Tag Archive for ‘commercial interests’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

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.

BabyFirstTV, a subscription-based network, is available via satellite and cable for $4.99 a month. Its programs air 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are targeted to children ages 6 months to 3 years. It claims to be an “educational tool that provides a positive learning environment and an engaging experience for both you and your baby.”

“Did you just shudder? Or did you reach for the phone to call DirecTV?” asks Buzz McClain of the McClatchy Newspapers. “Lots of adults have done both. Since its launch on Mother’s Day 2006, BabyFirstTV has found its way to 30 countries, making the network available to some 80 million homes. A DVD line of the programming is coming to stores soon.”

“BabyFirstTV transforms traditional TV into an interactive and educational tool that relies on the television as a medium to deliver high-quality programming and an engaging experience for both baby and parents,” the channel’s website breathlessly announces. “BabyFirstTV can enrich the connection between parents and baby and give them new opportunities for learning and playing together.”

“The general idea of parking babies in car seats on the floor in front of a television troubles childhood development professionals,” writes McClain. “The American Academy of Pediatrics says simply, “Don’t do it!”

Meanwhile the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood added BabyFirstTV to a suit filed with the Federal Trade Commission a month after the network launched, complaining that it, as well as the Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby line of DVDs — were falsely advertising educational benefits without evidence.”