Tag Archive for 'core knowledge'

The Making of Americans

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 1, 2009 in Core Knowledge and Education Theory. 4 Comments

The official publication date is still two weeks away (Sept. 15), but copies of E.D. Hirsch’s new book, The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools, have started to hit the bookstores.  Jay Mathews gets a jump with his review in the Washington Post.  “If the inventive 81-year-old had been a business leader or politician or even a school superintendent, his fight to give U.S. children rich lessons in their shared history and culture would have made him a hero among his peers,” Mathews shrewedly observes. ”Instead, he chose to be an English professor, at the unlucky moment when academic fashion declared the American common heritage to be bunk and made people like Hirsch into pariahs.” 

Mathews notes (correctly, I think) that Hirsch’s new book makes the case for a common curriculum “in the clearest form since his ground-breaking 1987 book, Cultural Literacy.”

“The Making of Americans” puts the most troublesome elementary school subject, reading, at the center of its argument. Reading achievement and language proficiency generally have been disappointing for decades, particularly in schools full of the children of immigrant or impoverished parents. Progressives have called for engaging students with lessons that celebrate their real lives and their cultural heritages. Old books about dead white guys don’t hack it, they say. Hirsch’s research convinced him that this approach cut children off from the shared background they all must have to understand the words in front of them.

Richard Kahlenberg, reviews the book in the Autumn issue of The American Scholar, not yet available online:

In The Making of Americans, Hirsch…widens the lens to connect his ideas on education reform to the fundamental rationales for our system of public schools in the United States. Citing the writings of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Horace Mann, Hirsch identifies two central reasons for the American “common school”: to create social mobility, allowing bright, hard-working students of all origins to enjoy the American dream; and to create social cohesion, binding children of diverse economic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds into citizens of a single nation. Hirsch makes a highly cogent case to support the concept that a common curriculum is necessary in elementary schools to further both goals. The American focus on skills, rather than on content, has left low-income students bereft of “unspoken background knowledge” that is explicitly taught in countries like France and Finland, where levels of academic inequality are much lower. “It does not seem to occur to the intellectual descendants of Rousseau,” Hirsch writes, “that the four-year-old children of rich, highly educated parents might be gaining academic knowledge at home that is unfairly being withheld (albeit with noble intentions) from the children of the poor.”

“American education would be far better off if leaders heeded Hirsch’s sound advice to restore a common-core curriculum, Kahlenberg concludes.  “Our system would do even better still if leaders went one step further and reinvented Horace Mann’s economically integrated common school for the 21st century.”

Core Knowledge a Difference Maker in Colorado Charter Schools?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 19, 2009 in Core Knowledge School and Curriculum. 0 Comments

Much sturm und drang over this week’s Stanford University study, which indicates charter schools nationwide are not performing as well as traditional public-schools.  Among the bright spots, however, were charters in Colorado, which the study says ”demonstrated significantly higher learning gains for charter school students than would have occurred in traditional schools.”

What’s in Colorado’s special sauce?

The Colorado Charter School Blog considers several factors including this one:  “Compared nationally, Colorado is atypical by having almost half of its charter schools using the Core Knowledge curriculum. Most states have more ‘home grown’ or experiential charter schools.”

 

Don’t Go There

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 2, 2009 in Core Knowledge and Curriculum. 12 Comments

Someone who worked on Ohio Governor Ted Strickland’s 2009 budget proposal seems a little confused about the difference between Core Knowledge and “21st Century Skills.”

“We thought former Illinois Governor Blagojevich was the most confused state leader in the Midwest,” notes Common Core. “But this chart, which lumps the idea of core knowledge in with 21st century skills, clearly illustrates that the Ohio Governor and the folks who advise him on education are at best deeply confused themselves–about the content of education.  No one who knows a lick about curriculum would put these two ideas together.”  Hmmm.  Where would such a confusing idea come from?    

Case closed.

Don’t Know Much About History

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 20, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Curriculum. 3 Comments

Pencils out, clear your desks.  Pop quiz!

What ”inalienable rights” are referred to in the Declaration of Independence?  What are the three branches of government?   Name a right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.  Which branch of government has the power to declare war?  And finally, what percentage of Americans failed a test of these and other basic civics, history and economic questions? 

Seventy-one percent.  Yep.  More than seven out of ten earned an F.The average score was 49%.  USA Today reports that of 164 respondents who say they have held elected office, 44% was average.  

Without knowledge of your country’s history, key texts and institutions, you don’t have a frame of reference to judge the politics and policies of today,” Richard Brake, head of the institute’s American Civic Literacy Program, tells the paper.

Take the quiz yourself, or give it to your students right here.  And after they’re done and you’re thoroughly depressed, here’s a link on how to become a Core Knowledge school.

Core Knowledge: A “21st Century Skill”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 11, 2008 in Assessment and Testing and Core Knowledge. 5 Comments

“The common idea that we can teach thinking without a solid foundation of knowledge must be abandoned, notes Lauren Resnick, a professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, in a new report from Education Sector, Measuring Skills for the 21st Century.  “So must the idea that we can teach knowledge without engaging students in thinking. Knowledge and thinking must be intimately joined.” The report is by Ed Sector’s senior policy analyst, Elena Silva, who notes:

The belief that there should be a solid, specific, and shared core curriculum, an idea advanced most notably by the nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation, founded and led by former professor and literary scholar, E.D. Hirsch Jr., is not at odds with this approach. The Core Knowledge curriculum supports the point that learning factual knowledge and the ability to apply, analyze, and solve problems go hand-in-hand. Teachers using the Core Knowledge approach do not stress rote memorization of facts; they use an array of strategies including workshops, research projects, dramatizations, and collaborative learning groups because they know that students will learn best if they are exposed to both subject knowledge and ways to apply this knowledge at the same time.

The full report is here.  Silva is hosting a weeklong online discussion on it with Eva Baker, director of UCLA’s Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing, and Paul Curtis, chief academic officer of New Technology Foundation, on Ed Sector’s website here. 

 

 

Quote of the Day

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 16, 2008 in Core Knowledge. 0 Comments

“’Critical thinking’ and ‘problem solving’—which progressives like me promote—have been taken to their extreme absurdity. We’ve disconnected them from their base—deep knowledge.”

-Deborah Meier, “A Disrespect for Knowledge” at the blog Bridging Differences

Core Knowledge Cultural Literacy Quiz

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 20, 2008 in Core Knowledge. 4 Comments

More examples of how speakers and writers presume background knowledge on the part of their audience.

1)   In a recent New York Time Op-Ed column, Gail Collins wrote “If the Obama brain trust seems relatively serene compared with its seething base, it’s because they live in the Electoral College world, where the presidential race only takes place in a third of the country. They don’t care about national polls – a concept as quaint as measuring one’s wealth by caribou pelts.”   What is the Electoral College?  Explain why would “living in an Electoral College world” make Obama unconcerned with national polls? 

2)   “Catch a look at next year’s spring men’s wear and you might find yourself saying, ‘What the Dickens?’” wrote fashion writer Patrick Huguenin in the New York Daily News. In a review of Fashion Week in New York, he described “roguish ensembles that call to mind the scrappy urchins of a Charles Dickens novel” and labeled the new look “Oliver Twisted.” Explain the reference.

3)   Supporters of Barack Obama have been wearing this button:

 

Why do you think the creator of this button thought this would be an effective message? Justify your answer based on what you know about the personal histories of the presidential candidates, their running mates, and their political parties.

Matt Davis on Core Knowledge Reading Program

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 9, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Education Practice. 1 Comment

There’s a good, in-depth interview on ednews.org with Dr. Matt Davis, the head of the Core Knowledge Reading Program, which will be piloted in New York City this year.  He talks about the two major strands of the program: a unique phonics-based “Skills” strand, and a “Listening and Learning” strand that enables very young children to build up vocabulary and background knowledge, through read-alouds of classic literary selections, fairy tales and poems, as well as a non-fiction selelctions in history, science, art, and music.

“We think the two strands together will be a great one-two punch.  The Skills Strand should teach the students to decode fluently, while the Listening and Learning strand should help ensure that they have the breadth of background knowledge they will need to understand what the words they decode.”

Davis also makes a good, if little appreciated point about Core Knowledge in general.  “Although people have been slow to see this, it is a curriculum designed for social justice,” he notes. ”The well-off kids, the ones whose parents read to them, teach them about numbers and letters, take them to New York and Washington, DC in the summer, visit museums, listen to public radio, and so on – those kids are going to tend to soak up a lot of cultural literacy in the home environment, and they will be able to make sense of a lot of what they read. But other kids are not as fortunate.  These children need to get their cultural literacy in the schools. These are the children the Core Knowledge Foundation is looking to help, and they are also the children we are hoping to help with the reading program.”

If You Push Out Subject Matter, You Push Out Reading Comprehension

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 3, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Literacy. 0 Comments

Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch is interviewed by Claus von Zastrow of the Learning First Alliance over at the website Public School Insights.  While supporting the broad aims of accountability, Hirsch laments the narrowing of the curriculum that has occurred under NCLB, since broad general knowledge is critical to reading comprehension.  Thus ”if you push out subject matter, you’re also pushing out reading comprehension.” 

Discussing the new Core Knowledge Reading Program, which will be piloted in ten New York City schools this year, Hirsch notes that the “listening and learning” strand of the program is key, since when it comes to taking in information ”reading doesn’t catch up to listening until 7th grade on average.  You’re really handicapping yourself in the teaching of general knowledge that’s needed for reading comprehension if you insist on doing it through the decoding process.”

There’s lots more.  You can hear the entire interview here.

Reading About Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 27, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Literacy. 2 Comments

Fordham’s Mike Petrilli weighs in on the Core Knowledge reading program announcement.  So does Richard Whitmire.  Elissa Gootman’s longer piece in yesterday’s NY Times even manages to elicit warm words from Lucy Calkins.  But especially welcome is Richard Lee Colvin’s entry at Early Stories, which concludes

“Journalists might look into pre-kindergarten programs or elementary schools in their area that are using the Core Knowledge approach.  Are the kids bored? Do their heads hurt?” 

If anyone wishes to take up Colvin’s suggestion, a complete list of Core Knowledge Schools can be found here.  Such a visit would help counter the nonsense peddled for years by Alfie Kohn, for example, that Core Knowledge is merely a bunch o’ facts that “steal time from more meaningful objectives.”

Indeed, too many people in education still carry around the idea that reading is a content-neutral skill, and don’t appreciate the connection between background knowledge and reading comprehension.  There is an assumption on the part of many teachers that the ability to decode and to apply metacognitive “reading strategies” is enough to make any text comprehensible.  Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Over the next couple of days, UVA cognitive scientist Dan Willingham and Matt Davis, who heads the Core Knowledge Reading Program will weigh in here on reading.  Stay tuned.