Well okay, firstly, many important bits in contemporary English-speaking culture come from non-western sources. For example, I would expect a literate American to recognise some meaning to the words “Mohammed”, “Confucius”, “Arabian Nights”, “Kama Sutra”, “Genghis Khan”, “Geronimo”, “Samurai” and “Buddha”. Also, I would expect a literate American to recognise the names “Indira Gandhi”, “Florence Nightingale”, “Jane Austen”, “Elizabeth I”, “Catherine the Great”, “Marie Curie”, “Hillary Clinton”.

Secondly, I think you are right that there is a threat in expanding covering in that the more you try to cover the more difficult it is to get everyone on the same page culturally, some teachers will not manage to get through the entire ambitious programme in one year so students will end with differing amounts of knowledge. Furthermore, there is some hysteresis, in that if you take up teaching every student in the USA about “Maui the Great Explorer” there will still be many years in which most of the population will have left school before said introduction and won’t recognise the history.
But I wouldn’t say that this is a *great* threat. After all the hysteresis problem would apply to the Core Knowledge series to a slightly lesser extent in that most of the population was not taught core knowledge systematically, and the extent to which people draw on those ideas is driven by their own reading outside school. Furthermore, one could easily expand western male white writers, thinkers and doers to such a point where the problems of trying to cover too much overwhelmed teachers. So I don’t think you have identified a “great threat”, just a problem that every single curriculum must face.
Thirdly, you assume a dichotomy between getting everyone on the same page culturally, “as opposed to providing students with the tools to become scholars in their own right”. When did the two become conflicting? Surely the more we know, the better scholars we can be? Do you have any evidence that there is a conflict between the two goals?

Are you suggesting that the mere phrase “literate Americans” somehow excludes Americans who are “not western, not male, not white”? That’s a rather remarkable implication to read into the mere word “literate.”

Sorry, Margo, but I’m not sure how the quote you cite, a rather bland statement of fact, is tantamount to my (or anyone else associated with Core Knowledge) fearing of other points of view, as you accused. I’m not a culture warrior, and I’m not particularly interested in becoming one.

In fact, the quote you cite makes my argument for me. The very reason for the existence of the Core Knowledge curriculum — and the clear, unambiguous thrust of Hirsch’s work for the last 30 years — is to make sure that we don’t have two classes of citizens in this country, the intellectual haves and have-nots. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning, too. So if that makes me a cultural hegemonist, I’ll (proudly) plead guilty as charged. But as I said in my post yesterday, the argument for Core Knowledge is not cultural, but structural. The quote you cite makes precisely that point.

Hirsch himself said it quite well in an address at the University of Tennessee several years ago. “It’s my fervent belief, reinforced by everything I have learned from study and experience, that public education has no more right to continue to foster segregated knowledge than it has to foster segregated schools.”

If you choose to turn this into an academic argument about “keepers of official cultural viewpoints,” that is your perfect right. But it’s not a subject that particularly interests me. Indeed, it’s the type of thing that is the exclusive luxury of those of us who already have cultural and intellectual capital. My interest is not in protecting my “cultural advantage.” And it’s not about defending Western civilization. It’s about making sure kids — all kids — can thrive within it.

How’s this–excerpted from the introduction to the first edition of the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy:

“The form and content of this common knowledge constitute one of the elements that makes each national culture unique.
It is our contention that such a body of information is shared by literate Americans of the late twentieth century, and that this body of knowledge can be identified and defined.”

If the term “literate Americans” doesn’t automatically give the reader pause, one might read further into Hirsch to see how he determined what the commonalities were–predicated on who the “literate” Americans were. There is quite a bit of cultural loading that goes into his process. The end result is that those who are “culturally advantaged” remain the keepers of the “official” cultural viewpoints. In the end, the pieces may each stand alone as having great value. However, other pieces, not already within the zeitgeist of the literati, would by definition be omitted.

That’s quite a statement. Care to offer any support for it?

As so much of this is coming directly from Core Knowledge (it was here that the Ohio Governor’s assignment of core content to the same circle in a chart as 21st century skills was derided as an impossibility) camp, rather than others who have an interest in assuring that students have a rich understanding of content, I think that it is appropriate to ask whether it is rich content that is being defended per se, or THE content that is purveyed by Core Knowledge.

Taken in pieces, I would suggest that CK has much to recommend it. Taken, and defended, as a whole, I have to underline what Clay (and many others) has pointed out, that it speaks to a viewpoint of western white maleness.

This is where the divide rests and ought to be acknowledged. I really don’t think that Core Knowledge folks teach something other than looking at the “main idea” in learning to understand content (although they may consider themselves to be less slavish to it than others)–and perhaps they toss questioning the author (having alread selected authors who are above quesion–or is that being snarky?). In the end, I don’t think that they are really opposed to bringing in some group activity, or using technology (at least I hope not).

What they fear, and see 21st Century as a opportunity to oppose, is the possibility that other points of view might also be organized into curricula of rich content. These curricula might give a greater voice to writers, thinkers and doers who are not western, not male, not white. This is a great threat if the purpose of your curriculum is to get everyone on the same page culturally, as opposed to providing students with the tools to become scholars in their own right.

They can garner some support by foisting fears (and these are likely very realistic) that the 21st Century bandwagon looks attractive to the folks who have not done well in purveying content of any kind and find 21st Century appealing because they see it as being a collection of test-resistent, subjectively rated “soft skills” that they can fall back on to to prove the “hidden worth” of what they have been doing all along. Recall the cries about how teachers and schools should be rated not on the level that kids reach, but how much growth they demonstrate. That is, until measures of growth were developed and put in place. It turns out that there are a bunch of kids who start behind and get further behind the longer they stay in school.

There are in fact emerging measures of the kinds of things that 21st Century speaks to, as these measures are further developed and come on the scene with a degree of validity and reliability, expect the slackers to fall by the wayside in their support.

I’d love a copy of the sequence. (And unless I missed it, a pdf version downloadable from your site would be a good application of 21st century skills. From what I’ve seen, the history curriculum you suggest is all Western Civ stuff, instead of global. If I’m wrong, school me, but if not, that’s the biggest indicator of the dreaded white male narrative bit.

I sometimes think you folks seem to want it both ways (I’m in a hurry, so don’t take that as snark, because I _am_ sympathetic to the need for an understanding of the – or better, “a” – Big Picture framework). On the one hand, I read you saying, “We only suggest you devote _half_ your curriculum to CK, and you have leeway to supplement that with whatever you see fit in the other half.” Good, fine. But then there’s so much deriding of 21st Century Skills and less canonical stuff that could very easily add value to that “other half” that I wonder why you can’t be more open to a synthesis.

Re: reading strategies, I’m no elementary educator, so I can’t speak to your claim on that. I’ll only repeat that I find it hard to believe it has to be so time-consuming, and easy to believe it helps comprehension.

More later. I’ll send you my email address off-line.

Thanks for the inning.