Dr. Steven Fortgang is a professor of education at the University of Northern Iowa. He is a longtime Core Knowledge supporter and a regular conference attendee and participant, and he will become a regular contributor to “Common Knowledge” based on his insight into the world of teaching teachers.

For years, Dr. Fortgang has prepared his students to teach in CK schools. Here he explores a concept that he believes will complement the Core Knowledge curriculum: specify “foreground knowledge” as well as background knowledge when preparing lesson plans. He welcomes feedback and comments at . To incorporate Professor Fortgang’s ideas into your daily planning, be sure to read the lists titled “What Students will Learn in Future Grades” in every major topic’s Big Idea section in the Core Knowledge Teacher Handbooks.

Background and Foreground Knowledge: A Planning Idea Whose Time has Come?

After years of introducing the ideas of E. D. Hirsch, Jr., to undergraduate preservice teachers via Cultural Literacy, the Core Knowledge Grader books, the Handbooks, and other marvelous materials that emanate from the Core Knowledge Foundation, it is time to share some thoughts with actual, real life Core Knowledge teachers. You are aware that Dr. Hirsch continues to contribute significant, timely, and powerful research and writing for educators at all levels who are seriously interested in American educational reform and social justice. In this essay, I offer some concrete ideas for Core Knowledge teachers that I think capitalize on Dr. Hirsch’s work in some unique and specific ways.

Perhaps the clearest and most widely familiar thought that Dr. Hirsch puts forward in Cultural Literacy is that knowledge builds on knowledge. This thought, explained primarily in the second chapter, “The Development of the Schema,” later led him to compare background knowledge to Velcro and to the “S” for sequenced, referred to with solid, specific, and shared, whenever Core Knowledge is introduced to newcomers.

Core Knowledge teachers know exactly why curriculum must be properly sequenced. The attainment of new knowledge critically depends on learners being able to “hook it on” to previous knowledge if it is to “stick.” For it to be learned and remembered it must connect with what is already known. Otherwise, while it may create interest, it is unlikely to be understood very well or to make it past short-term memory. The creators and refiners of the Core Knowledge curriculum have this as a central tenet of their work. That is why they have carefully sequenced the content within and between each of the grades in the curriculum.

Classroom teachers know the effects of teaching content that is not properly sequenced. These range from glazed looks as instruction goes over the heads of students to hostility that can take many forms while being largely rooted in an inability to comprehend what is being taught. There’s no Velcro. During a discussion of this phenomenon I accidentally bumped into a workable complementary metaphor to Velcro in the idea of the Teflon mind. Occasionally in class, when I see those glazed looks after I’ve developed an idea I’d thought was profound or at least interesting, I’ll say, “That went over like sausage off Teflon!” You get the idea.

Dr. Hirsch has shown us that this idea, about which it is easy for us to joke (gallows humor?), actually plays a major role in our schools’ problems educating for high academic achievement, sufficient reading comprehension, and equality of opportunity. In the absence of appropriate background knowledge, school learning is difficult or impossible. When social classes of people share in its absence, a class society begins to resemble a caste society.

Okay, I’ve always said that Dr. Hirsch’s work provokes diverse and lofty thoughts, and I’ve let myself get derailed. If you’re still with me, I’d like to return to the discussion of your classrooms. Specifically, I want to talk about sequenced subject matter’s importance to planning effective lessons and, as a bonus, to firming up our own command of curriculum. We all know that central to every good plan for teaching is the writing of good instructional objectives, probably the most fundamental nuts and bolts of good planning. Strangely, I’ve found that even the best education majors are unclear about this these days. I have many thoughts about how this can have happened, but I will not let myself get diverted again! Another time. Another column.

We know that, in writing objectives, we principally need to figure out how our students can demonstrate to us that they have learned what we set out to teach them. The thought process for doing this can be extremely helpful to us as we attempt to specify exactly what we do (and don’t) want them to learn in the lesson. Having a Core Knowledge curriculum — with specific as one of its four S’s — usually makes it easier for us to do this specifying. I am confident that you are quite adept at writing objectives.

But here we come to the practical idea I would like to advance, one that makes deliberate use of Dr. Hirsch’s wonderful insights about background knowledge. Just as I happened upon a complementary metaphor for Velcro in Teflon, I think I have come upon another that works with the very idea of background knowledge. What is that? Why, it is foreground knowledge!

What is this idea? We probably agree that knowledge builds on knowledge. For new knowledge to be acquired, there must be a sort of nesting ground for it, what Dr. Hirsch has called Velcro — the necessary schema. Long before Core Knowledge, teachers knew that they needed to do some sort of diagnostic evaluation of what their students already knew in order to successfully introduce a new unit or lesson. In the lesson plan format I have developed for my Core Knowledge student-teachers, I have made this evaluation — or at least thinking carefully and writing sentences about it — a necessary part of the planning process.

Therefore, just before the statement of lesson objectives we have “Necessary Background Knowledge.” What do your students actually need to know if they are to be able to learn what you are about to teach them? Of course, the further up in grade level we go, the more they would need to write if this were to be entirely inclusive. But I don’t require a treatise, just some information and/or skills needed for the comprehension of the content of your objectives.

That particular requirement, as far as I know, is a new wrinkle for a lesson plan. But I go further: If it makes sense to look backward for the necessary background knowledge before you teach something, doesn’t it also make sense to look forward at precisely that knowledge for which the new knowledge now becomes background knowledge? Therefore, right after the specification of the lesson’s content that follows the objectives, comes foreground knowledge. Here the teacher thinks about what should come next, sequentially, and describes specifically what that is before continuing with the main lesson plan.

Why specify “foreground knowledge”? There are two reasons for my undergraduate students to do this. First, it gives them practice in thinking clearly and precisely about knowledge, something they’re not required to do much these days. That’s important. (Yes, another column.) Second, it gives them excellent practice in using and learning the Core Knowledge curriculum and appreciating and comprehending its sequencing. One of the tenets of Core Knowledge is that it is vital for teachers to know the curriculum across grade levels. Much has been noted about the heightened professionalism of Core Knowledge teachers that results from the structure of the curriculum. Teachers at the same level have the opportunity to work together to find the best ways to teach their shared, specific grade-level content. Concurrently, they have many reasons to work closely with the teachers in the prior grade levels, upon whose success they depend. Similarly, they also have an obligation to be in synch with the teachers at higher grade levels who depend upon their own effectiveness in teaching what becomes the background knowledge for the students moving into their classes.

Would the addition of “Necessary Background Knowledge” and “Foreground Knowledge” to your planning process result in valuable enhancements to your teaching? That is for you and your colleagues to decide. As for me, I am happy to have completed my very first column for Common Knowledge. I welcome your comments!

Dr. Stephen Fortgang
University of Northern Iowa
May 16, 2007

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