginative experience. It is then THAT experience that is meaningful. The most important part of instruction in reading literature is helping people to learn how to do that. The formal analysis is an AFTERTHOUGHT. It’s what happens when we reflect, later on, about WHY we had the experience and derived the meaning that we did. Having literature standards that are ALMOST ALL descriptions of abstract, formal analysis skills encourages the sort of terrible teaching of literature that reduces “Sailing to Byzantium” to identification of the list of symbols that Yeats used.
The writing standards [sic] in the CCSS are almost identical from grade level to grade level, and all focus on writing in three “modes”–narrative writing, expository writing, and argument. And so they encourage the writing of the five-paragraph themes, instantiate an inaccurate view of writing in which these modes are isolated and not intermingled within particular pieces of writing, and completely fail to address the hundreds of thousands of very specific competencies that actual writers in the real world actually draw upon.
There are some great LDC modules being produced by great teachers, working collaboratively, who understand these matters. But the CCSS curricula being created by the big publishers are another matter altogether. Generally, this junk skips right to the abstract formal analysis. Gotta teach that CCSS skill. That’s what’s on the TEST!!!
Sadly, what is being skipped over is the stuff that provides the reason why anyone would want to read anything. People read Emerson’s “Brahma” because he has something to say about the nature of divinity, not to make a list of the themes that he introduces and the elements of prosody that he employs. Skipping, right away, to talk and writing at that abstracted level is a crime, especially with little kids. They want to know about sharks. That’s why they read about sharks. Their interest is not in what techniques of expository development the author used.
This note is already too long. One could go on and on.
I have a larger vocabulary than autocorrect. Sometimes I have a terrible time typing a simple sentence. (And I’m not nearly as verbose as you).
Dear Mike…”Teachers are paid…VERY well paid and not grateful…”
I was a single parent trying to live on my salary. I had a Master’s degree and was barely surviving. I remember buying two bags of chocolates for Halloween one year. When they weren’t used, I took them back to the store for a refund. I couldn’t afford such luxuries for myself.
One day, fortunately it was pay day, I only had seventy-five cents in my wallet. I bought gas so I’d have enough money to get to school.
I sometimes would take my daughter out to McDonald’s. I couldn’t afford to pay for a meal for myself and her.
Don’t tell me that teachers are well paid. I thought about money 95% of the time and was miserable trying to survive.
Eventually, when my daughter got old enough, I left the country and began working overseas. That was the only time I got paid decently.
I hear you Carol. I remember borrowing $5 from my principal so I had enough gas in my car to get home.
At one point I was sharing one car with 2 kids. My husband, who no longer lived with me, split the duties of dropping my daughter off and picking her up from the local college. My son said I didn’t love him because I made him walk to work in nasty weather. When I got home from work – my turn with the car was over. Such was my life. (My last car was a 1997 Neon which was recently junked – I “inherited” it from my uncle when he passed away.)
Perfectly expressed! Now…..will anyone listen???…..This is perfect..This is eloquent…This is the Truth….
Hi Dennis,
This article may explain why teachers generally dont like Common Core.
Mike
Why do people, like Chancellors speaking.at schools, insist that the common core is unscripted???? Have they seen the math modules at EngageNY in which teachers are absolutely scripted??????
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
Many of you might wonder why Mike would have such a low opinion of teachers, one of the nation’s most dedicated and hard-working groups. History provides us with an answer:
During good economic times, few people want to take low-paid public service jobs. Even when they do, the turnover is great (a staggering 50% leave teaching within the first five years). However, when an economic depression hits, these mostly secure jobs suddenly become very desirable. Not only that, but citizens who lose their jobs often become resentful and envious of those who hold public service jobs as teachers, social workers and librarians.
So Mike could be one of the many Americans who is hurting financially right now. He might look at a teacher’s modest salary and think the job looks darn easy and desirable. And it might very well be, compared to his own circumstances.
Or Mike could be a “reformer” looking to get his hands on school tax money. It’s hard to know. I’d be interested in knowing why he thinks as he does.
A nation with too many Mikes will never have a strong educational system. Fortunately the majority of our citizens value education and the people who provide it. And that’s the main reason why our public school system is the bedrock of our democracy and one of our greatest institutions.
The nerve of those second grade teachers, actually insisting on being paid. Don’t they know women should be expected to work for free?
Mike Wilcox, how you been doing???
Please remember to take your meds regularly.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.5 Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
This is not bad as worded– sounds innocuous. However [googling around] the way it is interpreted and implemented involves reducing all writing to a handful of 6 or 8 labelled ‘structures’ (compare&contrast, problem-solution, etc), memorizing & applying. All based on a couple of studies which if you read the abstracts (I did), actually only said that reading comprehension increases when teacher conducts a brief preview discussion observing how the material is organized.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.6 Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.
What a mish-mosh. Almost looks like a misprint to me. Two stds here. ‘Determine author’s point of view’ – yes, important; a unit unto itself. 2nd std suggests studying a powerful work of rhetoric to see how style & content contribute to the power– sure; do this with lots of stuff, not just ‘powerful works of rhetoric’.
YUP. The curricula being spawned by the gawdawful “standards” is a Pandora’s box of horrors
cx, are, not is, of coruse
OOPS I managed to post the last half of my post first… here’s the 1st half:
lafered– early on you listed 3 ela stds & asked whether there’s really anything ‘wrong’ with them. I too think it’s important to have ongoing discussion of specifics. We have had a few recently, with lots of specifics from Robert Shepherd. I’ll try to take you on, tho I’m just a BA-Lit parent of 3 public-school grads & part-time enrichment teacher. Hopefully some public-school hs teachers will jump in too.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).
This conflates 2 stds. Part 1 needs better wording/fleshing out. Interpreters (such as shmoop.com) say this is one of those ‘close-reading’ stds, requiring reader to figure out meaning [solely] via context clues. It doesn’t actually say that. If that is intended, why the emphasis on this particular skill? I don’t get the whole isolation of text & reading it in a vacuum. RE: Part 2 (should be a separate std) – yes I like it. BUT I really hate the idea of reading Federalist 10 as lit! Give it to me in a US History class, & discuss the ideas in depth.
(cont’d in immediately previous post)
Perhaps if you combined 11th grade US History and ELA together in a “Unified” program you could appropriately tackle primary source documents found in the US Annals of American History. Otherwise, let’s keep literature as literature and perhaps add in nonfiction such as autobiographies (there are some terrific ones on the library shelves) instead.
There are many high schools throughout the U.S. that have been doing these combined U.S. History/American Lit classes in the 11th grade for some time. Those classes can be wonderful. They can take a history of American ideas approach that can be extraordinarily stimulating. But the CCSS in ELA are a bullet list of abstract skills. No room, there, for figuring out what the Puritans thought or what the Transcendentalists thought and how those legacies played out over the course of our history. Gotta teach those skills from the bullet list because those are what will be on THE TEST.
Here’s what Coleman knew about classroom practice in ELA:
NOTHING
When I say “for some time,” I mean FOR DECADES. That combined “currents in American thought” approach in the 11th grade has been standard practice in many, many U.S. districts and schools for a LONG TIME.
But Coleman and Pimentel thought that they had all the answers, so they didn’t even bother to learn a thing about what people were actually doing in classrooms. That’s because they are members of the faith-based cult of deform–believers in the Revelation to Achieve, the central dogmas of which are as follows:
“U.S. schools are failing.”
“They are failing because of terrible teachers.”
“Learning has to be externally motivated by fear of failure on summative tests.”
“Learning can and should be bullet listed–reduced to items that can fit onto so many Powerpoint slides.”
“You get what you measure–just give a guy a KPI.”
Because these are Articles of Faith, they cannot be in error, so why would adherents bother to consider what people are actually doing in classrooms, what scholars think they know about language acquisition or the teaching of literature and composition, what results one gets if one corrects the international test scores for the socioeconomic status of the students taking the tests, and so on? Achieve to every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer in the country: “We don’t give a @$&*$@&*&*$@ what you think. We’ve made these decisions about the formulation of measurable outcomes and learning progressions for you.”
The Masters at Achieve have appointed David and Susan absolute monarchs of education in the English language arts in the United States, and this appointment is by divine right.
Ours is but to obey.
Smug bastards!
And the more we share the more we realize that there is some fantastic teaching going on in this country. True education. Or should I say “was”.
And why should we shuck a whole system because a few, easily identifiable groups, aren’t doing well. Enlightened people would analyze the situation and try to correct the problems.
Instead, in NYS, they rigged a test to prove that 70% of the student population were subpar. That was a big mistake. Suburban parents, and even some in the city or rural areas, are well aware of the status of their local schools. Many are active PTA members or school volunteers. The schools in my district have to stagger the open house dates by grade level – both parents and even the grandparents show up to meet their child’s teacher. They hire guards to direct traffic.
So, these parents are actively involved and they know what’s going on. They are militant because they recognize the pack of lies sold by King, Arne, etc. Even if the CCSS were valid, they would now reject it based on their current experiences. And that’s only in NYS.
I think we are reaching the tipping point. I have hope this backlash will be successful and maybe something positive will “climb from the ashes”. Perhaps that’s the Pollyanna in me, but Robert – maybe somebody will finally listen to informed individuals like yourself. Who knows, maybe there is a God!
One still encounters dolts who make comments like, “The Common Core is not a curriculum” despite the huge distortions of curricula (and pedagogy) that have been occurring. We’re seeing the Powerpointing of English language arts education–the reduction of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking to practice of a bullet list of skills.
And a hackneyed bullet list prepared by amateurs, at that.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles, not people.” –Albert Einstein, interview with the Saturday Evening Post
“There’s no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list.” –Edward Tufte, from “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint”
“Come, my dear. Both of our professions are being ruined by amateurs.” –The Old Theater Cat to Mehitabel in Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis
The CCSS in ELA were written by amateurs. If one wanted to prepare an exhaustive list of hackneyed halftruths and total misconceptions about language, literature, acquisition of language ability, rhetoric, composition, logic and thinking skills generally, etc., one would be hard pressed to do a better job than was done by the two amateurs chosen by Achieve to hack together the CCSS in ELA.
Pompous a-holes.
But these particular standards [sic], as badly conceived as they are, are not the most important issue. The most important issue is this: Real innovation comes from having competing, voluntary notions about curricula, pedagogy, learning progressions, etc. that must vie with one another for acceptability to individual teachers, curriculum coordinators, and curriculum developers subjecting their practice to CONTINUAL critique and revision in light of what they know of their particular students, of their subjects, of learning, and of the continually unfolding sciences of language acquisition and the psychology of learning. The last thing we need is some Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth setting this stuff in stone and overruling everyone else with regard to something as fundamental as what outcomes we are going to measure at each grade level and how we are going to conceive of those outcomes and of those measurements. Why anyone would think that some a priori list was a good idea is beyond me. That’s a crazy notion. It was a crazy notion when NCLB forced this paradigm on all the states; it’s an even crazier notion now that those state standards have been ossified into the CCSS in ELA.
A science teacher, introducing a single topic to five classes, might teach it the same way to three but have two totally different approaches to the other two classes based on the student composition of each group.
Even in the library, if I was teaching a lesson which obviously wasn’t going as planned, I would immediately change my plan. It might be one of my A-game lessons – one that’s “guaranteed” success – but if it was not working . . . I’d switch it up, mid-lesson.
Does CCSS and/or scripted text give us this flexibility?
I have noticed that there are some supporters of the CCSS in ELA who think that what they are all about is a) getting kids to attend to texts more closely and b) having them think more about what they read. They write and speak a lot about how we now, under CCSS, have the opportunity to start really teaching kids to think, as though we had never done that before, as though the CCSS were Eden with the dew wet on the grass on the first shining day. My blessings on those people. They have the right idea. But that’s what good teachers have always done, and one cannot simply ignore the significant problems with the amateurish CCSS in ELA (see the notes above, which barely begin to expose the problems with Achieve’s mandatory bullet list.
I have read a few really superb LDC lessons based on parts of the CCSS in ELA that are outstanding. There are creative teachers and curriculum developers who will do good word despite these amateurish standards [sic]–ones who will not do what the big publishes are doing (taking them as holy writ carried down from the mountain). But overall, the CCSS in ELA are an enormous mistake. The Masters of the Universe at Achieve could have issued a voluntary curriculum framework. That would have been a wonderful spur to innovation.
But instead, they gave us this bullet list of abstract skills. What is being done to the teaching of literature and writing and grammar and vocabulary as a result is criminal. I’ve seen the distorted, narrowed, incoherent curricula being produced by the big publishers to align with these standards [sic]. Enumerating the problems with the CCSS-inspired curricula being created and with the particular standards [sic] on which they are based would be a major undertaking–would take “from dawn to doomsday,” as someone on this blog wrote recently.
But none of that critique occurred, did it? Instead, these top-down, invariant, totalitarian standards [sic] were foisted on the entire country with NO VETTING WHATSOEVER–no testing, no learned critique.
What a tragedy for our students and for our country.
And the principals/administrators will use the guidelines of these publishers and force CCSS down the teachers’ and thus the students’ throats.
A wonderful piece by Melissa Heckler and Nettie Webb! Kudos to these teachers and to all like them who refuse the following vision for the future of U.S. education:
Good morning, class, I am CCSS teacher model Achieve740jB.rev2. Pull my string to begin the lesson on standard CCSS.ELA.RL.11.6b.
COMMON Core Curriculum = NO child gets ahead http://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2013/12/23/common-core-agenda-21-and-global-governance/