Mission Impossible: Teaching for Justice without the Canon

by Lisa Hansel
May 7th, 2013

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Posted in Higher Education, Teacher Training | 21 Comments »

In my last post, I noted that teacher educators who put shaping future teachers into social-justice activists above shaping them into effective instructors are, in my opinion, terribly misguided. I strongly agree with diminishing society’s inequities—and I think effective instructors, by narrowing the achievement gap, are doing just that.

One thing I did not mention is that the most effective instructors narrow the achievement gap in two essential ways: they build students’ knowledge and character (both of which contribute to achievement). Talk of character passes in and out of policy circles. Whether it’s shock at more teenage girls joining gangs or buzz about a book like Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, leaders tend to use character as an easy clap line without putting much thought into its cultivation.

But there are effective teachers who think about it every day. More importantly, they strengthen it every day.

Take, for example, Jessica Lahey, whose school emphasizes prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice: “In my middle school Latin and English classes, we explore the concept of temperance through discussions of Achilles’ impulsive rages, King Ozymandias’ petulant demand that we ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,’ Macbeth’s bloody, ‘vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other.’ ”

With a rigorous academic program, effective instructors accomplish academic and character goals simultaneously. Assignments that are challenging and thought provoking develop students’ academic knowledge and skills—and also draw them into humanity’s centuries-long debate about what defines a worthy life.

For those of us lucky enough to have a liberal arts education, this makes perfect sense. But many people with advanced degrees never had the benefit of being educated for freedom. They may not be stuck in the cave, but they aren’t enjoying the sunshine either.

I was reminded of this a couple of times over the past few days. The first reminder came with Mark Bauerlein’s excellent commentary, “What does University of Minnesota have against classics?” Bauerlein writes:

Given that only 39 percent of Minnesota eighth-graders score “proficient” in reading, … we might assume that the University of Minnesota would applaud high school English classes that assign great literary works of the last 500 years.

What could be better for students to read than “Macbeth,” “Don Quixote,” “Paradise Lost,” and “Frankenstein,” or the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Wilde, Willa Cather, Camus, Orwell, and Toni Morrison?

Yet sadly, when a high school offered such a syllabus to the University of Minnesota’s College in the Schools program, it was turned down…. CIS provides a reading list of 86 titles, syllabi outlining assignments and policies, and professional development for high school teachers.

The texts that were rejected are some of the most brilliant, demanding and profound writings in history. But they aren’t on the reading list. The list signals a narrow conception of what 17-year-olds should study. The oldest works are Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 story “The Yellow Wallpaper” and two 1899 novels, Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening” and Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Apart from a few midcentury texts, the rest of the list is entirely contemporary….

The motives behind this restrictive corpus are indicated by the sample syllabi. One announces the goal of the course in terms common to multiculturalist instruction: “students will understand diverse experiences, languages,”…. The other syllabus declares: “Racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism and other forms of bigotry are inherent in our culture.”…

The point here is not to censure the course for its contemporary, multiculturalist focus…. Instead, what matters is the active exclusion of the great tradition from Chaucer to Austen to Joyce — from the Puritans to Frederick Douglass to Edith Wharton.

Like Bauerlein, I am very concerned about the works being excluded. I am not concerned with constructing a course that uses literature to help students value diversity and challenge bigotry; that is fundamental work in the humanities. But I think that by excluding time-tested works, these courses limit their ability to accomplish their goals.

History offers us a great variety of cultures. Can one seriously engage in multicultural studies without reading broadly across time and space to find that cultures around the world in the past and present have produced works of lasting beauty? Can one really grasp racism, sexism, etc. by looking at them only in the current context?

Let’s hope that the University of Minnesota will reconsider.

Now, onto my other reminder of how many of us are not being educated for freedom. This reminder, happily, came in the form of a blog post by a retired English professor who would create a spectacular course for high school students. A course that would not only beat back bigotry and be worthy of college credit, it would foster virtue.

Spoiler alert—here’s the ending: “Life doesn’t just happen. We make it happen, for good or bad. We do it best when we learn pietas, or character, with its legacy of decency and discipline fostering empowerment and destiny.”

How would this professor teach character? Through great literature:

I’ve read a lot of books across the years, not surprising I suppose for someone who’s invested more than forty-years in academia. Of those many books, there are a chosen few I’d take with me into island exile. Let me list them. I’d add some poets, too, but not right now:

David Copperfield
Walden
The Varieties of Religious Experience
On Liberty.
Mill’s Autobiography
The Odyssey
To Have or To Be
How to Find Freedom in an Unfree World
Ulysses
The Aeneid

I fashioned this list in less than a minute, since each of the items triggers easily recalled memories of excited discovery, awe, and insight.  David Copperfield, for example, I read in eighth grade. From the very beginning I loved it, identifying with David, whose childhood, in good measure, mirrored my own as well as that of Dickens.

Walden, with its eloquence, gave sanctuary not only in wilderness, but in its verbal tranquility.

And there’s John Stuart Mill, that proverbial “saint of rationalism,” two of his books here. On Liberty taught me to hold out against censorship for the rest of my days; how to discern between just and unjust laws; the importance of protecting minority voices in a democratic society.

His Autobiography demonstrated a first rate humanity, a life of balanced thought and feeling, a passion for social justice. There isn’t any person I’d like to imitate more.

I could go on about the remaining works, too, as each of them has constituted a grace upon my life–a favoring of wisdom and influence….

When I studied in Europe on two occasions, England and France, I came upon an important word, character, something I find rarely talked about in America.  Europeans would often talk of someone’s character, encompassing integrity markers like dependability, perseverance, equanimity, fairness, empathy, all adding up to a fundamental decency. It’s what Vergil advocated. It’s what Mill is all about. It’s what I’d like, when all things are said and done, people to say of me: “I like his character.” I think it’s what you want too.

It is what I want. And I thank all the effective instructors in my life who put challenging, thought-provoking, freedom-giving works like these in my hands. Teachers who assign works like these set students on a path of finding what matters most—and provide the academic knowledge and skills needed to lead others down the same path.

Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said (quoting Theodore Parker): “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

How did King, and Parker, know that? Not by restricting their studies to relatively recent works. Not by schooling more concerned with social justice than with effective instruction. Their deep historical and literary knowledge revealed that humanity was capable of wickedness and beauty—and that inch by inch, the circle of those exposed to beauty is growing.

 

Fear Factor: Teaching without Training

by Lisa Hansel
May 1st, 2013

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Posted in Higher Education, Research and Reports, Teacher Training | 34 Comments »

On Friday, I had the pleasure of listening to Bill Bennett forcefully (and repeatedly) make the case for Core Knowledge and the work of E. D. Hirsch. But the event was bittersweet. Not because of the political differences between Bennett and Hirsch—for me, those only increase the odds that this Hirsch guy is onto something. But because the event was commemorating a Nation at Risk, and Bennett’s remarks highlighted the fact that we’ve known how to provide children with a better education for many decades.

Make that many, many centuries. Confucius knew. Socrates knew.

Rigorous study of important, time-tested content is not only the foundation of an excellent education, it engages students. When teachers present difficult academic content in a supportive environment, students rise to the challenge.

So why haven’t we ensured that all children get a rigorous, supportive education?

This is a question I ask myself and others all the time. I think it’s more productive than merely asking “How can we?” Those who ask how without also asking why haven’t tend to waste significant amounts of time and resources “discovering” things that some already knew.

Okay, so I’ve partly answer the why question right there. Much better answers can be found in Diane Ravitch’s Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, E. D. Hirsch’s The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, and Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.

But still, those answers are not complete.

Right now, Kate Walsh and her team with the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) are adding to our collective wisdom—and potentially to our collective ability to act.

NCTQ is just a couple months away from releasing its review of teacher preparation programs. The results may not be shocking, but they are terrifying. Walsh provides a preview in the current issue of Education Next. In that preview, she reminds us of a study from several years ago that offers an insiders’ look at teacher preparation:

The most revealing insight into what teacher educators believe to be wrong or right about the field is a lengthy 2006 volume published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Studying Teacher Education. It contains contributions from 15 prominent deans and education professors and was intended to provide “balanced, thorough, and unapologetically honest descriptions of the state of research on particular topics in teacher education.” It lives up to that billing. First, the volume demonstrates the paucity of credible research that would support the current practices of traditional teacher education, across all of its many functions, including foundations courses, arts and sciences courses, field experiences, and pedagogical approaches, as well as how current practice prepares candidates to teach diverse populations and special education students. More intriguing, however, is the contributors’ examination of the dramatic evolution of the mission of teacher education over the last 50 years, in ways that have certainly been poorly understood by anyone outside the profession.

Studying Teacher Education explains the disconnect between what teacher educators believe is the right way to prepare a new teacher and the unhappy K–12 schools on the receiving end of that effort. It happens that the job of teacher educators is not to train the next generation of teachers but to prepare them.

Huh? Really? How exactly does one prepare without training? Walsh goes on to explain that. But the only way to prepare yourself to comprehend the teacher educators’ reasoning is to pretend like “prepare them” actually means “brainwash them into believing that in order to be a good teacher, you have to make everything up yourself.” Back to Walsh:

Harking back perhaps to teacher education’s 19th-century ecclesiastical origins, its mission has shifted away from the medical model of training doctors to professional formation. The function of teacher education is to launch the candidate on a lifelong path of learning, distinct from knowing, as actual knowledge is perceived as too fluid to be achievable. In the course of a teacher’s preparation, prejudices and errant assumptions must be confronted and expunged, with particular emphasis on those related to race, class, language, and culture. This improbable feat, not unlike the transformation of Pinocchio from puppet to real boy, is accomplished as candidates reveal their feelings and attitudes through abundant in-class dialogue and by keeping a journal. From these activities is born each teacher’s unique philosophy of teaching and learning.

There is also a strong social-justice component to teacher education, with teachers cast as “activists committed to diminishing the inequities of American society.” That vision of a teacher is seen by a considerable fraction of teacher educators (although not all) as more important than preparing a teacher to be an effective instructor.

Those last two sentences stupefy me. I suppose it’s obvious since I’m writing this for the Core Knowledge blog, but I’m quite certain that there is no such thing as an ineffective instructor who is diminishing the inequities of American society. I suppose there could be an ineffective instructor who diminishes inequality outside of school, by volunteering at a food pantry perhaps. But I don’t think that’s what these teacher educators have in mind.

They may have in mind diminishing inequities by teaching something other than traditional academic content (social activism maybe), but if so, they are missing out on a far more powerful approach. They ought to think carefully about the effective instructors all across this country who are diminishing inequities by narrowing the achievement gap.

Purely anecdotally, I think that the difference between a frustrated teenager and a young leader is rarely a social-justice mindset—typically, they both have that. The difference is a strong foundation in traditional academic content, content that can help a young person find an ethical path and provide examples throughout history that offer guidance and inspiration.

Of course, another difference is being able to read. Walsh points out that the teacher educators’ notion of preparation, as opposed to training, means not covering the research on how to teach reading:

Nowhere is the abdication of training truer or more harmful than in the course work elementary teacher candidates take in reading instruction. It is commonly assumed that teacher educators opt not to train candidates in scientifically based reading instruction, instead “training” them in “whole language” methods. Actually, no such training occurs, as whole language methods require no training. Whole language is not an instructional method that a teacher might learn to apply, but merely a theory (flawed at that) based on the premise that learning to read is a “natural” process. It is no coincidence then that the whole-language approach tracks nicely with a philosophy of teacher education in which technical training is disparaged.

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has reviewed hundreds of syllabi from reading programs at more than 800 institutions across the country. What these programs most often teach is not to adopt the whole language approach but that the candidate should develop her own approach to teaching reading, based on exposure to various philosophies and approaches, none more valid than any other.

“None more valid than any other.” This is where my stupor gives way to fear. We have decades of research showing which methods of teaching reading are most effective. There is no justification for withholding that information from future teachers.

Based on my years as editor of American Educator—a quarterly magazine for teachers that endeavors to publish solid research on reading, mathematics, student behavior, pedagogy, and other core instructional concerns—I believe teachers are hungry for exactly the type of training that these teacher preparation programs are intentionally not providing. Many teachers expressed to me directly that they wished they had learned all this research during their preparation programs. Because they don’t receive research-based training, far too many teachers are forced to figure out what works through trial and error. While many do succeed, the process takes far too long; meanwhile, far too many children do not receive the benefit of instruction informed by our best research.

 

Making College a Genuine Choice: Michael Shaughnessy Interviews Lisa Hansel

by Lisa Hansel
April 22nd, 2013

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Posted in accountability, Core Knowledge, Higher Education, Research and Reports | 1 Comment »

Michael F. Shaughnessy’s interview with Lisa Hansel was originally posted on April 16, 2013, in Education News.

Michael F. Shaughnessy:

1) Lisa, tell us exactly what your position is currently and what you are trying to do.

In March, I became the director of communications for the Core Knowledge Foundation. Before that I was the editor of American Educator, the education research and ideas magazine published by the American Federation of Teachers. As I explained in my first blog post for Core Knowledge, it was hard to leave that position; I joined Core Knowledge because its approach is really well aligned with research on learning and it has the best curriculum I have ever seen. I would love for more of the national school improvement discussion to be focused on curriculum. For achievement, what could be more important than what gets taught? Bill Schmidt and Russ Whitehurst are both persuasive on this.

2) Now, you recently indicated in a blog that a very low-achieving 8th grader in a high-poverty school has only about a 3 percent chance of “getting ready for college.” What exactly do you mean by “getting ready” for college?

That is drawn from research by ACT, which has a long history of developing tests that assess the extent to which students are ready for college. ACT has figured out what “ready for college” means in terms of essential academic knowledge and skills by doing longitudinal studies; students who attain the “college ready” benchmark score are more likely to get decent grades in credit-bearing college courses and to earn college degrees than students who do not attain the benchmark score. Everyone is familiar with the ACT exams that millions of students take near the end of high school.

ACT also has benchmarks and tests for 8th graders and it is developing an aligned set of tests for elementary school through high school. Instead of doing so much high-stakes testing for accountability, it would be great if states used these as low-stakes tests to find out where students are on the path to college. That would be information schools could use.

3) I think you and I both understand that high school instructors are really not all that keen on doing remedial work with students who are 2-3 grade levels behind. On the other hand SHOULD an algebra teacher be going back and teach addition, subtraction, multiplication and division?

I am not qualified to answer that question, so I’ll offer an opinion and then point to an expert. Teachers have to meet students where they are and bring them as far along as possible. So when high school students still need instruction in foundational elementary mathematics, someone must deliver it. But should that class be called algebra? Probably not. To find out how to prevent high school students from being so far behind, please read two articles by Hung-Hsi Wu that I had the pleasure of publishing in American Educator: “What’s Sophisticated about Elementary Mathematics?” and “Phoenix Rising: Bringing the Common Core Mathematics Standards to Life”

4) I am going to use a nasty word—retention—should schools be retaining more students so that we don’t have this “achievement gap”?

I would not entirely rule out retaining students, but I think that strategy is used far too often. Betty Hart and Todd Risley’s seminal study clearly showed that the achievement gap starts at home, and research on the “summer slide” shows that it continues to grow at home after children enter school. I think our only hope is to prevent the achievement gap from opening. We have to address child poverty by, among other things, developing better health care, housing, and child care options for low-income families. At the same time, we need to educate parents on the importance of talking to and reading with their children—which is why initiatives like Providence Talks and First Book are so exciting. We also need to rethink early childhood education.

The Common Core State Standards are a step in the right direction because they emphasize the need to build children’s knowledge and vocabulary. Relevant background knowledge is essential to comprehension, critical thinking, and problem solving. That knowledge can’t just be at your fingertips; it has to be in your long-term memory.

Learning enough to be able to read and think about a broad array of topics is a huge endeavor that must begin as early as possible. For advantaged children, it begins as birth. So in school, including in preschool, building knowledge must become a much greater focus of elementary education.

5) In your blog, you state the obvious that “schools need to get better at closing the gap.” What if I counter that with “schools need to get better at identifying children with learning disabilities and remediating them”?

I agree with you. But I also have to point out that many children who are behind do not have learning disabilities. They simply have not had as many opportunities to learn (in school and/or at home) as their on-grade-level peers. A few years ago Charles Payne of the University of Chicago told me about an important study done by his colleagues at the Consortium on Chicago School Research. When teachers really challenged students academically and offered lots of social support, students made about two years’ worth of growth in one school year. In contrast, children with teachers who were low on academic pressure and social support made just half a year’s growth. Just as you would guess, schools serving high-income students were far more likely to offer this mix of challenge and support than were schools serving low-income students. What really frustrated Professor Payne was that this study—despite the striking results—is among the least requested from the consortium.

6) There seems to be this emphasis on all students going to college. In your mind is there anything wrong with a student graduating from high school and joining the army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard or becoming a manager at McDonalds?

I often emphasize preparation for college because I want that door to be open to all students (without taking any remedial, noncredit-bearing courses). But it really is not about going to college; it is about making sure that going or not going is a choice. Many students who do not want to go to college do not realize that they still need to be in college-prep classes. For example, a student who wants to become an electrician needs to be really good at algebra. Research by Achieve has shown that employers and colleges are looking for the same things. So if we prepare all students for college, then all students will have lots of great options.

7) We seem to have great research, but no implementation. Any insights?

There are many reasons why research fails to affect practice. I’ll mention three.

First, the education field suffers from too many snake oil salesmen, too many well-intentioned people acting on nothing more than their instincts, and too few trustworthy places to turn to cut through the cacophony. The situation is so dire that Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, wrote a book about it: When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science from Bad in Education. Willingham also has called for a “What’s Known Clearinghouse” to complement the What Works Clearinghouse.

Since we don’t have a what’s known clearinghouse, I suggest everyone read another of Willingham’s books: Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. If every educator, administrator, and policymaker studied that book, we could take a huge step forward in school improvement.

Second, far too few of our teacher preparation programs teach the research. On average, teacher candidates are not taught the cognitive science Willingham has written about, nor are they taught the very strong research on how to teach reading. Evaluations of teacher preparation programs by the National Council on Teacher Quality are very depressing. While there are bright spots, they are few and far between.

Third, high-stakes accountability has become counterproductive. Meaningful learning is a long-term endeavor. Many of the tricks that quickly bump up test scores do not actually contribute to student learning—but they do take time away from effective instruction. I think testing is useful; we need objective (if imperfect) measures of what students know and can do. Without such measures, how can we close the achievement gap? But the current high-stakes environment is not helping.

More policymakers need to realize that the nation’s educators are already doing the best they can with the knowledge and resources they have. No high-performing organization ever punished its way to the top. In places where student achievement is lagging, we need to roll up our sleeves and offer assistance, including research-based curricula and professional development.

8) Where does Core Knowledge fit into this picture?

The Core Knowledge Foundation offers a wide variety of supports for increasing student achievement, including onsite and web-based professional development, teacher handbooks, and materials for parents. What makes Core Knowledge stand out is its research-based guide to what all students should learn in preschool through 8th grade: the Core Knowledge Sequence.

Cognitive scientists have found that knowledge and skills develop together; the higher-order skills that are most crucial—comprehension, critical thinking, writing, and problem solving—all depend on having relevant knowledge not at one’s fingertips, but already stored in one’s long-term memory. Any topic that student need to read or think about is a topic that they must know something about. They don’t need to know a lot about each topic, just enough to be able to make sense of new ideas and information.

We’ve all had experiences that make this clear: recall a time when you tried to read a text on a topic you know very little about—for me, it’s the physics textbook I occasionally try to study—progress is slow, you feel confused, and even if you get the gist, nuances are lost on you. Now contrast that with a more everyday experience—maybe reading a newspaper article about the renovation of your local library—you zip through the article, easily absorb new facts like the name of the architect and the timetable, and fully grasp the renovation plans. But imagine that you did not know anything about libraries, construction, or renovations—the article would be very confusing.

As a basic foundation for lifelong learning, the knowledge that all students need to acquire is the knowledge that is taken for granted in spoken and written language aimed at adults. Here’s a recent example from CNN Health:

It is a case at the intersection of science and finance, an evolving 21st century dispute that comes down to a simple question: Should the government allow patents for human genes?

The Supreme Court offered little other than confusion during oral arguments on Monday on nine patents held by a Utah biotech firm.

Myriad Genetics isolated two related types of biological material, BCRA-1 and BCRA-2, linked to increased hereditary risk for breast and ovarian cancer.

To comprehend these three sentences, the reader must know about patents, genes, the Supreme Court, oral arguments, hereditary risk, cancer, and more. In short, the reader is assumed to have an enormous amount of knowledge.

The best way to ensure that all students learn the massive amount of knowledge they need to comprehend newspaper articles that cover everything from library renovations to patent disputes is to develop a carefully organized grade-by-grade sequence of knowledge for students to master. Such an approach does not ignore skills at all. It simply ensures that the reading, writing, analysis, and problem solving skills students need are developed and practiced through the acquisition and deepening of important knowledge.

This summer, the foundation will also begin offering Core Knowledge Language Arts, a comprehensive program for preschool through 3rd grade. CKLA teaches reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. It also has teacher read-alouds grouped into academic domains—such as fables from around the world, insects, early Asian civilizations, the five senses, mythology and more—that create interactive opportunities to question, discuss, and share ideas centered on the text. This domain-focused, coherent approach is the most efficient and effective way to build students’ knowledge and vocabulary.

I guess that’s a long-winded way of saying I hope Core Knowledge fits into the picture by ensuring that all children acquire the knowledge, vocabulary, and skills they need to be on the path to college—even if they choose not to go.

 

The Inclusive, Capacious, Diverse, Relevant . . . and Misleading California Reading List

by Guest Blogger
April 8th, 2013

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Posted in Educational Policy, Higher Education, Literacy | 9 Comments »

By Mark Bauerlein

Mark Bauerlein is a professor in the Department of English at Emory University and the author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30.

 

Last month, the California Department of Education issued Recommended Literature: Pre-Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve, an updated reading list of books for teachers of English, science, and social studies to use in their classrooms. The press release states that the list will “help students meet the new Common Core State Standards,” which were adopted by the State of California on August 10, 2010. To produce the list, the Department of Education convened teachers, librarians, administrators, curriculum experts, and college professors who deliberated and crafted the final tally, which Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson declared “a vital resource for students, teachers and parents.”

Sadly, the result falls well short of that description. Worse, this reading list actually works against Common Core and the expectations that inform them. The document

  • Explicitly violates the spirit and letter of the standards;
  • Does not foster college readiness of high school graduates;
  • Does not ensure that students are exposed to our literary heritage.

Why? For two simple reasons: the list is too long and too indiscriminate. It contains 7,800 titles—2,500 for grades 9 – 12 alone—and it sets dozens of classics among thousands of contemporary, topical titles without distinction. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is followed by Macho, a 1991 tale of an illegal immigrant who becomes a field worker. Little Women makes the list, but the description of it says nothing about its historical status. Every work gets the same treatment, a one-sentence statement of content. The field is overwhelmingly wide and it has only one level, ranking Leaves of Grass, Huck Finn, etc. equal to pop culture publications. It has no core, and it ensures that students across California will have un-common reading exposures.

Common Core demands the opposite. One unambiguous standard reads, “Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature,” requiring that English classes foreground Ben Franklin’sAutobiography, Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, Emily Dickinson’s poetry, etc. The California list does include such classics, but they are buried in a pile of recent works that have yet to face the test of time. When I clicked on one part of the Grade 9 – 12 list, I counted only three American staples among the 100 works provided. With no other guidance, Recommended Literature effectively says, “This is as good as that,” a flattening that contradicts Common Core’s emphasis on foundational texts. At face value, it implies that a year reading Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven, The Breaking Point (cliques in a private school), and The Lost Symbol (sequel to The Da Vinci Code) is just as preparatory as a year of The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid.

The Department’s all-equal approach also undermines college readiness. When students enter college, their professors assume that they possess some cultural literacy, that is, a little knowledge about the Renaissance, the Civil War, ancient mythology, and the American novel from Hawthorne to Ellison. When professors in U.S. history, sociology, or political science mention the American ideal of self-reliance, those who have read Franklin, Emerson, Thoreau, and Washington have a decided advantage over those who haven’t. A high school English teacher who skips those seminal works may feel that contemporary titles speak to the students more immediately, but he or she disadvantages them at the next level (and possibly throughout their lives). Many contemporary works are superb, of course, but they do not provide the background learning that goes with Gulliver’s Travels, Jane Eyre, and 1984. And few of them, too, contain the exquisite sentences of Gatsby, the piercing metaphors of Blake, the characters of Flannery O’Connor . . .

In the American setting, great works from the Puritans to the Beat Generation form an essential stream of our national identity, a lineage as crucial as the lineage of the American presidency. How much of our understanding of the Depression comes from The Grapes of Wrath, of the American South circa 1930 from William Faulkner, of old New England from Hawthorne? Without them, students lose a vital connection to their country. In adding so much contemporary literature, the CDE claims a more culturally relevant curriculum, but the relevance it offers amounts to a thin and haphazard version of the culture they inhabit.

Recommended Literature needs another component, one that ranks works by their literary-historical standing. Californians want the CDE to exercise some judgment, to distinguish the superb from the merely interesting, the foundational from the topical, the timeless classics from the temporarily relevant. Common Core does so, and in producing this gargantuan grab-bag of works, this list without a core, CDE has misaligned with the standards it adopted three years ago.

 

Larry Summers Calls Higher Education Stubborn and Anachronistic, Offers Suggestions

by Robert Pondiscio
January 23rd, 2012

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Posted in Education News, Education Practice, Higher Education | 8 Comments »

The following guest post is from Cedar Riener, assistant professor of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College  in Ashland, Virginia.   He blogs about education reform, college teaching, history and philosophy of science at Cedar’s Digest, where this post also appears.

I squirmed a lot reading Larry Summers’ recent piece in the New York Times on where he thinks and hopes higher education will go in the future. Here’s a point by point analysis:

He begins by undermining his own credibility:

A paradox of American higher education is this: The expectations of leading universities do much to define what secondary schools teach, and much to establish a template for what it means to be an educated man or woman.

REALLY? Have you paid attention to any of the K-12 school reform of the administration you have been a part of? The encouraged emphasis on basic reading and math skills at the cost of social studies, science, physical education and extracurricular activities runs exactly counter to the template of colleges and universities in which diverse offerings, and choices of majors proliferate. But I’ll forgive this vague handwaving and move on. Summers’ point is that colleges are seen as cutting edge, but in fact offer stale education which is stuck in the past because tenured faculty (who are often in charge of the curriculum) are stubborn. Dismissed college president says faculty are stubborn and old-fashioned, the Times is ON IT!

The paragraph in which he lays out the reasons that colleges are old fashioned seemed to me to be amazingly disingenuous. Colleges are staid and stuck in the past because… departments and courses have the same names as they did 50 years ago? Students take four classes and exams in blue books? Students pick a major? So the biology major is the same as it was 50 years ago because it is still called biology? Really?

Summers wants higher education to better reflect how the mind and world works. But as someone with expertise in mental processes who works in higher education, Summers’ understanding of both the current state of higher education and the science of cognitive psychology are simplistic and off base. As a result, we shouldn’t take his six “guesses and hopes” seriously except as a warning of the perils of breezy theorizing by famous intellectuals.

1) College curriculum will become “more about how to process information and less about imparting it”.

This is the standard: “You don’t need to know any facts because you can Google them, you just need critical thinking skills of finding and evaluating facts.” It is so tempting. Information is everywhere, it is at our fingertips, and the ubiquity of this information will spare us from keeping any of it in our heads, just like we don’t have to remember phone numbers, or directions anymore. Unfortunately, this is not how the brain works. As Daniel Willingham reminds us in his book “Why Don’t Students Like School?” “Factual knowledge precedes skill.” Whenever cognitive psychologists look closely at critical thinking, we find that it is tightly integrated with background knowledge. Any definition of critical thinking involves the creative and rigorous application of a network of facts. It is impossible to think critically about neuroscience unless you know dopamine from acetylcholine, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex from the occipitotemporal junction. Not remembering phone numbers is not the same as facts which we will sometime need to recruit to do our thinking. Summers shows he doesn’t have certain facts about language education and cognitive psychology, which he could easily look up, but which undermine the validity of his “critical thinking.” Read the rest of this entry »

You Want Fries with that B.A.?

by Robert Pondiscio
January 13th, 2011

Tags: , ,
Posted in Education News, Higher Education | 25 Comments »

Over at the Cato@Liberty blog, Neal McCluskey points out a sobering and under-discussed phenomenon: huge numbers of college graduates are taking jobs that don’t require college degrees.  He cites a recent study from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity:

Evidence shows that currently more than one-third of college graduates hold jobs that governmental employment experts tell us require less than a college degree. That proportion of underemployed college graduates has tripled over the past four decades.

The study points out the percentage of those in 20 “non-college” professions who have at least a Bachelor’s degree: baggage porters and bellhops (17.39%), bartenders (16%), administrative assistants (16.64%) and taxi drivers or chauffers (15.15%).   Before I push the panic button, I’d like to see data on how many degree holders are still in non-college jobs five or more years after graduation–plenty of us paid dues in entry level jobs right out of college–but the larger debate is an interesting one.  It should give pause to those of us who blithely sell the notion that without college, kids are consigned to second-class citizenship. 

“Many people, it seems, just assume that more education — without ever looking at what actually goes on in higher ed — is always a good thing,” McCluskey concludes, “while others believe that government should constantly funnel money to our precious ivory towers no matter how little of concrete value taxpayers get for their dough.”

In a post last year on “romanticism vs. determinism” in education, former teacher Walt Gardner argued:

If students don’t like to read and prefer working with their hands, for example, why counsel them to apply to a four-year liberal arts college? At best, they might pass through. Wouldn’t they be better off going to a community college to learn a trade in line with their interests? Or what about apprenticeships in the field of their choosing? Why is this blue collar work considered less worthy of respect?

Ultimately, perhaps the ideal outcome for K-12 is to keep as many doors open as long as possible, while not sending the message, as Jonathan Alter (if I recall his words correctly) put it in Waiting for Superman, that you’re going nowhere without college.  “Let’s hope that the record percentage of female and male high school graduates now enrolled in college get their money’s worth,” Gardner memorably concluded in his piece last September.  “A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but let’s not forget either that debt is a terrible thing to carry.”

“ican going to graduate to now”

by Robert Pondiscio
November 16th, 2010

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Posted in Higher Education | 13 Comments »

Meet Ed Dante, academic mercenary.  Since 2004, he has worked full-time writing “original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students.”  On any given day, he writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he’s working on 20 or more papers.  “My customers are your students,” he writes.  “Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can’t detect, that you can’t defend against, that you may not even know exists.”

I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.

“Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research?” Dante asks. It’s a devastating, yet fascinating piece describing in painful detail a career borne of the ”desperation, misery, and incompetence” that the educational system has created.  “You would be amazed by the incompetence of your students’ writing,” writes the pseudonymous Mr. Dante.  “They couldn’t write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school.”

To the inevitable question–which department has the worst incidents of cheating?–the  inevitable answer: Education.

“I’ve written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I’ve written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I’ve synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I’ve written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I’ve completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

Dante is clear that his work makes him “vulnerable to ethical scrutiny” but he insists pointing the finger at him is too easy. “Why does my business thrive? Why do so many students prefer to cheat rather than do their own work?  Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat,” he observes.  Tellingly, he notes that not one of his customers has had the originality of his or her work questioned, or been caught. 

The most wince-producing aspect of Dante’s long and withering piece are the semi-literate communications he reproduces from his customers. After completing a 160-page graduate thesis, “every word of which was written by me,” Dante got a thank you note from his grateful client. 

“thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now.”

“Diversity of Preparation”

by Robert Pondiscio
September 2nd, 2010

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Posted in Assessment and Testing, Education Practice, Higher Education, Literacy | 27 Comments »

At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein takes up a piece E.D. Hirsch, Jr. and I wrote in the American Prospect a few months back titled “There’s No Such Thing as a Reading Test.”  The essay explained why, contrary to popular belief, reading is not an all-purpose, transferable skill, and argued for a domain-specific approach to reading instruction and assessment.

But a commenter on Bauerlein’s Brainstorm blog wants to know why the professor is taking up the issue at all.  The piece, after all, was in an issue of the Prospect concerned with getting kids to read by third grade.  What does this have to do with higher education?  Everything, Bauerlein responds.

Just look at the numbers of freshmen who end up in remedial reading courses. And, as I argued awhile back, according to ACT, the biggest college readiness problem in reading is, precisely, inability to comprehend “complex texts.” The point of the post is to argue that reading comprehension doesn’t improve simply by practicing the “skill” again and again. Readers need to build domain knowledge in order to handle texts at the higher levels.

Right.  And that doesn’t happen overnight, nor can it be remediated at the college level. 

Ed reformers take note: if you’re not concerned with building domain knowledge in students, increasing graduation rates is only doing half the work (and the easy half at that).  If kids aren’t prepared to succeed in college–and the evidence cited by Bauerlein suggests they’re not–then what have we really accomplished?

Walt Gardner, in an unrelated post over at EdWeek,  considers President Obama’s recent declaration that “by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world” and sees a divide between “Determinists” and “Romanticists.” Determinists like Charles Murray hold that “only a small minority of high school graduates possesses the intelligence to succeed in college.”  Romanticists like Arne Duncan believe far more students should go to college.  “Which side in the debate is right? The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Success in college is not solely the result of intelligence or aptitude. Perseverance and dedication play a powerful role that is not fully appreciated,” Garner concludes.

Right again.  But surely preparation is an even more powerful determinant of college success or failure.  “The chief problem in American education,” notes Hirsch, “is not diversity of income, race, and ethnicity but diversity of preparation.”

If we continue to insist on treating reading as a formal skill, while dismissing the importance of the slow, steady buildup of domain-knowledge, we are not adequately preparing kids to succeed in college–a phenomenon most vividly appreciated by Bauerlein and his colleagues who work with the finished products (and only the “successful” ones!) of our K-12 education system. 

If we’re setting kids up to fail in college, what have we really gained?  Gardner puts it well:  ”Let’s hope that the record percentage of female and male high school graduates now enrolled in college get their money’s worth.  A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but let’s not forget either that debt is a terrible thing to carry.”

Indoctrination and Dispositions

by Robert Pondiscio
December 1st, 2009

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Posted in Higher Education, Teacher Training | 15 Comments »

The University of Minnesota’s ed school has found itself embroiled in controversy after a newspaper columnist claimed the school is seeking to indoctrinate would-be teachers with radical ideologies–and might prevent those who do not toe the line from teaching.  As described by Katherine Kersten, a columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune,

The Race, Culture, Class and Gender Task Group at the U’s College of Education and Human Development recommended that aspiring teachers there must repudiate the notion of “the American Dream” in order to obtain the recommendation for licensure required by the Minnesota Board of Teaching. Instead, teacher candidates must embrace — and be prepared to teach our state’s kids — the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.

The “oppresive hellhole” language is Kersten’s own; it appears nowhere in the task force report.  Here’s the passage in question:

The story of the United States is often told in terms of the American Dream….Future teachers will understand that despite an ideal about what is considered common culture in the United States, that many groups are typically not included within this celebrated cultural identity and more often than not, many students with multi-generational histories in the United States are routinely perceived to be new immigrants or foreign. That such exclusion is frequently a result of dissimilarities in power and influence. 

Jean K. Quam, the dean of UM’s ed school responds in the Star Tribune that discussion of these issues is not indoctrination. “Our belief is that acknowledging these issues is essential to teacher and student success and that ignoring them will not make them go away,” she writes. “A teacher with expert subject knowledge but without skills to connect with students or to be flexible and inventive in the classroom is an ineffective teacher,” she says.  

All well and good, but one still might ask to what degree the University concerns itself with ensuring its graduates are teachers with “expert subject knowledge,” something that is typically not a huge ed school concern.  The UM controversy raises the issue of ed schools insistence on evaluating teacher ”dispositions,” a hot-button term for many.  In a 2007 Education Next piece, Kent State professor Laurie Moses Hines questioned the purpose of such assessments:

Whether the standard is mental hygiene or possessing the proper political and ideological disposition, the elimination of candidates who do not pass muster gives teacher educators the power to determine who gains access to a classroom based on the values the teacher educators prefer. While the courts have permitted certifying agencies to require “good moral character” of teacher applicants, as legal scholars Martha McCarthy and Nelda Cambron-McCabe note, they “will intervene…if statutory or constitutional rights are abridged.” Thus, while pledging loyalty to federal and state constitutions is a permissible condition for obtaining a teacher license, swearing an oath to progressivism is not. Given the evidence and the history, there should be real concern, as teacher educator Gary Galluzzo has said, that “students’ views and personalities are being used against them” whenever dispositions are assessed. Those committed to academic freedom within higher education should be concerned when professional socialization trumps freedom of conscience in teacher education programs.

As a purely practical matter, one wonders why “dispositions” are a criteria at all in determining who gets to teach, and if time might be better spent ensuring future teachers have mastered their subject and craft, and are well-prepared to be effective classroom managers.  It seems reasonable to say that far more ground is sacrificed by teachers who are overwhelmed and unprepared than by those who are not, er, correctly disposed. 

(via Joanne Jacobs)

“And Thank You for Choosing Harvard University!”

by Robert Pondiscio
November 3rd, 2009

Posted in Higher Education, Humor | 4 Comments »

In most sectors of our economy, customer focus is paramount, as it should be in education, too. Customer focus could yield a more student-centric system through the development and dissemination of user-friendly “truth-in-education” information that helps students make “best-fit” choices regarding which education provider to select based on customer preferences such as: academic quality, price, convenience, learning style, beginning education level and the anticipated return on their investment in education.”  — Putting the Customer First in College: Why We Need an Office of Consumer Protection in Higher Education,” a report released today by the Center for American Progress

Hi, my name is Bruce and I’ll be your professor today!  We’re thrilled you’ve chosen to matriculate with us this Fall.  May I tell you about some of the special features of your college?

We’re committed to being the low-price leader in higher education.  This semester, we have a special Buy One, Get One Free promotion.  When you register for a class with us, choose a second class of equal or lesser challenge and get the second course absolutely free!  And remember, if you find a lower price for this course at any nationally advertised college or university, simply bring us the ad and we will beat their price.  Guaranteed!

I’d also like to tell you about out Frequent Learner program.  Sign up today, to earn class credits and education rewards.  You can use your frequent learner points to purchase clothing, housewares, books, and just about anything–even term papers!  Earn even more rewards when you put your tuition on your Phi Beta Kappa Gold Visa card.  In fact, you’re pre-approved just for registering for this class.

If at the end of this semester, you’re not happy with your grade for any reason, simply return it within 90 days for a full refund or a replacement grade.  In this class–and every class–customer satisfaction is Job Number One! 

I’m also happy to announce that starting with the 2009-2010 academic year, your undergraduate degree comes with a standard 10-year, 100-thousand dollar future earnings warranty.  If you’re not earning six figures within ten years of graduation, we’ll make up the difference no questions asked!

On behalf of the entire faculty, administration, support staff and our nationwide network of alumni, we’d like to thank you for letting us educate you.  We understand that you have a choice in colleges.  Our goal is to be your preferred provider of education and career services whenever and wherever you choose to be educated.

Thank you, and have a great day!

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