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ACTION --Don't complain. DO something.
February 24, 2010
The Exemplar Texts prescribed in the Common Core Standards are wildly inappropriate
Take a look at the Common Core standards in English Language Arts.[pdf file] Ask your governor when he/she read As I Lay Dying.
Ask him/her which of the 15 narrators of this stream-of-consciousness
novel he/she found most reliable. Oh, by the way, another Exemplar Text for 11th graders is Pride and Prejudice.
We should organize rallies outside every governor's office in the land, wherein the gathered protesters read As I Lay Dying aloud.
Or, if 250-page read-aloud is too much of an undertaking, we could read these Exemplar Texts assigned to 11-year-olds:
- "Allegory of the Cave" from The Republic by Plato (380 BCE) translated by G.M.A. Grube
-
"Address to Students at Moscow State University" by Ronald Reagan (1988)
Tell the National Council of Teachers of English and the International
Reading Association to stop scrambling for seats at the flimsy tables
set up by their lobbyists in Washington, D. C. and stand up for
professionalism, which means respecting teacher savvy and individual
student need. If you belong to these organizations, YOU are paying for
those lobbyists, which means YOU are paying to put As I Lay Dying and Pride and Prejudice on the required reading list of every 11th grader in the land.
Not to mention those 6th graders assigned Plato.
February 7, 2010
TEACHER/PARENT ALERT:
Teachers and parents, take a close look at the proposed Common Core standards for the grade level you teach (or in which your child is enrolled).
Literacy
Math
Then,
send me your detailed critiques/concerns. I will organize them and work with
some of you on a talking points op ed you can use in local media. The
period allowed for public comments on the Common Core is going to be
very short so we have to work quickly here.
Here are three examples (There is much more to cause outrage--grief):
Little House in the Big Woods
by Laura Ingalls Wilder is listed as an exemplar text for read-aloud
for K-1; fairy tales are not mentioned for student reading or teacher
read-aloud.
A writing standard for kinders is making baby plural.
Exemplar texts for 11th grade include Pride and Prejudice and As I Lay Dying.
susano@gmavt.net
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