Hirsch and the New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards

1. Hirsch and the New Jersey Core Curriculum Standards By: Bridget Abatemarco Shamus Burke Eileen Czarnecki

2. “The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the levels of skill, literacy, and training essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany competent performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life. A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom.” --A Nation at Risk, 1983

3. Literacy in the United States • National literacy has been declining since 1965 • There has been a decline in High School students’ abilities to understand written material • Verbal SAT scores have declined • Children do not know things we used to assume they know • The decline in literacy and the decline in shared knowledge is related • Literacy requires large amounts of specific information

4. How to increase literacy • Children need to be exposed to a wide range of knowledge • To be a good reader you need to know about a lot of things • Children should be taught the classics • Increase cultural literacy • Reading comprehension requires more than formal decoding skills • Comprehension requires a wide range of background knowledge • It also requires shared knowledge

5. General Knowledge Test • The best predictor of how well a student will do in school is his/ her performance on a general knowledge test • There is a high correlation between how well a child can read and write and the amount of background knowledge they have

6. Teaching Cultural Information in the Early Grades • American children need traditional information at an early age • It may help increase motivation to read and enhance self-esteem • One of Hirsch’s main points is that early education is vital, “A great deal is at stake in understanding and acting on this essential perception as soon as possible. The opportunity of acquiring cultural literacy, once lost in the early grades is usually lost for good.” • Around fourth grade is when children who lack the background knowledge necessary for significant reading start to get left behind

7. Curriculum • Hirsch feels that the school curriculum is the most important controllable influence on what our children know and don’t know about our literate culture

8. The Shopping Mall High School • Public high schools tend to offer a wide range of courses • The material covered in these courses varies greatly • This has decreased the amount of shared knowledge between generations • There is also a lack of shared knowledge across and within schools

9. Core Knowledge • An idea of what specific information all children should learn • Focus on stable events and the classics • Hirsch feels that Elementary and middle school students need to be taught a solid, specific and shared core curriculum in order for them to establish strong foundations of knowledge

10. New Jersey’s Core Curriculum Content Standards • NJCCCS define what every child in New Jersey should know and be able to do in kindergarten through twelfth grade • They are intended for all students • Help to ensure that all students receive a “thorough and efficient” education

11. History of NJCCCS • In 1996, the New Jersey State Board of Education adopted the NJCCCS • The State Board requires that the standards be reviewed and revised every five years • Most current standards are the 2004 NJCCCS

12. NJCCCS- Academic Areas • Visual and Performing Arts • Comprehensive Health and Physical Education • Language Arts Literacy • Mathematics • Science • Social Studies • World Languages • Technological Literacy • Career Education and Consumer, Family, and Life skills

13. NJ Core Curriculum Standards:Language Arts Literacy • Reading Standards include descriptions for Concepts About Print, Phonological Awareness, Decoding, Word Recognition, Fluency, Reading Strategies, Vocabulary and Concept Development, Comprehension Skills and Response to Text, Inquiry and Research • Writing Standards include descriptions for writing as a process, writing as a product, mechanics, spelling, and handwriting, writing forms, audiences and purposes

14. Why Are Standards Important? • Provide guideposts and academic focus • Help to provide a broad base of knowledge • Provide a plan for coherent, sequenced learning from grade to grade • Effective tool for lesson planning • Common focus to share knowledge • Decrease learning gaps caused by mobility • Provide a clear outline of what children are expected to learn in school

15. Goal of Standards • Intended to clarify and raise expectations • Provide a common set of expectations for all students • Improve student achievement • Clearly define what all student should know and be able to do by the end of twelfth grade

16. Hirsch and NJCCCS • Hirsch: Learning builds on learning. The more a person knows the more a person can learn. He calls existing knowledge "mental Velcro", which allows for additional knowledge to become attached to it. • NJCCCS: Skills are built upon. • Example: Standard 3.1 (Reading) 3.1.2G2: Recognize cause and effect in text 3.1.3G2: Distinguish cause/effect, fact/opinion, and main idea/ supporting detail in interpreting texts 3.1.5G3: use cause and effect and sequence of events to gain meaning

17. Hirsch and NJCCCS • Hirsch: Teachers should teach a core, common curriculum that focuses on a specific, shared body of knowledge • NJCCCS: All students will learn and be assessed on the same information. The standards state what all students should know at the end of each grade level

18. Hirsch and NJCCCS • Hirsch: The content of cultural literacy changes over time. Ideas, vocabulary, and art forms are constantly entering and departing from mainstream culture. Children should not learn exactly what was taught forty or fifty years ago. • NJCCCS: The standards are reviewed and revised every five years. The 2009 Standards Revision Project is helping prepare students in the 21st century by analyzing the current standards to see if they address what students need to know now through 2015.

19. Mechanics • Of course, from kindergarten through high school the descriptions for what the student is to know increases with difficulty. However, much of the descriptions focus on mechanics. There are no standards that include memorization, a point which Hirsch believes is very important, “At an early age when their memories are most retentive, children have an almost instinctive urge to learn specific local traditions.”

20. NJCCCS for Language Arts are (3.1) Reading, (3.2) Writing, (3.3) Speaking, (3.4) Listening, (3.5) Viewing and Media Literacy. (This last one has been added since 1987.) They are skill based standards.

21. Hirsch reports, “our results caused me to realize that we cannot treat reading and writing as empty skills, independent of specific knowledge.” These are all skill based standard, which do not refer to “specific knowledge.”

22. Hirsch claims that “in former days, when business people wrote and spoke to one another, they could be confident that they and their colleagues had studied many similar things in school . . . But today's high school graduates do not reliably share much common information, even when they graduate from the same school.” The skill based NJCCCS for language arts do not encourage districts to teach any specific literature; therefore, educators should not expect them to possess the same information.

23. Hirsch refers to an Orlando Patterson where he discusses “importance for blacks and other minorities of possessing [cultural literacy], which is essential for improving their social and economic status.” Hirsch expands on this concept to explain that Patterson’s “observations hold for every culturally illiterate person in our nation. Indeed, as he observed, cultural literacy is not the property of any group or class.” However, the NJCCCS for Language Arts do not suggest any particular content; therefore, it is not developing a cultural literacy for anyone (regardless of ethnicity or race).

24. Although Hirsch does not blame TV entirely he does claim that “television watching does reduce reading and often encroaches on homework. Much of it is admittedly the intellectual equivalent of junk food. But in some respects, such as its use of standard written English, television watching is acculturative.” When Hirsch wrote this there was no (3.5) Viewing and Media Literacy in the NJCCCS, but today, TV is a part of our cultural literacy. Just ask any American who the Soup Nazi is.

25. References • http://coreknowledge.org/CK/index.htm • http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Hirsch.html • http://www.state.nj.us/education/cccs/