Tag Archive for 'Wall Street Journal'

An Unhelpful Development

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 15, 2009 in Curriculum, Education News and Opinion. 6 Comments

The persistent battles over school curriculum in Texas have turned into a debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms.  It’s an unhelpful development for anyone who wants to see kids get more history in school.

The Texas Board of Education is revising the state’s social studies curriculum, the Wall Street Journal reports.  “Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history”  reporter Stephanie Simon notes.  

The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America’s founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances. The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good — and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.

Simon has more to say on the WSJ blog The Juggle, describing history class as “a new front [that] has opened in the curriculum culture wars.”  If so, it’s a most unwelcome and unhelpful one.  Core curriculum is already starved for oxygen in too many schools.  Fear that history is a stalking horse for religious instruction offers one more reason to downplay its importance, eliminate it from the school day, or reduce it to mere pabulum, as one commenter observes:

At this point, I don’t even care about the culture wars any more. I just wish the schools would teach a lot more history. My kids get so little history, and what they do get is mainly in the form of little nuggets of usually incorrect information. They do Columbus in October, Thanksgiving in November (and yes, they do mention God, and the kids color some pictures of Indians, usually in completely wrong attire, and that is about it). In January they learn that “Martin Luther King was a great man who got everybody together.” No mention of Jim Crow, no mention of civil disobediance, no mention of slavery. It is horrifying. My son just finished third grade and doesn’t know about slavery or the Civil War. What sense does Martin Luther King make if you don’t know about slavery? My sense is that the schools here are so scared they might offend someone, both conservatives and liberals, that they just don’t teach anything at all.”

Hard to disagree with that common sense perspective.  And even harder to see how emphasizing the “Christian character” of the U.S. is going to make secular teachers–or parents–more enthusiastic about teaching history.  It’s just what the effort to beef up core curriculum doesn’t need–turning history into the next “intelligent design” debate.

“Mr. President, Don’t Forget Catholic Schools”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 28, 2009 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 2 Comments

If President Obama wants to address the crisis in America’s urban schools, he could start by acknowledging the contributions of Catholic schools.  In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn notes America’s Catholic schools are in the midst of a crisis, with enrollment less than half what it was at its peak. Though doing a heroic job, he notes, they are closing their doors at an alarming rate.

Catholic schools are not for everyone, and they are not the answer for all that plagues our cities. But they are an answer — one answer that is real, less costly, and working for many families desperate for the opportunities these schools provide. With a little imagination, these schools could reach many more such children.

McGurn notes the President spent more time in Catholic school as a child than JFK.  “Simply by acknowledging Catholic schools as a national treasure that should be preserved,” he writes, “Mr. Obama would give them a badly needed shot in the arm.”

The Fordham Foundation weighed in on this issue last year with their report, “Who Will Save America’s Urban Catholic Schools?”

Strong Parents, Strong Performance

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 4, 2008 in Parents and Research and Reports. 0 Comments

Want to see improvements in education?  Start insisting that your children fully apply themselves in school, counsels Daniel Akst in the Wall Street Journal, in an essay that will surely be clipped, copied and passed out on curriculum nights and at parent teacher conferences.  “Let’s face it,” he writes, “more than budgets or bureaucrats, more than textbooks or teachers, parents are the reason that kids perform as they do in school.”

Citing a summary of research by the Michigan Department of Education, Akst notes “the most consistent predictors of children’s academic achievement and social adjustment are parent expectations of the child’s academic attainment and satisfaction with their child’s education at school. Parents of high-achieving students set higher standards for their children’s educational activities.”

He also shoots down the stereotype of the overachieving, upper-middle-class parent “bombarding their precious little ones in utero with Mozart and then hectoring teachers and hiring tutors right up until the Harvard application essay.”

Researchers at Brigham Young and the University of Michigan found that parents preferred teachers who make their children happy over those who emphasize academic achievement. My experience in a nonobsessive school district is consistent with this. Our family’s intense focus on learning is regarded warily by some parents, whose dissatisfactions with school are mostly about testing and creativity but never about a lack of foreign-language instruction or overall academic rigor. Indeed, teachers have reported watering down the public middle-school curriculum in response to parental complaints that it was too difficult.

The lack of demand for serious schooling is the least of it, writes Akst. Too many kids are growing up in homes with little emphasis on reading, learning or culture.  “Kids form lots of habits over the years, some good and some bad,” he concludes.  “What a nice surprise that doing well in school can be one of them.”

I suspect a lot of teachers will hurt their necks vigorously nodding in agreement with Akst’s essay.  There may not always be a cause-and-effect relationship between engaged parents and student performance.  But like the race going to the swift and the fight to the strong, it is the way to bet. 

Is It Better To Read Junk Than Not Read At All?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on August 11, 2008 in No category. 7 Comments

Where’s Richard Whitmire when you need him?  A pair of Wall Street Journal articles raise interesting questions about boys, reading, engaging reluctant readers…and sports trivia.  A Page One piece by John Hechinger points out what just about every elementary school teacher figures out 20 minutes into the job: if you want to see a boy engaged with a book, slip him any of the burgeoning genre of gross-out books.

Publishers are hawking more gory and gross books to appeal to an elusive market: boys — many of whom would rather go to the dentist than crack open “Little House on the Prairie.” Booksellers are also catering to teachers and parents desperate to make young males more literate. ‘There has been a real revolution’ in books that ‘have more kid appeal,’ especially when it comes to boys, says Ellie Berger, who oversees Scholastic’s trade division. ‘It’s a shift away from the drier books we all grew up with.’

The bottom line, the kind of book you used to sneak into school, and hoped not to get caught reading, has gone mainstream.  So is “Captain Underpants” the only way to turn boys into readers?  More to the point, is all reading created equal?  Does time spent with ”Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger?” help reading comprehension?  As a teacher, I’m all for engaging boys, but a steady diet of this fare invites the law of diminishing returns. 

In an unrelated WSJ piece, “Raising Bob Costas: Is Memorizing Sports Trivia Good for the Brain?” James Freeman frets that his son is spending all of his time memorizing sports trivia, and hopes to find an academic silver lining in this obsession from neuroscientists, Harvard’s Howard Gardner, and Core Knowledge founder E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

I figured that if anyone would trash the idea of kids consuming trivia it would be Hirsch but he found reasons to appreciate Will’s hobby. The University of Virginia professor recalled the line from Keats that “every thing is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer.” Mr. Hirsch said that it’s great to find an interest like Will’s because “it means you like to do something intensely, and you’re more likely to be successful in life” when you do.  But Mr. Hirsch was not suggesting that learning about football had any value at all in helping one to learn about academic subjects. “I don’t think there’s any benefit as far as ‘learning-to-learn,’ because that’s been exploded.”   

I’m with Freeman’s kid.  When I was his age, I could tell you from memory the teams who plated in every World Series ever played.  Numbers invariably invoked baseball statistics: 367, 511 and 714? Ty Cobb’s liftime batting average, Cy Young’s career wins and the number of homerun Babe Ruth hit, respectively. 

But you knew that. 

 Update:  Sir Fartsalot author Kevin Bolger weighs in below in the comments section.