Studying the Gettysburg Address under Common Core

[NJCubScouter]

Yes, let's be done with the name calling.

[qwazse]

Yes' date=' let's be done with the name calling.[/quote']

 

Moderators and their restricted appetite for sarcasm.

[Stosh]

At one time our education system was monitored by the people on the local school boards. For a couple hundred years we did pretty well. No, we did fantastic. Now we have abused the education system to the point where we have a national board of education that is totally and 100% out of touch with the people and are setting down standards that are basically a generic one size fits all. How's about going back to having the people decide what their kids learn and if they don't learn anything, that's okay too. We have plenty of examples of that even with the current system.

 

Stosh

[fred johnson]

I'm going to say this regardless of how politically incorrect it might be - Common Core is being dropped by some states because it has been politicized ....

 

I dropped the rest because it's just ugly hate speech and insults. It helps no one.

 

I read the lesson plan that was referenced and linked above. It actually looks reasonable. I don't understand the controversy. Different teaching techniques are needed at different times by different subjects. This lesson is less about history and more about critical reading and understanding challenging text.

 

Common core is being politicized. But it's from the teachers side and from groups who tend to have lower literacy rates. Teachers protest because they change how they teach to get their students score better (aka teaching to the test) and teachers have real pressure to have their students score higher. Lower literacy groups because it represents them poorly. On the flip side, other groups want more accountability from unionized groups that are often beyond reach.

 

​Numbers are needed. Comparisons need to be done. Without it, how do you discuss anything except assertions not defended.

 

People hate being monitored. People protest whenever it hits them. Truck drivers and pilots frustrated that they can't work more than X hours in a day as a standard when some can and others can't. Software engineers who don't want to provide cost estimates or be accountable for defect rates. My favorite is that doctors and surgeons who claim special training that allows them to focus for longer times. So they can do unlimited surgery and practicing medicine while another person is only trusted to point a vechicle forward for ten hours.

 

Perhaps the pressure should be removed. But measurements and baselines are needed.

 

[TAHAWK]

Had I know this thread would devolve into name-calling, I would not have started it.

 

As for the objectives of the unit being discussed, here is what Common Core says are the objectives (Not that some of these words from CC were not linked above.):

 

The activities and actions described below follow a carefully developed set of steps that assist students in increasing their familiarity and understanding of Lincoln’s speech through a series of text dependent tasks and questions that ultimately develop college and career ready skills identified in the Common Core State Standards.

 

Note "understanding" the speech is an objective. I question an effort to have anyone understand a speech from over a century ago without studying the words in context, as do acknowledged educational experts.

 

The Common Core emphasizes the importance of “close reading,†that is, understanding the meaning of a text without reference to context or background knowledge, which presumably might privilege some students over others.

 

How one prevents "reference to context or background knowledge" escapes me. It is like a judge instructing a jury to "disregard" some highly shocking piece of testimony. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"?

 

The Gettysburg Address was not an academic exercise in rhetoric. It was a political speech. "Understanding" is a result of reading it, carefully to be sure, in context. If not everyone understands the context, I submit that a better solution is educating those who do not know rather than attempting to avoid "privilege" reading the speech in a vacuum of ignorance of the context.

 

 

Try having a candidate for Citizenship in the Nation "understand" the Constitution in the abstract. Are we not guided in an effort to understand the words by knowing that those who wrote the words were revolutionaries who had fought bloody battles against the incumbent, legal government AND who were, in many cases, slave-holders who regarded those of Africans decent as less than fully human?

 

[packsaddle]

"Had I know this thread would devolve into name-calling, I would not have started it."

I'm laughing so hard I'm slapping my knee. What part of I&P do you not understand?

 

In this state, CC was rejected so harshly that when the state board of education was instructed to create a new set of standards, they were also instructed that they couldn't reference or even READ the CC. And worse, they were given an impossibly short time to create the new standards. I say impossible because the political process itself (nevermind writing the standards) required more time than they were given. Does the term 'stupid' come to anyone's mind here?

So after the political time frame finally hit home and the SBOE struggled to figure out how to write good standards that were substantially different from CC without actually referring to the CC, the process bogged down and almost without exception, the teachers I interact with say that the problem is that any standards that are likely to replace CC are probably going to be weaker than CC. Result: we're continuing with the old standards - which compared nationally, are actually fairly good....problem is...they 'look' a little like CC. If anyone is wondering why that is, I can tell you privately. It's a good story.

 

As for science and especially biology standards, we're also continuing the struggle there as well...but with fairly good success.

[TAHAWK]

I'm laughing so hard I'm slapping my knee. What part of I&P do you not understand?

 

I suppose the day is not totally lost if I can make someone laugh.

 

 

[TAHAWK]

There is a major misunderstanding here of just what these lessons are for - they are NOT' date=' as is being bandied about, part of a History or Social Studies curriculum. Common Core does not have any standards for History and Social Studies. Common Core does not have any standards for Sciences like Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geology, etc. Common Core has standards for Literacy (reading, writing, etc.) and Mathematics only.[/quote']

 

I do so try not to bandy - especially on weekdays. The materials (linked above) from Common Core say the following about the materials in question:

 

Common Core-aligned materials and lessons for teachers of history and social studies.

 

Source: http://achievethecore.org/page/737/history-social-studies-lessons

 

 

Oh - and don't claim HuffPo has problems with the Common Core when the article is an opinion piece by one specific writer in the HuffPo "blog" section which is analogous to the Letters to the Editor/Editorial Pages of a newspaper who also specifically states the opinions expressed are his alone. It isn't HuffPo that has problems with Common Core, it is Alan Singer of Hoefstra University. Context!

 

Absolutely correct. Just published by Huffington Post. I do not preclude the possibility that Huffington Post publishes articles with which it disagrees.

 

Huffington also published Singer's article: "Common Core, What Is It Good For?"" (No, oldsters, not "absolutely nuthin'")

[Scouter99]

From a literary standpoint' date=' one should be able to read the Gettysburg Address and, without having been told anything about it before hand, know that the US in in a war, Lincoln is speaking at a battlefield of that war, Lincoln is honoring the brave soldiers that fought and died there for their country, and that Lincoln is declaring how important it is to keep moving forward, to keep fighting for the country as conceived by our forefathers. The address also happens to have a great example of how a single word, like Dedicate, can have multiple meanings in one text. That's part of literacy too.[/quote']

 

It's clear that your interpretations are informed by your white cis-male heterosexual patriarch privilege.

 

Why is a soldier brave for fighting for his country? A country that calls on a citizen to fight has failed in its mission to safeguard the life and liberty of that citizen, the brave solider refuses to fight.

 

What makes a battlefield "great"? No battlefield is great, battlefields are monuments to the failure of the state and to the murder of innocents.

 

Why is it important to "move forward" by dying for a failed state?

 

Your beliefs that the soldier is brave, the battlefield is "great" and the virtue of death for a failed experiment are grounded in your toxic ideals of masculine as murderous, which is your privileged pre-knowledge.

[packsaddle]

Wow, I never would have thought you felt that way about the GA and war, or battle bravery, etc, Scouter99. It's for sure the first time I've ever considered that point of view. Fascinating

[fred johnson]

It's clear that your interpretations are informed by your white cis-male heterosexual patriarch privilege. ... ...

 

Wow. Your shameful statement just goes downhill providing more insult and ignorance. Shame.

[TAHAWK]

As Spock has just passed on:

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."

 

And:

 

The necessary is not equivalent to the good. It is, nonetheless, necessary.

 

 

99's post is why we want children to study war: so they know how awful it is and, sometimes, how necessary.

 

As is sleep.

[NJCubScouter]

Everybody knows Scouter99 was being sarcastic, right? And I had to look up "cis-male." Good grief. I guess I don't keep up with the radical-left lingo as well as Scouter99 does.

[TAHAWK]

No. But he raises a point that should be considered before we send our youth to war. It is a point considered by many national leaders, even those who led armies in battle. That answers may vary does not make the question illegitimate.

[fred johnson]

Everybody knows Scouter99 was being sarcastic' date=' right? And I had to look up "cis-male." Good grief. I guess I don't keep up with the radical-left lingo as well as Scouter99 does.[/quote']

 

If so, then my apologies to Scouter99. I missed the sarcasm side as I've heard words many many times that are so similar to what he wrote that it makes me sad.