I have been a supporter of Core Knowledge from its beginning. Indeed, as Don Hirsch will testify, I urged him to write the book that eventually became Cultural Literacy, after I heard him speak iat a conference in 1983. Like Don, I believe that children need a firm command of not just vocabulary and skills, but background knowledge that will help them understand new words and new ideas.
Over the years, I have come to understand that children need a strong, rich, coherent curriculum, filled with the amazing ideas, experiences, discoveries and people that awaken children’s passion to learn and keep on learning.
But I have discovered something else. It is very difficult for children to become deeply engaged in learning when they come to school hungry; when their eyesight is so poor that they can’t read; when their hearing is impaired but no one knows it; when their family moves from place to place because they don’t have a decent home; and when their family income is so uncertain that their home is filled with anxiety about meeting basic needs.
Thus, while I am a firm advocate of academic excellence, I came to sign an ad calling for a “bolder, broader approach” to education, one in which the government paid attention not only to school improvement but to the health and well-being of children. This group and its statement were organized by Richard Rothstein and Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., and they gathered an illustrious group of signatories. It endorsed more spending for pre-K programs, after-school programs, and health programs for children. The statement’s basic argument was that schools alone–absent an effort to reduce poverty and its effects–cannot eliminate the racial achievement gap.
Yes, I believe that children need a rich curriculum–my preference is the one called Core Knowledge; and yes, I believe that our government should provide a safety net so that young children are not burdened with terrible economic and social disadvantages.
This seemed commonsensical to me, but then I read David Brooks’ startling and disturbing column in the New York Times on June 13, 2008. Brooks is normally a wise thinker, which made his comments especially troubling. He divided the education world into two groups. On one side was the “status quo camp,” the group that signed the “broader, bolder” statement. On the other side was the “reform camp.” The reform camp, led by Reverend Al Sharpton and Chancellor Joel Klein insists that schools alone can do the job of reducing the achievement gap; the reform camp emphasizes tough accountability measures (more testing) and “changing the fundamental structure of school systems” (by which he means issuing more charters for independently run schools). At the Sharpton-Klein press conference, there was quite a lot of union-bashing, and assertions that the unions–selfishly representing the interests of teachers–bear responsibility for the racial achievement gap.
So if I have this right, America’s schools would be more successful if teachers did not belong to unions; if there were even more testing than at present; and if there were many more charter schools. Not a word was said about curriculum and instruction by this august “reform camp,” which included Chancellor Michelle Rhee of Washington, D.C., Superintendent Andres Alonso of Baltimore, Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, Roy Romer of Ed in ‘08, and Andrew Rotherham, former Clinton education advisor.
Will America’s achievement gap really be eliminated by testing kids more? Why would anyone think so? The fact that there were no teachers nor any experienced education administrators represented in “the reform camp” suggests that its press conference was a political show, one that has no support among the people expected to implement its proposals. The fact that the “agenda,” such as it was, was presented by Rev. Al Sharpton, who has no educational credentials, who has never attempted to improve schools where he lives, is a tip-off to the emptiness of the group and its proposals. Why were they assembled? What is the point of the Sharpton-Klein program? Why is it good politics to call for more testing and more charters? Well, it works. It gets good press. Even a smart guy like David Brooks was fooled into calling this pap a “reform” agenda.
The truth you hold to be self-evident is contained in the curriculum you stand behind. Al Sharpton would disagree with you. Al Sharpton has his own self-evident truths, as exampled in his debate with Christopher Hitchens on the existence of God, where his version of God resembled nothing I’ve read in the Bible. Education policy, on the other hand – traditional vs. charter public schools, union vs. non-union, to test or not to test – that’s easy to debate. Those debates, as contained in every policy book I’ve read or conference I’ve ever witnessed, are merely about structure. Content, like one’s religion, is left to the individual states and their legislatures, each of whom think themselves the final arbiters of all that is necessary to know. If you think you know better, you need to take your arguments past the hoards of policy wonks and directly to the consumers (parents). It is they, ultimately, who start the CK schools.
The people who focus exclusively on structure often obscure the discussion of content. The DoE refers now and then to its ELA “curriculum.” It cannot rightly be called a curriculum. The state “standards” specify no concrete knowledge, no works of literature, no mastery of grammar.
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/ela/elastandards/elamap.html
If parents believe the schools already have a curriculum, and that it’s causing improvements, they will not necessarily be moved to seek another. I believe many parents would be drawn to the Core Knowledge curriculum, or something similar, if they started demanding a curriculum in the first place. For one thing, the CK curriculum is fantastic. For another, it contrasts starkly with what many schools have (or don’t have) now.
I believe the first step is to clarify our terms: for instance, “curriculum?” in public discussion with parents and others. So long as we use words like “curriculum” to mean so many different things (including nothing), the discourse will not move forward.
I agree that a core knowledge curriculum would be much better than more testing or any other effort in our schools. My kids are in a foreign language immersion public school in a relatively wealthy MD county, but I still spend summers and evenings filling in all the curriculum blanks with core knowledge books, and other materials. My kids test scores are great, but I am convinced that much of it is due to the teaching we do at home rather than what they are doing at school. We plan to have our kids “attend” an online private academy for middle school that focuses on a classical “core” education – an affordable option compared to bricks and mortar private schools. My only disagreement with the article is that I don’t agree with the state becoming a nanny to all children, and basically subsidizing and promoting bad parenting.