A couple of years ago, I read an article in The New Yorker about the federal government’s efforts to shut down health-food cooperatives that sell raw milk.
The story focused on California, where SWAT teams descended on sellers of raw milk and locked them up.
What is “raw milk,” I wondered.
It is milk as it comes from the cow, not pasteurized, not homogenized.
Sounded frightening. I remember in health class in junior high school learning about Louis Pasteur and how important it was to get all those nasty biological agents out of milk so it would be safe for human consumption.
But then something funny happened.
I spend half my time in a rural area of Long Island (yes, they still exist), and week after week I pass a farm with an unpronounceable Welsh name (Ty Llwyd) on route 48. I always saw the sign that said “eggs” and “potatoes,” but I recently saw a sign that said “Raw milk, legal.”
A few weeks ago, my curiosity piqued by the article in The New Yorker about the black helicopters in California, I stopped and bought a big glass bottle of raw milk. The farmer said to be sure to shake it, so the cream blended in.
When I got the milk home, I shook it up and had a glass. Unpasteurized, unhomogenized. It was amazing. It was delicious. It was unlike any milk I ever tasted before, although I did remember unhomogenized milk with the cream on the top, delivered to our home in the 1940s.
On my second visit, I took my grandson to visit the farmer’s cows and chickens, and they looked content. None was locked in a packed cage. Don’t get me started about the way chickens are raised on factory farms; it is inhumane. Years ago, I visited Delmarva, the area where Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia intersect, and was upset to see the tall chicken coops, where the lights are on 24/7, and the chickens never set foot on the ground.
Our local farm was nothing like that. The chickens roam freely.
Now, I order my raw milk in advance to be sure to get a bottle. It is pure white nectar. And the eggs are unlike any I ever bought in the supermarket.
The raw milk that I buy is legal. The state of New York allows consumers to buy directly from the dairy farmer. They regularly inspect his facilities.
If you live in a state where it is legal to buy from the dairy farmer, I recommend it. It turns out that those biotics are actually good for us.
Some people actually take a pill called pro-biotics. Who needs to take pro-biotics when you can drink raw milk?
Raw milk is better than chocolate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My wife has a high school student who raises poultry as a business. We get farm fresh eggs from him regularly and they are great. I have a high school student who raises poultry for fun, and I adopted some of her ducklings that her parents told her to get rid of. I just go my fist egg from them yesterday! You must try duck eggs if you haven’t.
We also get raw milk, produce, and pasture fed meat from local farm families here in rural, Northeastern CT. Not only is the food delicious and healthful, I love how it links us even more intimately with our community.
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I started buying organic milk. It too tastes MUCH better and seems to my uneducated eye more creamy although it is only 1%. A woman in our grocery store put me up to it when I asked her about her buying it and she replied that it made a GREAT difference to her daughter especially at her time of the month.
Too, organic carrots tasted and looked much better. Having said that, a recent documentary showed that what we would LIKE to believe about organic is not as accurate as what it now has become. As usual the big companies have grabbed the name “organic” but have made the term very much less meaningful.
There are great documentaries about the factory farms and ALL the problems with them. In Indiana they have passed a law that one cannot go onto a farm and take pictures without permission. Obviously a way to keep the public in the dark.
One can also go on for a LONG time about all the antibiotics and feed given to these animals and why antibiotics have become less effective.
Europe will not allow, by law, the genetic engineered food which we are not even allowed to label as such in the U. S.
As is happening in education: we have the best government money can buy.
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The government is intruding more and more in our lives, where it doesn’t really belong. If a person wishes to buy raw milk, why stop the seller? I have never tried it, but you make me want to! Living in Lancaster County, PA, there are a plethora of farms. I buy my eggs from a market that sells them from free range chickens. The difference in look and taste is incredible. The yolk is a rich orange color, nothing like the pale yellow of store bought eggs. Even cage free organic eggs aren’t the same.
In so many ways, our country has gone insane. Forcing people to get rid of their vegetable gardens, feeding massive amounts of antibiotics to farm animals, imprisoning people for the awful crime of selling milk in its natural state. I believe it is all in the name of profit, just as the corporate attacks on schools are in the name of money. It is time for people to stop allowing this to happen. We have to stand up for our health and that of our children.
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The dairy industry appropriates the govt. to do its bidding.They don’t want the govt regulating their cruel & inhumane practices but have no problem lobbying for tighter controls over small farmers. When the chamber of commerce, corporations &/or agri-industry spout their agitprop about ‘free markets,’ and politicians say they are protecting ‘small business,’ you can be sure they mean protecting giant monopolies from competition.
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Just look where all the farm subsidies go. They are not going to small family farms.
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Diane, you must try real butter, unsweetened butter from dairy farmers. Nothing like it! I always picture Meryl Streep as Julia Child saying “Butter” with such passion. Great on fresh French Bread & Raw Milk. I grew up drinking raw milk in Europe. Awesome.
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Listeria is why it isn’t innocent. CDC website good place to get info on why a whole scale outbreak of listeria would be a great thing to avoid.
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Agriculture, food processing, and education . . . the possibilities for metaphor are endless.
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In case you missed it The New Yorker had a glorious report under Department of Education “For the Birds” by Rebecca Mead, January 16, 2014, p.16.
It is an account of a gifted 10th grader who moved to NY from a home in Pennsylvania where they raised chickens. He is now attending a school in NYC, called the Avenues (about $40,000 year),
The student proposes a chicken club for his school–an alternative to dance club and debate club. He writes a wonderful formal proposal–a parody of the school’s mission statement–that includes references to the poultry skills of chickens, their fluency in clucks and crows, being practical in the recipes of the world… and so on.
His proposal is subjected to review by students and staff, among whom he discovers a vegan and animal rights activist, someone concerned about allergies,, another about the location of the coops on a rooftop near the High Line and more. Enjoy. A perfect match for Diane’s blog entry.
I also have childhood memories of real milk and eggs delivered to my home, along with ice for the “ice box” in the days just before and during WWII when refrigerators were a luxury.
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I buy raw milk and pastured eggs. I grew up with it in Iowa. They say it is about protecting us but it is really fear mongering to control the market. This account of the Camembert Cheese Wars in France is a model: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/camembert-clash-the-french-cheese-wars-a-609046.html
The French didn’t buy the propaganda, neither should we. There is never perfect safety in any food, but on the whole raw milk from pastured animals that are cared for is much safer than many other foods. Pasteurizing milk simply allows the sale of dirty milk so it shouldn’t make you sick. It is still dirty, just sterile. It may not make people sick, it won’t make you healthy either. I’m not advocating it for anyone else. But I think it is wrong to keep it from me. The government has shut down one supply and keeps threatening my supply now. I take my glass jars to my farmer once a week to get my milk and eggs and shake the hand of the farmer. Trust.
We now know that bacteria are necessary for health. I prefer to get mine the old fashioned way in real milk instead of a capsule.
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Speaking French and having ties to Paris and Bordeux, I can say that despite a right wing movement in France, helped out by the same in the global movement, the French generally don’t buy any foreign propaganda, which is why even their wealthiest would never hear of privatizing the healthcare system there or introducing Gates style data obsession into the public schools.
The French also believe heavily in vocational tracks as well.
We would be lucky to adapt many of their philosophies about health and income distribution. . . . starting with fat consumption, wine, and lesiure time built into the culture.
Not that the French – or anyone else for that matter – are perfect.
Bt the French were the ones who overthrew their king, his wife by beheading him, her, their children, cousins, and as many of the court sicophant members as they could gather . . . . So gruesome, and so opposite of all that lovely architecture and beauxs artes you see all over the country, but still a statement about rich and poor and hideous, scandalous mobility gaps after the people had had enough. . . . .
Long live French cheese. . . there is a variety that has live worms in it. . .. I’m too squeemish and intolerant of dairy, but the French have a very soft and humanistic side to them that the average on-tour American has become paralyzed in detecting . . . .
England has jumped on the two tier system of education and data collection with scores. . .. I rather like the sterotype of French hostility toward the British. . . . It’s so appropriate, pas vrai?
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Something we agree 100% about 🙂
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I do have concerns about milk that’s not pasteurized… but with that being said, I also think some folks are more prone to some illnesses than others. I tend to not get the flu; however, I test positive for TB (and took a 6 month course of antibiotics to make sure I don’t get the active disease). I think it depends on genetic vulnerability… but I don’t have a degree in biology.
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Many experts would advise against drinking raw milk.
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@Patricia. not sure why you think that bacteria should/ would only come in capsule form. There is more bacteria in/ on your body than your own cells.
I love this community but the misapplication of science knowledge as being either part of the hegemony or a commodity is disheartening.
Large scale intake of raw milk into water supply would significantly increase risk of certain types of food borne pathogens, especially to those who are immuno-compromised.
Raw milk sales/ is analogous to freedom ride your bike with the wind blowing in your hair/ taking that risk and the wearing of a helmet to minimize potential life altering risk. Community rules are designed to minimize against foreseen catastrophes that could have big impacts, even if they are black swan type events.
Besides, small organic farmer selling raw milk is equivalent to large scale industrial farm selling raw milk- corporations are people these days.
I have enjoyed raw milk cheeses;I have had raw milk in Europe but I am glad that we have rules around pasteurization since the massive dairy related infections are no longer part of our current history. Especially now that antibiotic resistance is so prevalent. ( Bacteria have the capacity to share DNA so even organic farms/people and places harbor resistant organisms)
Science does not equal anecdotal evidence. Sorry to sound like a pontificating t*at but epidemiology and public health are based on solid science that have changed our collective good.
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I agree – Raw milk is to pasteurized milk what charter schools are to traditional public schools – bad science and anecdotal stories taken as truth.
It is up to individuals to find reliable sources and decide for themselves if the risk is worth the reward.
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I gre up on a farm. We drank raw milk. We ate fresh eggs. We grew vegetables in the garden. We butchered our own cattle and hogs. It sure brings back the memories. I haven’t had a good meal in 60 years.
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Gordon, “organic” milk in the supermarket is not raw milk. I think the term is not regulated and means nothing. Raw milk is not 1%. It is milk from the cow, bottled after milking.
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By the way, almost all eggs come from factory farms where hens are packed into tiny cubicles and their feet never touch the ground and they never see daylight. I don’t know whether the term “cage free” is real or not. Most everything we eat these days, including meat and grains, is genetically altered. I am not a vegan or a food fanatic. Just telling what I know. I recall many years ago, while on a family trip to go rough water rafting, picking up a young woman who was hitch hiking in Colorado. She said she worked in a slaughterhouse. She told us, “If you had any idea about the chemicals in the meat, you old never eat eat again.” I still like a good steak, but I never forgot her words.
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If you are ever down GA way, get pasture raised, 100% grass fed beef from Will Harris and family at White Oak Pastures.
He has his own abattoir on the farm.
He has written several articles in support of regulation of the food industry and welcoming inspection of his facility.
Fresh eggs, pastured chickens, turkeys, too.
Check out the video on his site about the Serengeti method of raising animals.
Big biologist seal if approval!
http://whiteoakpastures.com/index.html
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I have been vegan for about eight years, and I am healthier than ever AND I eat wonderful, extraordinarily various and delicious food. Almost anything can be veganized. I make homemade vegan cheeses and meats and mayo and cream, and they are AMAZING.
It takes some learning to figure out how to eat vegan, but I have become adept enough at this that I could run a bed and breakfast and feed you three meals a day for a month and you would NEVER KNOW that you were eating vegan.
There’s nothing fanatic about what I do. In fact, it seems odd to me, now, that people would want to put dead flesh in their mouths. YUCK! 🙂
Most humans on earth today are lactose intolerant and don’t consume dairy, and most, historically, have been able to afford very little meat. All our close relatives in the animal kingdom are primarily vegan. Gorillas, those powerful creatures, are vegan. Chimps and bonobos get 98 percent of their calories from plants and most of the rest from bugs. They consume VERY LITTLE meat. And our digestive systems and dentition are very like theirs.
With some minor exceptions, eating large amounts of meat is a recent phenomenon, and it’s not good for us. Meat and dairy consumption are HIGHLY correlated with the so-called “diseases of affluence”–cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and even, interestingly, osteoporosis. A study just reported in PLOS shows that vegans have 26 % fewer cancers, and female vegans have 60 % fewer female-specific cancers.
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In Masschusetts, it is legal to sell raw milk on the premises in which it was produced. It is not legal to sell it otherwise. This varies state by state. . . . . buy local whenever possible and feasible . . . .
Raw milk is the only dairy product I can consume and tolerate if I have it in small quantities and infrequently. I made my own mozarella with it several years ago, and it produced this beautiful silky, fresh, light but rich cheese . . . a rare but memorable pleasure to we who are less able to patronize the lactose arts . . . .
Of course, factory farming our food always corrupts and adulterates its purity and digestibility. . . . all in the name of mass prodcution and, yes, profit . . . . .
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Oh Dr. Ravitch. . .that is so Asheville.
You just have to come visit this city.
And we are allowed chickens in the city limits. I have four and I live right by a stoplight.
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wonderful
BTW, there are colonies of feral chickens in downtown Tampa. 🙂
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I remember my grandparents in upstate NY getting milk delivered with the cream on top when I was little. I never bothered shaking the bottle because the cream was SO good I poured it off the top into a glass and drank it. Ah memories.
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@Pam that is un-homogenized milk. The fat hasn’t been broken into smaller molecules allowing it to separate but the milk itself is pasteurized. before bottling. You can still buy it that way in some of the dairy stores in Upstate still, just have to ask for it by name.
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I think I may have to retire to Ashville. Hard to get chickens approved in my town and hard to find raw milk. So important to eat clean. Keeps us strong and healthy in order to save public education.
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why is raw milk clean?
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Depends on how the cattle are raised and what they eat. If you think homogenized, pasteurized milk is safe, think again.
That milk comes from many dairies and is mixed in a huge tank. Test reveal that 80% of that milk has bovine leukemia virus in it.
If you insist on drinking milk and feeding it to your children, I suggest you only buy organic milk that isn’t mixed with milk from the rest of the cattle who are fed huge amounts of antibiotics (half of the antibiotics produced in US are fed to cattle and sheep) and hormones to increase milk production.
Some studies have linked consumption of non-organic milk to cancers and other health challenges in children and adults.
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LL, I agree but I would still want that milk to be pasteurized.
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This may chill you.
Homogenized and pasteurized milk comes from many dairies and is mixed in one huge tank. This milk has been tested often and 80% has been found to contain bovine leukemia virus.
Bovine leukemia virus (BLV), an oncogenic retrovirus, is widely distributed and endemic in many cattle herds. Most cattle infected with BLV do NOT exhibit clinical signs. BLV infection is life-long in cattle so demonstration of serum antibodies to BLV indicates persistent infection. Persistent (or fluctuating) lymphocytosis(demonstrated in peripheral blood films or complete blood counts) develops in approximately 30% ofBLV-infected cattle. Lymphoma (lymphosarcoma) develops in approximately 3% of BLV-infected cattle but usually not until they are at least six years-of-age. This form of lymphoma is termed the “enzootic”, “endemic”, or “adult” form of bovine lymphoma or bovine leukosis.
https://www.addl.purdue.edu/newsletters/1996/winter/blv.shtml
And if you love drinking homogenized, non-organic, pasteurized milk, you really don’t want to read the next post written by a medical doctor:
http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html
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Milk is allowed, by law, to have 100 million “somatic cells” per half liter. Those somatic cells are pus. Actual levels are higher, consistently, when tested, than the law allows. Cows on large, industrialized dairy farms suffer terribly from mastitis, and that’s where the pus comes from. And that milk is full of antibiotics and recombinant bovine growth hormone (which has been outlawed in the EU, Canada, and Japan. Oh, and blood. So, that industrial milk is a toxic cocktail of pus, antibiotics, rBGH, and blood. And we’re the only animals who drink milk after we’ve been weaned or drink it from other creatures. Most people, when they give the stuff up, soon notice rapid improvement in their health. I suspect that that’s because most of us are a bit lactose intolerant. Most people on Earth are VERY lactose intolerant and don’t consume the stuff at all.
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I stopped drinking milk in 1982 when I became a vegan.
:o)
That lifestyle change saved my life.
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Awesome, Lloyd! Our numbers are growing rapidly. Funny thing, most nonvegans can’t imagine what we eat. They think we live on Brussels sprouts and raw tofu and tree bark. Every vegan I know is a great cook and eats extraordinarily well and knows how healthy a choice it has been for him or her.
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When I was stilled teaching, my students would ask me what I ate when they discovered I was a vegan. They were amazed when I wrote the answer on the board. And of course, this led to other discussions because most kids are naturally curious—something standardized bubble tests and teaching to the test robs them of. The change to segue into a topic that wasn’t on the lesson plan.
“The average American eats about seven different foods: meat, potatoes, milk, cheese, sugar, soda, white flower.” I guess I should have added chocolate. Didn’t think of it at the time. Most of these choices have little or no fiber and are missing a lot of vital nutrients.
“A vegan on the other hand has about 1,500 different foods to eat” and most of us who know what we are doing and eat a much wider variety of nutrient and fiber-rich foods each day than the average carnivore does in a year.
But it is important for any vegan to know what to eat to make sure they are getting a balanced diet with all the nutrients needed to support health. Many carnivores have no idea that even an apple has protein and that plant protein is much easier for the body to absorb than animal protein. One apple has about 1.1% of your daily recommended amount of protein but also 12% of your dietary fiber. That apple also has 10% of your daily recommended vitamin C. My main source of protein comes from nuts: almonds, cashews, filberts, walnuts, Brazil nuts, pecans, etc. and the oils from these nuts are much healthier for our body than the fats from meat and dairy (a host of studies have proven this).
In fact, the best source of calcium is from green leafy vegetables. Calcium from milk is difficult for the body to break down and absorb. To digest milk, the body has to actually leech calcium out of the bones sort of like taking one step back for every three steps forward and this leads to more brittle bones in the long run. A long term study in the UK of tens of thousands of nurses discovered that nurses who got their calcium not from milk but from green leafy vegetables had less osteoporosis later in life than nurses who only got their calcium from milk.
Then there’s this from a study out of USC: Meat and cheese may be as bad for you as smoking. This isn’t the only study with similar results. Google the topic and many will be shocked.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140304125639.htm
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I just started Running with the Enemy, Lloyd. It’s great. And so is My Splendid Concubine. Awesome work. More about them both when I’m done.
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Thank you. I had no idea anyone here was reading my work. My passion for teaching carries me away sometimes from my work. Now that I’ve discovered I’m not alone in my thinking about education, I’m spending more time on Diane’s site than I am on getting my next book out.
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One of the Social studies teachers at the local high school encouraged and facilitated a fresh egg business with one of his rural students. The student is conscientious, the eggs are perfection, and the word is out. A win for everybody, even the chickens.
This is not in the Common Core. Whaddya know!!
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Definitely a win for the chickens! If people are going to eat milk and dairy, they should make sure that it is not sourced from CAFOs. Those places are the very definition of evil. They are unspeakable. See Gail Eisnitz’s breathtaking expose, her book Slaughterhouse, which resulted years spent undercover and interviewing workers in the industrial meat and dairy industries around the country. You won’t believe what you will find out about what is done to animals in this country.
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There is so much cruelty and contamination in the industrial production of milk, eggs, and meat.
I don’t think organics or small local farms are the answer: we’re creating a two-tiered system where the rich can opt for expensive healthy food, and the rest of us get food laced with antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides.
Conditions on industrial farms must be improved for the sake of the animals, the workers, and the consumers of the products.
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Moving away from large factory farms and toward more local produce when ever possible can be part of the answer.
Check local CSAs for produce.
Often a good bit of cash out lay up front but a good value over the season. Definitely not out or reach for average folks.
They also are often good employers, as well. Added bonus, the money stays in your community.
In my area we also have access to several small farms for eggs and meat and the cost is not really that far off normal super market prices.
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Cost of 2,300 calories of soy and corn on the world market (enough to feed a person for a day and to provide ALL 9 essential amino acids–the ones not made by the body)–$0.13.
Thirteen cents. Beans and rice. A tiny bit more, but about the same.
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Diane, this is what I love about you–your ability to cover it all. Drink your milk, and please stay healthy! We need your truth and wisdom in this mendacious world.
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Indeed we do.
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Diane, if you let the cream raise to the top, you can skim it off and put it in a jar with a secure lid. Shake the jar with a constant motion. It may take a while, but the fat content of the cream will “break” and, you will have butter and buttermilk. Separate them, squeeze out the excess milk with a spatula, add a little salt ( if you like). Viola! Home made butter
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Thank you, Diane, for speaking out on behalf of those chickens in battery cages. What happens, in CAFOs, or factory farms, is obscene. Chickens spend their entire lives in cages no larger than a sheet of notebook paper. Their feet actually grow into the wires of the cage floors.
Only by NOT KNOWING what goes on in such places can people allow it to continue.
And, those places are extraordinarily dangerous. Raising animals for consumption in vast warehouses where they never feel the earth on their feet, the wind on their skin, the sun on their faces, is a very recent phenomenon. In order to raise them in such proximity, we have to give them enormous amounts of antibiotics–13 million kilograms of antibiotics annually in the U.S. And, of course, in response, bacteria evolve, rapidly, to become immune. So, those CAFOs are enormous petri dishes for breeding the next pandemic. It’s a very dangerous and stupid game that we’re playing there, but in this, as in ed deform, our politicians have been bought off.
The CAFOs are made possible by farm subsidies that make it cheaper to raise animals in captivity and feed them subsidized corn and soy than to raise them in pastures. So, our government created CAFOs, and the enormous suffering that occurs in them, via subsidies.
Your tax dollars at work.
Behind the scenes.
Unimaginable horror.
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Diane,
This posting was a surprising little gift at the end of a hectic day. I nearly channelled Annie Dillard while reading it! At first, I must sheepishly admit, I found myself searching in vain to decode the metaphor of the raw milk in relation to education reform. Then, I pinched myself and realized that I have been in far too many CCSS “close reading strategy” workshops lately, and sometimes–loosely borrow from Freud–a bottle of milk is just a bottle of milk. Thanks for this reminder that it just as valid to simply read for pleasure every now and then.
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Jean,
Once in a while I write about something I feel like writing about. Raw milk was on my mind.
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ANNIE DILLARD!!!!
OMG, I heart that woman!!! Her Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is one of the most breathtaking books ever written!!!
And, I feel the same way about this post, Diane. What a delight!
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Jean Evans Davila:
I’m with you on the overdoing of “close reading,” but in reading this post, the parallels between factory farming and the inhumane standardization of education, between over-processed food and overwrought lesson planning, leaped right up at me. The author’s stated intention might be straightforward, but the reader’s understanding of a piece of writing can be expansive, complex, nuanced, personal, and so on.
Still, the main reason I was delighted to read the post was the memories it evoked of visiting my grandparents’ farm as a kid. My grandpa had two dozen cows or more that needed to be milked twice daily, and I felt lucky to hang out with him sometimes while he did the work. I thought it was amazing how each cow would walk into the barn in the correct order and stick her head into her own stanchion and wait to be locked in as my grandpa talked to her and called her by name. Everything was amazing to me, from the vacuum system to the individual milkers to the nose-activated water bowls.
I never had warm milk straight from the cow, but the cats did. They usually drank from shallow cake tins set on the concrete barn floor, but I remember him on occasion squeezing a cow’s teat to send a stream of milk toward a litter of kittens. They’d do acrobatics to try and intercept it. (This is where I learned that if you turn a cat on its back and drop it, it will land on its feet, and also learned that this doesn’t work for kittens–and don’t think I’ve never looked at that as an apt metaphor for what not to do in early childhood education!)
I’m sure I drank fresh, unpasteurized milk during this time. I can remember my grandma straining it over the kitchen sink before she put it on the table. I remember the milk tasting different from the half pint of milk I paid two cents for in school every morning. My first grade teacher always called the roll first thing. When we heard our name, we were expected to give one of three responses: “Yes, please, white,” “Yes, please, chocolate,” or “No thank you.” I drank a lot of chocolate, as I remember. And I sort of learned manners.
Anyway, thanks to Diane for bringing back those memories and lots more. A farm is a perfect learning environment, especially when your grandpa is patient enough to answer all your questions and generally agree with your nonstop commentary. The kind of small scale diversified farming he did–he sold milk and some crops and grew feed for the cows, heifers, hogs, chickens, and ducks–that kind of farming has long since disappeared, in the name of efficiency. I’m glad I had a chance to get a taste of it when I did.
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Randal,
I loved reading about your grandparents’ farm, and certainly one can extend the metaphor to corporate reform in what you have written as well. I am intrigued to look at your response in terms of how you moved from the text Diane provided to the richness of the personal meaning it evoked in relation to your past.
This brings me to my number one critque of the CCSS-ELA, a criticism that I am sure Bob Shepherd will enjoy as a fellow curriculum professional. The ELA standards drip heavy with the blood of New Criticism as a school of literary criticism in how they require a student to parse a piece of literature up into its component parts. For David Coleman et al. to have the audacity to state that the standards do not tell a teacher how to teach but what to teach is so glaringly off the mark due to the very evidence of what is including in the Reading Standards of CCSS and what is missing from them.
I raised this issue recently with Sheila Byrd Carmichael when she was doing some short-term consultancy on a curriculum project in my district. She told me that she thought that it was interesting that I would view the standards that way and that she does not see that in the standards. We had opportunity to discuss it further and put it right out there on the table.
It bothers me greatly that this type of greater dialogue among educators who know their subject area was excluded by the people who funded and wrote the CCSS from the very start. When a curriculum administrator like myself can have the opportunity to speak face-to-face with a leading expert like Sheila Byrd Carmichael–and Byrd Carmichael
does have experience as a teacher nationally and internationally, as well as important experience in guiding education policy–it tells me that an authentic opportunity to learn from one another was totally excised from the process of creating the standards. It was a process which took its cues from business and politics from the start. They chose to function like a star chamber and to sequester their actions from anyone who might get in the way of their power grab. In doing so, they rendered the standards they produced up to public scrutiny. Even as a leader who merely works at the microcosm level of this much larger debate, I know enough to include some of my most vociferous critics in the foundational level work of any important effort I am working on in the district that pertains to curriculum, instruction, and assessment. I have found that it is best to have the divergent views in the room from the outset. We learn from each other through healthy debate, and we produce products that are not compromised due to those diverse perspectives, but that are all the more richer for it.
Thanks to everyone on the blog here for listening. I’ve been a reader of the blog for years, but I have always been hesitant to add my voice to the comments until this week.
Here I am out of the shadows, and I do promise to keep it brief from now on.
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From one who blathers much to much, your comments are more than welcome. I try to learn from the posters who obviously have experience and knowledge beyond my much less extensive experience.
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Thanks for the reply. I have to agree that the Common Core ELA Standards have severe limitations built into them, both in the way they were put together and the final result. When I responded to Diane’s post, it did cross my mind that I was doing what I often invited my students to do, something that’s discouraged by Coleman & Co.
As an English teacher I found that sometimes a narrow focus is desirable, and sometimes it’s good to help students build a web of experience and associations. Typically things would move from informal, impromptu, and associative response (usually followed by some form of peer sharing) to a more focused and formal performance (a formal written analysis, guided discussion, personal project, etc.). But not always.
I valued variety and informality. The ratio of informal to formal work tended to be high, partly to help students build confidence through non-threatening experience. This depended somewhat on how well prepared the students were, but honestly, the same principle would apply to anyone, even an eminent English professor. A scholar may publish in one or two narrow fields of study but read and appreciate a wide range of literary genres, historical periods, and critical approaches. This is all to the good, and even better when broad, informal study leads to serious interdisciplinary work. The Common Core Standards, which by their nature are narrow and reductive, discourage this sort of expansive learning.
The CCS approach asks even young children to jump immediately into formal textual analysis based on the cold reading of purposely de-contextualized works, and it demands that they repeat that process week in, week out, year after year. I’m not against cold reading in high school. But a steady diet of anything, especially excessive analysis, will get old fast.
That the CCS ended up with such a narrow and skewed view of reading tells me that the authors largely ignored decades-old research in reading comprehension (e.g., textual meaning is to a certain degree culturally determined) and at least fifty or sixty years of critical theory. And I agree 100% that they didn’t consider a range of viewpoints–no accident that many participants were recruited from testing companies.
Also, Coleman does tell teachers how to teach, demanding that students “read within the four corners of the text.” I like to say, based on what I’ve learned about reading comprehension and literature study, that a text does not have four corners. And to me, the idea that stripping a reading passage of its historical and cultural context and personal associations will somehow “level the playing field” for disadvantaged students is truly ridiculous. Yet this is supposed to be one of the hallmarks of the new “rigor.”
Again, thanks for adding your voice to the discussion. Here’s to divergent thinking!
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Oops, I went off on a tangent above, and I forgot my most important point to Randal. Your reading of Diane’s text honors the reader as the meaning maker of text. Louise Rosenblatt would be proud of your reading. As a proponent of the Reader Response school of literary criticism, I loved it. I believe that readers are at the center of meaning in every text they encounter. You cannot read a text without it passing through the filter of your life and experiences. We read to be human and to know life. Let David Coleman have his New Critics. It does not surprise me that the standards were drafted with this orientation, seeing as David Coleman was educated in Yale, the livingroom of New Critic and Formalist Cleanth Brooks. There is more than one way to peel an onion, Mr. Coleman.
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I’m with you. I’ve been interested in reader response for quite while. You could add David Bleich, Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, and a bunch of other names to the list of reader response theorists the CCS authors ignored. Then add all the other schools of critical theory they ignored.
In what field of study is turning the clock back fifty years considered an exercise in rigor? If you believe in the Common Core, I guess that field is literature study.
There’s another burgeoning mini-movement in English teaching the CCS authors seem to have missed, and that’s the practice of studying Shakespeare and other authors through enacting the text. This is exciting work that deals with the dynamics between text and reader, actors and audience (and all the other collaborators required to put on a play).
The Folger Shakespeare Library and the American Shakespeare Center are doing great work in this field. Interested English teachers should check out their websites:
http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=2594&CFID=58381453&CFTOKEN=25076575
http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com/v.php?pg=7
The Common Core Standards overload students with formal written analysis and argumentation. One way to fight them would be to try these high-energy integrative methods, then spread the word about them.
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I’m also sick and tired of government and Big Pharma mandating that I vaccinate my children. Follow the money!
Also, unfluoridated water is delicious. I recommend it to everyone.
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What a surprise to see your article on raw milk. Just recently we started using/drinking raw milk in lieu of the pasteurized and homogenized milk. We were substituting hemp milk for pasteurized and homogenized milk but prefer the taste of raw milk.
My daughter who is lactose intolerant can not drink pasteurized and homogenized milk because the healthy enzymes have been destroyed. She was drinking hemp milk but now she too has started drinking raw milk. She can drink raw milk because it contains the needed enzymes. (Some studies refute that claim.) Raw milk is filled with good bacteria – probiotics.
Anyone who takes a prescription of antibiotics needs to take probiotics in some form. Antibiotics destroy all bacteria – good and bad. Good bacteria helps our bodes digest food, absorb nutrients, produce several vitamins, and protect against harmful bacteria. On my own -not a recommendation of a physician- I take a daily probiotic capsule along with the raw milk. Eventually I will discontinue the probiotic capsule.
Dr. Ravitch, said that raw milk is better than chocolate but that is another topic that could be disputed.
Lloyd Lofthouse stated that test reveal 80% of the milk has bovine leukemia virus in it. That needs to be verified. Each bulk tank delivering milk to the factory from the farm is tested. Many bulk tanks filled with milk have had to be thrown out because the milk didn’t pass the test.
FLERP, you brought up another interesting topic: fluoride in water. Fluoride is known to cause cancer.
As another appendix, we need GMO foods labeled. Along with labeling foods, the govt. needs to reclassify hemp and once again allow industrial hemp farming producing more nutritional foods.
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I was wrong. It’s not 80%. It’s 89%. Click the link—the post cites the sources.
http://www.notmilk.com/leukemia.html
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There’s also another dairy product called Kefer that’s loaded with enzymes and probiotics. When I buy Kefer for my wife, I only buy organic. I would never feed her non organic products, especially dairy.
Here’s more info about Dairy Products from Whole Foods:
http://www.notmilk.com/leukemia.html
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“Raw milk is better than chocolate.”
Impossible, udderly impossible!
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Lloyd, I just discovered your response. Your negative report bothered me immensely. If that reporter chanced upon a breech in ethics it certainly could not be indicative of all dairy farms. Furthermore, diary farming has come a long way since that article was written. Dairy farmers are under strict federal guide lines. A veterinarian must examine and test milking cows at regular intervals. If a cow is found to be sick it is taken from the herd. Dairy farmers are very cautious that a sick cow be removed from the herd immediately so that it’s milk is not mixed with the healthy cows’ milk. Such a mistake could cost them tons of money because tainted milk is detected upon delivery to the plant. One sick cow’s milk mixed with a bulk tank of good milk would be a cause of throwing down the drain a lot of good milk which is money to the hard working farmer. He does all that is humanly possible to prevent contaminated milk from being shipped out.
Every cow is ear marked and its history is stored on a special computer used only for the cows. Cows are culled on a regular basis. In order to sell Grade A milk – milk for drinking, the milking parlor is regularly inspected to insure that all equipment is sterilized after each milking session. The udders are washed before milking – a new sterilized cloth is used for each cow. The floor of the parlor is washed down after each milking. The people who milk the cows are hired solely for milking and sterilizing the equipment and are closely monitored. The farmer’s lively hood depends on it.
I visited my brother-in-law’s dairy farm numerous times and observed the operation in person.
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I’m sure your brother-in-law runs a proper dairy but the dairy industry is much larger than one dairy. Is the milk he produces organic? Does he sell raw milk?
Have you ever heard of Howard Lyman, the Mad Cowboy? If not, you may want to visit his Blog and discover his story. It’s possible that these changes came about because of him and Oprah.
http://www.madcowboy.com/01_BookOP.000.html
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