There has been a lot of flap lately about the approaching
cataclysm that is the Common Core. If
you have not heard about this impending educational apocalypse, let me begin by
saying hi, welcome to the Internet! I’ll
be your guide.
At its core (the common one,) the concept seems pretty sound
and logical: every state is supposed to adhere to a set of standards, outlining
the basic skills and knowledge that every American student should possess by
the time he or she finishes high school.
Since all the states already rely on standardized tests to
track school progress (in keeping with our goal of Not Leaving Children Behind,)
this seems to follow quite logically.
Every math, science and history class is given an outline of what topics
to cover. In most cases, these will no
doubt be the stuff people are already covering in their classes. I don’t imagine for example, that most math
teachers are leaving out polynomials based on religious grounds, or that history
teachers habitually skip the Civil War because it’s too gory, and if they are, I think we all agree they should
stop that.
But when it comes to language arts, people get a little
touchy. As an English teacher myself, my
hackles raise any time someone comes at me with suggestions of why Macbeth might
not be worth students’ time, or why the Scarlet Letter is more important than
the Crucible (as a side note; fuck Nathaniel Hawthorne.)
And yet, I’m not one of the voices screeching in
protest. I’m not telling people to keep
their kids home from school as an act of demonstration against this
injustice. I have not taken to the
streets, torch and red pen raised aloft in righteous fury, to call for the head
of Anne Duncan on a silver EZ Grader.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the Common Core, while perhaps reasonable
and appropriate in theory, will of course be an utter abomination in
practice. I have no doubt whatsoever
that it will be an overly restrictive, needlessly cumbersome and ineffective
nightmare of bureaucratic doublespeak and wooly-headed numbskullery.
Indeed, in all the complaints I have read online (many from
my fervently pro-homeschooling fiends,) they have not even addressed the most
heinous (to me) aspect of this misguided attempt at didactical accord.
You see, one of the principal ‘developments’ the Common Core
adds to the language arts curriculum is that 80% of what students read is
supposed to be informational texts.
Can you imagine?
We’re not talking about remedial reading or test prep courses here; they
mean regular old English classes. You
know, the classes that originally taught Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird and
Of Mice & Men? Those classes are now
meant to spend the bulk of their time reading nonfiction.
Kind of makes you wonder what they will be reading in their
other classes. Isn’t that where they are
supposed to be reading nonfiction?
And I’ve seen the proposed textbooks my school is supposed
to use next year; they’re just plain awful.
They’ve taken out an appalling number of stories, and replaced them with
essays and ‘human interest’ articles, presumably because they felt that there
was no good reason for high school students to spend so much time reading
‘made-up stuff.’
As for the stories that they did leave in, many of those
have been cut down to excerpts. No need
to read an entire novel, I mean who in this day and age needs to read all of Huckleberry Finn? Surely the first chapter would be enough to get the general gist of the book? And when reading Moby Dick, why not skip right to the part where (spoiler alert) Ahab dies, and skip all that needless buildup? And once you've read "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," how much more of A Tale of Two Cities do you really need?
If you’re going to get rid of that much of a story, you
might as well burn the entire book, like they did in Bradbury's,
“Fahrenheit 45.”
So yeah, it’s going to be terrible, and limiting, and
designed to make our children soulless drones to prepare them for lives of
mindless drudgery blah, blah blah.
But I ain’t scared.
I’m not worried about the big bad Common Core one little bit. They can strip the lit out of our lit books,
they can mandate half the week be spent administering diagnostic tests, or cut
the Grapes of Wrath down until it’s the happy tale of one man getting out of
jail, it won’t make one bit of difference to me.
Because I’m a bad teacher.
My record of educational intransigence and obstinacy is well
established, generations of past students can substantiate my bona fides as
pertains to professional pugnacity and any administrator at my school will
gladly testify to my history of heterodoxy.
When it comes to adhering to the strictures of a rigid
curriculum, I am the magister of mavericks, the demigod of demagogues, the
bellwether of belligerence. In short, in
matters vegetable animal or mineral, I am the very model of a modern major
malcontent.
I don’t follow orders well, is what I am getting at.
In my fifteen years of experience, I have always taught my
classes in the manner I felt was best for my students. That means not teaching the same way from
year to year, not teaching the same way from class period to class period, not
teaching the same way the teacher down the hall does it, and it most certainly
means not teaching according to the Great Ineffable Plan set before me by the
County, State or Federal Government.
Every year, I change my teaching based upon what I learn
about my students themselves. I do my
best to teach what I feel to be the most vital and appropriate aspects of each
curriculum, emphasizing those portions that experience has taught me should have the
most impact on the lives of these students, and deemphasizing those more
trivial aspects, which I tend to view as serving suggestions; no more than the
picture on the front of the cereal box, and sometimes you just don’t have time
in the morning to put strawberries in your Cheerios.
And I’m not alone.
While some outside the profession may see this attitude as
woefully unprofessional and a shocking abuse of authority, those who actually work with children understand that there
SIMPLY IS NO ONE APPROACH OR SOLUTION
THAT CAN BE FAIRLY APPLIED TO ALL STUDENTS.
And so we teachers edit.
We append, we modify, we adjust and we re-kajigger (like making up words
when necessary.) Assignments get
simplified, assignments get expanded, ancillary materials are added, others are
elided as fits the needs and best practices of the students.
No two teachers in my department teach the same exact
things, in the same exact way. And that
is because I am fortunate enough to work in a department of excellent
teachers. If you find out one of your
child’s teachers is teaching from someone else’s lesson plans without modifying
them to taste, you keep an eye on that teacher, they might be a robot (or at
least an inexperienced teacher.)
There’s nothing wrong with strawberries on your Cheerios,
but make sure no one is allergic before serving.
So that Common Core?
It won’t make good teachers into bad teachers. We are still going to teach as we see
fit. 80% nonfiction? I’m an English major, my math skills aren’t
that good. Cut down the reading
excerpts? Bitch, I already own copies of
all the books, this won’t be the first time I’ve had to shell out money for
books or photocopies (fair use guidelines, y’all.)
No, I know that the majority of teachers will not be daunted
by the Common Core. We will make the
core uncommon, and continue carrying out its stated mandate, as we have done
all along.
To give each of our students the same exact kind of
education: The best that we can.
