How not to cover a story, by The Telegraph...
First, overstate the story right off the bat with the headline:
Catcher in the Rye dropped from US school curriculum
Schools in America are to drop classic books such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum in favour of 'informational texts'.
You'd think the more widely praised and sort of classroom standard
To Kill a Mockingbird would have been the headline, wouldn't you? I mean, after all,
Catcher in the Rye often appears on 'banned' book lists, so this hardly seems like
much of a change.
So why lead with that? Why lead with a book about angst and 'phonies', a sort of angry creed at authority being banned? Hmm?
Alright, so we've sold a story to an audience, now lets give them what they want to hear:
American literature classics are to be replaced by insulation manuals and plant inventories in US classrooms by 2014.
A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.
Books such as JD Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird will be replaced by "informational texts" approved by the Common Core State Standards.
That's horrifying, says the Salinger fans outraged that their classic is being once again banned but this is a totally new story. Hey, who is the
Common Core State Standards? I don't know. Sounds official, those bastards.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). The standards were developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts, to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce.
The NGA Center and CCSSO received initial feedback on the draft standards from national organizations representing, but not limited to, teachers, postsecondary educators (including community colleges), civil rights groups, English language learners, and students with disabilities. Following the initial round of feedback, the draft standards were opened for public comment, receiving nearly 10,000 responses.
The standards are informed by the highest, most effective models from states across the country and countries around the world, and provide teachers and parents with a common understanding of what students are expected to learn. Consistent standards will provide appropriate benchmarks for all students, regardless of where they live.
These standards define the knowledge and skills students should have within their K-12 education careers so that they will graduate high school able to succeed in entry-level, credit-bearing academic college courses and in workforce training programs. The standards:
Are aligned with college and work expectations;
- Are clear, understandable and consistent;
- Include rigorous content and application of knowledge through high-order skills;
- Build upon strengths and lessons of current state standards;
- Are informed by other top performing countries, so that all students are prepared to succeed in our global economy and society; and
- Are evidence-based.
Well, certainly was expecting a lot more smoke filled room there, but now I know. And knowing, well that's just not part of writing a horrible article.
Next step:
Suggested non-fiction texts include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council.
Scan the list and give the two most out of context silly sounding suggestions as if these two books were chosen to specifically replace
Catcher in the Rye and
To Kill a Mockingbird. Now I'm well and truly outraged at this thing I barely understand. Hey, lets find out what some random junior high school teacher thinks:
Jamie Highfill, a teacher at Woodland Junior High School in Arkansas, told the Times that the directive was bad for a well-rounded education.
"I'm afraid we are taking out all imaginative reading and creativity in our English classes.
"In the end, education has to be about more than simply ensuring that kids can get a job. Isn't it supposed to be about making well-rounded citizens?"
Well, what the Telegraph tells us of what the teacher told the Times seems nice and vague enough for us all to agree on, good things are good and bad things are bad. About the specific standards and their effect or how they are applied? Um...
Well, now we heard from Arkansas' Junior High Teacher quoted and all, lets hear from the Standards supporters:
Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare.
Well, not directly, let's sum up what we think they're trying to say. No need to use quotes, we heard from a Woodland Jr. High teacher. Through the Times.
Is there a link to the Times? God no. They might have written an actual article on the subject.
Googling these organizations to find out 'what the fuck' you know what I did find? The ratio they talked about. It's in a pdf on literary standards from the organizations website.
By 12th grade, in fact, the ratio is correct, 70% informational, 30% literary. It starts off 50/50 in 6th grade, 55/45 by 8th.
But you know what it says under that graph?
Source: National Assessment Governing Board. (2008). Reading framework for the 2009 National Assess- ment of Educational Progress. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
So...what they reported on, that's not a change. That's been like that since at least 2009. They, like me because this is a forum post so, you know, I have a stumble button that needs hitting, scanned the reading requirements, saw that chart, and printed the most "horrifying" part. But unlike me, they did not look to see what that chart's source was or what it actually referred to.
Oh, and here's an interesting tidbit:
The Standards aim to align instruction with this framework so that many more students than at present can meet the requirements of college and career readiness. In K–5, the Standards follow NAEP’s lead in balancing the reading of literature with the reading of informational texts, including texts in history/ social studies, science, and technical subjects. In accord with NAEP’s growing emphasis on informational texts in the higher grades, the Standards demand that a significant amount of reading of informational texts take place in and outside the ELA classroom. Fulfilling the Standards for 6–12 ELA requires much greater attention to a specific category of informational text—literary nonfiction—than has been traditional. Because the ELA classroom must focus on literature (stories, drama, and poetry) as well as literary nonfiction, a great deal of informational reading in grades 6–12 must take place in other classes if the NAEP assessment framework is to be matched instructionally.1 To measure students’ growth toward college and career readiness, assessments aligned with the Standards should adhere to the distribution of texts across grades cited in the NAEP framework.
Isn't that saying that the instructional material must be in classes where that is relevant? That's hardly what the headline suggests. No wonder they left that out.
I could not find the examples given in the text with a word search, maybe I suck at that, it's possible, but I did find this:
- “Letter on Thomas Jefferson” by John Adams (1776)
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by
Frederick Douglass (1845)
- “Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: Address to Parliament on May 13th, 1940” by Winston Churchill (1940)
- Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad by Ann Petry (1955)
- Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck (1962)
- “Speech to the Second Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry (1775) “Farewell Address” by George Washington (1796)
- “Gettysburg Address” by Abraham Lincoln (1863)
- “State of the Union Address” by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1941)
- “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964) “Hope, Despair and Memory” by Elie Wiesel (1997)
- Common Sense by Thomas Paine (1776)
- Walden by Henry David Thoreau (1854) “Society and Solitude” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1857)
- “The Fallacy of Success” by G. K. Chesterton (1909)
- Black Boy by Richard Wright (1945)
- “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (1946)
- “Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry” by Rudolfo Anaya (1995)
Those are the informative texts. Shocking. What literary value can be gleaned from Henry David Thoreau and John Steinbeck.
Oh, and this:
Given space limitations, the illustrative texts listed above are meant only to show individual titles that are representative of a range of topics and genres. (See Appendix B for excerpts of these and other texts illustrative of grades 6–12 text complexity, quality, and range.) At a curricular or instructional level, within and across grade levels, texts need to be selected around topics or themes that generate knowledge and allow students to study those topics or themes in depth.
Couldn't find anything on taking out
To Kill a Mockingbird anywhere.
So, the report contains information that is mislabeled and misrepresented, I'm shocked and scared and clearly don't know what's actually going on.
And
that is how not to write an article, by The Telegraph.