The chance to be here and not here

Still puzzling over the Common Core standards, the long, academically rigorous day for kindergarteners. I've heard parents say their kids enjoy it. Wally himself does seem to enjoy long hours at the desk with a reading buddy or in writer's workshop or math centers, but kids also enjoy ice cream for dinner, that doesn't mean it's what's best for them. Adults are supposed to decide what's best, and early educators know this is not it. Came across a letter sent to Catholic Bishops from a group of Catholic college professors. The excerpt below is worth reading. It focuses on one disadvantage of the Common Core in particular - the move away from traditional narrative texts to more informational texts. I don't have time or I guess really the will to write about this now - but I wanted to make sure to pass this on.

"Common Core adopts a bottom-line, pragmatic approach to education. The heart of its philosophy is, as far as we can see, that it is a waste of resources to 'over-educate' people. The basic goal of K-12 schools is to provide everyone with a modest skill set; after that, people can specialize in college – if they end up there. Truck-drivers do not need to know Huck Finn. Physicians have no use for the humanities. Only those destined to major in literature need to worry about Ulysses.

Perhaps a truck-driver needs no acquaintance with Paradise Lost to do his or her day’s work. But everyone is better off knowing Shakespeare and Euclidean geometry, and everyone is capable of it. Everyone bears the responsibility of growing in wisdom and grace and in deliberating with fellow-citizens about how we should all live together. A sound education helps each of us to do so.

The sad facts about Common Core are most visible in its reduction in the study of classic, narrative fiction in favor of “informational texts.” This is a dramatic change. It is contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation. Proponents of Common Core do not disguise their intention to transform 'literacy' into a 'critical' skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature.

Professor Stotsky was the chief architect of the universally-praised Massachusetts English language arts standards, which contributed greatly to that state’s educational success. She describes Common Core as an incubator of 'empty skill sets . . . [that] weaken the basis of literary and cultural knowledge needed for authentic college coursework.' Rather than explore the creativity of man, the great lessons of life, tragedy, love, good and evil, the rich textures of history that underlie great works of fiction, and the tales of self-sacrifice and mercy in the works of the great writers that have shaped our cultural literacy over the centuries, Common Core reduces reading to a servile activity.

Professor Anthony Esolen, now at Providence College, has taught literature and poetry to college students for two decades. He provided testimony to a South Carolina legislative committee on the Common Core, lamenting its 'cavalier contempt for great works of human art and thought, in literary form.' He further declared: “We are not programming machines. We are teaching children. We are not producing functionaries, factory-like. We are to be forming the minds and hearts of men and women.”