In an earlier post today, I described the use of FUD (fear, uncertainty,and doubt) to destroy public confidence in public education and thus pave the way for privatization. The vendors of FUD say our education system, which made this country great, is failing; that it is obsolete; that we are losing the global race. It is a massive hoax, a fraud, a lie. They want to frighten the public and open the door to privatization and profiteering.
Robert Shepherd shows how FUD works in the marketing of Common Core, which was created to address our allegedly failing schools. Just remember: our schools are NOT failing. Our society is failing to address the real crisis of our time, which is that nearly one-quarter of our children live in poverty, and many are racially segregated as well. The Commin Core won’t change those scandalous realities.
Shepherd, an experienced curriculum developer, writes:
“And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense
–William Shakespeare, Macbeth
According to the amusing Wikipedia article on the subject, agnotology is the intentional cultural production of ignorance. It’s what advertisers and the leaders of oligarchical states do. They manufacture ignorance in order to further their goals. When it became clear to the cigarette companies that their product was extremely dangerous to people’s health, they started running ads that read “9 out of 10 doctors agree, there’s not a cough in a carload.” That’s agnotology.
One of the primary means by which the agnotologist works is equivocation. Equivocation is a kind of lying that SOUNDS as though it might be true. To see agnotological equivocation brought to the level of a high art, you need but look no further than the webpage from the Common Core State Standards Organization (the CCSSO) that describes the “myths” surrounding the Common Core. Each “myth” described on the Common Core page and in other Education Deform propaganda is, in fact, the unspun truth. In other words, the Education Deformers are highly accomplished agnotologists. A few examples will illustrate their technique:
“The Common Core State Standards were developed by teachers”
means that teachers had almost nothing to do with them, that a few teachers were selected to rubber stamp work done by amateurs from outside the profession who were hired with money from plutocrats and given the task of hacking those standards together based on the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the state standards that preceded them.
“The standards were freely adopted by the states”
means that the USDOE gave the states no choice but to adopt them or suffer severe penalties that would come from not getting NCLB waivers. The “State” in “Common Core State Standards” is, quite simply, a lie. The standards were not developed by states but by a PRIVATELY HELD pair of organizations that hold a copyright on them.
“The new standards will unleash powerful market forces to encourage innovation”
means that the national standards will create markets at a scale at which only monopolistic providers of unimaginative educational materials can compete. It means the Walmartization, the Microsofting of U.S. education. It also means that in due time the CCSSO and the National Governor’s Association, or NGA, will start using the legal system to control the market for educational materials by deciding what materials will and will not receive its OK to claim alignment with its PRIVATELY HELD standards.
“The states are free to adapt the standards as they see fit”
means that the states can’t change them at all, that the most states can do is to add a few, but very few, standards to the CC$$ bullet list. The number of standards added can be no more than 15 percent of the total, and otherwise, the standards must be adopted without change (and without any mechanisms for change in the future other than the whim of the private organization that created the standards to begin with).
“The plutocrats have no seat at the table where educational policy is made” (Arne Duncan)
means that a small group of plutocrats paid for and directed the creation of the standards, the revised FERPA regulations, the new VAM systems, and the USDE technology blueprint. It also means that those same plutocrats are providing a lot of the money that is going into the development and marketing of the new national online bubble tests. It means that education policy is being made based on what serves the financial interests of the plutocrats. It means that the current deforms are the plutocrats’ business plan.
“The standards are not a curriculum”
means, in math, that they are a curriculum outline and in ELA that a) they dramatically narrow the possibilities for curricula and b) contain a great many items that clearly do specify curricula
“The standards don’t tell you how to teach” or “The standards do not specify pedagogical approaches
means that some pedagogical approaches are required in order for the standards, as worded, to be met and that MOST APPROACHES that might be conceived by independent teachers, scholars, researchers, and curriculum developers are precluded.
“The new national tests introduce breakthroughs in question types in order to test high-order thinking”
means that some minor online variants of fill-in-the-blank, matching, ordering, and other stock bubble test questions types have been introduced. So, for example, instead of filling in a blank, the student clicks on and moves an item to a blank.
“US schools are falling behind on international tests, thus making the standards and new national assessments necessary,”
means that US schools appear to be performing poorly if one does not correct for the socioeconomic status of the kids taking the test. If one does correct for SES, US schools and students lead the world.
“The Secretary of Education is the chief officer of the national public school system”
means that he is the fellow whom the oligarchs have put in charge of dismantling that system and replacing it with online and brick-and-mortar charters, voucher systems, and private schools run by well-connected profiteers.
“We’ve seen great improvements due to the accountability system put in place by NCLB”
means that scores have been almost flat and that the more than a decade of standards-and-testing that was supposed to “Leave no child behind” hasn’t worked at all to change overall outcomes or to put a dent in the achievement gap.
Poverty is not destiny”
means that the powers that be are going to ignore poverty and use the whips of VAM and testing instead.
So, agnotology, and, in particular, agnotology via equivocation, has become the PRIMARY MEANS OF GOVERNANCE of our K-12 educational system. In other words, our national education policies are, cynically, being formulated and enforced via LIES and, in particular, via means of that variety of LYING known as EQUIVOCATION.
And the leaders (LIARS) doing this governance are counting on having made the public so ignorant, via such equivocation, that it will not oppose their complete circumvention of democratic processes.
They are counting on the fact that their plutocrats, the guys with the checkbooks, can buy all the PR that is needed to keep the people in ignorance.
That’s how things work in a banana republic. The plutocrats purchase the political muscle to carry out their plans. In time, that muscle, the leaders/liars don’t even try to hide the fact that they are lying. They do it completely shamelessly. In fact, being able to lie shamelessly without having anyone call you out on it is a sign of enormous power, and to such people, to quote Kissinger’s infamous line, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Faith, here’s an equivocator, that could
swear in both the scales against either scale”
Macbeth, Act II scene 3
Humm…could it be an edufraud?
😉
Thanks for a great post, Robert.
“Agnotology”
I had never heard of this before today — even though I totally rocked the esoteric word & analogy portion of the SAT. 🙂 I was actually looking forward to test-prepping my children for that section!
Thanks, Diane and other commentators for providing many opportunities to learn something new. Sometimes the adage of “learning something new every day” only comes true via this blog.
Here’s one of my favorite new words, Emmy, from the last couple years:
interpellation. n. Unconscious acquisition of knowledge, values, and beliefs via implied messaging. Creating interpellations is one of the goals of PR. The idea is to assume AS GIVEN ALREADY, as already understood by everyone, that which would otherwise have to be argued. So, for example, a kid sees a poster that says, “The Reich wants you.” That poster assumes, already, that the kid wants to be wanted by the Reich. And that’s the primary intent of the campaign, to create the unexamined assumption that being wanted by the Reich is desirable.
When the deformers say that it’s important that we adopt these “new, higher standards,” they are creating the conditions for interpellation. They are using language that assumes as given, already, that the standards are “new” and that they are “higher.” Of course, the truth is that the ELA standards are hackneyed and backward–basically a list of received, unexamined and often scientifically unsupportable notions about teaching the the various ELA domains. They were hacked together by amateurs and would not survive the slightest scrutiny by experienced scholars and researchers and teachers.
But who can be against that which is new and higher? Who can be against having standards?
The deformers are very, very practiced at controlling the dialog and debate by creating the language in which that dialog and debate is conducted.
And, of course, that’s just what George Orwell warned us all about.
cx: teaching IN the various ELA domains
Bob Shepherd,
Here is a new word for your Rheeform dictionary: “relinquishment.”
This was coined–I believe– by Andy Smarick, former Deputy commissioner of education for Chris Christie, now at Bellweather Associates, to mean that public schools should disappear, relinquish, accept their demise, as they are replaced by an all-charter system. http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/disturbing-language-and-shallow-logic-ed-reform-comments-“relinquishment”-“sector-agnosticism”
Done:
From the Reformish Lexicon:
relinquisher. Superintendent, principal, school board member, or other “responsible” public school authority who voluntarily agrees to have his or her school or district replaced by a for-profit charter that will cherry pick students, vastly increase class sizes, practice data-driven numerology, buy lots and lots of technology, replace experienced teachers with online worksheets and/or pimply adolescents with five-weeks’ training, implement a punitive extrinsic punishment and reward system, replace curricula with test prep, eliminate art and music programs (which are suitable only for the children of oligarchs), and provide lucrative administrative jobs to the grifter cousins, siblings, girlfriends, and golfing buddies of plutocrats, of politicians and, quid pro quo, to said relinquisher; public school education deform quisling.
came upon this yesterday: “There are many words which are genuine and indigenous and have their root in our natures, not made by scholars, and as well understood by the illiterate as others. There are also a great many words which are spurious and artificial, and can only be used in a bad sense, since the thing they signify is not fair and substantial–such as the church, the judiciary, to impeach, etc. etc. They who use them do not stand on solid ground.” Henry David Thoreau, Journal, January 1, 1858
http://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=23&action=edit&message=1
Sorry, wrong link. Here’s the correct one:
Here’s a correct to the last paragraph of this post:
That’s how things work in a banana republic. The plutocrats purchase the political muscle to carry out their plans. The plutocrats’ hirelings and toadies threaten and cajole and equivocate and do PR and practice numerology of various kinds in support of their bosses’ aims. But in time, they stop using equivocation, for that’s one of many interim measures. In time, the hirelings, the boughten leaders/liars, don’t even try to hide the fact that they are lying. They do it completely shamelessly. In fact, being able to lie shamelessly without having anyone call you out on it is a sign of enormous power, and to such people, to quote Kissinger’s infamous line, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
yikes, correction
sorry about the typos!
Wow, what a brilliant and useful unpacking and exposing. Thanks, loved it! This protocol of lying, fear-mongering and deception couldn’t work unless coleman, duncan, Gates, Broad, Rhee etc. controlled the school story via the corporate media monopoly. Their twisted reports achieve dominance b/c they are the only ones in mass circulation. Many things are needed to confront this looting of the public sector–the recent NPE conference, online news lists and blogs, readable articles and books telling a different story as produced by Diane and David Berliner among others, and like each school district having a weekly action-alert newsletter/broadside distributed online to parents in the district and also by hand at dismissal time during pick-up. Frequent, readable, focused on one or two topics max, attractive graphics, humor, and info that gets parents moving into opposition.
This is precisely why the media ownership was regulated at one time. The proper role of the press is to dispense antiseptic cleaning and fresh open air in the public forum. Wiser leaders sought to preserve this and prevent monopolization of the press. The need for anti-trust regulations has never been greater than now. AT&T was broken up, some other monopolies should also be disbanded. Where is another Teddy Roosevelt when we need him? Jefferson warned us about corporations and the monied oligarchs, he was right.
Great article! Very well said. Thank you for posting!
Excellent post. Amongst all these. the one that seems most destructive because it seems so benign is
“But they’re just standards. And standards can do no harm.”
Except, in corporate standardization efforts we know that standards can, and do, often do far more harm than good.
But I’ve heard this from parents – and more concerning it’s the foundational lie that politicians have sucked in hook, line, and sinker.
See, for example, my analysis of a couple of the ELA “standards.” I chose these pretty much at random. A similar analysis could be done for almost any of the “standards” on the ELA bullet list:
Excellent additional post. I’d add to my earlier comments that the CC$$ (as you put it) enthusiasts have commandeered the language.
Why the word “Standards”? It sounds so good. Why not “Demands” or “absolutes” or “theories”? Those might actually be far more accurate.
Enthusiasts, for example, separate “standards” from the tests.
So I’ve begun to complain of the CC “ecosystem” which what CC$$ really involves. That’s (1) the standards, (2) the tests that measure them, (3) the curriculum necessary to reach the standard, (4) the learning required to successfully take the test, (5) the highly visible public publishing of test results and, in many districts, (6) the punishment of teachers, administrators, and schools for failure to achieve arbitrary success on arbitrary tests.
Well said, DOUG!!! Precisely!!!
Oh… And these days I make my living writing & communicating. I couldn’t analyze sentence structure according to those standards. But it doesn’t mean I can’t write persuasive prose. Which is more important to writing? Communicating or separating participles from infinitives?
Doug,
I invite you to read Noel Wilson’s work on educational standards and why the term standard is preferred. I don’t have his explanation in my very brief summary below. It’s best to read the whole study:
“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.
Interesting summation and quite on topic. I’ve downloaded his paper – but it’ll be a big challenge to wade through. But excellent.
So, yes, the term standard is perhaps best. But the truth remains that the mere term can be abused to imply far more than is actual within the term.
Standard implies or even signifies/indicates measurement. Attempting to measure the “inmeasurable” is Icarus attempting to reach the sun. It’s impossible.
So what are the edudeformers attempting with the CCSS and PARCC & SABC but to fly to the sun (not that many currently in education don’t believe that we can logically and validly measure the teaching and learning process. They’re wrong.)
And what do you mean by “the term standard is perhaps best”?
Thanks!
Among others, Stuart Ewen is an expert on techniques of persuasion, including aesthetic persuasion. See All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture, NY: Basic Books, 1988 and PR!: A Social History of Spin, NY: Basic Books, 1996.
For a recent example of spin, see this alert from POLITICO: “Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, a major donor to the education reform movement, offered a provocative view of what ails public education at the California Charter Schools Association’s annual conference last week. His diagnosis: democracy. Elected school boards turn over frequently and new members like to shake things up, he said. Districts change course often. But charter schools are run by non-profit boards or for-profit corporations that value stability and excellence, Hastings said. “Now, if we go to the general public and we say, ‘Here’s an argument why you should get rid of school boards’ – of course no one’s going to go for that. School boards have been an iconic part of America for 200 years,” he said. But with aggressive expansion, the charter movement could take over most of public education within 20 to 30 years and thereby wipe out elected school boards. “We are going to do it …” he said, “because we are relentless.” His speech: http://bit.ly/N29Rmi. Source POLITCO http://www.politico.com/morningeducation/0314/morningeducation13256.html
Clear example of hatred for democratic institutions, including school boards and public schools. Notece the timpine he envisions for the death of public education.
Every once in a while, one of these people spills the actual game plan. This is like Romney’s comment, during the last presidential election, about “those people.” It’s clear, unvarnished talk within the echo chamber.
This is the plan–to end public education.
Laura H. Chapman & Bob Shepherd: a money quote indeed! And since deutsch29 (aka Dr. Mercedes Schneider) comes in for favorable mention below, let me offer up another one from her blog that could compete for the “Spilling the EduBeans” award:
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
And from whence proceeds this all-too-revealing observation? From deep within the bowels of the self-styled “education reform” movement itself, in the person of—
Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. He understands—and quite well, I might add—exactly what the leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” are up to.
Although perhaps now he might wish that he hadn’t let the cat out of the bag…
😎
AEI still confusing conservatives with their well crafted propaganda to this day. Hess is the worst kind of word salad double-double agent.
Yes, it’s easy to forget that the education program at the American Enterprise Institute is funded by the DeVos Foundation and other rightwingers.
Beautiful job, Robert!
As I was writing that post, I thought, this is the sort of thing that Mercedes does so well–going through the claims, one by one, and exposing them for the falsehoods that they are. Thank you, Mercedes, for all that you do!
Excellent and clear analysis, Robert! This is the one that stirs the most fear in my heart:
“The new standards will unleash powerful market forces to encourage innovation”
means that the national standards will create markets at a scale at which only monopolistic providers of unimaginative educational materials can compete. It means the Walmartization, the Microsofting of U.S. education. It also means that in due time the CCSSO and the National Governor’s Association, or NGA, will start using the legal system to control the market for educational materials by deciding what materials will and will not receive its OK to claim alignment with its PRIVATELY HELD standards.
Using the legal system to control which materials fit the privately held standards is scary indeed. And so few people understand it. Thanks for enlightening us.
Just a few days ago, the Brookings Institution called on the CCSSO and NGA to start doing precisely that–to become the de facto US curriculum Thought Police by “vigorously enforcing” their copyright on the “standards.”
An earlier post of yours mentioned that, and I tracked down the source and read it. Now I must decide how best to share that with those in my district without sounding like I have “eaten from the insane root.” I had never reckoned that tried and true texts in the public domain or beloved literature not in the hallowed Appendix B would not “fit” the criteria of the copyright. Looks like we have a new “Gorgon” to publicize.
I know, Nimbus. What these people are planning is so nefarious as to sound unreal. One risks sounding like a conspiracy kook. But that’s, in fact, what Brookings just called for, and that’s what the copyrighting of the standards makes possible.
Frightening. Orwellian.
And quite real.
Robert, out of all of your excellent posts, this is one of the best, along with your subsequent comment on interpellation. CCSS should be resisted on principle alone, even if you, for whatever reason, actually liked the standards. If it is allowed to stand, we will get more of the same, and not just in the area of education.
This really is good because it gets at the heart of the matter.
It is tempting to fight the beast one tentacle at a time. . .but really, the larger issue is this prevalence of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt). Absolutely.
In conversation with others in my area who want to make a difference, this has been pointed out. That we are questioning ourselves too much.
We can’t do that. We can’t question our ability to raise our children. We’ve got this. Nobody’s perfect, but instinct and caring alone are a HUGE factor in relating to our inner selves that we are capable of moving forward and raising a thoughtful and well-prepared generation of children and youth to come after us without somebody who has more money than we do or who has deemed themselves more astute telling us otherwise.
Spot on, Robert.
And in so doing, we have allowed ourselves to become slaves to the notion of being prepared for the 21st Century, while meanwhile we are in it and life is happening NOW!
One week ago was the day to call ourselves to action. . .the only day on the calendar that gives us a command. . .
March 4th! March forth. . .with confidence.
“That we are questioning ourselves too much.”
I don’t. When one uses rational, logical and scientific based thought one can have enough confidence to state that some things aren’t valid, reliable and that can’t produce results that are anything less than “vain and illusory”. As Wilson (see reference above) has proven, educational standards, standardized testing and the accompanying “vain and illusory” results are logically epistemolgically and ontologically bankrupt.
Since that is the case, throw that crap out the window, recognize the inherent complexities of the teaching and learning process and get on with the very true and real activities of teaching and learning.
Reblogged this on My Thinks and commented:
This is a perfect explanation of what’s happening to our education system here in NZ also. Read immediately.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Winston Churchill
Bob, We’ve been back and forth over the standards. I enjoyed reading this post and appreciate your spin on things. What I take exception to is the idea that one can be critical without offering suggestions for improvement. Let’s say we eighty-six the hackneyed standards. What would you replace them with?
My question is simple: What do you want?
Since the standards in place are now what we have as teachers to work with, I’m finding that content area teachers, beyond those who teach English or Reading, are improving their practices to include more writing, speaking, listening, and tech integration into their pedagogy. Career/Tech, Social Studies, et. al are required to implement the same literacy standards into their curriculum as the English teachers. We are adapting and the teaching truly is improving. Instead of giving our struggling readers or ELLs text that has been abridged to meet their readability levels, they read the text in its original form. With help and repeated readings, they are getting it.
The flaw in your argument, at least in these blogs, is that you use an ad hominem attack of the standards with your language without offering a concession or an alternative. In Florida we had the flawed FCAT (read a ‘purpose’ written passage and answer questions assessing 13+ standards). I would prefer that students read the types of documents and quality novels “suggested” in the exemplar texts (CCSS Appendix B). Our Bio teachers assign “Henrietta Lacks”, Physics uses “A Brief History in Time.” Art teachers are using “Naruto.” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and “The Prince” are found in our history classrooms. These are just examples of the different ways the content area teachers are stepping up to include meaningful text beyond the big box publisher textbooks to include ELA standards into the classroom. We are not constrained by these standards. In fact, the opposite is more true. We are liberated like never before, and many teachers are doing just fine with the change.
To be fair, I agree with 90% of what you write, but I do wish you would present some balance to your argument. True, many agree that there needs to be a better evaluation system in place for both students and teachers. To tie test performance to pay seems punitive, but the archaic system of rewarding a teacher simply for surviving another year without true accountability isn’t any better. Where is the incentive to improve or grow in our practice? Would you want your child to go to a surgeon who only has 25% survival rate, even though they have been practicing for 25 years? (This is a red herring argument, I know.).
Since I love reading your rants (said with no guile and only true admiration), I want to know my alternatives. If you suggest that these standards are hackneyed, what makes them hackneyed? What would be the alternative? What would work better for the hundreds of thousands of teachers who would benefit from a blueprint? If students are to receive a standard diploma, what standards should a student master in West Virginia, that they also have to master in Florida or Massachusetts? How can a new set of standards benefit a first year teacher in the same manner as a veteran, especially veterans with maladapted, archaic practices who are not preparing students adequately with the tech or literacy skills necessary for career or college?
If an administrator came in to do a formal observation on you and they only criticized your lesson without offering meaningful suggestions, you would hit the roof! We improve our practice through collaboration, communication, and peer observation. While I do appreciate that you put yourself out there the articulate way that you do, I’m left empty on the inside because I don’t feel you are giving me an alternative. I want to charge you with improving your rhetoric to include concessions where appropriate and alternatives that we can all wrap our heads around.
I get that you don’t like the standards, but what I don’t know is what you want.
Your friend in the trenches,
Linda Kal Sander, Literacy Coach
Boyd H. Anderson High School, Lauderdale Lakes, Florida
Linda, you ask what I want. I refer you to my brief overview of an alternative to national standards given here:
Education deformers love asking, “What’s your alternative?” But they expect stone-cold silence in response. Sorry to disappoint. Here’s an alternative to top-down, invariant, inflexible, mandatory, amateurish “standards” like those foisted on the country with no vetting whatsoever: crowd sourcing of alternative, innovative ideas. In other words, we could have
Competing, voluntary standards, frameworks, learning progressions, curriculum outlines, reading lists, pedagogical approaches, lesson templates, etc.,
for particular domains,
posted by scholars, curriculum developers, and teachers to an open national portal or wiki,
that are crowd sourced and
subjected to ongoing, vigorous, public debate and refinement
based on results in the classroom and ongoing research and development,
freely adopted by autonomous local schools and districts
and subjected to continual critique by teachers who are given the time in their schedules to subject them all, and their own practice, to ongoing critique via something like Japanese Lesson Study.
I can outline for you curricula and pedagogical approaches that I favor in particular domains for particular purposes with particular students. But that’s not something that can be done in soundbites. And I don’t think that MY IDEAS should be foisted on the entire country.
I’m excited to hear about what you are seeing, Linda. It sounds as though you are pretty much ignoring the bullet list of standards and attempting to implement some general take-aways like close reading of substantive texts. That’s great, though it seems bizarre that this would be a great break from what you did in the past? Did your teachers really not have kids read substantive texts closely and careful thinking about those before David Coleman explained that to them? What did they do, try to hold the texts up to the light or press their ears against them to see if they would say something? I think that it’s an insult to teachers nationwide to presume to think that these general ideas about the importance of reading substantive texts closely were not already widespread. Coleman’s doing that is like someone coming along and telling doctors that they should start healing people. What presumption! What arrogance!
I’m seeing something quite different from what you describe. In the past two years, I have worked on twenty-five or so “Common Core aligned” products from various publishers. In every case, the publisher has taken the bullet list of “standards” as the curriculum–is producing something narrowly focussed on items from that list. And hardly a day goes by in which I do not hear from some teacher about some scripted Common Core lesson that he or she is being forced to implement almost verbatim.
What do I want? I want to be able to describe to a publisher a curriculum, a pedagogical approach, a learning progression based on my understanding that this is the right thing to do for kids without having that publisher say to me, “But that’s not in the standards.”
In other words, I support freedom of thought regarding these matters.
Yikes, so many typos in that. Focused, not focussed, for example. My apologies. Writing quickly, here, while engaged in other work.
What the big box publishers are doing is simply repurposing what they already had in place. I see a disconnect there. I follow an Edmodo group called the Anthology Project. Here, publishers are putting their newly aligned materials up for teacher review from across the country. I don’t see evidence of close reading to deepen understanding or tech integration. The questions don’t progress in difficulty with subsequent reads. It really is a shame. I totally get your point about reaching the required number of bullets. Just because they think it aligns and they slap a label on it, doesn’t mean that it is.
The scripted lesson idea is an attempt to assist teachers with little to no time to plan and can serve as a blue print for a new teacher. They aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but for a veteran teacher who has a full bag of strategies and ideas for text to text, text to self, and text to world connections, this type of scripted lesson delivery is an anathema. I can see your point, to a point. I feel that the big box publishers are trying the square peg round hole approach and it is a problem. However, I see this as a tremendous opportunity for someone like me to create a product on the cutting edge of blended classrooms, tech integration using smartphones and social media as tools, and thematic instructional practice with complex text that teachers, and their clients, can embrace and explore.
I have only ever worked in an urban, inner city school environment both in Washington Heights in NYC and here in Broward county. I work in the most economically disadvantaged section of our county and we have a 39% mobility rate with high poverty. You asked if the idea of rich text integration was a new idea at our school. Quite frankly, yes. Our struggling readers were rarely, if ever, exposed to rich text in its original language. Our Hampton Brown Edge series for remediation isn’t helping our students reach proficiency. Imagine reading Poe’s The Raven in the abridged 5th grade reading level! So we ordered books that the teachers wanted their classes to read. Sometimes they only read a few sections so that students get the feel for the author’s positions in relation to what the textbook says on the same topic (as in the case of the Hawking book). We replaced The Raven with its original language. In our most intensive reading programs we are reading authentic literature from AP lit books instead of the watered down versions in the basal. I don’t profess to have any and all answers like you do. But I can tell you that since attending David Coleman’s presentation in NY, I have changed my perspective about teaching and learning. I didn’t agree with much he had to say because it was antithetical to my current pedagogy, but I was still open minded enough to try. We started limiting background and vocabulary instruction till after students had an opportunity to struggle with complex text independently. The students balked. They wanted the easy way out. The strange thing is, it worked. Students didn’t mind being challenged. Now they quote the bard, or Poe, or Hawking in their Caribbean island accents. Because we didn’t feel that we had a choice in the matter as to whether we could eschew these new standards, we had to embrace them. We had to adapt. As a result, performance is improving both in terms of student achievement and teacher efficacy.
Lesson Study has been our school’s professional learning community focus now for two years. As teachers plan, deliver, observe, and revise their lessons, the pedagogy improves. Content area teachers are focused on the literacy needs of their students in a much more refined manner. The change is two fold. There is a need for lesson study because we have a new accountability monitoring process in place with iObservation (Marzano) and the new standards. Collaboration among peers has improved. Teachers who have had their planning time cut in half are taking the time to collaborate on planning, assessments, and sharing the work. Lesson study is having a positive impact on our teaching and learning. It all goes hand in hand.
Teachers need a clear road map. If I teach 7th grade, I need the 6th grade teacher to cover her content, and know mine, so that when they get to me they are ready. I also have to teach to the 8th grade standards so that I send my students prepared. I need to have a clear vertical picture of progression. This is why I don’t oppose the ELA standards to the degree that you do. I also see the progression from Big Ideas to Craft and Structure to Integration on Knowledge and Ideas a natural flow in lesson delivery. For some in our profession, this alone was an “aha!”
Too many teachers come into the teaching profession, especially at the high school, as second career professionals. Teachers who go to teaching colleges invariably go into early elementary education. But a physics major isn’t necessarily planning on becoming a teacher. I am sensitive to what it is like to be a new teacher in the competitive high stakes testing environment that is high school. They need so many tools to be successful in their first year. If these are the standards, imagine the mixed message I would send if I told a new teacher these are the hackneyed standards the state says you have to teach. Just do your best. We have to be careful here.
You write: Competing, voluntary standards, frameworks, learning progressions, curriculum outlines, reading lists, pedagogical approaches, lesson templates, etc.,
How is this different? Why competing standards? Why should they be voluntary? I’m not sure how to interpret this in a big picture kind of way. How is this practical?
You also write:
And, I don’t think there should be anything like a “standard diploma.” Students are not widgets to be identically milled. A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs schools that provide many, many paths for development of differing potentials.
Bingo. This is the crux of the problem that is not part of the national discussion. We have these standards in place for students to receive a diploma, but we offer absolutely no alternative for the student who is not making the “standard.” Other industrialized countries offer tracks. Although there are flaws in those systems too, I wonder why our vocational programs aren’t flourishing across this country. Instead of channeling money to non accredited charters, lets start looking at meaningful alternatives for our students who find academia meaningless or beyond their reach.
We have many charter schools in our area. In one case, a charter waited for the FTE money then closed their doors. We had over 150 students to register in October when their charter closed. We don’t get a penny for those kids because they weren’t here on the day of the “count”, but we sure are accountable for ensuring their passing success. When we ask about their charter school experience, students usually tell us they didn’t learn anything and that it was a terrible experience. I have never heard of a single student (and there have been many) say that they would miss their charter school.
You write:
Now, because of the enormous gaps in low-SES kids’ exposure to complex syntax and vocabulary, they build less complex internalized models for their native language, and they build models that are not standard–not the ones prized in school.
So true. This is a page right from “A Framework for Understanding Poverty.” We must provide a constant model of the Formal Register. In all we say, in all we do, we must model appropriately. It’s about teaching our students the language of money.
We have a great charge ahead of us. We would like to think we know what is best for our students and our teachers. We don’t have all the answers, but whatever is thrown at us, we will take the amorphous ooze and make it work. That’s what we do. We shape minds, no matter who is in the White House or in the Governor’s mansion or in the Principal’s seat.
I love my job, I love my students, I love being a teacher. I have the greatest privilege in the world. I take this responsibility very seriously as do you. I admire you immensely. I hope in some small measure that you learn from me as much as I learn from you.
As always, I remain a true admirer (even if you think I am your harshest critic!)
Linda
Linda, again, it sounds as though you are doing some exciting work. It also sounds as though what you are implement are some general principles that you’ve taken away from the material SURROUNDING the standards and are ignoring the point-by-point bullet list. That’s wise, for the bullet list is extremely amateurish and often instantiates backward notions leading to substandard curricula and pedagogy. If your people have suddenly discovered substantive texts and looking at those closely, that’s great. If they are having kids write five-paragraph themes in the three modes following rubrics for supplying evidence in support of a theme from a writing prompt based on one of these standards, then I would look very closely at that and the extent to which what you are doing takes away from actual engagement with the particular text.
And, I don’t think there should be anything like a “standard diploma.” Students are not widgets to be identically milled. A complex, diverse, pluralistic society needs schools that provide many, many paths for development of differing potentials.
I am glad that you are making lemonade from the lemon that is the CC$$ in ELA, Linda. Be careful, however, to recognize that the CC$$ is not neutral with regard to curricula and pedagogy. The specific learning progressions and the specific formulations of particular standards PRECLUDE many approaches. If a standard calls for students to learn Greek and Latin roots and the meanings of standard affixes, ask yourself whether the research really suggests that having students do these things really has a substantive effect on vocabulary development. See, for example, George Miller’s great book The Science of Words, which should disabuse people of that notion and lead them to understand that the way to teach vocabulary is in batches in meaningful semantic context. Having students memorize the meanings of affixes and spew those back on a test might be suggested by these “standards,” but its a lousy way to teach vocabulary and has significant opportunity costs. It also is in keeping with a false extrinsic reward and punishment model of learning–teach the list, then do summative testing on it. Wrong from the start.
cx: it’s not its, of course
sorry about the typos
You are really having physics students read A Brief History of Time? The general consensus on that book is that it is UNREADABLE. Review after review said that this is a book that people bought because of Hawkings’s celebrity but that few actually read because it was extraordinarily confusing. I concur. There are some people who have a gift for creating analogies to explain mathematically formulated concepts to nonmathematicians, but Hawkings is not one of those people.
Here are some folks who do have such a gift: Dennis Flanagan (see his Flanagan’s Version), Brian Silver (See his The Ascent of Science) and Michael Guillen (see his Five Equations That Changed the World). Some folks who write very clearly about mathematics in ways that lay people can follow include Morris Kline (Mathematics for Nonmathematicians), Jerry King (Mathematics in 10 Lessons: the Grand Tour), and George Simmons (Precaluclus Mathematics in a Nutshell), and Charles miller, Ven Heeren, and E. Jon Hornsbym, Jr. (Mathematical Ideas).
The sort of creativity that you describe, Linda, would have been fostered if the CCSSO had issued, instead of this bullet list, a short set of VOLUNTARY, VERY GENERAL GUIDELINES–a framework–providing the degrees of freedom within which people could develop curricula, pedagogical approaches, learning progressions, and associated reading lists, lesson templates, etc. You speak as though the Common Core were simply such general guidelines–read original texts, read closely, etc. But it’s not. As written, it encourages some terrible pedagogical practices and terrible curricula and precludes many that would be much more productive.
Let me give you an example, Linda, of a change that I think needs to be introduced in the early grades that is precluded by the CC$$ in ELA:
In classic research conducted during the 1960s, Hart and Risley documented a 30-million-word gap in the exposure to spoken language of low- and high-SES kids during the first four years of their lives:
http://centerforeducation.rice.edu/slc/LS/30MillionWordGap.html
Research in language acquisition over the past 40 years has shown that grammatical competence is largely acquired via the unconscious operation of an internal language acquisition device, or LED, on the raw data in the ambient linguistic environment. Here’s how that works: functional equivalents of general principles for language are hardwired into the brain at birth. Then, parameters for a particular language are set depending upon the language to which the child is exposed. So, that phrases have heads is universal. It’s hard wired. That those heads come first is a parameter set when the child encounters French or English. That they come last is the parameter set when the child encounters Japanese or Hindi.
Now, because of the enormous gaps in low-SES kids’ exposure to complex syntax and vocabulary, they build less complex internalized models for their native language, and they build models that are not standard–not the ones prized in school. And there is even research showing, unequivocally, that neural circuits for grammatical and phonological features not encountered during a critical period are lost, forever.
So, it’s important that we provide for those low-SES students coming into school alternative, compensatory spoken language environments in which they are exposed to the full range of syntactic, semantic, morphological, and phonological forms of the language, in all their complexity, so that the LED will have the material upon which to work its magic.
Instead, what we do, in our well-intentioned but wrong-headed way, is to expose kids, on purpose, to language that has been intentionally impoverished syntactically, semantically, and morphologically–e.g., via readers with carefully controlled, grade-level “appropriate” morphology and semantic and syntactic structures.
What those low-SES kids need, however, is those rich, complex SPOKEN LANGUAGE environments on which their LEDs can work to build the spoken language competence that is foundational for later reading competence–environments that have been carefully constructed to do in a couple years, via oral language, what did not happen in the five+ years before the kid entered the first grade. Those environments must be interactive and must introduce the full range of forms of the language.
I’m convinced that until we do something like that, we’re not going to narrow, dramatically, the achievement gap. If we do not implement such compensatory spoken language exposure in the early grades, we shall continue to see the operation of the so-called Matthew Effect whereby school serves to give to those who already have and to take from those who already lack.
But building such a system and implementing it would be INCOMPATIBLE with the CC$$ as written.
Reading through the CC$$ in ELA, one quickly sees that the authors of these “standards” had no familiarity at all with research into language acquisition and just parroted, in the language “standards,” a lot of bad, prescientific ideas.
And, such work as I have described to provide the environments in which unconsciously acquired competence can be acquired would be greatly assisted by the development of finely grained diagnostics of syntactic and morphological competence of a kind that DO NOT CURRENTLY EXIST except in the scattered papers by linguists and cognitive scientists (as opposed to reading professors) who study child language acquisition.
Now, Linda, it would be possible to “kill two birds with one stone,” to use an extremely unfortunate metaphor, by having that spoken language work that has been designed to introduce the full range of phonological, semantic, morphological, and syntactic complexity of the language to low-SES kids ALSO be so designed as to introduce key concepts in key knowledge domains–ones that provide basic info about the world that writers the kids will encounter later will take for granted. I worked with a partner to outline precisely such a program a few years back. Such a program is a hard sell to one of the big educational publishing houses because those houses are in the business of giving people what they are used to seeing with some of the latest buzz words tossed in (NEW! RIGOROUS! ALIGNED!). And that sell becomes IMPOSSIBLE when everyone is focused not on what the research tells us about how kids learn but on the learning progression already established by Lord Coleman’s amateurish bullet list.
Linda,
“. . . is that you use an ad hominem attack of the standards with your language without offering a concession or an alternative.”
Please cite the ad hominem attack as I don’t see it. Thanks!
Also, when and if there is a “problem” one has to first identify it, and Bob most certainly has, and then settle into the business of correcting it, certainly not by doing more of the same.
But allow me to offer a different attack on educational standards and standardized testing. They are epistemologically and ontologically bankrupt, there is nothing there (thanks to TE for that phrase in criticizing Wilson whom he doesn’t understand.) See my above reference to Noel Wilson’s work “Educational Standards and The Problem of Error”.
Have you read Wilson’s work, Linda? If so, what critiques/rebuttals/refutations can you give me to show that he is not correct in his logical thinking/explication.
Linda,
It seems to me that U. Sinclair had something to say about those who dogmatically follow a line of thinking: “It is difficult to get a [wo]man to understand something, when his[/her] salary depends on his[/her] not understanding it.”
The final “it” being the epistemological and ontological bankruptcy of the concepts of educational standards and standardized testing and the concurrent harms caused to the students subjected to teaching and learning in that mode.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.”
—— Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post interview, 10/26/1929″
Bob:
For the sake of the exercise, if an entity of government came to you and offered you $1 million to draft standards on which to base our states’ standards, do you think you would? If not, would you offer up a flat no, or would you find a way to work with them, knowing they would find someone else if you passed on the offer?
I think regulars on this blog would be well suited to confront the realistic scenarios on the parts of others that got us where we are. What if you were David Coleman? What do you hope you would have done when the Governors made known their goals of common standards?
To me, some conversations like one that confronts the very real and human situation that did transpire on leading up to CCSS, are what takes the conversation to a more productive level.
I am not trolling. I am encouraging honest dialogue that factors in the temptation anyone would feel when millions are waved in your face and the vanity of having such a large say in what constitutes a high standard for students everywhere.
Honest dialogue. Alternatives. Etc.
Here’s what I would have done, Joanna:
1. I would have tried to convince them not to issue a bullet list of standards but, rather, to issue a few general, voluntary guidelines that would provide the degrees of freedom within which true innovation could occur. (However, this is not what the plutocrats who paid to have the standards created wanted. They wanted a single national bullet list to align their computer-adaptive curricula to. That’s why they paid to have those standards created. The whole thing was a business plan.)
2. If there were no choice but to create the mandatory bullet lists, then I would have recommended that
a. the work be divided by domain and that committees of scholars and researchers who were experts in those domains be formed to make recommendations (so, for example, linguists who were experts on language acquisition would join with reading professors to form the group working on standards in the language domain);
b. they NOT take their cue from the lowest-common-denominator group think instantiated in the existing state standards;
c. that not one but SEVERAL sets of standards, representing alternative approaches/learning progressions be created, in a branching format allowing for differing tracks for students who, after all, differ; and that
d. a great deal of preliminary work be done to formulate what was to be meant by “standard” in each domain (and for particular kinds of learning and acquisition within domains, that is, in subdomains); standards are statements of outcomes to be measured, and across grades, they become learning progressions, or curriculum maps; standards should look very different for different kinds of learning, and there are many possible ways of formulating them that differ dramatically from the ways in which they have traditionally been formulated. The ELA “standards,” for example, are almost formulated as descriptions of abstract concepts and skills. BIG MISTAKE! Far too little attention was paid to knowledge of what (world knowledge) and specific, concrete knowledge of how (procedural knowledge), and almost no attention was paid to ACQUISITION as opposed to EXPLICIT LEARNING. Again, BIG MISTAKE.
Bob. This is awesome.
Any chance reformers might hire you to fix what they did poorly? (I think you should try to help them by taking what they did to the new level you describe. Everyone wins that way).
I wonder, could you go to the states that are now suffering because of the blind adoption of RttT and offer this up? Something tells me leadership will be looking for a way to get the egg off their face.
Reblogged this on Middletown Voice.
Hey Duane, I opened the Wilson link, but in honesty, I did not read it. I will try during spring break to do this “light” reading (250 pages on this complex subject requires more time than I have at the moment…I work in a high school and I am in the trenches of my own text book writing). With that said, the first thing that I noted is that this research is 16 years old. That is not to say that isn’t relevant. It just isn’t timely. I won’t judge, since I didn’t read it.
I agree that Bob has identified the problem. He’s done a very good job at that. There is little disagreement to that point.
When he calls the ELA standards hackneyed, he is using inflammatory language to describe something instead of stating with specificity where and how they are flawed.
According to Merriam Webster,
Ad hominem
1. appealing to feelings or prejudices rather than intellect
2. marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made
I don’t see that the CCSS as hackneyed at all. But let’s be fair. I don’t have any other state standards besides Florida, New York, and oddly enough, Alaska’s standards by which to compare. I think the CCSS are very similar to what we had in Florida for the past 15 years, only with the addition of rhetoric and argument. I welcome that addition.
I think there are two bigger issues. The assessment tied to the standards with the impact on teacher salaries. And publishers, both text book and online platforms, who are trying to adapt their curriculum to the new standards. This is that bulleted list, formulaic approach of which Bob so eloquently speaks. Too many Principals and Curriculum Specialists look at the label CCSS Aligned and drink the snake oil because they are desperate for materials to help both teachers and students. We can’t assume that teachers have the inherent knowledge to teach to these standards. Please keep in mind the number of second career professionals who come to teach in a high school. They have content knowledge, but lack delivery practice or knowledge. This is why a set of vertically and horizontally aligned standards is an absolute necessity. Administrators are just as clueless to a large extent about the roll out as the teachers.
I may be following the standards in a dogmatic way (if that Upton S. quote was directed at me…which it wasn’t but work with me here), but for an inner city high school with a 39% mobility rate and the highest poverty level of any of the 30+ high schools in my district, we have an 84.3% graduation rate. We are implementing the full scope of all common core standards, even if we don’t know what the target assessment will look like and what students will be expected to know and do. We have to work with what we are given and do our best to educate these students who have to compete in a global market.
I am a teacher of 25 years. It isn’t as long a tenure as others on this blog, and I have yet much to learn, but I do know a solid argument when I hear one. So far, I still have not been convinced that the standards themselves are the issue. Bob may call them hackneyed, but I don’t have to agree with him on that.
I appreciate what Joanna Best said in her comment: honest dialogue and alternatives.
I don’t care if someone criticizes, but do so with an alternative that we can understand and work with.
BTW on another note…Does anybody see the connection between the Affordable Care Act roll out and the Common Core roll out? Just saying.
Anyway, thanks for responding to my reply to Bob. I am glad to have others join in the conversation.
It’s okay if we don’t all agree. It is healthy, right?
Linda Kal Sander
Boyd H. Anderson High School, Lauderdale Lakes, Florida
Linda, I’m wondering whether you read carefully my comments on two of the thousand or so standards, here:
I also mention, briefly, in that piece some general issues that I have with the overall approaches in the various domains covered. I have a number of projects underway at present, but one of them is an exhaustive critique of the new ELA standards.
However, I think that you are missing my most general point: These standards are not, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, the best that we can come up with, so why should they be set in stone and mandated for everyone? Is it not better to have scholars, researchers, curriculum developers, and classroom practitioners nationwide putting forward, continually, their best ideas?
We would not dream of dictating to writers of novels what narrative structures they must use because we want to see from writers of novels a great deal of innovation, and they need to be free to do what suits THEIR PARTICULAR materials and purposes. The same is true of teachers.
What I am angry about here, and I am angry about this, is having a couple of amateurs tell me and everyone else what outcomes must be measured at each grade level, how those should be formulated, and what learning progressions we should follow. That sort of TOTALITARIANISM precludes implementation and development of a lot of BETTER ideas.
It ossifies hackneyed, backward notions. It doesn’t move us forward.
And, again, Linda, I want to emphasize that it sounds to me as though you are doing wonderful things within the CC$$ framework, and I applaud that. But don’t take these “standards” as written in stone, and allow your people to think for themselves and to deviate from them when they have better ideas.
Suppose, Linda, that a literature standard at a particular grade level says, as some of them do, that the student must look at how figurative language affects mood and tone.
Now, doesn’t that strike you as odd and constricted? As thought it reflected very immature notions about figurative language and the ways in which it operates in the world?
Let’s think for just a moment about one variety of figurative language, metaphor. As such thinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Martin Heidegger, Kenneth Burke, George Lakoff, and Zoltan Kovecses have made abundantly clear, metaphor is a fundamental means by which we understand the world. Our ways of conceptualizing the world are to a large extent metaphorical, and language is absolutely shot through with metaphor. And most of the metaphors that we use are used unconsciously.
If you think carefully about the preceding paragraph, you will discover that it is full of metaphors. The word Let’s depends upon a metaphorical conceptual frame of a coming together of you, the reader, and me, the writer, a frame that equates consideration of a topic with physical meeting. The word variety employs a conceptual frame in which types of language are thought of in the same way that we think of types of physical objects–varieties of birds or squashes or whatever. The word figurative belongs to a whole class of metaphors that describe statements and thoughts as shapes (e.g., “The author centered in on Eliot’s later poems”). The word abundantly is clearly metaphorical and relates to a conceptual equation of the power of ideas with quantities of objects. The words fundamental and understand related to a conceptual framing of ideas as parts of structures. The metaphor in shot throughis clear enough.
Emerson, in his essay on Language, makes the claim that all abstract thinking has its roots in the concrete. He gives the example of the word right meaning, literally, on a straight path. Lakoff and Kovecses have exhaustively catalogued metaphors, like this one: debate = war:
He won the argument.
Your claims are indefensible.
He shot down all my arguments.
His criticisms were right on target.
If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
In short, metaphor does a lot of heavy lifting in our language and thought, and limiting ourselves, as teachers, to measuring how the use of particular metaphors affect mood and tone in a literary work is like reducing the study of the Civil War to learning about the relative sizes of the cannonballs used by Union and Rebel forces.
Suppose that a curriculum developer suggests to an educational publisher, today, that there should be, in a tenth-grade literature program, a unit or a part of a unit on how metaphors work, structurally, and how they shape thought and how most of the metaphors that people use are used completely unconsciously because they are part of the common linguistic inheritance. Such a unit could be EXTRAORDINARILY valuable and interesting. It would give kids conceptual tools or ENORMOUS POWER that even most professional writers don’t have.
But that publisher would say, “No. You can’t do that. The “standards” say that you are to concentrate on how figurative language affects mood or tone in literary works.
Now, that idea, is a LAME ONE. It’s hackneyed and obvious and something that teachers have done pretty much unthinkingly for eons, and it’s a LOT LESS interesting and powerful than it would be to tackle the subject of metaphor as I have suggested we might do. What we are told to concentrate on in the standards reads, to me, like what an amateur who really doesn’t know much about figurative language and how it works would think was important.
And the alternative that I have outlined is JUST ONE of MANY possible approaches that one could take to this one part of this one “standard”–one of many that are RULED OUT because we have been told that we must do what the “standard” says and not something else.
And what I have said, here, about this one standard could be said about almost all of them.
So, in short, if I told a publisher that I wanted to do a unit on metaphor as conceptual framing, I would be told, “No, the standard says that we’re supposed to do how figurative language like metaphor affects mood and tone.”
Now, the unit on metaphor as conceptual framing would be in line with the state of the art of research into the cognitive science of thinking and language. Such conceptual framing is FUNDAMENTAL to the thinking via natural prototypes (as opposed to Aristotelian natural kinds) that we ACTUALLY DO. And being aware of what we do, there, is extremely powerful and enriching, both to one’s reading and to one’s writing.
But no. I am not allowed to think about these matters now. Lord Coleman has done the thinking for us all, and we shall have new thinking when the CCSSO reconvenes the Politburo to issue its next bullet list.
$&*$#@&*$@*&&*$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And by such means, these standards limit the possibilities for pedagogical and curricular creativity and innovation to the backward, received notions that the philistines who put these “standards” together based on the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the previously existing state “standards.”
My apologies for the typos in these hastily written notes.
And, Linda, when someone presumes to tell everyone else in the country what to do, then he or she invites ad hominem attacks. I do have an issue with Coleman. I think that what he has done is breathtakingly presumptuous, breathtakingly arrogant. Who is he to make these decisions for every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum developer in the country? Is he now, by divine right, absolute monarch of instruction in the English language arts in the United States? Is that what we are to accept? I do not. I, for one, don’t need David Coleman to do my thinking for me.
However, it’s inaccurate to describe what I have done here as primarily ad hominem. I have offered many, many arguments that go to the issues, that are not about David Coleman.
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.