2008 May 08 Archive at The Core Knowledge Blog

Archive for May 8th, 2008

Domain Understanding Helps (DUH!)

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 8, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Literacy. 1 Comment

Over at the Teacher Leaders Network Blog, a question and a discussion that seems obvious to Core Knowledge teachers, but causes endless head scratching elsewhere: Why don’t more teachers incorporate Social Studies into Language Arts? “Now that science will be tested annually at our elementary level, social studies has officially taken the lowest spot on the totem pole,” complains a district coordinating teacher for S.S.

One teacher replies with common sense: “Language Arts is not a subject. Instead, it is a set of skills that one uses to learn other subjects. So when we’re selecting texts to read, we select social studies texts and incorporate reading skills into our lessons. When we’re looking for topics to write about, we select social studies topics.”

This simple idea could do more to improve reading scores than any other measure: stop sacrificing content on the altar of language arts. The connection between content knowledge and comprehension is established enough that the idea should start to gain some traction. There’s a law of diminishing returns in abandoning content instruction in favor of yet more reading strategy lessons.

We need a snappy way to get this idea to stick. How about “Domain Understanding Helps”…DUH!

Gilded Age, Gilded Cage

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 8, 2008 in Parents and Students. 1 Comment

You think parents of American high-achievers put pressure on their kids? Try this:

“At the age of four, Zhou Jiaying was enrolled in two classes—Spoken American English and English Conversation—and given the English name Bella. Her parents hoped she might go abroad for college. The next year they signed her up for acting class. When she turned eight, she started on the piano, which taught discipline and developed the cerebrum. In the summers she went to the pool for lessons; swimming, her parents said, would make her taller. Bella wanted to be a lawyer, and to be a lawyer you had to be tall. By the time she was ten, Bella lived a life that was rich with possibility and as regimented as a drill sergeant’s. After school she did homework unsupervised until her parents got home. Then came dinner, bath, piano practice. Sometimes she was permitted television, but only the news. On Saturdays she took a private essay class followed by Math Olympics, and on Sundays a piano lesson and a prep class for her entrance exam to a Shanghai middle school. The best moment of the week was Friday afternoon, when school let out early. Bella might take a deep breath and look around, like a man who discovers a glimpse of blue sky from the confines of the prison yard.”

So begins a fascinating article in the current National Geographic, “Gilded Age, Gilded Cage,” by Leslie T. Chang, which examines the opportunities and anxieties facing China’s emerging middle class. A study has shown that nearly half of Chinese urban residents are at health risk due to stress, with the highest rates among high school students. While the story’s larger point is to paint a picture of a society in turmoil, the pressure to succeed placed on Chinese youth is front and center:

“You were only as good as your worst subject. If you didn’t get into one of Shanghai’s top middle schools, your fate would be mediocre classmates and teachers who taught only what was in the textbook. Your chances of getting into a good high school, not to mention a good college, would diminish. You had to keep moving, because staying in place meant falling behind. That was how the world worked even if you were only ten years old.”

Now, About Your Friend Mr. Ayers…

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 8, 2008 in No category. 0 Comments

You thought this was going to go away after North Carolina and Indiana? Not so fast, says columnist Bob Novak. His syndicated column notes questions will need to be answered about Obama’s friendship with and support from bomber-turned-ed-prof William Ayers. For example: “What’s up with this picture?”

“We Are All In The Same Boat”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 8, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Curriculum. 7 Comments

Core Knowledge trustee Diane Ravitch serves up a stirring and eloquent argument for a national core curriculum over at Bridging Differences:

“I maintain that our diversity makes it hard for us to forge a national core curriculum, but our diversity makes it necessary that we do so. In a nation as diverse as ours, we need a common language and a large fund of shared values and references in order to talk to people who do not share our religious, cultural, ethnic, or racial background. In order to maintain a democratic society, we need to be able to communicate and exchange ideas, to sustain diverse coalitions, and to recognize our common goals and work together with others who are different from us. Collaboration requires some mutuality, and such mutuality is not possible without the ability to communicate and to recognize that ‘we are all in the same boat,’ we are part of the same community even as we are members of many other, different communities.”

Ravitch also performs a nifty bit of intellectual jujitsu, pointing out that we already have a de facto national curriculum whether we like it or not, driven by test and textbook publishers. “In effect, our highly decentralized system of schooling has left the issue of what to teach to commercial interests, those who write the standardized tests and those who compile the textbooks that are sold in every state. So, I would contend that we have a national curriculum; that it is in the hands of the marketplace and the educational publishing industry; and that it is no substitute for the national core curriculum that would emerge if we set our collective minds to the task of writing it. We have a default curriculum. I think we can do much better.”

Hear, hear.