A Backward Glance
Raj Desai, a student from the first Core Knowledge class, now a college senior, looks back on his early education.
There is a photo spread mounted in the workroom at the Core Knowledge Foundation of a 1991 Life magazine story describing the early days of E.D. Hirsch’s attempt to reform American education. I often have wondered what happened to the young students in the picture. There is, for example, a young boy front and center in one of the photos with his hand raised, bursting with answers. An internet search found this student, Raj Desai, in the middle of his senior year on the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Below are some of the answers he volunteered when I asked him to reflect on being one of the very first students to take on the full Core Knowledge curriculum .
Do you recall being part of that story in Life magazine? How old were you, what school and what grade were you in?
I remember that day and that story very well, partly because my parents saved the magazine article and wouldn’t let me forget even if I wished to. We were making atomic models with marshmallows and candy, which definitely increased the level of my interest in chemistry. I was in the second grade at Three Oaks elementary school in Fort Myers, Florida.
Unless you were mugging for the camera, you looked like a really eager student. Tell about what subjects you liked at that time. Were the seeds of your later education choices planted in elementary school or middle school or later?
Looks can be deceiving but not in this case. I was indeed a very eager student and have to say I liked every subject in elementary school. Core Knowledge gave me a love of learning in general, since there was no subject that wasn’t made fun and interesting. For example, I never learned to hate history because my first experience with it was not having dates and names and facts drummed into me but learning through interaction and stories. I remember having a Roman market day where we recreated the experience of a Roman bazaar with students manning the stalls and being the patrons. The very broad range of education I went through in elementary school encouraged me to be open-minded towards courses in all of my further education.
Did any of your teachers make you aware that Core Knowledge provided the framework for your studies? Did you find when you went on to high school or even in college that some of the topics you studied stayed with you? Did having learned something about, say, ancient Rome or the French Revolution or Renaissance art or anything else, stand you in good stead?
I know that my teachers said often that we were learning topics beyond our grade level; however their words never sunk in until I graduated from elementary school. For example, I know our class memorized the beginning of “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” by Longfellow and discussed its significance in second grade. I did the exact same thing in 9th grade civics. I can’t say that I directly retained every fact I learned in elementary school; however, the Core Knowledge curriculum has definitely served me well over the years. I know most of the material in all of my basic middle and high school subjects was familiar ground to me. It is a lot easier relearning material than it is learning it for the first time.
Core Knowledge intends to tie subjects together, to enable students make connections between history, geography, art, science and literature and to show familiar patterns appearing in different civilizations. I feel that some people aren’t able to make these connections until college or even later. Do you remember seeing some of these connections early on?
I have observed a lot of the cross linking between subject fields and I think that I have noticed relations within a subject matter before many of my peers in middle school who did not have the breadth of knowledge coming in.
Core Knowledge includes the story of the world’s major religions, which is not always the case with other elementary and middle school curricula. Have you found this knowledge useful in your later studies or life experiences?
I am a Hindu, so it was nice to see my faith given even a passing glance in class. I did not realize how rare that would be until later in life. Even through high school, western civilization and western religion is given not just precedence but almost complete focus. I don’t remember a specific time when having this knowledge was directly useful; however I am positive it was useful in a more general sense. It definitely adds a sense of perspective knowing how many kinds of different cultures exist and having an idea of how different they are.
What difference did teachers make? Without naming names on this one, have you ever changed your mind about some of your teachers, finding that some, whom you didn’t like at the time, seem in retrospect quite good or vice versa?
Teachers were the most crucial component of my education, because no matter how great or thorough the material covered is, it is meaningless if not delivered well. I haven’t ever changed my mind for the worse about any of my teachers. I have only grown to appreciate them more over time. The greatest thing my teachers did was making my early education an enjoyable experience.
Core Knowledge endorses the study of entire books, both fiction and non-fiction, not excerpted bits and pieces presented in textbooks. What books do you remember reading in school in those days? Can you cite one particularly influential one and explain why it influenced you?
In general, I remember reading a lot of books, so many that I have trouble remembering which ones were read for school and which ones I read on my own. One book I have a definite memory of reading in school is a Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. It was part of a reading assignment in a gifted sub-class, M.W.(major work area), a program that might not be a of Core Knowledge. The reason why the book so heavily influenced me was because it introduced me to concepts I had no experience with. Faster-than-light travel, an explanation of morality and, of course, great entertainment ―this book had it all. It is a book that is complex even for an adult.
Where did you go on to high school? How do you feel your background compared with the preparation other students had?
I went to a private school, Canterbury High School, also in Fort Myers, Florida. Since it was a K-12 school where most of the students had either gone completely through the system or had come in from other private schools, the other students definitely had excellent educational backgrounds. I went to the gifted program at Dunbar for middle school. This program was disproportionably filled with students from Three Oaks. If I had gone to another elementary school, I don’t know if I would have qualified for Dunbar. Without my elementary and middle school education, I know that I would have lagged behind my peers at Canterbury instead of being near the top.
Enough about the past, what are you studying now and what is your next step?
I am currently a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I will graduate this May with a Bachelor of Science in Business and Administration with a concentration in Finance and a minor in Chemistry. I am going directly into graduate accounting school after this year and will graduate with a masters of accounting next May. After this degree, I’m going to be out in the workforce for a while.
Let’s imagine that your elementary school and your middle school ask you to come back to give a talk and they want you to evaluate your education in those grades; in particular, they want you to reflect on Core Knowledge, among other things, and to say what was right and what could have been better. Then give us a really brief summary of what you would say.
Elementary school was a long time ago. No system can be perfect, but I just can’t remember anything to criticize. One thing I know is that Core Knowledge should keep the mandate that education be thorough. I do not know of many other people who have studied material such as I had in elementary school. I know that nearly all students can perform above their current level; they don’t only because they are never asked to. An education system needs to bring people to their limits in order to expand them; otherwise people will always perform below their potential. I am very glad Core Knowledge has enough faith in its students to ask more of them
Views from the Other Side of the Desk
I was curious about whether Raj’s good memories of his early schooling were paralleled by memories his teachers had of him. Below are the results of a little investigative work at the Core Knowledge pioneering school, Three Oaks Elementary in Ft. Meyers, Florida, where I put some dedicated teachers to the memory test.
I was fortunate to have Raj Desai as a student when he was in second grade and when we were in our very first year of teaching Core Knowledge. He, along with all of my students, became engrossed in our various topics of study. Whether it was mapping the oceans and continents of the world or delving into the culture of ancient Egypt, his enthusiasm for learning was truly inspiring. He spent time in the library, eager to discover more information related to our studies. When Raj came to be my student again in the fourth grade, it was readily apparent that he had retained much of what we had learned two years earlier. He was one of several students to take an educational trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. The guide for our trip was surprised at the amount of knowledge Raj possessed about the Revolutionary War. Raj and I have stayed in touch and it has always been easy for me to see that same enthusiasm for learning sparked by the Core Knowledge so long ago.
Raj Desai is one student who will always be a delightful memory in my long teaching career. Raj was a child with many unique characteristics but I remember how bright he was and how he took everything I taught him, especially from the Core Knowledge curriculum, very seriously. It was as if he were storing the knowledge in a vault for future use. Raj wrote an in-depth article on Julius Caesar, for a class newspaper, as that was part of the fifth grade curriculum at that time. I do remember Raj dressing for a Civil War day. I remember thinking how awkward it would have felt to him, but how significant it was that he represented what America has become to immigrants: a home and a homeland that they want to represent.
Raj couldn't tie shoes when he was in fifth grade; it was a cultural thing, since he regularly wore sandals. Everyone understood that. As a student, he is, no doubt, just one example that can be applied to sayings like "to teach is to touch the future; you never know where your influence ends." Raj is a success story who, by chance and circumstances, had the opportunity to be "touched" by the Core Knowledge curriculum.
When I first came to three Oaks, Raj was a fourth grader. It was easy to see that he was a special student. His family had recently emigrated from India. Both of Raj’s parents placed a high value on education and became active PTO volunteers in spite of the long hours they worked in their business. Raj was a quiet intense student with an enormous curiosity! He made friends easily, loved reading, and enjoyed the Core Knowledge events.