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.
Ravitch, 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…‘we are all in the same boat,’ we are part of the same community…
You know, this quote could be pulled from 1930’s Italy or Germany. Of course, no national curriculum would ever teach this!
Nothing frightens me more than consolidating power at the national level, and the cries of how this is “necessary” because we have too much individuality to make good citizens.
And no, we are not all in the same boat. We educate for very different reasons, because we hold very different values. Americans range from San Fran liberals to redneck Southerners to Amish farmers. We tolerate each other, and that’s enough. Nothing is more dangerous to liberty than a bunch of “education experts” trying in vain to immanentize the eschaton.
Ravitch’s quotes above could be used with very little modification as a good argument to outlaw homeschooling as well, or at the least to require national conformity for them as well. Shudder.
OK, I’ll bite: How would content guidelines on what to teach (not how to teach) constitute a “consolidation of power at the national level?” How are the values of San Francisco liberals and Amish farmers troubled by introducing kids to Ancient Egypt, the three branches of government, photosynthesis or the parts of the atom? How do children come to understand tolerance as an American ideal without understanding the history that led us to prize it as a civic virtue?
Robert Pondiscio, How would content guidelines on what to teach (not how to teach) constitute a “consolidation of power at the national level?”
It’s a scary day when I must defend freedom. But I’ll bite.
First, for justice - nobody has any moral right to push national guidelines. Second, because federal money would of course be tied to guidelines over time. Third, the federal government has no business being in education at all. But don’t listen to me; read the Constitution, that quaint little document that I can promise will not get a whole lot of time in this national curriculum, and nor will a good history of nationalism and fascism. Why would this national curriculum slit its own throat? Unity!
I turn the question around: what makes y’all think you should have a say in any child’s education not in your state? Why all this yearning for national conformity? Personally, I think we are doing just fine building our own content guidelines, and wish to give others that same freedom, even though I am quite confident mine are superior. I merely lack the desire to control others. Sadly, just as the younger generations are becoming empowered and impatient to transform or even eliminate institutions that make no sense anymore, others (most from these very threatened institutions) seek national conformity.
Of course, Ravitch has the answer to all my questions: individuality is bad, because our diversity makes it necessary that we do so…‘we are all in the same boat,’ we are part of the same community… Still shuddering.
Vital Core: Why do you equate a common curriculum with fascist conformity? That equation does not hold up historically or philosophically. There are so many counterexamples, and so many reasons why a common foundation, if well devised, would enable students to think on their own. Do you consider France, England, Japan, and Finland fascist? Do you think that students in a Shakespeare class end up thinking all alike, just because they all read Hamlet?
The Nazis had a propaganda machine based on fear. They used the curriculum to their own ends. A national curriculum should serve the opposite end: to make our citizens highly aware of language and history. Common culture can enable us to find our individuality as well as community. Fear of such tradition forces us into the curricular void we have now. Instead of curriculum, we have slogans, fads, bad textbooks, and tests.
Why do you assume that a national curriculum would not cover the Constitution thoroughly, or teach a history of nationalism and fascism? I would expect such a curriculum to do both–and much better than the textbooks or “discovery” methods are currently doing.
A national curriculum would have complications and problems. It would not please everybody, and it would be subject to change. But even that would have its blessings–we would be talking about subject matter again, as well as values. Make those subjects taboo (or everyone’s own private and local business), and we’re all on our own, fending for ourselves, and buzzing past each other with our words.
I’m going to respectfully disagree with Ravitch and the national curriculum crowd.
First: There is absolutely no basis for believing that the feds, and their experts, can fashion a coherent national curriculum in the first place. In any event, the feds know nothing about quality education. All of their programs have been expensive failures, right down to Reading First, which was bungled in the legislation stage.
Second: If none of the fifty states have gotten it right yet, what makes us think the feds will do any better, especially considering that any national curriculum will be about 1000% more politicized at the federal level.
Third: The worst enemies of a coherent curriculum will have a large say, probably a majority say, in the national curriculum, assuring that any standards are watered down to meaningless drivel.
Fourth: Top down government standards down work, ask the Soviet Union. The analogy is apt, our education system is much closer to the Soviet ssytem than a free market.
Fifth: NAEP. ’nuff said.
How about federal standards, Ken? Let states adopt them or exceed them at will? You raise valid points about the political realities of national standards, but given the connection between content knowledge and comprehension, it just won’t do to say “it’s too hard” and quit the field.
I’m not saying it’s too hard, I’m saying the reality is that it won’t be any better than the current patch work of 50 standards. I see no reason to believe that the feds will do a better job than what the best of the states have to offer. And, I don’t think any state’s standards are close to the detail needed to be usable as a guideline for informing instruction. This is especially true with respect to real content knowledge. We’d be better off calling a subset of Don’s “what you’re x grader needs to know” our content standard once we’ve determined how much of it could resonably be taught to an average student.
Also, I don’t think standards work the way most people think they work. If the standards merely codify the industry practices, they tend to work as expect. When standards are imposed by fiat, they tend not to work as expected and usually have unexpected consequences. Federal auto gas mileage standards are a good example of the latter.
In education we have the latter. We are in a situation in which improvement is desired but the means of effecting that improvement are unknown. Thus, we’re trying to impose by fiat some standards that we think will force us to improve.
In any event, any proposed federal standard should be thoroughly vetted via experiment with a smaple of school districts to see if the standards actually accomplish what they purport to accomplish before they are imposed on the country.