The common core has been murderous for English classrooms, mandating that students read over 50% informational text throughout grade school and as high as 80% in eighth grade and beyond. Articles from 'Popular Mechanics' about driverless cars and why blue whales are so enormous have taken the place of classic literature because, according to the drafters, boys do not read fiction and prefer topics such as technology, history and science. Most importantly, students need to be able to analyze text, think critically, develop logical arguments and defend these arguments with evidence cited from multiple pieces of text.
Sounds like we're grooming future lawyers and politicians, not readers, writers and thinkers.
The common core crew chatters on and on about how teachers need to have mastery of the content they are teaching in order to guide learners to "work towards gaining a deep meaning of the content; an understanding that goes beyond the surface knowledge of facts and information....to promote "deep reflection of the content and concepts covered..."
(If the amount of buzzwords crammed into those two sentences haven't made you roll your eyes in disdain, here's some more!)
"Learners are asked to develop and use skills for reflective practice through discussing, reviewing, analyzing, evaluating, and synthesizing"
It's clear that none of the creators of the Common Core ELA standards have ever read Jules Verne, Richard Wright, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Ralph Ellison (authors that appeal to boys, by the way...and foster a bit more thinking, pondering and discussion than the fatness of whales).
For all those Radical English Teachers out there, I will be compiling some of the best excerpts from classic texts that unfortunately our students are not being exposed to in future posts.
Stay tuned...
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