How about you take a look at ten minutes of video. David Coleman lead the language arts team for Common Core, even though he has never been a teacher.
Due warning - Coleman is now head of the College Board, and in that capacity responsible for both the SATs and the Advanced Placement examinations.
Thus how he approaches things will carry inordinate weight in shaping education for America's future.
So take a look, and then see what you think.
For myself, I have serious problems with his approach. For what it is worth, Coleman thinks it might take 5 class periods to do justice to the document in question, King's Letter from Birmingham Jail.
In fact, I do not think it would take more than parts of three class periods, 30 minutes of each.
1. Watch video of events in Birmingham
-- the children's March
-- the police dogs and fire hoses
2. Read the original statement in the New York Times that so provoked King and discuss
3. Read and discuss the letter itself.
Each of the segments listed above is far broader than the two individual texts, each of which serves as a window to understanding and connecting with the broader issues of which they are a part.
But Coleman's approach is to read the document in isolation, without context. Sorry, but that is poor teaching, and will not connect with the vast majority of our adolescents.
But then what do I know? I have only taught social studies - history and government - for more than 17 years. Clearly what I have to say is irrelevant.
But there is so much more.
We are now seeing examples of people providing "professional development" in line with the Common Core.
Common Core has a strong emphasis on "close reading."
If you really want to see how perverse this can be, let me give you an example of such "professional development" where the person presenting is arguing that a text of less than 300 words will take several periods to read closely. It takes 48 minutes for her to discuss how to present the lesson(s).
The text is the Gettysburg Address.
If you can tolerate, here is the video:
If this is what the Common Core will be, then I want no part of it.
But teacherken, you tell me, you are talking about English Language Arts standards.
No I'm not.
Both examples I have given you are texts from American History that are also relevant for Government classes.
Both presentations are by people intimately involved with designing and presenting the Common Core.
Neither is a teacher, which is obvious.
And I find it amusing that she says "If this was a lesson...." demonstrating that she is NOT an English Language Arts person, since apparently she does not understand the use of the conditional subjunctive - it should be "If this were a lesson. . ."
And then there is this additional video:
For all the verbiage that Common Core is not telling us how to teach, in fact it is.
Its notion of "close reading" is only one possible way of viewing a text. And it is an approach that has the student reading the text out of context, reducing its value for understanding and serving as a window to understanding the time in which it was produced.
It is not how I would teach either text.
I'd like to think my track record as a successful teacher should stand for something.
The tests that will be based upon Common Core, and upon this kind of approach are not going to serve our students well.
And I cannot help but wonder whether the insistence upon "close reading" is to make it easier to machine grade student answers - the more words quoted directly from the text the higher the score? What about student ability to restate, to paraphrase, to summarize?
Yes, there is a value to closely examining a text.
But it is far from the only value of a text like either of those offered in the first two videos.
Do I really want to keep teaching if this is what is happening to my profession?
I am not the only one asking that question.