For reasons unknown, Connecticut appears poised to endorse New York state’s odd lesson plans for Common Core.
This Connecticut blogger pulls apart the first grade lessons, previously discussed on this blog.
The blogger refers to a small portion of what first graders are supposed to learn (subjects that might well fit better in high school and/or college, that is, if one expects depth of understanding):
“A further examination of Domain 4 means reviewing its 81 student objectives. That number is not as intimidating as the language in the content area objectives. The first ten objectives state that “by the end of this unit, students will be able to….”:
“Locate the area known as Mesopotamia on a world map or globe and identify it as part of Asia;
Explain the importance of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and the use of canals to support farming and the development of the city of Babylon;
Describe the city of Babylon and the Hanging Gardens;
Identify cuneiform as the system of writing used in Mesopotamia;
Explain why a written language is important to the development of a civilization;
Explain the significance of the Code of Hammurabi;
Explain why rules and laws are important to the development of a civilization;
Explain the ways in which a leader is important to the development of a civilization;
Explain the significance of gods/goddesses, ziggurats, temples, and priests in Mesopotamia;
Describe key components of a civilization…”
Why do six-year-old children need to learn the word “perplexed”? There is actually a good reason. The content of the first grade lessons will surely make them feel perplexed. Better: why should they know the word “apoplectic”? You know why.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Since these outcome statements are found in instructional materials developed by a private company, but not in the actual CCSS, I would be curious to hear from the CCSS writers whether they believe they represent a valid interpretation. That might clear up some of the perplexity. Since they are likely to appear to most early grade teacher or parent to be age inappropriate (except if memorization or parroting is the goal), I would like to hear a defense grounded in some peer reviewed cognitive and developmental research. Maybe that would leave the apoplectic more sanguine. (Are these still SAT words?)
Oh, if only The Czar (aka David Coleman) knew what was being done in his name!
Well said, Ang. FLERP, we need a lot of parents like you!
Leaving aside whether it’s a good idea to mandate curricula from central command;
And leaving aside the inherent arbitrariness involved in decisions about what history should and should not be taught;
And leaving aside the gag-reflex I have to this day whenever I encounter the phrase “Explain the significance of” something:
I don’t actually find these topics “age inappropriate.” At least not necessarily so.
My first-grade son has always been slow on the reading curve, although he’s gathering steam lately. He’s a sharp kid, but he’s also a pretty regular kid. One of our bedtime reading sources is the Bible, which we intend to read cover to cover. (I’ve him that there are some pretty dry stretches once you’re out of Exodus.) He cannot get enough of it. He constantly interrupts the readings to ask pertinent questions like “What’s Goshen again?” or make observations like “Man, God is a jerk!” And I constantly pause to engage him with questions, and jokes, and other information. But the material itself, he loves it, and he retains a surprising amount of it.
And “perplexed” is age inappropriate for a first grader? I’m not following that at all.
All that said, I can imagine this curriculum being pretty clumsy in practice. I’m just a parent reading to one son (and often my daughter, who really does not like God based on what she’s been hearing in Exodus). That’s a lot different than teaching a class of 30, obviously.
Flerp, no disrespect, but it’s developmentally inappropriate, not age. Give me one good reason a first grader needs to know anything about the Tigris River or Babylon.
Maybe because it’s interesting? Although it’s true that just because something’s interesting doesn’t mean you need to know it. I don’t have any good reasons why a first grader would need to know the story of the great flood from Genesis, or the Greek myths, or Hakeem Olajuwon’s post moves, or any number of other things my wife and I try to teach our 7-year-old.
Of course, one potentially ENORMOUS difference between what I’m talking about and the curriculum “modules” featured in this post is the quality of the text. I can’t imagine sitting around reading Common Core “read aloud” modules to my kids. Not because the subject matter’s too advanced, but because, from what I’ve gleaned, the text is flat and awful.
Spot on Flerp. Unfortunately too many schools (administrators and teachers) feel compelled to teach the modules so the kids can “test” better. Our elementary school is using the math and reading modules and it makes me want to barf.
If you can make it interesting, God bless ya! Problem with the Common Crock is why would you want to make Mesopotamia interresting? How about when they’re in 8th grade and have the cognitive ability to comprehend the Earth and it’s history? That said, I would teach the post moves!
FLEP,
Your lucky son and daughter!
Naturally bright kids with well educated, native English speaking parents who have the ability, time, inclination and resources to read to them every night and the further intelligence, time, confidence, literacy skills and knowledge base necessary to discuss with them what you have read.
You give them a great many gifts.
I am sure you know that those combinations are not present in many, many households.
On a separate note:
Some where, some teacher should be grateful, since your children will easily pass the mind numbing bubble in tests. However, the same teacher may curse you as your kids may not show enough growth (hard to improve when at top of curve) and that teacher will get a terrible VAM score.
Keep yo the good work, dad!
😉
I suspect that they don’t need to know why they might be apoplectic because it is of Greek origin . . .
And this is why 1st graders need field trips to the post office and fire station. Let’s teach little kids about their own back yard first. Mesopotamia, who gives a crap? The Common Crock Stds. are a joke.
First grade units of this nature should deal with their own community. My wife is a superlative teacher and her units (which have been killed by the BS perpetuated in New Haven, CT over the past decade) focused on understanding the community in which they live. Six year-olds are rather focused on self and finding the relationship they have with the others around them, the physical aspects of the community in which they live, connecting to that, then beginning to develop an understanding of the history of the place in which they live (and this area is rich in history and resources) is what matters and will foster enduring understanding. You can blend language and mathematics and science into all of that. But Mesopotamia? Come one!
Stefan Pryor is a non-educator with a financial connection to the privitization that is going on here and across the country. He is a lying, deceptive manipulator who should never have been selected for so important a position. But his connection to Danel Malloy (our one-term governor, I hope), Achievement First, ConnCAN and the big money people who are behind that (like Jonathan Sackler, the uber-wealthy owner of Pardu Pharma, the makers of oxycontin, and the father of the woman who disingenusouly told the Wall Street Journal that she just happened upon this educational crisis of of the need for charter schools, which launched her on her crusade to produce “Waiting for Superman”) made him an attractive choice. The
Stamford connection – the rich pricks down on the Gold Coast funded Malloy and he is giving them what they want to get their funding. There is a special place in hell for these people- why not in jail?
Amen brother.
Love the concepts behind your wife’s units!
As a mom and a teacher, I’ve been around my share of little kids.
These standards are not appropriate. They are a list of memorizable facts; they are not skills.
A child might be able to reel off a list of fun facts about Mesopotamia, but to what end?
The first years of elementary should be exclusively devoted to learning how to do basic math computations, writing complete sentences and playing with objects to learn the principals of science.
Learning the important skills takes years of repetition.
Deformers focus on the “fun facts” model vs “important skills” model because it’s easiest to test.
Public school science classes are indistinguishable from social studies classes. That’s a disgrace.
“As a mom and a teacher, I’ve been around my share of little kids.”
What I love about is it is that all of these people enjoyed the exact same things you’re talking about when they were in 1st grade, and yet for some unknown reason they want to deny that to the kids that come up behind them.
Were they “college and career ready”? Why? Obviously they were denied the benefits of “college and career readiness”, yet somehow they’ve managed to rise high enough to dictate this to every public school parent and kid in the country. How did they manage to rise to such positions of prominence and power, without “college and career readiness”? Are they just extremely talented and brilliant, so we able to overcome the “coddling” they got when they were 6 years old?
I’m never clear who it is that they’re talking to with all this blather of how mediocre we are and how there isn’t enough rigor. Are they included in this critical analysis of mediocrity?
Cupcake, the CC$$ in ELA, the centerpiece of education deform, is almost entirely content free. It is a list of skills.
Un-teachable skills at that
“The first years of elementary should be exclusively devoted to learning how to do basic math computations, writing complete sentences and playing with objects to learn the principals of science.
Learning the important skills takes years of repetition.”
Yeah. What cupcake said! How did we “forget” this time-tested approach? Asking kids to regurgitate facts about ancient Mesopotamia in first grade necessitates that direct literacy instruction happen in kindergarten when many kids are not developmentally ready for it and many studies suggest they will benefit most from playing. (Or at least that early literacy gains are not a lasting effect.)
We are living in strange days. Did you ever imagine it would come to this?
I get an uncomfortable feeling that the “Christian” “Right” may have had a hand in this. Christian homeschooling curricula very often have a heavy emphasis on ancient cultures, especially around Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome and other areas/empires of importance in the Bible. For the homeschoolers, the point is to trace “history” from the Garden of Eden through the various empires that controlled Israel to the point at which Jesus enters the scene. I’m sure the Common Core isn’t quite so blatant about it, but I wonder how much influence there is.
Dienne, I’m a teacher (28 yrs.) in NY. It’s not the Christian Right. It’s Megacorps like Pearson and politicians like Cuomo, Obama and Arne Duncan. It’s all about money. For the record I go to church only when forced to.
I know I’m a raging conspiracy theorist, but I’m not entirely sure the megacorps can be separated from the megachurches. I think there’s a connection with the “prosperity gospel” which teaches that wealth is a sign of God’s favor and what most of us would consider obscene wealth is just a sign of very high favor. I don’t know about people like Buffet and Gates (Gates just thinks he is God), but I wouldn’t be surprised to find people like the Waltons espousing such beliefs. It also explains why education “reform” is more like a religious faith than a rational, empirical theory.
That had nothing to do with this. The material comes from the Core Knowledge Sequence, published by the Core Knowledge Foundation. This is just one unit from that sequence, which has has its goal building background knowledge in a great many domains–the knowledge that the writers whom kids will encounter in their later reading will take for granted.
The theory is this: Writers assume that their readers will have certain background knowledge–common knowledge. If a reader tries to read something that assumes background knowledge that the reader does not have, he or she will not comprehend it. So, the Core Knowledge Sequence attempts to build that GENERAL background knowledge. Ancient cultures is just one of MANY areas of general background knowledge that the Core Knowledge Sequence covers.
cx: which has as its goal building background knowledge in a great many domains
Dienne, I was thinking the influence comes from ED Hirsch’s work?
Not just the influence, Emmy. This is the work of Hirsch’s foundation. It was licensed by Amplify and adopted by NY state as the official state curriculum.
Bob,
More specifically it comes from the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program, which is vehicle to push the Core Knowledge Sequence into a repurposed package complete with a synthetic phonics approach. Though I am an avid fan of Diane Ravitch, my one sticking point that divides my views from hers is the relative value of the Core Knowledge Sequence. I can live with that difference for the greater good of all I have learned from her through her books, her activism, and this blog. It is safe to say I am in awe of Diane and her tireless support of public education.
Jean Evans Davila
I challenge any teacher in my child’s elementary building to use the word “apoplectic” or “apoplexy” correctly in a sentence.
From a child’s perspective . . .
“I went to the supermarket with my mom and had apoplexy trying to decide which apople to chose for my lunches that week from the apoplectic kinds that they had.”
A little background:
The curriculum being discussed here is the Core Knowledge Foundation reading curriculum. This curriculum was, I believe,
a. Licensed by the Core Knowledge Foundation to Amplify, formerly Wireless Generation, the company run by Joel Klein and owned by Rupert Murdoch
b. Adopted by New York State
So, the state has adopted a proprietary curriculum. However, Don Hirsch, Jr., the founder of Core Knowledge, required that the company make these materials available on the website FOR FREE.
That the material is made available FOR FREE is a big deal. That it is proprietary to Amplify–well, I would have to know more about that, but it’s a bit disturbing that the state adopted a proprietary curriculum without any public discussion of that backroom deal.
Now, about the bit of the curriculum that is being respond to above:
I am a bit shocked that people would think that studying Mesopotamia is “a joke” or say, of such study, “Who cares?” When, under George Bush, Jr., the United States government was bombing the hell out of libraries and museums in Iraq, I was HORRIFIED not only by the human cost but also by the cultural cost. Basically, our government’s response to the looting of museums and destruction of artifacts that followed the SHOCK AND AWE of the opening of the second Iraq War was a shrug. I thought, “Here we are, centuries later, destroying what remains from the earliest civilizations, what has come down to us from the dawn of civilization itself, and the philistines in our government, the ones overseeing this evil, don’t care, don’t give a damn, because they are so profoundly ignorant of what all this stuff means.”
So, a little history lesson:
For millions of years, humans lived in small hunter-gatherer bands. In various places around the globe, these bands would come together at particular times during the year–at the Summer and Winter Solstices, for example–for festivals that they held at sacred ritual centers. They established these centers near water and stands of wild grain. In time, some started living in these centers year round and figured out how not simply to care for those wild sources but to save the seeds and sow them.
And in this manner, the first civilizations were born–agriculture, cities, governmental and religious administration, writing, literature, law, specialization of labor, engineering, buildings, roads, hierarchical and patriarchal social order, and much more. The switch to agriculture and to specialization meant, interestingly, a dramatic decline in general health but also a dramatic increase in the sheer amount of calories produced, which meant dramatic population growth because people didn’t have to be particularly healthy; they just had to live long enough to have kids, and they did, in record numbers.
It is in these places, at these times, that life as we know it was born. This was the decisive break. We lived in one way for millions of years. Then we lived in a completely different way. And the transition happened, in the scheme of things, just about overnight.
If we don’t understand how people started living then and how that was different from what came before, there is much that we won’t understand about how we live today. It’s extremely important to understand that what we do is not what people have to do but that these are cultural choices we humans have made–to live in cities rather than in small bands, to accept hierarchies, to accept the rule of law, to submit to government, to follow the established or state religion, and so on. If we don’t know where we’ve been, we won’t understand, really, where we are and how we got to this place. And, importantly, we won’t understand that all of this stuff, all of it, is NOT NECESSARY BUT CHOSEN.
I think that this curriculum is really exciting because it is content rich. Give me a room full of 2nd graders, and I will bring this material alive with them. I’ll have them building ziggurats and writing laws and establishing a caste system and doing projects with division of labor and learning about the sun and the earth and the solstices and the seasons and about growing grains and irrigating and about writing systems and number systems.
And we”ll have a great time because the material is so rich and interesting and, yes, BECAUSE IT’S SO ANCIENT AND WEIRD AND FOREIGN.
Or, we could have them read about Sally and Jimmy going with Rex the dog down to the firehouse, and they will learn nothing that they did not already know. And while we’re at it, we will do some inane exercises on finding the main idea.
But, clearly, just throwing this stuff at teachers without LOTS of GREAT PD is really, really stupid.
“Ancient, weird, and foreign.” This is exactly what drew me to the ancient world as a kid, and as an adult as well.
Well done.
I don’t think anyone is saying “Who cares?” about Mesopotamia in general, just that it shouldn’t be the focus of weeks of instruction in FIRST GRADE.
Also, what’s with the enormous list of standards? Sure, introduce kids to Mesopotamia, even with the read-alouds. But WHY have 81 standards just for one unit? That would be overwhelming for my 9th grade World Geography students, let alone first graders.
Yes, the unit is a mess. It really needs reworking by experienced curriculum designers and editors.
And it needs to be moved to an appropriate grade level and decoupled from the egregiously amateurish Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic].
And, if they don’t work hard, I’ll threaten them with passing them through a fire to Moloch.
Just kidding!
Send me the map to that fire, I won’t be kidding, I’ll be sending the originators.
The kids actually love that Moloch stuff, some of them anyway. 🙂
A lot of people will be horrified by the “Read Alouds” in this curriculum because they will seem far above grade level. Elementary school teachers are used to seeing leveled readers, with carefully controlled syntax, vocabulary, sentence length, etc. However, bear in mind that this material is meant to be READ to kids. There is an enormous amount of research in linguistics that shows that it is ESSENTIAL for language development that kids at very early ages be exposed to the full range of syntactic complexity in the spoken language, for based on that, they automatically, and without explicit instruction, construct their neural models of the “grammar” (using that word in its wider, technical sense) of their native tongue–their linguistic competence.
But, just thrusting this stuff at teachers without explaining that is really, really stupid. I doubt that the people from the State Department who are promoting this stuff even understand what I just explained–how the very materials that they are promoting are designed to work.
Read alouds are a great way to introduce kids to the world. I even use them occasionally with my 8th and 9th graders.
But, once again, WHY the zillion standards and the insane vocabulary lists and the explanations of world religions when kids at that age cannot really explain their OWN religious beliefs?
agreed
This unit is a rework of the Core Knowledge® curriculum developed by E.D. Hirsch, who was quick to rebrand it for the CCSS. Hirsch is probably best known as the proponent of education for “cultural literacy,” a national curriculum for K-8, with a commercial version on cards sold for a time at big box stores (e.g. Sam’s). Hirsch’s philosophy of education is grounded in a critique of John Dewey’s progressive thought. See Hirsch, Jr. E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Hirsch has endorsed the CCSS, made his K-8 curriculum framework available on the Internet at no charge, and changed the rhetoric of Core Knowledge® to accommodate the CCSS aims of education for college and career readiness. See Core Knowledge®. (2011). Core knowledge foundation: Common core state standards. Retrieved from http://www.coreknowledge.org/ccss.
Hirsch designed his program in social studies to teach a traditional “survey” version of the history of Western Civilization, moving from the “Fertile Crescent” lessons described in this post then chronologically forward. The program assumes that lessons learned in the first and second grades and each later grade would be retained and eliminate the need for what he regarded as needless repetition. Correlated lessons in art and music were, in the main, based on social studies concepts
The curriculum plot thickens because some of the writers for Hirsch’s program migrated to a “Common Core” ELA Curriculum Maps program directed by Lynn Munson and initially funded by Bill Gates.
Common Core is a non-profit organized long before the CCSS saw daylight. The organization argued for a balanced program of studies in the arts, science, and humanities with a conservative bent on that articulated by key members of the Board, including at one time Diane Ravitch but also Chester Finn (of the Fordham Doundation) and Lynn Munson, former director of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The Common Core Curriculum Maps for ELA are available on-line. They include CCSS coded standards, and mostly public domain supports in music and art. This project is directed by Lynn Munson and takes advantage of the visual resources she helped to develop while at the Endowment in a program called “Picturing America.”
I have a fair amount of experience in curriculum development. I looked at some early units the Common Core Curriculum Maps and found them amateurish, providing only marginal guidance to teachers, but diligent in their numerical coding of the units to comport with the CCSS coding system, complete with spreadsheets for a teacher to check off their “coverage” of every ELA standard for each grade. See Common Core. (2010). Common core curriculum maps: English language arts. Retrieved from http://www.commoncore.org/maps.
It is worth noting that both of these resources are produced by “non-profits” but are not entirely free. Hope this provides information of use. I would not be surprised if Pearson and others “appropriate” and recycle a lot of resources and re-brand them as Hisrch did.
Laura Chapman,
Comon Core existed as a free-standing organization before CCSS. I was co-chair of the board. It was created and funded the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, where Checker Finn is president.
It began receiving Gates money to write curriculum maps for CCSS in 2010. I left the board about that time.
Laura, I was shocked that E.D. Hirsch, Jr., who spent DECADES writing books about what a mistake it was to couch standards in the form of content-free, abstract skills, chose to endorse the Common Core. I still hold out hope that he will recognize how dramatically the CC$$ in ELA is distorting most curricula being produced and renounce that endorsement.
The CC$$ modules could use a good edit, certainly. There are some dramatic errors in the ones I have reviewed, but beyond that, there are significant problems in conceptualization of the lessons and activities. Nonetheless, they are a great deal better than most of the junk I see from the big textbook publishers.
cx: CC$$ in ELA are, not is
Bob shepherd, as you probably know, Rupert Murdoch bought the rights to Hirsch’s Core Knowledge ELA.
I agree that first grade should concentrate on the local and concrete. Bible stories and fables are appropriate for young children — more for second than for first grade, though. I am an atheist or agnostic myself but I think Biblical legends are important for understanding art and history (cultural literacy). I always loved them as a child and still do. In fact, would like to see some religious legends of all cultures taught. But to get back to the post, the study of ancient civilizations would be much more appropriate for third grade and up. When children’s grasp of the local world has solidified a bit. And it would be good if the information were accompanied by model building or drawing or other crafts to make it more meaningful. But hey, stories about pre-history are unaccountably missing — what about the cavemen and hunter gatherers, fishermen and pastorialists and agriculturalists who inhabited the earth for thousands of years before the first civilizations.
This is the earliest study of ancient civilizations that I have ever heard of. Dewey-inspired schools do ancient civilizations in fourth grade. Waldorf schools do ancient civilizations in fifth grade. Montessori students work thematically on the topic of human needs/society over a period of years.
Ancient civilizations were just as complex as our own civilization today. This is a crucial “take away” in my opinion. The placement in first grade is odd. Shouldn’t students be getting to know the natural and built environment of their own surroundings first?
21st Century Skills . . . B.C.
The study of ancient civilizations is wonderful. The older the student, the more they will understand and remember. It is indeed odd to place this complex study in first grade.
I agree.
The topic is fine for 1st graders, but the objectives are not.
I read Twain in high school. Didn’t love it. 3 years later, I took a Twain class in college and absolutely loved it.
Too much or too soon isn’t beneficial.
It’s actually a 2nd grade module, but I agree, Emmy. I would do this stuff later. The most important central concepts are difficult.
These Core Knowledge modules can be taught in a way that is amazingly enriching (not to mention fun). Just think of the term “Fertile Crescent”: kids learn what “fertile”, what “crescent” means and where the Fertile Crescent is. These are indispensable building blocks for real literacy. Teaching about familiar topics (e.g. one’s neighborhood) is not nearly as rich. When building literacy, teaching “reading skills” is no substitute for learning about the world, though, sadly, many teachers think it is. Kids can get enthused about Mesopotamia, but not about “learning to make inferences”. The embrace of such a content-rich curriculum by some districts is one of the few bright spots in education today. I think Diane is wrong to cast aspersions on it. True, Murdoch’s touch has tainted it, but should we let the perfect be the enemy of the good?
The critic from Connecticut points out how the CK curriculum deviates from the Common Core Standards. Hooray –it’s great that they deviate from tedious, content-free skill-drilling! The critic complains that CK teaches “low-level” knowledge. “Low level” on Bloom’s taxonomy does not mean “contemptible”; it means “absolutely essential for higher order thinking”!
We can’t think without having something to think about and with, something substantive. If we’re not thinking within a knowledge domain that we actually have some familiarity with, then our thinking will be shallow and uninformed, and we’ll get used to thinking that that’s OK. It’s not.
Thank your all that you have posted in this discussion, especially here. You are demonstrating the difference between the stale high fructose corn syrup of repeating empty skills and the intellectual protein involved in thinking about something fascinating, foreign, and foundational.
In all the years I have been reading about education in this country, I think I have reached the outer edge of frustration by reading the comment posted here today, “Mesopotamia, who gives a crap?” That statement pretty much sums up where we are in this country and why we are having this debate about whether or not our children should learn about the world.
I’ve been saying this since I started teaching middle school. The vocabulary on the STAAR social studies test (Texas) has high school and college level vocabulary. It is developmentally inappropriate and just flat out wrong. The kids understand the material, but get tripped up by words they don’t understand. My thinking is that the only way the test writers can get to a “higher level of knowledge” in Bloom’s Taxonomy is to ramp up the vocabulary.
I want to clarify that no one would enjoy learning about Mesopotamia or teaching a unit on it more than I would–even to first graders.
My issue is with the stated objectives–the student will know the significance of blah, blah, blah…
If, as a teacher, I have to make sure my 1st graders will be able to prove they know the significance of the Code of Hammurabi on a bubble test, then I’m test-prepping a child on developmentally inappropriate objectives.
If the stated objectives were that the student would be able to write a complete sentence using the word Mesopotamia, okay. No problem. That’s a skill they need.
If the stated objectives were that the student would be able to add and subtract the numbers of fish in the Tigris or Euphrates, great. That’s a skill they need.
My secondary students know all kinds of arbitrary facts, but they can’t tell you why the water in a swimming pool is cool while the concrete surrounding it is hot. They don’t know how the world works and they can’t communicate in writing or perform simple calculations in math. If you give them a map with North identified, they cannot label the rest of the compass. They look at 90.27 and cannot round to the nearest whole number.
They lack fundamental skills because of bubble testing and its emphasis on memorizable facts.
There’s a lot of higher-order learning to be done in a unit like this. Consider, for example, teaching kids about how, in the first cities, people specialized. Now, breaking a task into is parts and having people specialize in those parts (or concentrating, one’s self, on those parts, in turn) is an extremely important heuristic. How wonderful to ground an understanding of that in something concrete and to do the transfer from learning about that in the context of studying how a ziggurat was built to applying that to, say, doing a math problem or planning and essay.
Dan Dennett argues that the major reason for the Flynn Effect–the dramatic increase in average IQ of the population, worldwide, in the past 100 years–is the availability of such heuristics. I suspect that that’s part of it.
But I agree that I would do this unit later on.
Cupcake: what memorizable facts do the SBAC/PARCC ELA tests test for? They seem pretty fact-free to me. All intellectually adept humans have memorized a ton of facts; they’re just not aware of it. You have memorized the meaning of the word “fundamental” and the cardinal directions. These memorized facts are the indispensable foundations of your high-level cognitive functioning. Let’s give our kids this knowledge. I agree that the phrasing of some of the objectives is worrisome, but the overall thrust –to learn some concrete world knowledge –marks a radical and hopeful change of direction after years of content-lite literacy and math instruction spawned by an unholy alliance of high-stakes tests and the anti-knowledge strain of progressive pedagogy. We have been starving our kids –ESPECIALLY the underprivileged ones –of mental nutrition.
The CC$$ in ELA are almost all content-free descriptions of abstractly formulated skills, and the very existence of such a list encourages the sort of terrible teaching that doesn’t linger in a knowledge domain long enough for people actually to learn something about it–encourages gawdawful “And now for something completely different” approaches. And it also, ironically, subordinates the text. The text becomes only an occasion for the exercise of a skill. I say “ironically” because the CC$$ is supposed to represent some sort of great “return to the text.”
And, it’s a lousy list of skills at that, one prepared by amateurs.
I don’t want to get into a facts versus skills debate. That’s stupid and fruitless. Both world knowledge, or knowledge of what, and procedural knowledge, or knowledge of how, are important. The latter, however, should be concretely formulated, for instructional purposes. That is, it should be operationalized AND PRACTICED WITHIN A KNOWLEDGE DOMAIN that has significance to the learner. And often that significance comes from being unusual, weird, strange, far out, distant–from the learner’s having been dropped down a rabbit hole and shoved through a wardrobe where he or she encounters something EXTRAORDINARY, outside his or her everyday, normal experience. Egypt or Pleistocene Megafauna of the United States are a LOT more likely to capture students’ imaginations than are the firehouse and the football game.
But, again, I would do this unit much latter. Maybe fifth or sixth grade, depending on the kid.
Ponderosa–I’m unfamiliar with those specific tests as I am a teacher in Texas.
My comments are specifically directed at the Mesopotamia objectives for 1st graders–not the concept of teaching kids about Mesopotamia.
If Texas ELA tests are anything like the tests to which you refer, you’re right that those tests are chock full of skills–and my experience is that the skills they demand of kids are far from basic skills and equally inappropriate.
It’s just too much too soon and the kids aren’t absorbing it while they are also failing to master basic skills.
the kids aren’t absorbing it while they are also failing to master basic skills.
This happens when one issues an invariant, one-size-fits-all bullet list instead of letting teachers make these determinations based on the needs of the specific kids that they are teaching. Well said, Cupcake!
Just curious…why do people say that progressive education is anti-intellectual? When people say “progressive Ed” one of the first people I think of in the American context is Dewey. He was far from anti-intellectual as are the schools I know that see themselves as inspired by his work. What am I missing here?
Bob Shepherd 1: Are you in classroom in a public school? 2: From now on 30 words or less.
LOL. I will try to keep that in mind.
Mesopotamia in the 1st grade are you kidding me. Don’t first graders need to learn about their self-identity? No wonder I have 5th graders who think China is one of our states. I know it’s a misconception since lots of things are labeled Made in China. More reason to clear those up.
That’s why we need to teach things ONCE, when students can truly learn them and are ready for them, and teach the concepts WELL, so we don’t have to reteach them. A pet peeve of mine is that in elementary school, legends on maps are called “keys,” but most real world maps say, “legend.” So I have to reteach “legend” in 9th grade geography, and some kids don’t make the jump. When I ask them what a legend is, some kids say, “a made-up story.” Which it IS, but not in my context! If we just taught the term “legend” in the first place, we wouldn’t have the problem. Just my two cents worth…
I’m not so sure, Louisiana. I get what you are saying about “legend” and “key,” but about when to do what in history, I’ve gone round and round. Spiraling can be effective, or it can be repetitive and deadly, depending on how it’s done.
I suspect that it might be a good idea to try to get an overall timeline into kids’ heads pretty early on so that they can drop new learning into the places where it goes on that line–connect it to a network that they’ve developed a good mental map for.
I have wondered whether something like Gates’s Big History approach, early on, might make sense, with zooming in and taking a closer look being what happens later on. Of course, if we were going to do something like that, we wouldn’t be going into detail about Mesopotamia in Grade 2!!! But we might present the Neolithic inventions of agriculture, writing, and settlement as a milestone.
Imagine this: A long hallway in an elementary school designed as a logarithmic scale timeline from, at one end of the hall, the big bang, to, at the other end, a mirror and a changing digital date and time display and a sign under the mirror reading YOU ARE HERE.
One could have a lot of fun with that AND create that mental map in kids’ heads so that new learning has a place to connect to.
Dienne, we have good reason to be raging conspiracy theorists.
Just as trauma is passed down in families, so is EVIL. It is most apparent in those highly Narcissistic families whose history is based on power and greed. For example, take a good look at the Bush family back to Prescott Bush, and his efforts to fuel the Nazi war machine. Take a good look at ex-President George Bush’s immoral leadership. Take a good look now at Jeb Bush’s efforts to gain power and political support in the trough of the Educational Industrial Complex.
The hidden agenda of this education reform movement has roots in the eugenics movement in the US which became a model for that in Germany prior to WWII. The curriculum of Common Core is not based on sound educational philosophy or knowledge of children’s developmental needs, it is based on power and greed. It is based on control, and creating the slave workers of the future totalitarian regime. It is a poisonous pedagogy.
The “Christian Right” conditions children not to think for themselves, but to accept and believe what they are told. They are conditioned to believe whatever their “Christian Authoritarian Leader” tells them to believe, no matter how ridiculous or absurd that leader’s interpretation of the bible may be. They are conditioned to become obedient “sheep”, without recognizing whether the authority is abusive or insane. That is the hallmark of the Common Core – It creates children and adults who are not able to use scientific thinking, or higher level thinking skills to perceive reality in their environment.
We are allowing our children to be conditioned in a system that is leading them down a path that is the educational political version of “Jim Jones”. This is not a result of one political party, it is not partisan, it is the overall conformity that has been conditioned into our children via the increasingly authoritarian pedagogy in public education and US politics for several decades since WWII. It has now reached a level of destruction of the mental health of the nation’s children, while the general population looks on like helplessness bystanders.
As parents who have first hand observation of the environment and curriculum of Common Core, we can see that it is age inappropriate and creates chronic stress for our children, as well as for the teachers. If we put on our “thinking caps”, we can see this is permanent psychological damage being done to our children. However, “we” are now the sheep. Those 1% with all the money and power in this country are in control.
The destruction to our nation’s children from the educational reform disaster that is Common Core is beyond any other disaster our nation has ever faced. It is the manifestation of Nikita Khrushchev’s prediction in a speech given at the UN during the early years of the cold war:
“America will fall without a shot being fired. It will fall from within.”
Our best hope is to dismantle the toxic Common Core education reform movement and save our children from being turned into inhuman Nazis. We must give our children a safe and nurturing environment that will allow them to become strong leaders with empathy, not robots. It is our only hope to preserve their humanity and the future of our democracy.
What I find most appalling is that Common Core has already stretched across the globe. Here in Dubai, it IS the curriculum in the American schools (no real surprise, I suppose), but even in my school – which is a fully bilingual IB school – CC has made it’s presence known. We are using various sorts of curriculum material from CC, and especially computer programs that were designed to support it. I can’t even imagine how much money is being made just on overseas adoption of this craziness. And when it proves to fail, the whole world will suffer…not just the USA. Tragic.