If the authors of the draft national standards are unwilling to name specific works of literature children should read, they should at least name specific literary movements, writes Dan Willingham.
The draft ELA standards floated by the Common Core State Standards Initiative focus almost exclusively on skills–what students should be able to glean from written texts, for example–but remain silent on content. Dan Willingham floats an intriguing way to split the difference in his latest post at the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog. He points out it’s not a problem to specify what kids should learn in other subjects. “In science, for example, we expect that students will acquire certain skills– methods of scientific analysis–but we also believe that there is a body of scientific knowledge that students will learn,” he notes. “The same is true of history and mathematics.” Why, he wonders, should literature be any different?
Perhaps a better method would be to select literary movements based on their influence. Specifying literary movements (e.g., Modernism, The Lost Generation, Harlem Renaissance) rather than specific authors would better parallel standards in other disciplines.We might expect a national body to recommend that students study Colonial American History in 3rd grade. We would not expect that national body to specify the particular events that must be studied (and by inference, what ought to be excluded).
“Influence is likely a less arbitrary criterion than aesthetic value, and it is more useful to students. Influential movements changed how future authors wrote, their subject matter, how they thought about literature, and so on,” writes Willingham, who argues understanding something of various literary movements is a key to understanding individual works of literature.
Is it really impossible for literature experts to agree on a set of major literary movements with which American high school graduates ought to be familiar? It would not be an easy task, surely, but I think that, if given the chance, a group of literature experts (teachers, editors, professors, writers, and critics) could rise to the occasion, especially if the criterion—literary influence—were made clear.
There is more at stake in getting the balance between process and content correct if the national standards movement is to succeed. “A stated goal of the common core standards is to prepare students for college,” Willingham concludes. ”If the standards leave the selection of literary works utterly to chance, they are unlikely to meet that goal.”
I am ambivalent about this idea. On the one hand, yes–it would probably be easier to agree on a set of literary movements than on a set of authors or works. On the other, it could be a limiting idea to organize literature instruction primarily around movements. The best authors are often outliers of the movements of the times, and some of the best works foreshadow movements or stand outside them. Writers have founded movements and then departed from them, or they have resisted the trends of the time altogether.
Certainly students should learn about literary movements. But they should be taught with great care.
Comment by Diana Senechal — October 6, 2009 @ 8:06 am
I had similar feelings, Diana. I’m afraid the teaching of literature could boil down to “how does this work exemplify the movement?” Such teaching could really bypass a lot of the inherent worth of the literature.
Comment by Ben F — October 6, 2009 @ 11:07 am
A typical high school student will be assigned, what, maybe 5 to 8 books per year? So 20 to 30-some over 4 years?
(For many kids, they won’t actually read these assigned books).
Given the inherent limitations of 20 to 30-some books — how small a dent it is in “books we’d love kids to read” — why is this discussion important?
You assign Gatsby and I assign Scarlet Letter. You occasionally sprinkle in an SE Hinton for low-readers and I don’t.
Why not simply hold us both accountable for whether our kids can read a passage and find the main idea? I mean that would knock out so many kids who cannot do that.
It’s like the Civics discussion. Was it Jay Greene’s blog that had something like 90% of kids can’t even pass the Citizenship test? Kids know almozt ZERO history.
Yet history frameworks debate centers on whether kids should be able to explain the intricacies of the New Deal. Huh?
Comment by GGW — October 6, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
I think I’m with Dan on this one. I was an English major, so I’m biased, but the emphasis on reading skills and “developing a lifelong love of reading” as recently discussed here tends to reduce literature to a less rigorous subject than, say science or history. I see nothing wrong — and quite a bit right — in turning out high school graduates who can place works of literature along a continuum. It also guarantees a broader range of exposure than leaving it entirely up to chance and choice — the student’s OR the teacher’s.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — October 6, 2009 @ 5:48 pm
I am not against teaching or studying movements–just against using them as the main organizing principle or rationale for s curriculum. Historical time periods make a little more sense to me, because they can encompass many tendencies and idiosyncrasies.
I favor approaching literature from a number of angles: courses about individual authors; courses organized around a theme (with a specific syllabus); courses about various movements (and their outliers); courses about time periods; courses about specific genres (and works within those genres); courses about works of specific cultures; and even courses in literary theory (with specific literary works). I realize this sounds like a list of college courses, but many of them are possible at the high school level and earlier.
I have taken courses in nineteenth-century Russian literature (time period); Shakespeare (author); Southern literature (region or culture); Russian Symbolist poetry (movement); poetics (theory with lots of specific poetry); The City in Literature (comparative literature, organized around a theme), and many more. Each of these was worthwhile. But the most rewarding part was delving into the texts themselves.
Comment by Diana Senechal — October 6, 2009 @ 6:26 pm
I don’t disagree, Diana (although the course you describe sound more like college courses than high school). But I think the frame of this issue is a little different. The question, it seems to me, is not whether you would prefer organizing the study of literature along literary movements as Dan suggests, or as a pure list of skills. I’d take the former.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — October 6, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
I would take the former, too, but with a dash of skepticism.
But why should standards limit what schools do? They should be the starting point.
If standards mention certain movements, by no means does that imply that schools themselves cannot teach courses on individual authors, time periods, themes, etc.
We get into trouble when we confuse standards with the whole of what we do. Include them? Yes. Confine ourselves to them? No.
And such confinement happens far too often. The term “standards-based” often comes to mean that you can’t diverge from the very wording and framing of the standards. So if the standards focus on movements, schools will assume you are supposed to teach movements and nothing else. Anything else will not be “standards-based” in their view.
So if we are going to have standards organized around movements, we should also consider what role the standards are supposed to play in the curriculum. The standards should be a subset of the curriculum; the curriculum should cover the standards and much, much more.
Comment by Diana Senechal — October 6, 2009 @ 6:50 pm
Diana, Robert,
If specific texts are not defined, then the tests developed to match the standards will only test those skills that are common to all literature (main idea, inference, etc…). This is fairly similar to what our tests currently do.
How is it possible to have specific content on a test without defining specific texts to be studied?
Also, considering that students are having a great deal of difficulty meeting most current state standards, why would any school try to go over and above what the standards documents state?
Comment by Erin Johnson — October 6, 2009 @ 9:47 pm
I am surprised to find myself agreeing with Diana on this one. I think that she makes a good case in describing the many different ways in which a study of literature can be organized. This doesn’t mean that I discount Dan’s suggestion of literary movements. This is certainly one way to organize.
But, in order to allow teachers the kind of freedom that Diana describes (and which I would hope would be implemented collaboratively in some form at the school or district level rather than in an every teacher for themselves conglomeration) in a standards-based context, this does rather imply that the standards focus more particularly on skills than works. There are, of course, some other “things” beyond pure skills–knowledge of genre, perhaps; point of view; voice; relationship to audience; purpose.
The danger is, and it is by no means a small danger, that there may be some teachers/schools/districts who, rather than learning these things through examination of works selected from the broad range of literature, synthesize them to a list of memorized definitions, perhaps applied to samples bits of writing.
Balance is such a difficult thing, as is responsibility. Somewhere between the limitations of a prescribed set of readings and the wide quality variance of letting every teacher choose, there must be an ability to educate all our children well.
Comment by Margo/Mom — October 6, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
Margo/Mom,
If standards and tests focus primarily on skills, how in the world will content ever be valued in the classroom? (Other than the few brave teachers who persevere against the system?)
Comment by Erin Johnson — October 7, 2009 @ 1:10 am
Margo/Mom,
I agree with most of your points here here! But I question your assertion that if teachers and schools are to enjoy a certain freedom (within reason, and with collaboration), then standards would probably have to focus on skills.
I am not sure this has to be so. You can have a prescribed set of readings and many ways to teach them. The required readings could be very few, leaving room for schools and teachers to supplement them. No matter what the focus of the standards, they fix certain things and leave others open. It is to the schools to recognize what is fixed and what is open and to make the most of both.
My high school had a tremendous English department. They planned the required courses together. Students took required courses through ninth grade (the school is actually for grades 5-12). In eleventh grade, there was a required expository writing course. The rest were electives: courses on authors, courses on time periods, courses on specific genres or themes. Tough courses–lots of reading, lots of writing. To get a B for a course was a real accomplishment. The expository writing course was considered the hardest of all–but by the end of it, students were ready to write college-level papers.
So teachers were on the “same page,” but they also got to teach courses in their particular areas of knowledge or interest. I took Satire, Southern Literature, Modern Drama, Innocence and Experience, Society and its Discontents (or something like that), and more. But there was also a common curriculum; by the time students got to the electives, they had read several ancient Greek plays, Chaucer, several Shakespeare plays, a good selection of poetry, a few nineteenth-century novels, and a few twentieth-century novels.
That was an exceptional school, but why not strive for something in a similar vein? If students start reading literature earlier, it will not be so difficult for them later. Getting Shakespeare in your ear at a young age makes it much easier to understand down the road. It is amazing what young children can understand and do–why not give them a chance to do it?
So, back to the question of balance, which you put very well. Wouldn’t it be possible to have a few required readings–just a few–to ground the standards and prevent them from turning into a bunch of memorized definitions? If the standards included even a handful of works, then we could see many different ways of teaching those works in different schools across the country.
But if the standards will not have specific works, then we’re back to the question of how to organize the material. And any organizational scheme carries the risk that schools will reduce the teaching of literature to that. So we have to think carefully about what it means to implement standards.
Diana Senechal
Comment by Diana Senechal — October 7, 2009 @ 9:01 am
Erin and Diana–I think that your comments exemplify the conundrum. Diana points out the many ways that teachers/schools CAN respond when provided with limited content guidance. And I wholeheartedly agree. When my daughter was in high school I finally had to let go of my “public schools with public dollars” bias and consider a charter school (another way to fund public schools with public dollars). The charter that she attended–uniquely high achieving amongst the charters available–had organized their English courses in the ways that Diana describes. It did, in fact, more closely resemble, as Robert suggests, a college catalogue. Rather than the unimaginative English I, II, III and IV, they had offerings like Fantasy, Book to Film–I cannot recall the others. But, I can see that it would not be difficult to incorporate, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hawthorne, etc, into these thematic offerings–and to delve deeply into them.
However, as Erin suggests, simply removing any perceived barriers to teachers teaching in this way is not sufficient to ensure that they will. I frequently see a lethargy that falls somewhere between labor and management, or teachers and administrators, so that if the state specifies a single novel per grade level, many students will get this and nothing more.
Comment by Margo/Mom — October 7, 2009 @ 9:51 am
Diana, You are making a great case for NOT having standards but for having multiple (but well defined) courses. Would you concur?
Comment by Erin Johnson — October 7, 2009 @ 11:21 am
A key discussion point regarding reading instruction today involves those favoring skills-based instruction and those favoring content-based instruction. This is not the old phonics-whole language debate. Other than a few hold-outs, such as Stephen Krashen, most in the reading field would agree that this debate has been largely settled. The current debate involves whether teachers at all levels should be teaching the how or the what of reading.
There are, indeed, some who would restrict reading to a measurable skill-set. These would pigeon-hole reading instruction into a continuum of increasingly complex rules, while ignoring the thinking process necessary to advanced reading. Teachers of this ilk love their phonics, context clues, and inference worksheets when they are not leading their students in fluency exercises, ad nauseum, whether the students need fluency practice or not.
On the other side of the debate are those who would claim that content is the real reading instruction. These would limit reading skill instruction in favor of pouring shared cultural knowledge into learners. They favor teacher read-alouds, Cornell note-taking, and direct instruction. They argue that subject area disciplines such as English literature, science, and history often provide the best reading instruction by the content that they teach.
Both are extremes. Students need some of each to become skilled and complex readers. More on how to strike this balance on my blog at http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/reading/content-vs-skills-reading-instruction/
Comment by Mark Pennington — October 26, 2009 @ 2:24 pm
As I understand, the national core standards will be the basic standards of the participating states. However, each state will then in turn, have an opportunity to further add the standards that they feel are necessary for their state. In addition, when school districts use the standards,they will be able to make their own decisions on how the standards will be implemented in the courses taught at their schools. I believe the core standards are to be basic at the national level, but by no means limits in which way they are utilized. If there are concerns, states may possibly request input before they finalize their standards; it would be important to become involved with additional standards to express your ideas, concerns and comments.
Comment by Val — November 9, 2009 @ 1:44 pm