Archive for September, 2011

History Matters

Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, writes that history matters—and our students poor performance in the subject is cause for concern:

“It’s the other things that subjects like history impart: critical thinking, research skills, and the ability to communicate clearly and cogently. Such skills are certainly important for those at the top, but in today’s economy they are fundamental to performance at nearly every level … . Now is a time to re-establish history’s importance in American education.”

Augustine’s not the first businessman to argue for history education because of the skills its study engenders—the so-called 21st century skills particularly important in the face of economic recession. But he understands rightly that only deep interaction with the content of history can build these skills. He writes, “Having traveled in 109 countries in this global economy, I have developed a considerable appreciation for the importance of knowing a country’s history and politics.”

In 1985, historian Paul Gagnon also made an argument for the study of history—but not because that particular generation of students needed it more than others. According to Gagnon, history’s offerings transcend generational needs:

“If American education is ever to be made democratic, so that, as deTocqueville said, democracy may be educated, nothing will be more crucial than a common, sequential study of history throughout the elementary and secondary years. Only history, and particularly the study of Western civilization, can begin to help us find who we are and what choices we have before us.”

Stephanie Porowski

Posted in History/Social Studies | No Comments »

Educating Our Students for the Future

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Are education reformers—and even educators themselves—capable of forecasting the education “essentials” of tomorrow?  In an article for Education Week, Christopher Doyle challenges the notion of a set of 21st century skills. Historically, he writes, we have been unsuccessful at predicting skills essential to the future. He points to forward-thinking talents like Einstein, Freud, Gandhi, and Picasso, “those truly oriented to the future,” who felt “alienated in their own time.” Such artists and thinkers deviated from the educational norms of their day to blaze their own paths to success.

In contrast to those who would teach the skills of the future, he offers his agenda as a teacher:

“It is to teach my subject matter, history, to the best of my ability. This includes trying to understand and reach a generation of high school students whose intellectual world is increasingly fragmented into sound bites, PowerPoint bullets, text messages, Facebook posts, and “tweets,” and who appear rapidly to be losing the capacity for lengthy reading, synthesis of thought, and critical analysis. My agenda also encompasses linking the past to current events such as climate change, economic and debt crises, and wars on terrorism. I aspire additionally to teach empathy and ethics, qualities that I believe the discipline of history is uniquely capable of developing. And I seek to improve my students’ skill at writing while sharpening their capacity for critical thought.

“I do not know if any of this qualifies as ‘21st century.’ It often seems difficult enough; yet it appears far more realistic and hopeful to stick to my subject than to chart a suspect course toward a badly drawn image of the future.”

Still, reformers, such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, continue to re-package skills that have been taught for centuries in shiny new jargon.  Leaving us to wonder if the artists and philosophers of tomorrow are being any better served in the classrooms of the 21st century than they were in those of the 19th.

Hillary Marder

Posted in 21st Century Skills | 2 Comments »

Good Technology Won’t Cover for Bad Curriculum

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011

Even in the midst of budget cuts, education leaders are investing billions of dollars in technology. School leaders, education reformers, and the business world, in particular, herald digital devises that “let students learn at their own pace, teach skills needed in a modern economy and hold the attention of a generation weaned on gadgets” as education’s next savior.

But the technological emphasis is largely untested and, when available, data shows moderate if any student achievement gains. Fordham’s Peter Meyer offers insight:

“[I]t would seem … as happened to the charter school movement, which spent lots of time and energy debating the chartering process and defending it in the face of frequent lackluster performance numbers, the technological classroom is late to an appreciation of the essential elements of education; mainly, the importance of knowledge.  What should our kids know?  David Cohen of the University of Michigan told a gathering of education journalists last May (see my Digital Divide post) that all the technology in the world won’t help if you don’t get the curriculum right.  (And speaking of charters, I once asked KIPP co-founder David Levin how important curriculum was to KIPP’s success. ‘Very,’ he said.)”

Read more, here.

Posted in Curriculum, Technology | No Comments »

Cut and Pasted!

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Our disagreement with the skills-centric movement in education, particularly our criticism of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), is no secret. We’ve criticized P21 again and again for their evidence-free rhetoric, shallow curricular models, and “cut-and-paste” approach to subject matter knowledge (Why learn things when you can just find them on the Internet?). So we’re chagrined to find ourselves the victim of a P21 “cut-and-paste.”

P21 has included an unrepresentative excerpt of one of our curriculum Maps in its new Common Core Toolkit (see page 18). They’ve done this in a manner which reveals, once again, their deep misunderstanding of the key role that subject matter knowledge plays in learning.

P21 cut and pasted the overview of our Grade 8, Unit 4 unit on “Authors and Artists” into their document:

In this unit, students step back and consider the motivations of authors and artists alike: What inspires artists? Are their inspirations similar or different? How is the process of creating a painting or sculpture similar to and different from the process of writing a story or poem? Students read books written about artists and study artwork found in museums across America. Students work with classmates to discern the unspoken meaning in literature and art. Students also discuss illustrations and other forms of commercial art, looking for differences and similarities in fine and commercial art, in terms of both its motivation and its presentation. They write an informative/explanatory essay about an artist of interest. The unit ends with an informative/explanatory essay in response to the essential question: How are artists and authors similar?

P21 put forward this, along with two (of our eight) CCSS “focus” standards from our unit, as one of eight “Sample ELA Lesson Starters” in its toolkit. It offered no other specifics from our unit, which lists 10 specific student learning objective, recommends more then two dozen readings on figures from Mark Twain to Mary Cassatt, Maya Angelou to Marc Chagall, along with eight paintings, and seventeen student activities illustrating how to meet the new standards while deepening student knowledge of important authors and artists.  Here’s just one example of the kind of activity we recommend:

Examine and discuss the variety of perspectives used by the artists in the artworks (e.g., worm’s-eye view, sitting at the table, far away, or up close). Identify the perspective in each work. How does the perspective affect the viewer’s relationship to the work? For instance, in the works by Caravaggio and Cézanne, does it seem as if there is a spot left for the viewer at the table? How does this differ from the perspective in [Hieronymous] Bosch’s work? What about [Chuck] Close’s? How do these artists use perspective to draw viewers in? Write responses to these questions in your journal and share with a partner prior to class discussion. Discuss how this compares to authors’ use of point of view in the characters they create.

Our Maps are informed by the cognitive science that has demonstrated that in order to think critically about a topic, students must study content directly related to it. As Andy Rotherham and Dan Willingham write, “All content is not equally important to mathematics, or to science, or to literature. To think critically, students need the knowledge that is central to the domain.”

As much as we want to share our work, we do not appreciate P21 cannibalizing our curriculum Maps and do not believe that their appropriation can be helpful to anyone. The teachers who wrote our Maps worked tirelessly to connect the skills identified in the standards with rich texts and works of art, with essential knowledge. And now their work is being further enhanced by the teachers nationwide who are using our Maps to create their own informed and imaginative lessons. We’d prefer P21 not cheapen their work and ours with a sloppy “cut and paste.”

Lynne Munson

 

Posted in 21st Century Skills, Curriculum | 1 Comment »