If you ever watch The Food Network or something similar, you have probably seen Chef Bobby Flay and his “throw down” with a competing chef. Sometimes Bobby goes into a little known neighborhood and challenges a local chef who is famous for a regional dish, sometimes he takes on another famous chef. And you never know who will win.
In this post, Peter Greeene, Pennsylvania high school English teacher, has a throw down with an unnamed Other. That Other is E.D. Hirsch, Jr. Hirsch has argued in several well-known books that there are certain facts, ideas, and concepts that every American must know. He calls it cultural literacy. Others might call it background knowledge. In general, I agree with Hirsch’s idea that we need to accumulate background knowledge so as to have a conversation about the past, the present, and the future.
Peter Greene, however, has lost faith in the idea that there are certain things all educated persons must know. He explains why here.
He thinks there might be some things we should all know, but his list is short, and he is conflicted.
He writes:
“I think any person would be better off knowing some Shakespeare. I think every person would benefit from being able to express him/her-self as clearly as possible in writing and speaking. I think there’s a giant cargo-ship-load of literature that has important and useful things to say to various people at various points in their journey through life.
“But this is a fuzzy, individual thing. Think of it as food, the intellectual equivalent of food. Are there foods that everybody would benefit from eating? Wellll…. I would really enjoy a steak, but my wife the vegan would not. And given my physical condition, it might not be the best choice for me. On the other hand, if I haven’t had any protein in a while, it might be great. And a salad might be nice, unless I already had a salad today, because eating a lot of salad has some unpleasant consequences for me. Oh, and I do enjoy a lobster, which is fairly healthy, unless I’m have to eat while I’m traveling– lobster makes very bad road food in the car. You see our problem. We can agree that everybody should eat. I’m not sure we can pick a menu and declare that every single human being would benefit from eating exactly that food at exactly the same time.
“Ditto for The List. I mean, I think everybody should learn stuff. Personally, I’m a generalist, so I think everybody would benefit from learning everything from Hamlet to quantum physics. But then, I know some people who have made the world a better place by being hard core specialists who know nothing about anything outside their field.
“So if you ask me, can I name a list of skills and knowledge areas that every single solitary American must learn, I start to have trouble. Every mechanic, welder, astronaut, teacher, concert flautist, librarian, physicist, neurosurgeon, truck driver, airplane pilot, grocery clerk, elephant trainer, beer brewer, housewife, househusband, politician, dog catcher, cobbler, retail manager, tailor, dentist– what exactly does every single one of those people have to know?”
Maybe we could get gather if we talk about the principles of government. Shouldn’t we all know about the Constitution and Bill of Rights? Aren’t there signal events in American and old history that we should all know about?
Maybe it is just a difference in fields, but I think that history might be less arbitrary than English. Or is it?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The new Common Core State Standards are almost exclusively a list of very vaguely and abstractly and generally formulated “skills.” As such, they were misconceived at their most fundamental level. Please read the following carefully.
1. For the most part, the new national “standards” in ELA neither cover world knowledge (knowledge of what) nor formulate procedural knowledge (knowledge of how) in ways sufficiently operationalized to allow for transmission by teachers or valid testing. So, these “standards” almost entirely ignore much of ELA (knowledge within the subject area) and misconceive the rest of it (skills within the subject area). So, the “standards” strike out on both counts. (And please understand that world knowledge, or knowledge of what includes far, far more than just knowledge of “isolated facts.”)
2. The new national “standards” describe outcomes for whole domains of ELA as though these domains primarily involve explicit learning of skills, when, in fact, those domains, for the most part, involve largely automatic acquisition that occurs given appropriate inputs, motivation to engage with those, and guidance in that engagement. Almost all the vocabulary, grammatical competence, ability to reason cogently, and command of specific tools and techniques for writing and speaking fall into this nonexplicit learning, or acquisition, category. The “standards” thus reveal profound ignorance on the part of the standards’ “authors” of the crucial distinction, for ELA, between learning and acquisition and lead to (and often explicitly endorse) extremely counterproductive curricula and pedagogy.
I’m glad you get into the important distinction between learning and acquisition. It is driving me bonkers at my school watching colleagues feeling like they have to teach nouns, verbs and other grammar terminology in k and 1.
Hand them a copy of any introductory syntax book. Here’s the example that I often use to explain this to people:
You know that
the green, great dragon
sounds weird, and that
the great, green dragon
sounds fine.
That’s because you have a device in your head that intuited the rules for order of precedence of adjectives in English from your ambient linguistic environment. No one taught you those rules, but you learned them, and you follow them very precisely.
And ALMOST ALL grammatical competence is of that kind. It’s extremely important that people understand this so that they know what they are dealing with–how grammatical competence is attained. When students in someone’s class typically say things like “Me and Julio played some hoops,” this is NOT because those speakers “haven’t learned any grammar.” It’s because the device in their heads for constructing a grammar of the language has worked to construct one in which that is an acceptable construction. And if you want those students to develop an alternative internalized model, you are going to have to work on them to develop that USING THE MEANS THAT NATURE HAS PROVIDED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNALIZED MODELS OF LANGUAGES. And those are not explicit means. Teaching the child explicit rules for case assignment will be largely irrelevant and will have significant opportunity and motivational cost.
Thank you Robert for that reply. You just explained everything that is wrong with the Fundations curriculum. Once again, as “just a parent” I am not nearly as smart as you, all I have is a gut feeling and a sense I don’t like this when I see it. I hear my 7 year old struggling to grasp these formal grammar rules and learn how to explain what a diagraph is, and I can’t articulate what I see wrong with this. I know I don’t like it, but I don’t know why. You know exactly why. Thanks for explaining.
Rather than discuss what knowledge is of greatest worth, I prefer using Dewey’s terminology: what set of intellectual tools would provide students with the kind of knowledge and skills that support their role as a citizen of a democracy. The greatest worth frame reduces the discussion to what subject or discipline is of greatest worth which inevitability leads to some form of ranking of disciplines (which is more abstract—mathematics always comes out on top) and then a discussion of depth of understanding. Both discussions draw the conversation away from Dewey’s point: what intellectual tools would an individual require to play their proper role as a citizen of a democracy —–now those of us in social studies would jump on this frame say, oh, of course, history, government, political science, but again we are back discussing subjects instead of intellectual tools. The three intellectual tools Dewey talked about was the ability to critique, the ability to implement/practice/formulate/create, and the ability to communicate. All of these abilities lie in different subject areas, but now here is the rub with Dewey, the particular knowledge/skill in each discipline only becomes relevant when confronted with a paricular societal or human problem. In other words, history, or math, or biology only become important in the context of a problem (that is how these subjects originated) that either privately or publically requires solving. Before ranking subjects or discplines or level of abstractness, Dewey would begin with what problems needs solving in this country (e.g. climate, poverty, etc.) and what intellectual tools do we bring to bear on these problems. The answer is that no subject alone could solve these problems and no subject as it is taught in schools is framed in this manner. Problems that could kill us or keep us up at night are not subject matter problems or problems that academics argue over, rather they are interdisciplinary in nature and require both big picture thinking (putting specialized knowledge into a democratic worldview) into a and little picture thinking (identifying and applying specialized knowledge). What is common to this problem solving process are those three intellectual tools: critique, application, and communication. The major complaint of employers and a major impediment to solving the societal problems we now experience, is the ability of graduates, whether from high school or college to think critically, to execute a plan, and to communicate. Talk to any graduate who voices this same complaint when they say, school did not prepare me well for this job—what they are really saying is they spent their entire educational career embedded in learning the definitions, the facts, the procedures, and the academic arguments of a subject, but never how to use these subjects to solve real public and private problems —but as I have attempted to explain, the human and societal problems with confront will not be solved with a major in history or taking an AP calculus course—that will give you a diploma, it will not give you answers to what could kill us or what keeps us up at night.
There’s a problem, however, Alan, with that formulation, if people do not understand the crucial distinction between learning and acquisition. Many of these tools are acquired, not explicitly learned. It’s very, very important, particularly in ELA, that people understand this and understand how the acquisition takes place. There are many, many sciences that deal specifically within thinking processes–probability, propositional and predicate logic, modal logic, fuzzy logic, and so on. But people almost never actually apply those explicitly. Even professors of logic don’t. Instead, they apply habits of thought that they have learned from situations in which they picked those up and modeled them without being aware that they had done so.
For the past few decades we’ve seen a disease metastasize through our K-12 system that involves explicit but extremely vague, sloppy, useless instruction in abstractly formulated skills (e.g., the teaching of “critical thinking”) by people who haven’t learned enough about those skills to be teaching explicit techniques for them. Most of the “critical thinking” sections I’ve seen in basal ELA texts, for example, are embarrassingly bad. They get the most basic concepts wrong. One of the big lit basals, for example, defines “deduction” as reasoning from the general to the specific.
$&$@&*@*$&*&!!!!
So, yes, we teach kids how to think. But that should take place, by and large, incidentally when we are engaged with significant content and thinking about, focusing on, that. If we are going to do explicit instruction in “thinking skills,” then we had better actually learn something about those, about probability and heuristics, formal and informal inductive and deductive logic, abduction and hypothesis testing, etc. Otherwise, we are completely wasting our students’ time. Ironically, the “critical thinking” materials in textbooks tend to be the ones least well thought out because the authors of those materials didn’t understand the basics of the relevant disciplines.
Deduction, of course, is reasoning by means of procedures that result in a conclusion that must be true if the premises are true.
Would agree, if the intellectual tools I referred to are reduced to a subject —then yes, we are back to acquisition —which always equates to an institutional goal. But Dewey’s use of the term intellectual tools is a dynamic/organic context, where various intellectual tools are applied to societal/existential problems that we all confront—this is what he meant by “The school and society,” not school apart from society — which are the schools our children now attend.
well said, Alan!
It’s extremely important for educators to distinguish among these various kinds of attainments and to put together learning situations appropriate for them. Some things are best taught explicitly. Others cannot be effectively taught by explicit means–they involve acquisition that takes place automatically GIVEN THE APPROPRIATE CIRCUMSTANCES, and those circumstances have to be created. For example, almost none (far, far less than 1 percent) of the vocabulary of an adult speaker and reader is acquired via explicit teaching and learning. Vocabulary is acquired in semantic groups in the context of significant activity that involves use of that vocabulary. So, you take an art class at the Y, and in the course of a week, you learn what filbert brush, chiaroscuro, tableaux, stippling, and gesso mean, but no one taught you those explicitly. They were used in a significant context in which you were involved, and you picked them up. And because you acquired that vocabulary in context like that, you also acquired, without being aware of it, the morphological rules for creation of inflected and derivative forms of those words.
correction: Instead, they apply a) habits of thought that they have learned from situations in which they picked those up and modeled them without being aware that they had done so and b) functional processes that their brains are wired to apply.
The second part (b) is by far the most important, and I inadvertently left it out.
It seems to me that your distinction between “learning” and “acquisition” can be viewed as “formal” vs “informal” thinking or perhaps explicit and implicit thinking and that the formal, learning and explicit and are sub categories of informal, acquisition, and implicit?
Most of what we learn from infancy to schooling no doubt is “acquired” through little to no conscious activity on the part of the individual. But as time passes for the individual more and more of thinking is explicitly “learned” through formal schooling although not completely of that realm.
I believe it to be a mistake to think to infer that the best way for older children and adults to live and change, i.e. learn, is through a process(es) that mimics the first five or so years of life and that those means should continue to be used.
To be continued. . .
This approach of working from problems is, of course, a powerful pedagogical strategy–one of the tools in the kit.
“Tools” provide me with knowledge? I’m not following that one. “Tools” sounds a lot like “skills,” and certainly skills are not the same thing as content.
FLERP, acquisition of ability with tools and techniques often involves knowledge. Suppose that you are in my woodworking class. I introduce you to planes and scrapers and sharpening tools of various kinds. I teach you that you have to sharpen first, then plane. You learn about the parts of the plane. You learn about the materials and techniques for sharpening. You learn the order and parts of the processes of sharpening and planing. You learn to plane in the direction of the grain and not across the grain. Hell, you learn what “grain is.” Becoming capable of using the tools and techniques involves a lot of concrete knowledge. This is a water stone. It has a particular grit. And so on.
So, yes, you have knowledge of tools, and that knowledge makes other knowledge available to you. You learn what a micrometer and how to use and read one, and you learn the metric system, and then you can use that knowledge to gain knowledge of the precise measurement of, say, a particular pipe.
An oldie but goodie. I think that there are a couple lessons to be learned from this. First, people retain what they use. All of these kids learned, in third grade, that seasons result from the tilt of the Earth, but they were never, ever, again, called upon to use or apply that knowledge. Second, people retain what is connected in their minds to a body of knowledge, in a network, other parts of which are called upon regularly, thus triggering concomitant rehearsal of that connected part. One could do this with many items from the standard curriculum. We all learned what the Krebs Cycle is. At some point in high school, we all learned the difference between synecdoche and metonymy. How many of us remember those things?
So, it’s of little value to teach isolated factoids or skills that will not be used later.
Most adults, a few years after they have left school, have forgotten almost all of the mathematics that they learned in K-college, and have done so happily. In beginning Algebra, we all studied the FOIL method for multiplying binomials. How many adults do you know who could explain that method right now? Most have put it entirely out of their minds.
Playing “gotcha” doesn’t really tell you anything. The thing about these Harvard students is that if you say, no the seasons change because of the angle of the earth’s axis, they won’t answer, “No, you’re wrong” but rather — “Oh, that’s right, I remember learning that!” In any case, they will know how to assess and correct their own information. They will know what revolving on an axis at an angle means, and so on. Also, they will probably never make that mistake again.
So it is NOT useless to teach them the isolated factoid about what causes the seasons because they don’t use it every day in their work or every day conversation. The whole thing about liberal education is that it is broader than what seems immediately practical, because we can’t predict the future and what will be practical at any given moment, for one thing. For another, if people are going to retain the information that the earth revolves on a tilted axis, then we need to teach it “redundantly” for make sure it really does get passed on by large numbers of people. This will make it easier to teach in future because of the “resonance” effect.
That’s very well argued, Harold.
In addition, I don’t need to keep everything in my memory., I just need to know how to find or retrieve the information when I need it.
I have always abhorred “gotcha” stuff like this.
Think about it.
We walk up to you on a day when you are busy, excited, distracted, (graduation day anyone?), shove a microphone under your nose and a film camera in your face. Most folks are pretty unaccustomed to being “interviewed”/formally filmed. We then proceed to quiz you about something that you make no claim to be an expert on.
How would most of us do?
Alan
The problems you describe does not require the problem solving skills of 7 billion people. however, we do need an educated populace to make intelligent decisions regarding proposed solutions, energy issues for example. If the members of a region do not understand the fundamental workings of a nuclear power plant, how can they intelligently decide to accept one in their backyard? The general populace does not have to solve the problems of enriching uranium, designing safety features, determining geologic security, or containment technologies for waste.
There is widespread misunderstanding, I think, of Hirsch’s arguments and of what he is arguing for. I want to clarify just a few points:
1. First, Hirsch came to his ideas by studying reading comprehension. At a time when we was already a world-famous professor as a result of his work in hermeneutics, he chose to teach the intro composition classes generally pawned off on TAs, and he did this because he considered them important. And in his research with students of composition, he found that he encountered, again and again, that students were having difficulty with comprehension because they did not have the background knowledge that the writer took for granted. Without this basic background knowledge, they were lost.
2. Second, Hirsch is often accused of being a champion of lists of knowledge deriving from the work of dead white men. His work happened to hit at the height of the multiculturalism wars. However, his thesis is not that one should teach the work of dead white men. It is, rather, that one should impart to students whatever knowledge writers and speakers typically take for granted that their adult listeners and readers will have. So, the question of what that knowledge is will be an entirely empirical one, and as a society changes, the constitution of that knowledge will change. So, for example, as the Hispanic population in the United States grows, so will the extent to which speakers and writers will assume familiarity with Hispanic cultural materials. If, in the United States today, you do not know what the word “Hola” means, you will be at a disadvantage, because most educated speakers and writers assume, now, that other educated speakers and writers do know what that means, and so knowledge of that would be on the list.
3. Third, Hirsch has NEVER called for his list to make up the entire curriculum. At most, he says, and he has said this again and again, that “knowledge that people assume that others will have” should be addressed by something like half the curriculum. Hirsch has always recognized the importance of expertise and specialization beyond this common base.
4. Fourth, because of his friendship with the brilliant Dan Willingham, Hirsch has come to place increasing importance upon both world knowledge and procedural knowledge (concrete knowledge of processes to be carried out). His beef has always been with “skills” instruction so vaguely formulated that nothing of substance was transmitted to students.
Now, with all that understood, this conversation about Hirsch’s ideas can proceed. I personally have become sick of listening to rantings about Hirsch and Core Knowledge by people on both the left and the right who understand neither–by right-wingers who love Core Knowledge because they believe, falsely, that it’s a dead white man curriculum and by left-wingers who hate Core Knowledge for the same reason.
Now, here’s an issue: If it is indeed the case that the list is an empirical matter–if the list contains whatever speakers and writers take for granted that others will know–that list will, inevitably, be culturally conservative. So, that is a real issue. But the way to address the issue, I believe, is to supplement the list in that other half of the curriculum. Perhaps speakers and writers in the United States, today, do not typically assume familiarity with the Mahabarata and the Ramayana. Speakers and writers in India absolutely WOULD assume such familiarity. And so, I believe, as wise educators who want our kids to be citizens of the world, we would want to make certain that they get that familiarity with that which is, to many of them, very foreign.
That’s why I composed the following statement for the header of my personal blog:
“All real learning is unlearning. You have to step through the wardrobe or fall down the rabbit hole into a place beyond your interpellations, beyond the collective fantasies that go by the name of common sense. Real learning requires a period of estrangement from the familiar. You return to find the ordinary transmuted and wondrous. You see it anew, as on the first day of creation, as though for the first time.”
Correction, item 1, above: “At a time when he was. . .”
I live in Tampa. We boast one of the largest and most active Indian communities in the United States. If you don’t know the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and live in Tampa, you are ignorant of really important parts of the collective cultural inheritance of the community in which you live, and the possibilities for your understanding and interactions are to that extent diminished. So, it’s both reasonable for schools, here, to teach that core material that speakers and writers across the U.S. take for granted, generally, and to share these unique, community-specific cultural materials that are of such extraordinary value.
And in Western New York we learn about the Iroquois and Algonquin.
Or we used to, before NCLB and CC replaced the emphasis on social studies to make more time for math and ELA.
Everywhere, this is happening. the good stuff is getting pushed out. Got to make room for that lesson on writing the constructed response with three pieces of evidence showing that the author used a comparison and contrast method of development in the middle part of the complex informative text on the light rail system proposal for Erwhon, Arkansas. There are millions of stories like that, Ellen, and it’s sickening.
cx: onto TAs, not on, of course
I read a piece a few years back by a filmmaker who was visiting India. He wrote that there were 17 different feature-length films in production, at the time of his visit, based on stories from the Mahabharata. In other words, this material is extraordinarily culturally important to people in India, and very much alive. It means a great deal to a seventh of the population of the world. And so it would be incredibly provincial of us to leave it off any list of what an educated person, today, might be reasonably expected to know. I’ve offered one proposal: part of the curriculum would be based on what people in the given culture are generally expected to know and be able to do, and part of it would be based on a) the particular interests and expertise that differing students want to develop and b) what is culturally significant to people in the rest of the world. I think it also important for people to think in terms of providing students with opportunities to apply knowledge (of what and of how) to significant, difficult, complex, unusual problems, for it is doubtless the case that kids in school today are going to experience more change, in their lifetimes, than has occurred up to this point in the entire history of our species, and so they had better be flexible, self-motivated problem solvers with experience learning on their own, quickly, and motivation for such learning.
One of the problems with basing curricula and pedagogical strategies on abstractly formulated skills like those that make up the bulk of the extraordinarily amateurishly conceived CCSS in ELA is that activities on such skills tend to be disconnected and not concrete and focused on vague, abstract ends so not particularly engaging. Kids want to read about snakes because they are interested in snakes, not because they have a burning desire to find out what method of expository development the author used in paragraph 13. But rivers of CCSS curricula are being created that do the later kind of thing because that’s what the tests do because that’s what the “standards” say is important.
BIG MISTAKE. ENORMOUS MISTAKE. HUGELY DISTORTING of both curricula and pedagogy.
cx: latter, not later, of course; oh, for a correction feature on WordPress!
I can’t (I won’t!) believe that there isn’t a plugin that allows users to edit their comments.
Life itself needs such a plugin.
“All real learning is unlearning….”
AMEN!
Carlos Castaneda’s books started the “Unlearning” for me…
” The basic premise of sorcery for a sorcerer is that the world of everyday life is not real, or out there, as we believe it is. For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description.
For the sake of validating this premise I will concentrate the best of my efforts into leading you into a genuine conviction that what you hold in mind as the world at hand is merely a description of the world; a description that has been pounded into you from the moment you were born.
Everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. We have no memory of that portentous moment, simply because none of us could possibly have had any point of reference to compare it to anything else. From that moment on, however, the child is a member . He knows the description of the world; and his membership becomes full-fledged, perhaps, when he is capable of making all the proper perceptual interpretations which, by conforming to that description, validate it.
The reality of our day-to-day life, then, consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we, the individuals who share a specific membership, have learned to make in common….”
The invocations of “Education”, “Democracy”, “Rule of Law”, “Free Market”, …
continue to clash with “Reality”, yet they are continued by the “Shepherds” of the
many flocks, as though they weren’t illusions.
The problem with (fill in the blank) is that it has nothing to do with the “Real” world
and everything to do with propaganda. Introducing more “Unreality” into the mix
does nothing to improve matters.
All real learning is unlearning…
Think of the absurdity of claiming that there’s this list of hundreds of books that must be read and thousands of facts that everyone should know when compared to 316+ million citizens, some who love to read (65 million are avid readers) and 32 million adults who can’t read and everyone else is in between—about 52 million read below a 5th grade level and 80% of high school graduates who don’t go to college never read a book again in their lives. Fortunately about 41% of American adults have earned a college degree (yet only 27% of the jobs in the US require a college degree) so it’s a safe bet that most of them have read a book or two or at least did some thinking on their own.
I think that Peter Greens suggestion that “we all know about the Constitution and Bill of Rights” is the best place to start. Even the 32 million adults who can’t read could learn that by just watching educational films and taking part in discussions. Maybe this should be a requirement before anyone was allowed to vote. No grade. Just show up and attend all the screenings and discussions. An easy pass just to be exposed to this vital information for a few hours.
Then once all Americans were knowledgeable about the Constitutional and Bil of Rights that would put a stop to the fake education reform movement, and many Americans who vote might spent a bit more time thinking about who and what to vote for instead of blindly falling in line behind the list a Rush Limbaugh, for instance, would hand them as he calls his followers ditto heads and that he will think for them. The same might even work for the Koch brother funded and managed Tea Party Americans. Maybe they would shake their heads to clear away the nonsense and start to think for themselves instead of let someone else think for them.
The research on the efficacy of Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Curriculum is minimal.
Where the Core Knowledge curriculum has resulted in some very moderate positive achievement results in some areas, the most likely explanation is that it’s not Core Knowledge specifically that accounts for it, but rather “curriculum coherence.”
And this is nothing new. Effective schools research from decades ago noted that there tends to be a positive relationship between curricular articulation, “clear goals, and student learning. (This, by the way, is an argument made for Common Core).
As one national study on Core Knowledge noted, the “benefits” of a rich, diversified curriculum are not “limited to Core Knowledge, but instead may be applicable to other specified curricula…even those developed by schools themselves.”
Again this is not “new” news.
The Eight-Year Study (circa 1933) was a plan to take a group of schools and free them
from the traditional curriculum. The plan was to allow schools to redesign the “college preparatory high school curriculum in order to meet the needs of increasing numbers of students who in earlier years would not have gone beyond elementary school.”
In these schools, “the general life of the school and methods of teaching should conform to what is now known about the ways in which human beings learn and grow.” Educators and community members “realized that many changes in ways of teaching, as well as in organization and curriculum, were necessary if attendance at school was to become the stimulating, meaningful experience it could be for each student.”
As one principal noted, “My teachers and I do not know what to do with this freedom. It challenges and frightens us. I fear that we have come to love our chains.”
Yet, those involved in the study “recognized their responsibility for measuring, recording, and in reporting the results of their work.” They realized that they were trying to”develop students who regard education as an enduring quest for meanings.” In that sense, the participants were confident that they could change education, and “perhaps the chief reason for confidence in the schools’ use of freedom is to be found in the genuine sense of responsibility which most teachers feel. They are conscious of the far-reaching consequences of their work.”
The follow-up evaluation of how graduates from the experimental schools did in college compared to graduates of traditional schools “found that the graduates from the participating schools in the study earned slightly higher grades; appeared more intellectually curious, objective in their thinking, and resourceful; received slightly more academic honors in each year; were more often judged to possess a high degree of intellectual curiosity and drive; were more often judged to be precise, systematic, and objective in their thinking; more often demonstrated a high degree of resourcefulness in meeting new situations; earned in each college year a higher percentage on on-academic honors; demonstrated a more active concern for what was going on in the world.”
In the early 1990s a k-12 version of the Eight-Year Study was proposed and developed in Virginia. Called the Common Core of Learning, it was centered on developmental research, developmentally-appropriate practices, and it exemplified the principles behind the Eight-Year Study.
A small number of elementary and middle schools in the state were given grants to align their curricula and instruction with research-based best practices and to train teachers. Early results were promising. But the Common Core was routinely bashed by the conservative Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial page and by Times-Dispatch columnist Bob Holland (now at the conservative Heartland Institute, funded by the Kochs and Waltons and Exxon Mobil)), who likened it to Big Brother and termed it “outcome-based education (OBE).”
The Virginia Common Core got caught up in the gubernatorial election between George Allen and Mary Sue Terry, and Allen’s campaign mobilized the Christian Coalition against OBE. When Allen was elected, what might well have been a student-centered, thinking curriculum became a specific content, test-based one called the Standards of Learning (SOLs). Early drafts of the elementary grade SOLs were taken nearly word-for-word from Hirsch’s Core Knowledge work. Interestingly, Diane Ravitch, before her “conversion,” was hired as a consultant by the Allen administration’s department of education, and blessed the SOLs.
It isn’t that we don’t know how to improve public education to make it more meaningful, relevant, and effective. We do.
We just do not have the will to do it.
And Core Knowledge is not the “answer.”
The benefits of a rich, diversified curriculum are not “limited to Core Knowledge, but instead may be applicable to other specified curricula . . . even those developed by schools themselves.”
I agree. And though I cannot speak for him, I think that Hirsch probably would, too.
However, I don’t approve of the disparaging “even” in that sentence, for I believe that teachers should develop curricula collaboratively.
But I have become sick to death of looking at lessons in textbooks in which the content was considered of no importance but simply a vehicle for delivering a skills lesson. May the gods save us from yet another lesson on finding the main idea and supporting details in a random bit of drek plopped in front of a student so that he or she can exercise this “skill.”
No one believes in having kids memorize lists of isolated factoids. But some things are worth knowing and interesting, and some are not, and we have gone far, far down the path of delivering Monty Python “and now for something completely different” curricula because the content was relegated to a status of no importance whatsoever because it was treated as a mere opportunity for exercising an abstractly, vaguely, and often ignorantly formulated “skill.”
And today, class, we are going to practice our inferencing. I have heard that far, far, far too many times.
My 2 cents worth.
Are our major problems today ones of lack of specific bits of knowledge or of compassion, virtue, integrity et al? Many of great intellect and even knowledge in their area of learning have caused all kinds of problems. Too, is the love of learning not at the top of the list for educative goals? And what of the idea of humility, that one recognizes their own ignorance? There certainly are great ideas from humanity’s best scholars but many of those ideas are listed above.
A University of Chicago professor several years ago wrote a list of great books, the syntopican – sorry my spelling does not seem to be correct – but yes there are great books and great ideas but as soon as a list is made out, MANY great ideas are necessarily excluded
AND
as someone above has so cogently said, people are different with different backgrounds, likes, and interests. My favorite one is: Wagner and Debussy hated each other, could not stand each others music but how much poorer would we be without either of them
AND again,
along those lines for learning. Beethoven rewrote his music over and over and over again before the final work was finished. Mozart rarely rewrote anything, it was first conceived in his head and “the rest is just scribbling”. To try to make Mozart work like Beethoven or vice versa would be madness, something like the mindset of many today who think that there are some magic bullets which if everyone would only follow, the little widgets would be “educated”.
Gordon Wilder: your comments got me to thinking…
Here are some quotes from Albert Einstein:
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
I will readily admit that bits and pieces of any truly creative and original thinker/creator can be taken out of context and practically turned into the opposite of what they were originally conceived to mean, yet what has struck me lately is how much Einstein valued some of the most nebulous and difficult things to measure numerically—
To wit, from the aforementioned quotes: joy, creative expression, imagination, passionate curiosity that won’t let go of an idea or conundrum.
IMHO, that is why teaching others and teaching oneself is more of an art than a science.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
Of course there are very basic things that people need to know. For example, my friend teaches English to adults in a community college. She had students who didn’t know what a valley was. How can people make sense of reading without knowing concepts like that? She tried to explain “altitude” and they confessed they had never understood what package labels were talking about when they talked about baking at high altitudes. Of course, they were very glad to learn about this. Parenthetically, I think talking about things is the best way to learn things — not through lists and tests of lest. People need to learn the same things over and over. Religions and advertising agency understand this. That is, they need to practice using and exchanging their knowledge.
I think if we want children to know things, we should not neglect adult ed., because children have an incredibly strong drive to emulate those they admire. This is not rocket science.
I am humbled. This is definitely the most erudite conversation ever sparked by something I’ve written.
This is the best of the best teacher response to the all time classic question:
“Do we really need to know this stuff?”
And the answer is, “It depends on which stuff and who you are and what you want out of your life.”
I will add that the null curriculum is very damaging to young people trying to figure out their place in the infinitely varied adult world of work, play, and ciizenship.
So, again, the question that Hirsch posed was, “what are those things that educated speakers and writers assume that their audiences already know”? He conducted research on what he thought of as a representative group of educated people (he chose lawyers, for some peculiar reason that I cannot quite fathom). These days, there is quite a lot of empirical research being done in the humanities–by literature professors and philosophers–and such research is considered quite avant-garde. Hirsch was a pioneer in the application of such empirical methods to questions in the human sciences—in the humanities.
I don’t think, however, that the particular method that he used is quite the right one for answering the original research question. If one really wanted to approach that question scientifically, one would gather a large, representative corpus of writing and speech and analyze it for undefined, unexplained references. Google Books and Google Scholar and Google generally have just the kind of data that one would need for such a project. And I suspect that the resultant list would look quite a bit different from Hirsch’s list and that it would vary a lot based on how widely one cast one’s net.
I suspect that what led Hirsch to this interest was encountering gaps in his students’ knowledge of traditional materials. When I was an undergraduate studying literature, I brought to that study a lot of knowledge of the Bible because I happened to have been raised by a fundamentalist Christian grandmother who took me to church several times a week, where I read a lot of Bible stories when I was still quite young. When I got into college and was reading the likes of Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Donne, Pope, Coleridge, and Blake, I knew all those Biblical allusions, and I was surprised to learn that many, perhaps most, of my classmates did not. My upbringing also included a lot of traditional stories and poems and song–Greek myths and Grimm’s tales and Mother Goose Rhymes and the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine and jump rope rhymes and songs by Stephen Foster–that sort of thing. And again, I readily got the allusions to those that are so frequent in the British and U.S. literary traditions. I assumed that everyone knew the stories of Zeus and Chronos, Tantalus, the White Snake, the Fox and the Crow, Cock Robin, Wee Willie Winkie, and so on. But the fact is that few did, and that lack of background knowledge was a huge disadvantage to those who would try to read the British and U.S. classics.
I don’t think that we are ever going to get back to a time of a single, shared culture, and I am not sure that that’s even a good thing. Provincialism is not admirable, and the world is a big place. Who is to say that a child should know the story of Cinderella but not the story of Zhuangzi’s dream of being a butterfly; the story of Samson and Delilah but not the Baal Shem Tov’s story of the marvelous, forgotten song; Zeno’s anecdote of the unmoving arrow but not the anecdote of Mullah Nasreddin and the fellow who wanted to cross the river? Those are all great stories and have survived in their various traditions for a reason.
Of one thing I am certain: making abstract skills the focus of our instruction instead of whatever it is that writers and speakers are saying—what they are writing and speaking about–is counterproductive and deadly. Doing that isn’t going to kindle a fire in a young mind. Instead, that’s a recipe for killing any desire to learn.
And that’s what I mean when I say that whatever it is that kids are asked to do on reading and writing tests like the new PARCC and SBAC tests has nothing whatsoever to do with authentic reading and writing, with what people in the real world do when they read and write, making those tests, ipso facto, not tests of real reading and writing and certainly not models on which to base our curricula and pedagogy.
“he chose lawyers, for some peculiar reason that I cannot quite fathom”
Probably because 80% of Americans are lawyers.
LOL
So, there’s a fence between heaven and hell, and God calls Satan over and says, “What are you going to do about your fence?”
And Satan says, “What do you mean, my fence?”
“Your fence,” says the Most High. “It’s falling down. It’s an eyesore.”
“Look,” says Satan, “You’re omnipotent. You want the fence fixed, fix it.”
“You take care of this fence, or I will sue,” says the Lord.
“Oh yeah?” says Satan. “That’s a laugh. Where are YOU going to get a lawyer?”
There’s also the story about replacing lab rats with lawyers. You see, the researchers sometimes get attached to the lab rats, and there are some things that lab rats just won’t do.
“I don’t think that we are ever going to get back to a time of a single, shared culture.”
If you’re talkign about the United States, I don’t think it ever had a single shared culture due to the way North America was invaded from Europe. It wasn’t one culture that arrived. There were several and more arrived with each wave of immigrants.
This link to a settlement map of 1755 by ethnic groups shows what I mean.
https://www.google.com/search?q=a+map+of+multicultural+America+United+States&rlz=1C1AFAB_enUS474US474&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=SzBxU4GRApLjoAS2o4L4AQ&ved=0CCgQsAQ&biw=960&bih=478#q=multicultural%20map%20of%20the%2013%20colonies&tbm=isch&facrc=_&imgrc=nc5yr12js98AHM%253A%3BudOgpbSn5SVJ9M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fusers.humboldt.edu%252Fogayle%252FMapColonialEthnicity.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fusers.humboldt.edu%252Fogayle%252Fhist110%252Fcolonial.html%3B307%3B506
Maybe this map of dialects today will also help.
https://www.google.com/search?q=a+map+of+US+regional+accents&rlz=1C1AFAB_enUS474US474&es_sm=122&tbm=isch&imgil=Z1KFjUADdUPWnM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcSQ98VA7dCLWGAjIjATPRhsX14sY7ABQRtR3YjuAXj_QNo7RhgP%253B855%253B514%253BcMfRUSDOhecFvM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.washingtonpost.com%25252Fblogs%25252Fgovbeat%25252Fwp%25252F2013%25252F12%25252F02%25252Fwhat-dialect-to-do-you-speak-a-map-of-american-english%25252F&source=iu&usg=__McuhTR62vhPq1wuxqbrGch6oJBY%3D&sa=X&ei=RDFxU867E5fhoATeuICIAg&ved=0CEMQ9QEwAw#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=Z1KFjUADdUPWnM%253A%3BcMfRUSDOhecFvM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.washingtonpost.com%252Fblogs%252Fgovbeat%252Ffiles%252F2013%252F12%252Fdiausa.gif%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.washingtonpost.com%252Fblogs%252Fgovbeat%252Fwp%252F2013%252F12%252F02%252Fwhat-dialect-to-do-you-speak-a-map-of-american-english%252F%3B855%3B514
C.S. Lewis (in The Discarded Image) said that learning should be like a door to which you enter knowledge. (I dislike C.S. Lewis, but happen to agree with him on this.) I think there is such a thing as cultural continuity and it is good to be familiar with at least some of the things that, say, the founding fathers would have been familiar with — and that includes classical mythology and history, and the stories from the Bible, at least the rudiments. Though it is important to learn local traditions and traditions of other cultures as well, including the Ramayana. Speaking of which, interestingly, I recently attended a symposium about the influence of the Ramayana in East Asia and one participant contended that a lot of the knowledge of the Ramayana is really extremely thin in some of these areas, and the evidence is that it has always been so, despite its appearing in iconography for centuries. If it’s any comfort — you might also say that knowledge of “western” culture is extremely thin in most areas of the west –except perhaps Greece where it’s like it all happened last week, people tell me. It’s an ongoing struggle to keep it going, but that is not a good reason to give up and abandon it. You might as well burn all the libraries and museums, if that is the case.
I am not opposed to the idea of a list as long as it is developed cooperatively by educators who are free to use and modify it as they see fit rather than developed by a private vendor who will copyright it and bribe politicians to force schools to buy it.
I second that!!!
I love Peter Greene, but I disagree. Well, sort of. Of course, every time anyone actually tries to make a list of “what we all should know,” the project starts to seem daft. On the other hand – with no such attempt, we lose sight of an important function of school: to transmit the culture.
What is the culture? Who the heck knows. In the US we don’t really have a common culture the way other countries do – we’re multi-lingual, multi-cultural, we eat different foods and celebrate different holidays. So when we venture onto common ground – the public square, so to speak – we need some sort of sense of what tastes, ideas, experiences govern that common ground.
In school, it seems to me, we shrink from imposing a common culture on students. But there’s a much more confident voice out there which is perfectly sure what unites us as Americans. It comes from advertizing, from big-box stores, from music videos. So my kid, like many of yours, picks up values and attitudes promoted entirely with a view to selling her stuff. (Crap, mostly.) One reason the voice of sales has so dominated our public discourse is because we don’t seem resolved on pitting another voice against it. We don’t have any other narrative for our culture, so we’re left with – business. (Which partly explains why initiatives like CCSS have done well; even education honchos, it seems, respond only to corporate rhetoric.)
So yes, writing a list of E. D. Hirsh-like facts that people should “know” will lead to all kinds of omissions, challenges, and so on. So what? People can decide when they grow up that the “wider” culture left out important stuff, and indeed, that the story told in school wasn’t adequate. They always do; that’s why cultures keep changing. But we have to start with some sense of common culture, or we’ll leave the job of fashioning the American Identity to advertizers.
Well said, Marianne. There are many ways to reach a goal. Just let’s make sure that the curriculum is coherent, transparent, and developmentally appropriate.
My husband knows obscure facts about disc golfing. My brothers know amazing trivia about college football and basketball. My daughter knows tons about frogs and is trying to save them all . My son reads everything he can find about anti-matter, black holes and time travel. I read everything I can find about education policy and am starting to become pretty knowledgeable. Each of us reads and researches all the time and our understanding and knowledge grows. Now because I want to speak to these people I love I try to have a rudimentary understanding about what they are interested in so we can hold a relatively pleasant conversation. But I would not want to tell them they need to be experts at what I am obsessed with any more than I want to be told I need to learn all about the different types of plastic used for discs or the type of fungi killing off frogs.
I want my car mechanic to know how to fix my Honda Odyssey and my hair stylist to know what covers my gray roots. I guess I agree with Peter. I really do not think we all need to read a lot of Shakespeare to function in society. But it would be nice if we all knew a little civics and were exposed to different things so we could know what our passions were. I always regretted that never was taught anthropology until college and always though if physics started with astronomy rather than moving objects I would have loved physics.
I was fortunate as a child- I was exposed to theater, art, horseback riding, skiing, basketweaving, ceramics, archery, riflery, psychology, philosophy, and music. I found out softball was not my thing but if I can imagine it I can create it. My best teachers were one’s who realized that if we included the arts or creativity in the project- I could learn anything. My 3-d model of DNA was a total hit as well as my puppet show on the branches of the government. I wrote songs about historical events and made games to teach mathematical concepts. As long as I got to put myself into my learning I could be enthusiastic about anything. And that is what I try to do for my students. I make whatever I teach relevant to what they care about int the world. And I hope they do the same for their students.
Your joy in all that comes through so clearly in your writing, Janna! Such rich instruction for all our kids, not this thin Common Core gruel.
Thanks Bob. That is high praise from you who writes so well. I have always been just a B+ writer but if you ever get to hear me speak I can be pretty interesting. My students always tease me since we all know the person having the absolutely best time in my classes is usually me. 🙂
This is the best quality that a teacher can have. More than anything, a teacher is a model to his or her students of what a learner is. Students should look upon a teacher and say, wow, I want some of what he or she has.
Excellent post and comments.
I say that because you have touched on a note which I have often debated (with myself) over the years.
First of all, all students should know enough history to pass the Citizenship Exam we expect immigrants to pass in order to become Americans. (It’s not an easy test).
All students need to know enough math to balance a checkbook, figure out tax, figure out a tip, figure out what 20% off means, make change, complete their tax forms, recognize if the number on their calculator is inaccurate, recognize if they are being overcharged for an item, etc. As a student, it would also be helpful to figure out your average. (You would be surprised at the number of students who don’t realize they can’t pass with three quarters of failing grades). We used to call it everyday math. (And I do remember what FOIL means, but I cheated because I tutored kids in math and other subjects. I did have to reteach myself quite a bit of advanced algebra and trig.) I use a lot proportions to figure stuff out and I trust my arithmetic over a calculator any day – as proven at a meeting last week when I informed the chair their numbers were incorrect and they afterwards deferred to my sums.
I’m not a science person, but I did know about the seasons and the tilt of the earth. I married a man who is a genius in math and science. I would call him if I couldn’t answer a science real and question. Yet there are basics every adult should know. Some of these concepts are no longer being taught in deference to ELA and Math. Yet everyone screams STEM.
Literature is a whole other ball game.
One of the reasons I was horrified by the “recommended” CC reading list was not just the inappropriate age levels for many of the readings, but the copyright date of the selections (many out of print books or old articles, some from defunct periodicals).
Whereas I read most of the books which were suggested literature for the college bound, that was in 1972. In the past 40+ years, shouldn’t that list have evolved?
And Robert, I read many of the same books as you. Weren’t we lucky to be aware of the little “in jokes” found throughout literature, and, for that matter, television and movies? We both had a chuckle, sometimes looking down on the poor slobs who didn’t have a clue. Not unkindly, but, well, that was the prerogative of a well read English major. (Or minor?)
There are a few pieces of literature whose themes appear throughout pop culture.
1) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – hundreds of variations from cartoons such as Mr Magoo (my fav) and Mickey Mouse to the musical Scrooge (another favorite) to Scrooged to . . . .
2) The Gift of the Magi by O’Henry – sacrificing ones beautiful hair for a watch and a watch for a decorative comb – neither gift of any value except to demonstrate true love. This theme worms its way through many stories in so many different variations.
3) Cinderella – every culture has its own version of Perrault’s original Little Glass Slipper tale. Always a joy due to its happy ending. All little girls dream of meeting their own Prince Charming. And I believe that little boys one day hope to meet their version of Cinderella.
Those three are the basics. Shakespeare – Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth and others come in a close fourth.
The Bible, of course. The story of Genesis can be found in numerous forms throughout folklore, as well as a story of the great flood, and the wandering Magi searching for the Babe. What child wouldn’t enjoy the story of the baby in the bulrushes of the Nile, or Joseph and his perceptive dreams?
Greek Mythology also winds it way through our culture. Robert, there is a series of fiction books starting with The Lightning Thief by Riordin which has enticed young people, both boys and girls, back into the arms of Zeus and company.
Obviously kids are still fascinated by Vampires and Count Dracula has found a host of competitors, not least of which is the series by Meyers and werewolves are a part of the equation.
Although not many will attempt to read Shelley’s Frankenstein (my youngest daughter said to me – “Why would anyone want to read this book, it’s horrible?”) even though they enjoy the theme of the story.
Of course witchcraft and the battle between good and evil and all the shades inbetween are found in the Harry Potter series by J K Rowling.
And dystopia novels are all the rage, with the Divergent series by Veronica Roth leading the way. Too bad everyone has forgotten Lost Horizon by Hilton. Remember Shangrala?
But some of these titles meet today readers’ needs and/or desires? Will they stand the test of time? Will they be on any sort of reading list in forty years?
And I disagree – there are a lot of readers out there. More than you think. They might not be reading the “classics” but they are reading the books that appeal to them. Many of the popular titles I mentioned, amazingly, appeal to both adults and children.
Otherwise, why the need for Kindles and Nooks, Book Shout and iBooks? Let alone Libraries and Book Stores! (And our local libraries, when open, are full of patrons – and there’s always a line at the check out at Barnes and Noble.)
It’s The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers.
Frankenstein could have used a good edit, but hey, the author was young and so, btw, was the genre she was working in. I would suggest that if teens are to read Mary Shelley’s original, that they LISTEN TO IT, which will help them to get past the difficulties that an older form of the language present to them, and that they look closely only at particular passages. Just an idea.
A good idea. We need the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version. Or they can just watch the movie.
Personally, I thought that Mary Shelley did a great job.
My daughter, however, did not appreciate the wordiness. Especially since she had a week to read and critique the story. She used Sparknotes.
I think it’s an amazing achievement, especially for someone who as 18 and 19 years old at the time of its writing and revision. I reread it again only about a year ago. Great little book. But, a book written by an adolescent and quite flawed. I would not go the “condensed version” route. Rather, I would do this as a listening lab project, with discussion of the text after kids have listened to portions of it. And I would embed it in a unit on transhumanism and its origins in nineteenth-century scientific ideas. Powerful stuff. And Mary Shelley is a great model for teenagers.
I actually have this book on tape. When the kids were younger we listened to books I thought they should read (especially for my dyslexic son) in the car. We listened to the Harry Potter books to and from our visits to Chicago to visit my brother. (Those were great Books on Tape, by the way).
My version of Frankenstein was eleven – one hour tapes. Not for the faint of heart.
I see what you mean. A bit long.
OK. Maybe a combination of the two. A little reading, a little listening. A little discussion.
Harry Potter books on tape are actually better than the movies, and even better than the books! I read them, saw them and heard them, but Jim Dale ( the actor who read the books) is a wonderfully talented voice actor.
I really do not think it matter what literature we give to children as long as we give them a variety and we love it. A camp counselor in the late 1960’s read to me “The Last Unicorn” by Peter S. Beagle. That started a continuing love of science fiction/fantasy that continues to this day. My favorite art was from MC Esher shown to me by a teacher. An art camp counselor played Green Onions by Booker T and the MG’s that turned her on to jazz. Her favorite is Herbie Hancock. Since I am a rock n roll gal she would not have gotten that from me (though I did sing some jazz fusion for a while). My son loves reading non fiction my daughter loves biographies. The writings of Martin Luther King Jr. really impacted my daughter when she was in elementary school.
My point is we should broaden horizons in school and it really does not matter what it is as long as the teacher is passionate about it and allows the children to be passionate about it too. I always differentiate it- celebrate books however you want- talk about it, write about it, make art, a video or game about it, write a poem, put it in a different setting or time, see from other character’s views and so on- each book each story is an adventure. I had one boy who hated fiction but loved sports. So we turned each story into a sporting event and figured out who “won”. He loved giving points for different scenes. Another class loved hip-hop but not Antigone. Our Antigone rap was epic, I wish I still had it somewhere. I still am waiting for one of my students to do an interpretive dance of a book or article . . .
Yes, our passion translates to their enlightenment into a genre or topic they would normally avoid.
Do you think your son might like to read some sports novels? There are quite a few out there. Or what about autobiographies by famous sports figures? Some biographies are even better than fiction – good for both children. I could advise better if I knew their ages, specific interests, and reading level.
Give me a non reader. It’s not that they don’t like to read, it’s that they haven’t found the right reading material. My biggest challenge – my own son. Poetry by Shel Silverstein and the Guinness Book of World Records became his gateway to reading.
This is a dead thread but — when my daughter was in third grade we listened to a tape of “Pickwick Papers” in the car while driving to school (it was abridged). She loved it.
wonderful!
Perhaps we should add this to a part of a child’s education. Although we encourage parents to read aloud to their children, sharing a good story on tape or CD while your kids are captive in the car, can be a special bonding event. The professional readers do a phenomenal job, and after hearing the book it feels the same as if you had actually read it yourself.
Plus, you can borrow them for free from the public library.
Of course, there is the issue of our heritage. When creating a book list for student use, it needs to include something for everyone.
Since I’ve been brought up a white Anglo Saxon, my views are Euro Centric. We don’t even realize how white and privileged we are. Even the map we use of the world is inaccurate. We have been fed tainted truths or unintentional lies, based on the world as our teachers knew it. Not unlike the above video.
My grand mother was brought up in Canada. When she came to the United States, after the death of her mother, she did badly in school. The Canadian version of the Revolutionary War did not led to high grades in US History. She had to relearn a lot.
We tend to be smug. The creators of the CCSS personify smugness.
At various times in my life, the realities of the world have hit me square in the head and left me reeling – Upending everything I had believed to be replaced by a universal truth I had only just discovered. In a way, this is what we are attempting to do with the general public – giving them a fresh draught of water so they can see the current status of education with fresh eyes and heart. Many will prefer to keep drinking the Kool Aid.
But, getting back to the topic, your point Peter, is valid. What common ground do we need to establish in our children? Since it’s impossible to predict future needs (the world has changed so even from my generation to now), how can we ever establish a baseline to include everyone, not just people like us?
So a reading list needs to be in constant flux, representing diversity as well as good literature. Include some classics. Include some contemporary stories. Include science fiction, fantasy, biographies, cultural lit, historical novels, realistic fiction. When it comes to nonfiction, make wise choices. One size does not fit all. Some nonfiction is for information only, and not meant to be read cover to cover – unless the goal is to teach kids to skim through a book. Some nonfiction is more “how to” do something, such as an arts and crafts or hobby book. Some nonfiction is politically correct, but inaccurate. Finding a nonfiction book of literary quality requires due diligence. The really good ones are on a high school or adult level. A lot more care and attention needs to go into narrowing down the choices. Reading a book such as Nickeled and Dimed by Ehrenreich can be a life changing experience. Supersize Me can also open ones eyes. Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is an excellent choice to stimulate conversation. All are probably considered too controversial.
Perhaps it is too difficult to create a national list? Maybe regional choices would be better.
The reason this topics speaks to me is that I had to make choices daily on what books to share with the children. I also decided which books I would purchase and recommend.
And a teacher or librarian who is passionate about the books they love develops the same feelings in many of their students.
So, the best of the best:
Charlotte’s Web by E B White
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr Seuss
Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
All by dead white men.
I did a unit on quilt stories. Quilts were used by slaves as a signal to help escapees use the Underground Railroad to come to Buffalo and cross the Niagara River into Canada.
I had to discuss slavery to explain the significance of the story. They were first graders. How could I tell this class full of all colors about slavery. I felt like I was telling them the facts of life – shouldn’t their parents be the ones to handle this sensitive subject. I tried to explain away the stupidity of the past. I knew that those with dark skin would still have to face this stupidity, but not in my class. My favorite quilt story had nothing to do with slavery. It was about a family who made a special quilt which commentated major events of the past – The Patchwork Quilt.
I tell the above tale to emphasize that a lot of thought needs to go into recommending specific books.
So, at one point in time I thought ALL children needed a basis in folk and fairy tales, as well as nursery rhymes, jump ropes ditties, and other poetry. I was surprised at what they didn’t know. When our school started a Spanish Immersion program, none of then knew any of the basic tales – Goldilocks, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff. They didn’t know any of the Nursery Rhymes (of course, they were from England).
I felt that they needed to know at least the basics. I threw in some folk tales from Spanish Cultures. I already had included Native American, Asian, and African tales, as well as those from other countries, in my curriculum.
I personally loved those units. Yet, is it necessary for all children in this country to know these tales. We have such divergent backgrounds. Do these tales really pull us together as one, or is this just a pipe dream? Perhaps there are other stories I should have been sharing instead.
I don’t feel I did any harm, but did I make the right choices?
Ultimately, if I loved the book, so did the kids. But I still debate with myself over those core selections. And if we are to have a countrywide set of recommended books – someone should be agonizing over what to include on the list.
This stuff is really valuable because a) it introduces kids to a lot of archetypes that recur frequently in later and more sophisticated work and b) it gives them a visceral feel for the language as poetry–for techniques of sound and c) this is all really WEIRD material and a heckuvalot of fun, which is why it has survived and why it helps to build intrinsic motivation to read and learn.
And they love it.