Dan Willingham’s the special guest star again over at the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog, and he’s weighing in (again) on the draft ELA standards from the ‘Common Core’ State Standards Initiative. We’re intrigued by these pieces (here’s the first one) because Dan shares our concern about the lack of content specificity in the draft standards. This time around we’re not so sanguine about the fix he recommends.
He suggests an approach to adding content to the ELA document that he believes will avoid two common criticisms of prescriptive standards–the (bogus) claim that aesthetic judgments are arbitrary and the reasonable concern that too much specificity constrains teacher creativity. “Both objections spring from the idea that content standards should specify particular titles based on their literary merit,” Dan posits. “But that’s not the only way to write standards. Perhaps a better method would be to select literary movements based on their influence. Specifying literary movements (e.g., Modernism, The Lost Generation, Harlem Renaissance) rather than specific authors would better parallel standards in other disciplines.”
He futher flushes out the parallel to other disciplines later in the article: “The problem of selection is not that different than the problem in Biology, Chemistry, or American History. Selection is difficult because the domain is vast. In those subjects, the centrality of the topic to the field is a crucial determinant. Evolutionary theory is important to teach because so many of the subtopics within biology require a firm grasp of its concepts. Similarly, it makes sense that students have some familiarity with the literary movements that have been the most influential.”
At first glance, this seems like a logical approach. But the idea of movement-centered ELA standards falls apart under further examination. One reason Diane Ravitch just pointed out to me is that there are key figures whose works any educated person must study — Shakespeare, Melville, Twain — who arguably fell outside the boundaries of any obvious “movement.” And, to apply Dan’s thinking to the arts, can someone really have claimed to study the Renaissance, for example, if they have not studied Michelangelo and Leonardo? Dan’s approach would allow that to happen.
Finally, and most importantly, aesthetic determinations are not arbitrary. The postmodern fallacy that genius is a construct has infected discussion of aesthetics for some time. But it is invalidated by the evidence. We return to great artists of all types — Mozart, Dickens, Rembrandt — because the force of their genius pulls us to them time and again. “Movements” don’t have that power.
Lynne Munson
Do you support the English frameworks in Massachusetts and California? Your website suggests that you do. Yet they do not require specific works. In fact, I can’t find a single set of ELA standards on the planet that does more than suggest a (wide) range of authors, or require a selection of a broad range from a specific period (e.g., in England there is a single standard requiring some coverage of pre-20th century English literature).
Your analysis does not demonstrate an understanding of the role of English Language Arts standards.