Core Knowledge Foundation
2002
The fact-intensive K-8 curriculum sequence developed by E.D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge Foundation is famously demanding of students, but its rigorous and highly specific content can also be demanding of teachers who are expected to explain the nuances of classical music or African geography, perhaps for the first time. To help teachers prepare for the challenge, Core Knowledge has developed a college curriculum called "What Elementary Teachers Need to Know." The publication consists of syllabi for 18 recommended courses, written by experts and provocative in their specificity and comprehensiveness (and their length - often around 70 pages). Most courses are surveys of traditional liberal arts subjects, though devised with an eye to content that a solid K-8 curriculum will require teachers to know. (Two of the courses - Reading Instruction and Children's Literature - fall outside the traditional liberal arts core.) Core Knowledge believes that such an education would be invaluable for all teachers, not only those teaching in Core Knowledge schools, and could go a long way toward solving the nation's teacher quality crisis recently highlighted by Secretary Paige (see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=54#802). Download the syllabi - as well as a companion essay suggesting ways in which schools of education could apply the recommendations - at http://www.coreknowledge.org/CKproto2/resrcs/syllabus.htm.
