Should computer algorithms determine our national English curriculum? That’s what E.D. Hirsch wants to know when he raises this shockingly relevant--if absurd--question in his evaluation of the draft “Common Core” college-ready standards. The standards, in his view, have several pluses. They explicitly associate literacy with having a broad base of knowledge, and they correctly divide the amorphous “language arts” into its core skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. But reminiscent of our own evaluation of the same standards, Hirsch cautions that schools can’t teach these skills directly without a knowledge-rich curriculum. The primary error, explains Hirsch, is that the standards-drafters treat language proficiency as a how-to skill. Similar to many state ELA standards, they use a technical definition that is based on finding the main idea and “inferencing.” In reality, inference cannot be taught in the abstract. Studies have shown that a poor reader with extensive baseball knowledge will score higher on a passage about baseball than a good reader with little knowledge of the sport. Thus, to impart the necessary language competencies, we must focus on increasing a student’s knowledge of content, not attempt to teach them “reading skills” as such. This is an important distinction that the standards fail to point out.
“First, do no harm,” E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Education Week, January 14, 2010 (subscription required)