Daniel E. Ferguson, who taught in his native Birmingham, is now a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Here he reviews David Coleman’s “close reading” of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Coleman wants the reader to interpret the text without reference to his or her personal views. He demonstrates that this technique is designed to serve the needs of testing corporations, but disempowered and silences students who should be able to connect their lives to Dr. king’ s powerful words.
Ferguson writes:
“There is a grand irony in the last few minutes of the video when Coleman praises King for not just responding to what was in the clergymen’s letter, “but pointing out how critical is what’s not in the letter.” Why then, is it problematic to let students do the same, to let their world inform their reading? It was at this point that I wondered: What if King had done only a close reading of the letter from the Southern clergymen he was addressing? What if he did not allow his own reading of the world to inform his understanding of the white clergymen’s words? What leadership and wisdom would have been lost? Would he have been more sympathetic to their concern about “outside agitators” meddling with Birmingham’s affairs? It was King’s understanding of the world that led him to state, “Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
Critical literacy argues that students’ sense of their own realities should never be treated as outside the meaning of a text. To do so is to infringe on their rights to literacy. In other words, literacy is a civil and human right; having your own experiences, knowledge, and opinions valued is a right as well. Despite praise for King’s rhetoric, Coleman promotes a system that creates outsiders of students in their own classrooms. “
I am surprised that Coleman “gives a s*** what MLK thinks or feels.”
Exactly, Alan.
Good one, Alan. I agree. Coleman indeed does not give one hoot, and I add that he really doesn’t understand much of anything. He’s one of the entitled in the closed circle.
“Critical literacy argues that students’ sense of their own realities should never be treated as outside the meaning of a text. To do so is to infringe on their rights to literacy.”
Yes, to negate a child’s thoughts and feelings is to diminish their very existence.
I am a reading teacher and couldn’t finish watching Coleman’s “lesson” because it was so cool, calculated and monotone. Rather than bring a historical document to life as some of our best teachers would, Coleman killed it. After listening to his deadly presentation, I looked up his teaching experience and saw that he barely had any. It takes years to become an excellent teacher. If students had been sitting in front of him, he would have lost them and he would not have received a very high score on the Danielson rubric either.
Coleman has no classroom teaching experience at all. When he was in high school, he was a tutor, aka he helped kids one on one. That’s very different from regularly capturing and holding the attention of an entire class of kids. No doubt, that is why, whenever I’ve seen videos of him, his presentation and speaking styles turn me off and he loses my attention –much like what you experienced. Coleman’s prescriptions are all untested theories laid on America’s child lab rats.
This has puzzled me as well. This reverence for the “text”, the almighty text. I have heard the argument that this “text focused” aspect of CCSS curriculum is a way to achieve some degree of equity in education; that student’s who don’t have background knowledge will presumably be able to score better on assessments that not don’t ask for background knowledge, opinions and experiences. This says so much more: that we don’t value them. The sad irony is that affluent parents will continue to find ways, because they can, to enrich their children’s education beyond what is being taught in schools. The achievement gap will continue to widen. This obliteration of context around literature, or any primary source document, is a strange, and frightening, turn in public education, pushed forth by David Coleman and his supporters, as a “superior” way to teach students “English Language Arts”. Our children are so much more than the narrow definition of human being than David Coleman would have us believe.
And kids WANT to know the background. I started teaching the Holocaust years ago PRECISELY because students began coming to me (their history teacher) asking more about the Holocaust as they read Anne Frank in English class. I teach U.S. History, and the Holocaust isn’t technically in my curriculum, but I teach the Holocaust too, because the kids NEED to know the background and I can’t turn them away.
Even literary theory scholars don’t really subscribe much to New Criticism anymore, let alone the CC Crackerjack version.
In fact, just about the whole of what happened in the second half of the twentieth century was reaction AGAINST the New Criticism. “CC Crackerjack version”–that’s rich! And entirely appropriate.
Ignore this imposter. He is not an expert in child development, knows nothing about cognitive processes and he never taught a classroom of children a day in his life, so he has no clue about the importance of meaningful contexts to students’ learning.
Except this impostor is currently rewriting the SAT.
And already wrote the curriculum that 45 states are following.
And his only experience in education was as a student and as a tutor when he was in high school. I did that, too. Now can I tell all the teachers in this country how to do their jobs? No, because I also have degrees and experience in several areas of education and, in this oligarchy, the top education jobs are not about what you know but who you know.
Exactly, Emmy. Given the shoddy job done on the CC$$ in ELA, that’s truly frightening.
“Yes, to negate a child’s thoughts and feelings is to diminish their very existence.”
Thank you, readingexchange. So true.
And to ignore a child’s thoughts and feelings is to ignore the very existence of the child.
This is a fantastic analysis/critique of how to suck the life out of a text in the name of ‘questioning’. Critical literacy remains a key ingredient in any pedagogy that stresses democratic principles and student-centered instruction. Thank you, Daniel Ferguson!
Additionally, Coleman can’t even get his pronoun to match its antecedent in his bland, New Critical approach: ‘An excellent way to deeply understand what an author is doing, is to, in this close way, examine how they treat a single word that is fundamental to their thinking, and exactly how they define it and describe it…” You’d think he’d have ‘scripted’ it better. 😉
David Coleman applied to become a teacher and was rejected. Doesn’t that tell the public something about his credential as an “expert” in the field of education.
Hopefully, he will be ousted from his position and sent to work at Wal-mart where he can deceive the customers telling them that the company cares for their employees.
And Rhee was also a failure and left after two to these years.
Is there a theme here? Self-appointed elitist bloviators, who failed at a once noble profession, decide to feign concern for children while destroying the art of teaching.
Typo…two to three years.
David “Dark Lord” Coleman – Architect of CCSS
Arne “BAM-BAM Thank You VAM” Duncan – Secretary of Education
Michael “Term Limits Are for Little People” Bloomberg – The Anti-Shanker
Joel “I Pads R Me” Klein – Former Chancellor NYC schools
Michelle “Erasures R Me” Rhee – Former Chancellor DC schools and Founder of Students First
John “The Andy Man Can” King – NYS Commissioner of Education
Meryl “How Loew Can I Go” Tisch – Chancellor of NYS Board of Regents
Wendy “Amateurs R Us” Kopp – Founder of Teach for America
EIGHT OF THE MOST INLUENTIAL US EDUCATION REFORMERS OF THE 21st CENTURY.
SUM TOTAL OF PUBLIC SCOOL
TEACHING EXPERINCE = 3 YEARS
It’s difficult to imagine how Coleman came up with the absurd notion that teachers engage children in “far reading,” which needs to be turned around. Just goes to show that even attending reputable schools is likely to result in a dearth of insight on teaching and learning –and some truly ridiculous ideas about education based solely on having been a student.
I was recently observed by my new coordinator while I was teaching the clergy men’s letter preparing student for their reading of Dr King’s letter. During our conference, my coordinator wanted to know why I was teaching this, along with other background knowledge. I kept insisting the students needed to know the purpose of King’s letter, and they should look for allusions to the clergy men’s statements in his. Also, it is important for students to know the clery men were white. How might that affected the way they saw the situation in Birmingham and why for them the idea of waiting was ok but not for Dr King. My coordinator wanted to give me Coleman’s reading of the “letter from Birmingham” but I let her know I wasn’t interested in his idea if teaching.
I know it was a type-o, but I LOVE how your last line says “IF teaching.” That’s what Coleman is doing–not actually teaching anyone anything useful! Who died and made this idiot king of schools?
Did he even “teach” to real live kids or was he just bloviating for a camera?
Maybe he should get closer to humans, ages 5-18. Try close breathing first Coleman.
“try close breathing first” LOL
David Coleman is a 21st century SNAKE OIL salesman
These days, if you “close read” a news article without bringing background knowledge (or healthy scepticism) to the text, you will have no idea who is lying, as the authors will not or cannot give out this information any more.
I love it mom…great point. Maybe that’s the intent, create non-thinking “readers”.
Closed reading
Another educational meme that will wind up on the ash heap of bad pedagogy.
Schemer vs. Schema?
Coleman and his ilk are infringing on students’ right to a comprehensive education in their neighborhood public school, on their right in the future to earn a middle class income with some degree of professional autonomy and voice, on their parents and teachers’ right to have some say in their education.
Given that, of course he would infringe on their right to literacy, since the latter enables the former.
My critique (March 2012): “A student’s level of appreciation of a text is still often tied to personal experience. Deep engagement with a text for student is, as with many adults, a personal experience that cannot be forced. Coleman’s six to eight day formula may make a student aware of elements in a text but not necessarily personally engage in the same manner he espouses. His personal engagement with King’s letter is obviously one of reverence; his video explaining King’s letter borders on proselytizing. In comparison, King did that better-and he didn’t take six days.”
http://usedbooksinclass.com/2012/03/01/dear-common-core-send-strategies-not-a-messenger/
I was struck that MLK was so inspired by Socrates, one of my heroes. Obviously his parents were inspired by Martin Luther. I wonder what kind of education MLK received and what he thought of it. Did it oppress him or liberate him? Would he recommend it to others?
Wiki:
Growing up in Atlanta, King attended Booker T. Washington High School. A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grades and entered Morehouse College at age fifteen without formally graduating from high school.[8] In 1948, he graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. degree in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a B.Div. degree in 1951.[9][
This is an hour-long “Democracy Now” on Dr. King with a lot of video of his speeches – including the entire controversial “Beyond Vietnam” speech.
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2014/01/20 (IF you use any part of it with students – preview it first – it’s got some tough Vietnam footage)
In the introduction of the person introducing the video explains that the “Beyond Vietnam” speech is controversial and she says “We’ll let you decide!”
Ha! What a concept for a teacher. Isn’t that our job? Let the students figure it – construct meaning – use informed text – add their own developing beliefs – and draw their OWN meaning and conclusions.
Coleman left critical reading out on purpose like some publishers do themselves. I was reading a text on westward movement in the US. In no way shape or form did it talk about mass killing of Am. Indians let alone how they were put on reservations. I’m sure there are more texts like it out there.
In addition, many teachers don’t elicit personal responses from students when it comes to social justice for whatever reason. I would say to those who critize the lack of critical reading to be bold and implement it in your instruction. Kids will remember the event if they are engaged and are connected personally.
We can agree that literature can change a persons’ perspective on their values/beliefs about themselves, others, and the world. However, kids need guidance as to how to analyze, interpret, synthesize the information to look at both perspectives, make an argument, and/or to agree or disagree. Kids in low SES school that I teach would be bored to hell if all I did was do a close reading without group debate, role play, and giving presentations. I don’t see how one can do a close reading of author’s perspective and not have the critical discussion how it relates to our kids lives. It’s like coming upon a surprise detour sign or a movie without an ending.
Like you all, I have my common core manual, but don’t take Coleman, etal., seriously in the classroom.
Great, Jon, because CC is by and for those who don’t know anything about children and learning, or how to teach, but you clearly do! Keep on keepin on!!
Coleman is deep. Up to his knees, standing out in the barnyard.
Coleman wants the reader to interpret the text without reference to his or her personal views.
In other words, we are to ignore the last century of work in critical theory in which hundreds of thousands of critics and scholars worked to show us, again and again, that the supposed objectivity of the New Critic was a sham.
Let us teach children to strike the pose of objectivity, to treat their opinions not opinions at all but as facts engraved upon texts.
In other words, let’s teach them to be insufferable, arrogant blowhards,
just like Coleman and his ilk.
And let’s test the hell out of those kids to see whether they are insufferable and arrogant enough to rise from their lowly origins to a place in the meritocracy.
Look. You don’t have a choice about this. Achieve has appointed Lord Coleman, by divine right, absolute monarch of the English language arts in the United States, and yours is but to obey. The standards are inerrant. Challenge them at your peril!
I agree that it is important to attend carefully to texts. I agree that texts can’t mean whatever one might arbitrarily attribute to them. But I also understand how fallible we all are, how complex the simplest texts can turn out to be, and how dramatically our readings are conditioned by our experiences, knowledge, understandings, unexamined beliefs, and so on.
All that said, modeling readings for students can be extremely valuable, like apprenticeship. Certainly, a knee-jerk horror at teachers acting as “the sage on the stage” misses this–that kids can learn a lot by overhearing a masterful reader at work, just as an apprentice luthier can learn a lot by watching how the craftsman carves the top of that violin or checks its resonance.
There are two possibilities. Either Coleman was in way over his head and did not understand how many wild, unsubstantiated, controversial assumptions he made throughout these “standards,” or he understood full well that he was making these and just didn’t give a $&#&$#&*!! what other highly experienced, knowledgeable critics, scholars, educators think.
Neither possibility is very attractive.
I don’t think Coleman has debated anyone about the standards. I would like to see him go up against you and Stephen Krashen.
Oh, how I would welcome such an encounter!
And then the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth could haul me off to MiniLuv for rectification. 🙂
Krashen would crush him. It would be insane for Coleman to take up such a challenge. Krashen holds the black belt, BTW, in Tae Kwon Do and in linguistics. 🙂
Essentially, Coleman is a cowardly blowhard.
They don’t control our minds when we close the door.
I can survive two formal/two informal observations and continue to subvert.
Coleman’s Crap is unbelievable!
Close Readings – laughable, if it were not so serious and harmful.
Coleman brags about having no credentials, peddles his crap, while laughing all the way to the bank, and making every child in America squirm.
Sick! Pathological! Unprecedented! And UNTOUCHABLE!
If it were not for Bill Gates’ MasterPlan and $B, we could still recognize education. It may be too late, because Gates’ $$$$ will never end, and his bottom feeders will continue to feed feverishly.
How dare Coleman whittle down Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr’s speech to a sound bite, Post-It, 140 character Tweet, or any other isolated …. NOTHING!
Our children will end up terribly undereducated like Bill Gates. Except, he can always buy someone to summarize anything into Cliff Notes. Our kids will not.
Coleman will not let go of our kids until his cold hands are pried from his iPad.
For what age group is this lesson designed?
I ask because if I were using this text in a college classroom, this is more or less how I would go about it. This is how all his small seminars were at Yale and again at Oxford. It is incredibly important for students to understand the rhetorical structure of an argument. That being said, a college professor is able to focus on structure because she can assume that the students already possess a certain level of background knowledge. Just as mathematicians know an “elegant” proof when they see it, a student schooled in ancient and modern history understands why King called upon certain pieces of evidence over others in making his case.
Yet even in a college classroom this speech would not be presented in a vacuum. Students would be assigned it in the context of a particular course and where it was placed on the syllabus (particularly in connection with the other readings for that week) would suggest themes to the student.
IMO, close textual reading is not that difficult to teach. Exposure to this kind of lesson in 11th and 12th grade should suffice for college readiness. What exactly does he propose?
Emmy~
College classes and teaching methods are not appropriate for elementary, middle or secondary education kids.
A HUGE problem with CCSS is that the assumption is always that children should have the prerequisite skills when entering their current grade. Trace that misaligned thinking all the way down to Kindergarten & even PreK. Result, always misaligned requirements, developmentally inappropriate objectives and activities.
Plain English: teaching way above children’s understanding, perception skills, processing abilities and frustration levels.
Poor, Poor, Poor Pedagogy! Pedagogy Not At All!
Extremely Harmful and more children will react to it. We can’t describe it as ‘unforeseen consequences’…we knew it all along and allow it to continue – until the last American Greed is satisfied.
I agree with you 100%.
I am trying to understand where he feels a lesson of this nature fits in K-12 education?
As much as I detest the whole CC$$ approach to the English language arts and as disturbing as I find Coleman’s elevation to absolute monarch of ELA instruction, I believe that there IS room for such lessons. As I mentioned above, students can learn a LOT from observing as a careful reader thinks, aloud, his or her reading of a text, just as an apprentice luthier can learn a lot from watching the experienced luthier carve the top of a violin from a slab of spruce. But to promote this approach to the status of THE way to teach at all times with all students is, of course, absurd. Save us from these absolutisms!!!
Absolutisms about teaching are dangerous (e.g., Students should attend to the text itself. The teacher should be the guide on the side not the sage on the stage. One could go on and on.). Sometimes, it’s essential to go outside the text. Sometimes, it’s a very valuable for the teacher to be the sage on the stage–the one who has knowledge and experience and skill that students do not have and who can share that. But if that’s all that ever happens, . . . well, that would be just awful.
One of the best teachers I ever had as an undergraduate spent an enormous amount of time, in a class on Modern American Poetry, simply reading poems aloud. He understood them so well, and his readings were so carefully modulated and nuanced, that much that was obscure became clear simply because of his inflections.
Maybe another way of asking my question is does Coleman present this lesson as the end-goal for 11th and 12th graders or does he present this kind of lesson as being appropriate for middle school students? Or, does he present this lesson as the archetype for all reading/discussion lessons with only small modifications for the grades?
I ask this because this lesson closely conforms to what students’ in-class work will entail in a college seminar. Moreover, students must be able to do this kind of work independently in order to write their first 20-page paper in college. But even if this is the ultimate goal for 11th/12th grade it is patently absurd to spend the previous 10 or so years learning via this style. What is the plan?
“students can learn a LOT from observing as a careful reader thinks, aloud, his or her reading of a text”
PS: I assumed this lesson would be taught socratically. But then again, I think it would be absolute hell trying to get through this letter in 45 minute increments.
Coleman comes at K-12 education completely from the outside. It’s no surprise that his models for teaching are the lecture and the college-level seminar. But nowhere that I have seen does he model anything like the Socratic seminar, in which students who have been given some grounding in a subject take it up critically in a format in which a leader–the teacher or another student–asks leading questions designed to draw out subtleties.
These Coleman videos are being played in teacher trainings all over the country (trainings, as in “Roll over. Bark. Fetch. Sit. Good boy.), and close reading model CC$$ lessons based on lesson templates from the Literacy Design Collaborative, another Gates-funded initiative, are being disseminated in those trainings as well. Basically, a couple of rigid models are being enforced to the exclusion of thousands and thousands of other approaches.
I have on my hard drive an outline for a book on lesson design alternatives that I have not yet written. The book covers an enormous number of permutations for possible lesson designs, appropriate for various purposes. The deformers are making the classic mistake of treating everything as if it were a nail because they happen to be in possession of a hammer.
There are a couple of possibilities. They are either so ignorant that they don’t realize the utility of screwdrivers and micrometers and wrenches, or they don’t even know that these exist.
You will notice that the CC$$ in ELA call for study of foundational texts in American studies at Grades 11 and 12. Either Coleman and Company were not aware of the fact that almost all high schools in the U.S. do British literature or world literature at Grade 12, or they knew this and disagreed with the practice. In either case, they are forcing their will on everyone else.
That call for foundational American lit texts in Grades 11 and 12 is creating a huge problem for the publishers of Grade 12 Brit lit and world lit texts, as you can well imagine. How can they say that they are aligned with the standard? And was Coleman just unaware of the fact that almost all high schools do Brit lit in Grade 12? It sounds as though that were, indeed, the case, which is breathtaking, for this shows that he didn’t have the faintest idea what was actually being done in U.S. classrooms. There is abundant other evidence that that’s so, including his treatment of the most obvious stuff (students will use evidence from the text; students will attend closely to texts) as though it were some new divine revelation.
Emmy, the Publishers’ Criteria document that accompanies the CC$$ calls for teachers to do with students regular close readings of anchor texts AND for students to do separate independent reading. So, there is some call for variation. But I’ve seen what happens with these edufads many, many times. A decent idea gets blown all out of proportion. It becomes THE WAY. The evaluators come into classrooms and mark teachers down if they don’t happen to be following the latest edufad during the particular session. This sort of crap happens all the time. Some dimwit educrat reads an article about the importance of “metacognitive thinking.” Then, every lesson becomes about thinking about what and how one is thinking instead of thinking about the subject matter. And this sort of thing is incredibly distorting. One of the problems with establishing a Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth is that the ideas of a few amateurs on the central committee become Holy Writ, and the diversity of approaches–existing and emerging–that might have been taken is dramatically diminished.
Robert or anyone else: Can you please answer Emmy’s question about WHICH GRADES this, aka Coleman’s “close reading” approach, is expected in K12 classrooms?????
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” is in the grades 9-10 exemplars for CC$$, but I’m not sure if that was Coleman’s intended audience.
Dolly, this is one of the few selections specifically mentioned in one of the CC$$ ELA standards. It’s for Grades 9-10, so I’m pretty sure that that’s the level to which Lord Coleman was pitching the vid:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.9-10.9 Analyze seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (e.g., Washington’s Farewell Address, the Gettysburg Address, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”), including how they address related themes and concepts.
The grammar of that standard is a bit screwy:
“Analyze . . . , including how”
Would that bad grammar were the worst of the problems in the CC$$ for ELA!
Of course, all of this stuff about curricula and pedagogical approaches is moot. Once the new tests are in place, along with sanctions for not passing them, both curricula and pedagogy will devolve to practice done in the formats of the test questions. That’s inevitable.
Kurt Vonnegut wisely wrote, in Mother Night, that “You are what you pretend to be, so be very careful what you pretend to be.” Well, you get what you measure, so you better be very careful about what you measure. If you are measuring mastery of the bullet list, then you will get a narrow focus on the bullet list. If you are measuring abstract skills, you will get a narrow focus on abstract skills (and the concomitant curricular incoherence that comes from lack of any attention at all to subject matter). And if you are doing invariant ranking, you will get invariance, standardized minds, not individualized creative and critical thinking.
“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
Eight days of doing just close reading of this letter is what Coleman suggests. That’s not close reading; it’s bludgeoning. I watched the original airing of Coleman’s lesson. I felt he was not speaking to actual high school students, and I feel that way even more so today.
No, he is demonstrating to an audience how close reading might be done. He’s not speaking to actual students. I think that the points that Lord Coleman makes about not prejudging the text are valid, to a point. I have seen a LOT of awful prereading activities that do the terrible things that Lord Coleman mentions in this video–that interfere with engagement with the text because they substitute for it the teacher’s or curriculum designer’s predetermined summary, usually some blithering generality about it’s theme. However, again, we mustn’t take this good advice too far. One of the texts suggested for high-school students in Appendix A of the standards is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Without some background to prepare kids for the text, Plato’s allegory isn’t likely to make any sense at all.
cx: its theme, of course, not it’s
I LOVE “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” but I think I might hate it after EIGHT days (!) of close reading.
I agree, Louisiana! Close reading probably feels tedious rather than revelatory when it’s squeezed between gym class and an algebra test.
And, Dolly, I hesitate to answer questions “for” people, especially for people as breathtakingly bright as Emmy is. She often asks rhetorical questions, and when her questions are not rhetorical, she is typically able to answer them herself as well as or better than I can. 🙂
I am trying to learn to accept compliments without deflecting them in real life. It is much easier to do this on the internet!!!
So, thank you for kind words. I appreciate them.
Well, Robert, Emmy asked and then restated her original question as, “I am trying to understand where he feels a lesson of this nature fits in K-12 education?” so I assumed she wanted an answer, and I was curious about when Coleman expected students to begin to engage in close reading myself. She didn’t answer that question; she only provided a link to the standards. It took another college professor, Cosmic Tinker, to identify Kindergarten and 1st grade as when close reading starts, with and without prompts and supports respectively.
Actually, someone else, Janna, provided that link to the standards.
Yes- but I did not answer the question since we keep getting told that the standards are not curriculum. ( I know . . . .). But lookingat them is eye opening enough. 🙂
Pluto and Oli are sitting in a room and come up with a plan for corporate take over of public education in the USA.
Pluto suggests that for Plan A they side with the Democrats and promote big government takeover of education through creating a common core and tests that have to be taken on computers. “Think of the money we will make on the curriculum materials, test prep materials, tests and technology! It will be a killing.”
Oli says, “Why stop there? We can make sure the curriculum dumbs down Americans children so they have no critical thinking and become the low wage drones we want to hire for our corporations. We can hire any idiot to develop it. Just make sure he can write in confusing terms so it takes a while for people to decipher it all. Plus if we tie teachers to tests we can get rid of all the experienced teachers in a few years time”.
Pluto agrees. Then he suggests Plan B. “Oli”, he says, “this is the best part. Let’s say it all blows up in our face and people rebel. That would be the best case scenario. Because when it blows up we will have proof that government run schools are atrocious and we can side with the Republicans who agree we need to give parents choice to get away from the schools. Charters and private school vouchers will finally become the norm and we will have full power over the schools with no accountability. We can stop wasting money buying all those testing and curriculum materials too. We can hire any drone to teach and take all the money for ourselves. That will help get rid of those pesky universities and their tiresome research.”
Oli considers Pluto proposition. “Well, that is how we have done it all over the world. We really cannot lose as long as everyone keep arguing over the little issues and loses sight of the big picture. Let’s make sure our spokespeople are really obnoxious then. That will help distract everyone.”
Pluto smiles, “Then I have the perfect guy for you . . .”
LOL
Emmy ~
You wondered what Coleman was thinking and where such a lesson would fit?
My take: Coleman has no credentials, no knowledge, no skills, no experience to write learning objectives – CCSS, AT ALL!
He only plays an Expert on TV. As do so many of his ilk. There are thousands just like him graduating every semester.
What else can these folks do with PoliSci or Public Policy BS degrees and make a mint?
EdReform has become a Job Program for the Bright & Beautiful People.
On top of all this stupidity, Coleman could care less because Gates loves it all and pays well. He just laughs at our outrage, I’m sure.
That’s all that matters!
Kids, what kids?
According to CCSS Appendix B http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B.pdf
Letters from a Birmingham Jail is considered an information text appropriate for 9-10 grade. On page 127 you can find the excerpt. The suggested activities are on page 129.
But the video discussed here is meant for middle school students. The link is on the article. So I guess it is ok to use this reading for middle school too?
Since I am teaching a group of teachers this week how to follow these standards I love when all of the CCSS materials contradict themselves. Clear as mud. These standards are truly convoluted. I have taught teachers about standards ever sicne there were standards. These are the most confusing since they are hard to know what goes to which grade and to what extent. So each district came up with their own pacing guides. But now the new textbooks only sort of allign to how the standards were interpreted so everyone is having to adjust again. If I wanted to mess with public education, I think this is a pretty good start.
And Coleman’s “close reading,” aka “read like a detective,” without the teacher helping to further student motivation and comprehension by placing the text within meaningful context or relating to students’ background knowledge, is to begin in which grade(s)?
The entire standards are here. http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy
Methods are not clearly stated in the standards. But, for informational texts, in Kindergarten, “With prompting and support,” children are to “identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text” and, in Grade 1, they are to do that as well, however, the prompting and supports are gone. That’s incredibly early for teachers to not provide prompts and supports, and it is not developmentally appropriate for young children.
If David Coleman’s bullet list and his videos were mere recommendations, that would be perfectly acceptable. They would be a contribution to the ongoing discussion and debate about learning progressions and pedagogical approaches. But they are not recommendations. They are not voluntary. They are not subject to critique. They are absolute, invariant mandates, and in a democratic state, that’s just not acceptable.
Luckily no one is checking here in NC . . . yet. I agree with you on how David Coleman is interpreting the standards but luckily most teachers have a much broader view of what he is suggesting and are still teaching using contextual information and making it relevant to their student’s lives. Almost all of the literature is still being taught using it’s historical context and personal reflection. History is only made relevant by how it helps us to understand why things are the way they are and how things have changed. And how that impacts us today. A close reading of anything would make no sense without the historical context and personal reflection.
Thanks to everyone who commented in regards to my comment. Close reading, of the sort suggested in his video, is important for college readiness. And when the source is as excellent as King’s letter, close reading plays a role in educating our electorate. What is concerning to me is how the common core may fetishize this kind of lesson. Something to keep an eye on as I learn more about the roll out I guess…
Something to keep an eye on as I learn more about the roll out
This will all boil down to the specific test questions. Teachers will use the questions pertaining to close reading and train students how to respond for test success.
Well said, Emmy!
This is exactly what I was thinking, specifically in relation to a distrcit-related professional development activity that I’m in the midst of today. The activity is on close reading for 12th graders (as per the CCSS model), but my problem is that it’s become an experience of reading in isolation, with the only goal to find all the clues in the text and move along. There is no context in these questions, or in the act of reading itself. (Is it right to bring up Louise Rosenblatt at this point?) Indeed, it becomes fetishized in practice, and in time, it may work against what students need to develop in post-secondary courses, not to mention a goal of developing a sense of critical literacy within our students (Freire) at all levels.
There is much, much that I agree with Lord Coleman about. I agree withthe call to have kids read more valuable, more substantive texts, for example. I have often looked at current textbooks and been appalled by how many lame readings are included in them simply because they illustrate some concept (e.g., using some method of elaboration or some figure of speech). I agree that kids need to do extended reading in particular knowledge domains (something mentioned in Appendix A of the standards but not stressed in the standards themselves) because knowledge builds on knowledge and because kids need to be able to pursue their bliss in their reading–to find that topic they are fascinated by and pursue it. That’s how we build committed readers. That’s how kids learn that reading can be valuable TO THEM. I agree that it’s important to build knowledge, in the early grades, that writers take for granted–common knowledge (though I cannot see how issuing a set of standards that is nothing but a list of skills can accomplish that).
What I do not agree with is foisting a particular invariant bullet list of standards on the entire country. Doing so distorts curricula and pedagogy dramatically, encourages the development of educational materials monopolies because it creates economies of scale for the big providers, and keeps people from being able to adapt their curricula and pedagogy to their particular students who, after all, differ.
What I cannot forgive is the insufferable presumption of Coleman’s thinking that he has THE ANSWER, that he is the BRINGER OF THE LIGHT. I would never presume to force my views about curricula and pedagogy on the entire country–that only I have anything valuable to say about these matters, but that is precisely what Coleman has done. When, oh when, have we seen such arrogance? I do think its unparalleled.
it’s, of course, not its. Oh for an edit feature on WordPress!
What I cannot forgive is the insufferable presumption of Coleman’s thinking that he has THE ANSWER, that he is the BRINGER OF THE LIGHT. I would never presume to force my views about curricula and pedagogy on the entire country–that only I have anything valuable to say about these matters, but that is precisely what Coleman has done.
I don’t think that he cares if he has the answer or not. He has what he wanted: A MONOPOLY on the entire K-12 curriculum for nearly 50 million children. And a guaranteed 7.5% turnover every year. Add year 13 – a monopoly on SAT and ACT and GED exams and the cash cow called test prep.
I don’t think that this is about test prep for Coleman. I think he would probably say something like, “If you have excellent standards, then prepping for tests on those is precisely what you should be doing.” David Coleman seems to me to be sincere–to believe in what he’s doing. I don’t think that this is just about the money for him. He gives me the impression of being a true believer in the ed reform approach. He thinks he is on the side of the angels, and if his prescriptions were not being treated like Holy Writ–if they were part of a vigorous, ongoing discussion and debate about approaches to teaching English, I would welcome them. As I said above, he espouses some ideas that I agree with. I just happen to think that his bullet list of standards is extraordinarily ill conceived and amateurish and that its preparation was not undertaken with the high seriousness that such a task required, starting with a critical examination of the consequences of issuing such bullet lists and with a great deal of thought about how standards and frameworks and learning progressions might differ in the various ELA domains. And, of course, his final product should have been a set of general, voluntary recommendations submitted to the community of scholars, researchers, and teachers for their consideration, not an inflexible, top-down, absolutist mandate foisted upon everyone else.
He’s just young and inexperienced and has no clue about the far-reaching consequences of his prescriptions, no familiarity with actual classroom practice, no understanding of the sciences of language acquisition, little understanding of the diversity of ways in and out of literature, no familiarity with writing curricula and approaches, and, generally, little appreciation of the diversity of curricular and pedagogical approaches in the English language arts and how dramatically and, often, how negatively, his bullet list narrows the possibilities.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Pope said. Well, that applies here.
I hear you. I guess I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the scale of such arrogance.
You failed to mention that Coleman knows absolutely nothing about child and adolescent development and cognitive processes. It’s unconscionable that he presumed to be able to prescribe ANY standards whatsoever for the learning of every public school child in our country without making every attempt to acquire as much expertise in child development and cognition as he possibly could.
No one who truly cares about children could perceive such a quack as having good intentions when there are so many well-trained, skilled, genuine experts in the field who he did not bother to bring onto his team or consult.
Identifying, sourcing and crediting evidence in informational texts pales in significance to the ability to do the same in real life situations. Coleman’s failure to do that is precisely why the standards are not developmentally appropriate for young children. His actions should be seen as nothing less than a monumental crime against our nation’s children.
Just to underscore, Coleman’s unforgivable faux pas is that, at THE most critical time, when constructing K-12 national standards, he failed to APPLY the very technique that he thinks is so lofty and important for college and careers that he decided children must learn it starting in Kindergarten, and then they are required to do it without teacher prompting and supports from 1st Grade on. And APPLICATION IS A LOWER ORDER THINKING SKILL –which, no doubt, Coleman does not know.
So, instead of consulting with experts on child development and cognition, as if little children are just small adults, he used “backwards scaffolding.” Per Peter Greene:
“Supporters keep saying this like it’s a good thing. I always explain it this way: You want a high school senior to be able to run a ten minute mile. If you allow for getting one minute faster each year, that means you just need to make five year olds run a twenty-four minute mile. Or twenty-seven when they’re three. Or a thirty-minute mile when they’re newborn. Makes perfect developmental sense. That’s how well backwards scaffolding works.”
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/01/john-king-really-did-that.html?m=1