2008 August 27 Archive at The Core Knowledge Blog

Why is content knowledge so important to reading? A couple of reasons are obvious: (1) you can’t comprehend if you’re missing some of the vocabulary, and (2) the text might use vocabulary you know, but reference ideas that you don’t know. For example, the sentence “Gosh, it’s January 5th-I’ve got to go get some wheatberries and raisins!” doesn’t use unusual vocabulary words, but it’s not sensible unless you know that the speaker is Armenian, and that a traditional dish for January 6 (Armenian Christmas) is a pudding that includes those ingredients.

But content knowledge serves reading in more subtle ways. A key feature of all writing (and speaking) is that information is omitted. For example, suppose you read the following sentence:

John said ‘look Dave, I would stand in line with you for the tickets, but I’ve used up all my sick days.’

There are two key ideas in the sentence: (1) John wants to stand in line for the tickets but can’t and (2) John has used up his sick days. The second idea is offered as an explanation for the first. But notice that a good deal of information that is necessary for the right interpretation is actually missing from the text. You need to know that (1) people may wait hours in line for tickets to entertainment events; (2) people may use sick days to avoid work even when they are not sick and (3) people are reluctant or unwilling to skip work when they have used all their sick days because their pay may be docked. The writer has omitted this information, gambling that the reader already knows it, and can fill the logical gap in the sentence. If the reader does not have the requisite background knowledge, he or she doesn’t comprehend the sentence.

Writers must omit some information-if they didn’t, writing would be impossibly repetitive and tedious. So readers must bring background knowledge to the task of reading so that they are ready to fill the gaps that writers will leave. Small wonder that students who score poorly on reading tests suddenly look like terrific readers when given a passage on a topic that they know a lot about.

I’ve described just one of the more subtle ways that background knowledge helps reading comprehension. There are others, described here http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring06/willingham.htm.

Fordham’s Mike Petrilli weighs in on the Core Knowledge reading program announcement. So does Richard Whitmire. Elissa Gootman’s longer piece in yesterday’s NY Times even manages to elicit warm words from Lucy Calkins. But especially welcome is Richard Lee Colvin’s entry at Early Stories, which concludes

“Journalists might look into pre-kindergarten programs or elementary schools in their area that are using the Core Knowledge approach. Are the kids bored? Do their heads hurt?”

If anyone wishes to take up Colvin’s suggestion, a complete list of Core Knowledge Schools can be found here. Such a visit would help counter the nonsense peddled for years by Alfie Kohn, for example, that Core Knowledge is merely a bunch o’ facts that “steal time from more meaningful objectives.”

Indeed, too many people in education still carry around the idea that reading is a content-neutral skill, and don’t appreciate the connection between background knowledge and reading comprehension. There is an assumption on the part of many teachers that the ability to decode and to apply metacognitive “reading strategies” is enough to make any text comprehensible. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Over the next couple of days, UVA cognitive scientist Dan Willingham and Matt Davis, who heads the Core Knowledge Reading Program will weigh in here on reading. Stay tuned.