Irony and Common Core

Posted on | October 19, 2009 | Comments Off

Doug Noon quotes approvingly from a piece by Elizabeth Moje and her co-authors entitled: Reinventing adolescent literacy for new times: A commentary on perennial and millennial issues in adolescent literacy (PDF):

Critical consumers situate recommendations, determining where they are coming from and where they would like us to go. Critical consumers continually question claims, analyzing, comparing, and evaluating what is said.

Doug notes the touch of irony in the fact that this article is one of only six articles listed in the ‘Disciplinary Literary Research’ section of Common Core’s English Language Arts Standards (PDF). Why ironic? Because, of course, any set of ’standards’, as Doug notes, is ‘built on a set of values’. So, interpreting Moje et al:

They ask us to think about who says a practice is best, and what is the philosophical orientation of the author; what is the basis for a claim, and how its effectiveness is determined. They also recommend, among other things, that we think about who a practice benefits, when a practice is appropriate, and whether educators are treated as professional decision makers or assembly line workers.

These are very good questions to ask of any set of standards in any facet of life, but they are particularly pertinent in education, where it is critical to understand the cultural values that are built into any set of standards being imposed on society. While Common Core is an American entity, and their aim is to set standards for American education – an aim that is being endorsed, it would seem, by all but two US states and by a range of heavy-weight educational lobbies and organizations – the same questions need to be asked of the standards set for any education system.

In the light of this, Doug points us to Tom Hoffman’s 10 Reasons you should care about the Common Core State Standards Initiative’s Draft English Language Arts Standards.

It makes interesting reading, I would say, for very many countries around the world at the present time.

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