S Krashen
NABE Perspectives just published an
article that to me reads like a commercial for the Common Core. Prof. Anita
Pandey interviewed three students, four teachers,
five parents and one administrator, and quoted a radio interview with the D.C. Schools
Chancellor. All those interviewed presented a cheerful view of the
common core curriculum, with only gentle criticisms, expressed as concerns.
There was no mention of any of the serious criticism of the common core
published in the professional literature and the media, including those in NABE
publications (Krashen, 2011, 2012).
The interviews included this segment, presented enlarged in a box on page 12:
Nick Rotoli (Assistant Superintendent, Haverferd School District, PA): Some teachers are asking: “Are our youngsters being asked to do things that many of them are not developmentally ready to do?”
Prof. Pandey: There’s only one way to find out,
right?
In my experience, one is never too young or too old to learn, and it’s
better to overestimate our children and to set the bar high than to
underestimate them.
But there is another way to find out: Read the professional literature,
interview teachers, and do small-scale pilot studies. There are apparently are
no plans for doing this. Instead we are going ahead and imposing the standards
anyway, deliberating erring on the side of too hard rather than too easy, and
ignoring the words of Dewey: the value of what students do
"resides in its connection with a stimulation of greater thoughtfulness, not in the greater
strain it imposes." (Kohn, 1999).
Pandey, A. 2013. Concerned about Common Core? Conversations with students, teachers, parents,
a
policy maker, & a superintendent. NABE Perspectives 35(3):5-20.
Kohn, A. 1999. Confusing harder with better. Education Week, September
15, 1999. http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/chwb.htm
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