Flabby to the ‘Core’ > Kennewick School District Citizens |
Flabby to the ‘Core’ > Kennewick School District Citizens
Teachers were told to “avoid giving any background context” because the Common Core strategy of so-called close reading “forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge and levels the playing field for all.”
This is truly stupid. Some students likely will have some knowledge of Abraham Lincoln — perhaps picked up from TV — and cannot be prevented from using it, Chaffee noted.
Students were not supposed to be asked if they had ever been to a funeral because that gets at “individual experience and opinion” and does not “move students closer to understanding” the address. The address is the greatest funeral oration of the modern age; to ban funerals from discussion is boneheaded.
The example forbids asking questions about the causes of the Civil War because they “go outside the text.” The example, said Chafee, thinks the address is “about equality and self-government, and not about picking sides.”
Picking sides — supporting a cause — is exactly what the address is about. Lincoln said it: That those listening “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain” for the Union. To teach otherwise is grave malpractice, and the Common Core is guilty. Massachusetts should get out while the getting is good.
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Flabby to the ‘Core’ > Kennewick School District Citizens |
Flabby to the ‘Core’ > Kennewick School District Citizens
Teachers were told to “avoid giving any background context” because the Common Core strategy of so-called close reading “forces students to rely exclusively on the text instead of privileging background knowledge and levels the playing field for all.”
This is truly stupid. Some students likely will have some knowledge of Abraham Lincoln — perhaps picked up from TV — and cannot be prevented from using it, Chaffee noted.
Students were not supposed to be asked if they had ever been to a funeral because that gets at “individual experience and opinion” and does not “move students closer to understanding” the address. The address is the greatest f
uneral oration of the modern age; to ban funerals from discussion is boneheaded.
The example forbids asking questions about the causes of the Civil War because they “go outside the text.” The example, said Chafee, thinks the address is “about equality and self-government, and not about picking sides.”
Picking sides — supporting a cause — is exactly what the address is about. Lincoln said it: That those listening “highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain” for the Union. To teach otherwise is grave malpractice, and the Common Core is guilty. Massachusetts should get out while the getting is good.
← The buzz…constitutional amendment on pensions? > IEA Capitol Report
Meet the Three ALEC Supporting Corporate Giants Who Dare You to Boycott Them →