First it was Randi Weingarten, who yesterday embraced Core Knowledge as the sort of program New York City's schools need. Then today Education Week published a very friendly article about the approach. But every piece of journalism needs its "alternative" perspective; enter Alfie Kohn:
The curriculum "steal[s] time from more meaningful objectives, such as learning how to think critically," Alfie Kohn, an education writer and opponent of test-based accountability, wrote in an opinion piece in USA Today last December. "The best classrooms aren't organized around a ???bunch o' facts' but around problems, projects, and questions."
Yup, gotta hate those facts. As they say, "history: it's just one bloody thing after another." But come on, Alfie, does anyone but you accept the characterization of Core Knowledge as just a "bunch of facts"? At a time when teachers are deeply depressed about everything but dumbed-down reading and math skills getting narrowed out of the curriculum (depressed in part because of Alfie's exhortations), isn't a curriculum with lots of deep, rich, engaging, exciting content across history, literature, science, geography, and more worth praising and embracing? There, Alfie: now you have your "questions."
