Whose Core Knowledge, and What Sort of Citizens?
Published April 07, 2009 @ 05:21PM PT
Core Knowledge proponent E.D. Hirsch wrote an op-ed in the NYTimes recently, Reading Test Dummies, that argues the bubble-test-bashing engaged in from Obama to most classroom teachers is misguided. Hirsch argues that the problem with the tests is that they're not aligned with content standards in the core curriculum, which forces teachers to teach test-taking strategies instead of content. If the tests were aligned with the "knowledge" dictated by literature, science, history, geography and arts curriculum standards, Hirsch argues, then teachers would be free to teach content instead of test-taking. They'd know that test scores would measure the "knowledge" imparted in the content, and that teaching that knowledge would raise test scores. It sounds sensible enough, until we ask such questions as, "Knowledge of what? From whose perspective? In whose interests?"
Hirsch is silent on the value of questions like this, and it's that silence that suggests the "Core Knowledge" approach needs a healthy supplement of critical thinking for it to have more merit. Below are some places in his op-ed where he could have shown that he values critical thinking, but didn't:
"Empty 'reading strategies'": Hirsch seems to categorically dismiss all instruction in “reading strategies” as "empty." (You see a lot of similar blanket statements about 21st Century Skills on the Core Knowledge blog too.) To be fair, he may mean this characterization only in the context of drilling students with practice tests - and if that's the case, that's fine. But as a teacher and as a reader, I know two things about this topic: 1) it doesn't take a lot of time to carry out the basic "reading strategies" of skimming the table of contents, section headings, emphasized words, and graphics in a chapter, first and last paragraphs, and so forth, in order to activate readers' schemata and give them a sense of the organization of a text, and 2) that schemata and sense of organization is helpful. Hirsch's op-ed implies that this is a time-consuming process to teach and to do, but it really doesn't have to be at all.
Pre-reading strategies can make texts more interesting, too, when we throw a couple of critical thinking angles into the mix: "What information do you expect to find in here? What points of view?" These simple questions before reading can make the "knowledge" much more interesting if we discover as we read, for example, that there is no mention in a text on the Colonial Period that many whites crossed over to the Native Americans, while few Native Americans did the same to the whites, or no mention in a section on the Founding Fathers that many of them were slave-owners. Suddenly we have something to think about: why does the textbook omit these things?
One Core Knowledge fits all: When Hirsch writes,
Better-defined standards in history, science, literature and the arts combined with knowledge-based reading tests would encourage the schools to conceive the whole course of study as a reading curriculum — exactly what a good knowledge-based curriculum should be. Schools would also begin to use classroom time more productively, which is important for all students and critically so for disadvantaged ones.
--it gets tricky. If done according to local, not national, standards in history and literature - I have no problem with national science and math standards - then this may be a good idea. But if he's talking national history and literature standards, that's more problematic. It deprives local schools of tailoring their curriculum to their student bodies and communities. An all-girls' school, a majority Latino or African-American or rural school - they're not likely to be best served by a single "core knowledge" or set of "core texts" in history and literature. To impose one is likely to turn them off of reading, even as they might gain in knowledge that raises their test scores.
Hirsch strongly suggest he is thinking of such one-size-fits-all "knowledge" when he writes, (click "Read more" for the rest...)
Teachers and students might begin to demand content standards that are more specific than, say, this third grade standard from Ohio: “Compare the cultural practices and products of the local community with those of other communities in Ohio, the United States and countries of the world.” It would be far more useful to set out what exactly children should learn about the 13 colonies or Paul Revere’s ride.
How is knowing about Paul Revere's ride more valuable and relevant than learning about local and distant communities?
Hirsch concludes,
Better-defined standards in history, science, literature and the arts combined with knowledge-based reading tests would encourage the schools to conceive the whole course of study as a reading curriculum — exactly what a good knowledge-based curriculum should be. Schools would also begin to use classroom time more productively, which is important for all students and critically so for disadvantaged ones.
Reform of standards and tests needs to begin in the earliest grades. Knowledge and vocabulary are plants of slow organic growth. By eighth grade, after the cumulative benefits of a more coherent curriculum and more productive tests, students would begin to score much better on all reading exams, including those that aren’t based on a school curriculum. More important, they would be prepared to be capable, productive citizens.
If we can talk leaving high school content under the control of local teachers, not dictated by national content tests, then maybe - high school teachers could fill in the silences left by the national(istic) 3-8 standards, teach race, gender, and class-based perspectives in history that almost surely wouldn't be covered earlier.
But a white male-privileged narrative of history that I suspect Hirsch advocates is also unfair to those very disadvantaged students Hirsch claims will benefit from his model. It excludes all who don't fit that profile. Above all, I'd rather see thinking-based reading tests that ask about point of view, bias, audience, omissions, etc - that ask students to think about what they read, rather than simply remember it as "knowledge." Without that critical stance towards what is decided as "knowledge worth having," Hirsch's ideal of a "good knowledge-based curriculum" seems an oxymoron. Can we talk a "knowledge-and-thinking-based curriculum" instead?
Because without critical thinking about what's read, we're not "capable and productive citizens" - at best, we're creating "capable, compliant workers." We can do better than that.
Photo by shapeshift
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Comments (11)
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Author
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Clay is an American high school Humanities teacher, technology coach, and Apple Distinguished Educator who has taught for the last eight years in Asian international schools. According to law, he's married to his wife. According to his wife, he's married to his Mac.
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AP is so frustrating; everything is centered around the test coming up in a few weeks. It's never about the content anymore or the history. It doesn't make a difference whether you teacher hates schooliness, the test dictates every aspect of the classroom. There's no joy and I feel as if I'm being taught how to think. I wish more people would see it your way.
Posted by Priscilla Kim on 04/08/2009 @ 05:20AM PT
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A friend of mine is teaching AP World History this year, and it's giving him headaches for the reasons you mention: the students and their parents complained that he should be giving straight, fact-filled lectures, and stop the project-based active learning approach he prefers. They're all worried about the test.
Posted by Clay Burell on 04/08/2009 @ 12:04PM PT
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Hirsch claims a test aligned with a good set of standards would free teachers (and students--let's not forget about the students) to concentrate on teaching what's important and leave the tests to take care of themselves. I guess the idea is that students would learn the "knowledge" well, and the tests would accurately reflect what they know, so that we could relax and concentrate on teaching content. Unfortunately, there are two problems as I see it with this contention.
First, and foremost, as long as the test results are high-stakes for the adults in the system, they (the adults), being intelligent beings and not rocks, will exert their intelligence to raise students' scores by any means possible. At least the vast majority of them will. And since the tests cannot include everything in the curriculum, this results in a de facto narrowing of the curriculum. In a high-stakes system, the test, not the standards or the texts, define the bottom-line curriculum. (This is just as true for students in a classroom in which grades are heavily emphasized, or who have very grade-conscious parents or for whatever other reasons become worried about grades. How many of us have heard "Will this be on the test?" in the middle of what we thought was a very cool lesson that went above and beyond the humdrum of everyday material?) Even if it were true that students would do as well on the tests if the tests were ignored during teaching, how many people are capable of ignoring something that will have major consequences in their life on the simple assurance that it's OK to do so?
Which brings me to my second point--what evidence do we have that any standardized test can be so constructed that as long as we are teaching good stuff, and students are learning good stuff, the test will reflect that? That is, how many of us really believe that students will score as well on the tests if we ignore them as if we teach to them at least to some extent? Heck, I tell my own students (prospective teachers) all the time that they need to concentrate on helping their students learn the math, not burn up time teaching to the tests, but even I know perfectly well that some test-prep will raise scores. ETS used to tell us that you couldn't raise SAT scores with test prep because they were doing what Hirsch contends a good test would do, but the test-prep entrepreneurs proved them wrong, and student routinely raise their SAT scores by 50 or even 75 points just through test-prep programs.
I'm with Hirsch insofar as he wants students to experience a more meaningful and coherent curriculum. But the way the tests are bing used, the informational poverty (i.e., based on one measure only) and high-stakes-for-individuals nature of the accountability system, work against that. And you are right on the money about what and who's (whose? I'm getting confused about that in my old age) knowledge he thinks should be included in that curriculum, what he thinks counts as meaningful. He's out there promoting and defending what's important to him--as is everyone else who addresses questions of curriculum. To me, that fact is a powerful argument against a national curriculum. It seems to me that what's important to specific parents and perhaps even students (what a thought!) should count for something, and how would that be taken into account in a national curriculum?
Posted by Jean Mitchell on 04/08/2009 @ 08:00AM PT
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Great comment, Jean. I'm curious if you share my view that national science and math curricula are less problematic than history and literature ones?
Posted by Clay Burell on 04/08/2009 @ 12:07PM PT
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Maybe less problematic, but I still worry about top-down micro-management when the top is so widely separated from the bottom. As usual, the devil is in the details, I suppose. I have recently come to a fresh appreciation of the crucial importance of allowing teachers to make critical curriculum decisions based on what her/his students know/can do/have learned. Decisions that can only be made in real-time once you know the students and have assessed them for yourself. So if there's slack built into the curriculum, so teachers can pursue topics that spark their students, or re-teach topics when a unit or series of lessons don't work, it might be OK. But so far the people who make curriculum decisions from above show few signs of being willing to leave anything up to those below them in the hierarchy.
And then there's the mile-wide-inch-deep issue, which you've brought up in this blog elsewhere. One way to think about curriculum is that the hard decisions are what is NOT essential, what can be left out. There are plenty of advocates for including almost anything you can think of, but few people are willing to stnd up and publicly state that something can be left out, or even given less emphasis. Look what happened when NCTM came out with their Standards, which did just that (more of. . . less of. . .). It started the Math Wars. And that was just a professional organization, not an official government function. Imagine the politics of THAT.
I don't think we need a national curriculum. I think the only reason anyone is calling for it is as part of the testing and accountability hysteria. I mean, just how important is it that we should be able to line up all the students (and teachers, and schools, and districts) in order from best to worst? That's the main rationale for it that I've seen. I think there is enough de facto consensus about the curriculum to keep the country from falling apart, and we have professional groups and textbook publishers all working to maintain a rough commonality of curriculum. To me, the risks and drawbacks far outweigh the potintial benefits.
But then, I'm getting to be a crusty old curmudgeon, and powerful people want that national curriculum, so we may be in for it regardless.
PS I'm on a Mac iBook, and for the life of me I can't figure out how to get an extra line between paragraphs, so that a person can actually tell where my paragraphs are. Please, please, tell me how to do it.
Posted by Jean Mitchell on 04/09/2009 @ 07:30AM PT
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I think the only way you can make line-breaks is to input your comment into the comment box itself, rather than copy-paste. Maybe you can copy-paste, THEN go back and hit return after each paragraph to be safe.
I did it for you, anyway. We're told the comment thread is up for a rehaul, but not on top of the developer's list. Cross your fingers.
Real quick: for the life of me, I can't see why the same kids nationwide can't be expected to learn math at the same rate - if the plan starts with a single first-grade year, and progresses along with them. I fear that doesn't make sense, but have to run. But if it does, do you think I'm wrong?
Posted by Clay Burell on 04/09/2009 @ 04:01PM PT
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"I can't see why the same kids nationwide can't be expected to learn math at the same rate - if the plan starts with a single first-grade year, and progresses along with them."
Wow, really? So then do you have the same expectations of kids learning how to read? It never evens out, nor can it, really, for so many reasons. Kids enter first grade at different levels already -- some might know their multiplication tables and others might only know how to count to 25. Some are reading picture books while others don't yet know what letter their name starts with. Then, as they progress -- how can the level stay steady? Every child has different learning needs and different interests -- it's virtually impossible to "even it all out."
I like what Jean said earlier here:
"... the crucial importance of allowing teachers to make critical curriculum decisions based on what her/his students know/can do/have learned. Decisions that can only be made in real-time once you know the students and have assessed them for yourself. So if there's slack built into the curriculum, so teachers can pursue topics that spark their students, or re-teach topics when a unit or series of lessons don't work, it might be OK."
... and this is why I believe in a community-focused curriculum (meeting the needs of the learners within it) and one that is skills- and concept-heavy, and not so much on the knowledge. And at that, I'd prefer those skills and concepts outcomes to be broad and inquiry-based rather than narrow and prescriptive, to allow for that slack that Jean mentions, which is so crucial for authentic learning.
I know I often sound like MYP-fangirl, but I hafta say that this is in my opinion another thing that makes the MYP of the IB so fabulous -- the curriculum is *not* narrow, and it is *not* decided upon by someone at the top -- it is developed in response to the needs and desires of the community, and it is constantly a work in progress; ie., it is never finished.
Incidentally - that is what drives some teachers nuts about it -- that it is never "done" and that it is dynamic. As you can probably guess, those teachers gravitate away from MYP and move into more traditional schools (AP, British Nat'l Curriculum and the like).
Posted by Adrienne Michetti on 04/10/2009 @ 02:18AM PT
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@Adrienne, I thought about my question to Jean as I drove my scooter, lost, around Seoul today (beautiful day to get lost on a scooter, spring and all!), and the early years/home environment factors made me re-think that. I'm so not math, it's a foreign language to me. So it's no surprise I'd think it's easier to progress at uniformly than language and literacy. And it's never a surprise that I'd lay an egg....
Posted by Clay Burell on 04/10/2009 @ 04:21AM PT
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Clay--
Ok, you took it back (thanks, Adrienne, for taking him up on this)--but I still can't believe that you thought students NATIONWIDE could or would all progress at the same rate. Students in the SAME CLASSROOM don't (pardon the shouting, but I'm too lazy to do what I have to do to get italics). I mean, think about your own experience-did you, and could you have, progressed at the same rate as all your classmates? People are not machines, to be all "processed" in the same rate and the same way, nor are they computers that can be programmed, not even when it comes to math. That's precisely why the factory model for education does not and has never worked.
Also, people usually assume math is "culture-free", and in a sense they are (almost) right. But I've taught math in several different settings--West Africa, small town Idaho, inner city California, Navajo reservation--and there are differences that need to be paid attantion to even for math. They are subtle, and my claim is not to be taken as a reason to do less (or more) math in one setting than another. But could national standards (let alone a national curriculum, which is at least one step more refined and detailed and prescriptive than standards) be done in such a way as to allow people 'on the ground' to take these into account? And more importantly--would they?
A couple of PS's:
PS1) People like you make me itch to sit down with you and work with you on some math, both so that you can see that math can make sense to you and so you can see why people like me like it :-).
PS2) Thanks for paragraphing my last comment. But I AM inputting straight into the comment box, and I still can't get two carraige returns to register with the system. I understand why they'd want to wipe out excess carriage returns, but other people can get those lovely spaces between paragraphs, so why can't I? If I were a different sort of person, I'd be feeling picked on.
Posted by Jean Mitchell on 04/10/2009 @ 07:34AM PT
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Jean, you're not alone - I also have issues with line breaks on this site, but curiously it is only when I'm using Google Chrome as my browser. When I use Firefox, or IE, I don't have those issues. So it may be something about how those browsers (Chrome and Safari, which I presume you're using?) handle the site.
Posted by Adrienne Michetti on 04/10/2009 @ 11:32PM PT
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I passed it to The Powers That Be, Jean and Adrienne.
Posted by Clay Burell on 04/11/2009 @ 01:11AM PT
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