Common Knowledge^™
The Newsletter of the Core Knowledge Foundation

Through a long process of consensus building and under the watchful eye of our founder and board chairman, E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Core Knowledge developed what so many had said could not be developed — an agreed-upon framework of multicultural elements to introduce every American child to the contributions of diverse peoples who make up the mosaic of one unified nation.

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The Core Knowledge National Conference will celebrate the excitement of learning in Washington, D.C., February 22-24, 2007. The theme, Eureka! The Energy of Learning, guarantees that the sessions will be informative and invigorating. Whether you’re a first-time conference attendee or a seasoned veteran, the 200+ sessions offered during the three-day conference are sure to inspire.

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What does he know of reading who only reading knows? The ability to read a wide variety of texts addressed to a general reader, the ability to learn a variety of new skills from the spoken or written word, these are ultimately abilities that depend on broad general knowledge — the very thing that is being driven out by a narrow, formalistic focus on reading. The answer to the reading problem is a language-arts program that focuses on knowledge and is part of a coherent education in history, science, general cultural knowledge, and the arts.

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How much does a beginning reader need to know about English letter-sound correspondences to read an easy children’s book? More than you might think.

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Past issues of the Core Knowledge newsletter, Common Knowledge, have detailed the extraordinary progress of the youngsters in Baltimore and Arkansas schools that have adopted the Core Knowledge Preschool program. Several years into the project the numbers speak for themselves.

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Until the 1960s, France had a good educational system that was the envy of many countries. However, a pedagogical revolution then occurred, which transformed our system — previously based on transmitting knowledge — into a new system based on constructivism in which the child was supposed to “build his own knowledge.”

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