Dear Deborah,
I always find myself in agreement with your judgments about teaching, which are invariably wise. Yet I am often, as in this instance, unable to follow your logic when applied to district-wide, statewide, or national-wide policies. Like you, I think it is wonderful to teach argument, to encourage students to think about alternative interpretations, to realize that their textbooks are not necessarily authoritative, to prepare for democratic life by thinking independently.
Still, it seems to me, unless I am misreading you, that you are opposed not only to tests, but to curriculum as well. Here and elsewhere, you have made clear your strong opposition to any standardized testing. Again, unless I wasn't listening closely enough, there is no standardized test that wins your approval. That's OK. It's a principled position, and you make a good case. But no matter how good your case, standardized testing is not going away, so I believe that we should try to come up with sensible ways to improve such testing and to limit the excessive test prep that is ruining so many classrooms.
You end with a swipe at the NAEP proficiency cut points. It's true that they have been criticized by various reviews; it is also true that the NAEP staff and board commissioned most of those reviews and have responded to them over the years. Without question, NAEP is the most heavily studied, analyzed, and evaluated testing program in the United States. I also think it is a better test than any state test that I have seen. If you want to know what it "covers," go to the NAEP website and you will find curriculum frameworks for every subject tested, as well as large numbers of sample questions in each subject. I don't know of any other test that is as forthcoming in describing in detail what it covers.
I find it harder to understand, however, what seems to be your opposition to curriculum. In good old-fashioned progressivist fashion, you want classrooms where teachers can explore a question that a student raises and make that question the topic of the day, the week, maybe longer. Presuming that in a class of two dozen students, there are at least two dozen questions, the entire semester could be spent exploring interesting questions raised by students. The teacher could wander from topic to topic or revisit an old topic or whatever.
This is a description, I would guess, of a school or a district in which there is no set curriculum. As you know better than most people, many teachers would find this mode of teaching to be extremely stressful. It is hard to prepare for the day's lesson when you don't know what it will be until Maria or Johnny raises an interesting question. (I remember when I was in school—probably junior high school—my friends and I used to raise "interesting questions" as a way to distract the teacher and pass the time in class on our terms, shooting the breeze, not hers.)
I truly don't see why you find it objectionable to know what the curriculum for each year's studies will be. Is it really so awful that many fifth-grade classes study the founding of the American nation and the American Revolution, or that eighth-graders are likely to study the Civil War? It would seem to me that teachers can organize their work better if they know what they are supposed to teach. And that within the limits of an organized curriculum, there is plenty of room for students to debate, argue, search for alternative explanations, explore alternative sources, etc.
This is a matter on which I expect we will never bridge our differences. I do believe that whatever the subject, be it science, history, or mathematics, it is valuable to have a curriculum, a definition of the topics and main ideas that will be taught during the course of the year. I believe that it is valuable for teachers, students, and even for parents, who know what their children will be learning. I don't see that this implies any diminution of the teacher's freedom to teach or the student's ability to raise questions and engage in debate and argument.
Diane
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Who's Afraid of Curriculum?
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Dear Diane,
I don't believe that teaching by argument and teaching according to set curriculums are mutually exclusive. I'm not sure that Deborah is strictly advocating for that either.
I hope she corrects me if I'm wrong, but I think she's advocating that set curriculums, even if based on traditional/classic topics (Founding Fathers) or books (Huck Finn), can be occasionally modified to allow for exploratory/contingent propositions introduced by students. It seems that Deborah is trying to allow for something organic or inductive in teaching. You start with X topic, but make it X-Y in accordance with the students' interests (and with the teacher's discriminating judgment in mind). Unfortunately, strict testing regimes, part and parcel with the NCLB laws, don't seem to easily allow for x-y learning situations.
Sincerely,
Tim Lacy
Chicago, IL
Diane,
Not only do we need a set curriculum, we need a COMMON set curriculum, nationally. If we had a national curriculum youngsters from across the country would then have access to the same rich body of knowledge we would want for our own children. Kids from Mississippi would be expected to learn as much as their peers in Massachusetts. And why do we need this common curriculum? Because (most) children do not have the wherewithal to determine what they should study/learn or when they should study/learn it. That's why here on planet Earth, adults make the important decisions. There's not a town, a village, a city, a state, a country, or a continent where children are allowed to make important decisions about their upbringing. Adults simply know better. They've had the life experiences, a fuller education, that children have not had, to make these important determinations for children. I'm not talking about what kind of sandwich they want for lunch or what sweatshirt they want to wear to school. What children should learn and when they should learn it are too important to be left for children to decide. This is not intended to be dictatorial, it's simply pragmatic. Should students have decisions to make in school? Of course they should, but they should not be given carte blanch calls on what to study or not study in school, especially elementary and middle school youngsters. I discussed this topic with my class every year asking them; which of you are going to allow your seven or eight year old to tell you (the parent) what time they're going to go to bed each night? Whether they should or should not do their homework? What they're allowed to watch on television? Whether they should or should not brush their teeth every day? Etc.? When children have academic interests they should be encouraged to pursue these interests. But their interests cannot usurp or determine a curriculum for a class, a district, a state, or a country.
Summerhill never caught on for a reason. Too many adults had too much good sense to sanction/condone such a school environment. Deborah is entitled to her opinion but…
Paul,
I agree with you, for all the reasons stated. I have a hard time understanding the rationale for fifty states, fifty standards, fifty tests. Makes no sense. It seems to me also to be profoundly inequitable. I agree with those who says that curriculum isn't everything; it's not. There are lots of important things that contribute to a good education besides curriculum. And no, I don't expect that schooling can equalize all conditions. It can't. But curriculum does matter; I don't see a reason to dismiss its significance out of hand, as so many do. Like you, I think that having access to a good curriculum--and having a common national curriculum-- would promote social equity. Not solve all problems, but equalize the possibility of good education for more children.
Diane Ravitch
I'm not sure I agree with a "national curriculum" - but whether I do or not I have a feeling we're not going to get 50 states to agree exactly what that curriculum would be - do you???
Brian,
Yes, it is hard to imagine a national curriculum--until you review the NAEP frameworks and see that we already have something very much like a national curriculum. Or look at our U.S. history textbooks and discover that they are indistinguishable. Or look at science textbooks and reach the same conclusion. Or look at the test questions for TIMSS or PISA and see that there is already something akin to an international curriculum in math and science. It wouldn't be that hard!
Diane Ravitch
Is it so awful. asks Diane? The best teachers I know find it so. Just as they find those textbooks--that try to cover too much while also avoiding controversy. It's not Summerhill we're arguing about, Paul. But if you build a strong and powerful adult community curriculum--not just pedagogy--is one of the things faculties care deeply about. They know that to get the best from the kids they need to attend to their interests, their own and the world out there that we are jointly trying to uncover--not cover.
Besides, Brian is probably right. The textbook publishers have watered things down to meet different state "biases", building a national concensus will require the same. None of this is too serious if what we are collecting is "just" information. And in that case a sample of the whole will do just fine. The old NAEP, in short.
Deborah
Deborah,
You ARE an idealist. That's meant to be a compliment.
I'd like a national curriculum as a minimum tablet of information for kids to be exposed to. Whether they get excited enough about a topic or subject to pursue it on their own is the idea. Again, I'm probably traditional, and old fashinoed because I believe adults simply know what's better for kids than most kids do for themselves. Regimented? Insecure? Rational? Pragmatic? Guess that's what makes the world go around.
Diane, I couldn't agree more about curriculum. Our children need to to learn to think but they need "something" to think about. Thinking is not an isolated skill, but an ability to integrate disparate knowledge into new and interesting ideas. To be able to generate "new" ideas, children need to be extremely familiar with the "old" ideas.
What is a shame is that we as adults are unwilling to articulate and translate into a educational curriculum what knowledge, skills and abilities our children need to grow into thinking, rational adults. Consequently, we end up with the thin, watered down, boring textbooks/test prep worksheets that my children must slog though. Books with real content/information/facts are so much more interesting and are able to stimulate the types of discussions that Deborah envisions in a wonderful interactive classroom.
Asking teachers to be entirely responsible for deciding "what" children should learn is overwelming and disrespectful of the needs of their job. The "how" of teaching is difficult enough as it is. It is unreasonable for us (the public) to put the enormous effort at articulating the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities needed by our children entirely on the shoulders of our teachers. They work hard enough as it is.
Unfortunately, our system is not set up for a national curriculum. Neither our states nor the federal government have shown any ability to lead us in a direction that will improve education. Testing and accountability alone only shows us where we are not. Leadership about how to best proceed is what education needs and can not be provided for by politicians.
What would work is a clear articulation by our colleges what a high school education should be. (Clear course/syllabus outline along with end-of-course testing to obtain a high school diploma or entry into college.) This is something our colleges can and should do. (And yes, critical thinking questions within the scope of the course syllabus should be included in any end-of-course exam and if you need any examples of these types of questions, I can refer you to my professors in college/grad school who excelled at producing such interesting questions!)
Clarity about what education is/should be would be helpful to both student and teacher, alike. And this is something that in our country only colleges can do.
Best,
Erin Johnson, Ph.D.
Los Altos, CA
A national curriculum seems reasonable from the outside. The problem is, who determines what will be in that curriculum? My experience has been that curriculums always have too much, too much coverage, too many items, too much text. The overabundance of curriculum leads to teaching that is thin and boring, a kind of dish-it-out-to the students-and-hope-something-sticks curriculum. Yet, the folks that are asked to design these curriculums do not seem to be able to thin anything down. When we can't agree we just include it all. I like that the Japanese curriculum and texts are revised and edited by teachers. They cut it all down to the core so that there is time left for teaching, and talk, and student exploration, and (god forbid) thinking. I have a sample of Japanese elementary math texts and it is exhilarating to see how they have honed their curriculum. Why do we seem unable to do this in this country? In my district, after the state has finished designing a too large curriculum, the district adds its own, just in case the teachers are thinking about including some time for thought. Wouldn't want that to happen.