Ideas, Convictions and Courage:
People Tell the Story of Core Knowledge
From Common Knowledge, Volume 14, Number 2, 2001
© 2001 Core Knowledge Foundation. Not to be copied or reproduced without permission from the Core Knowledge Foundation, 801 E. High Street, Charlottesville, VA 22902.
It’s fitting that we should be having this 10th anniversary meeting in Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, the Red Sox, and as it happens, the home of two Hirsch children and four grandchildren. Two of those grandchildren attend a Core Knowledge school. Their father, my son Ted, is a teacher in their school, and he has taught his own children, which is a thrill for them and for me.
This is also a fitting place for us to meet on this 10th anniversary, because some of the earliest activists for Core Knowledge were here. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Kelleher was the thoughtful parent who introduced the concept to other parents at his children’s public school, the Morse School. James Coady was the brave and eloquent principal at Morse, who introduced the concept to his energetic teachers who put the curriculum into effect. They were some of the early Core Knowledge pioneers, and their story, like that of Three Oaks Elementary School in Florida, has been a success story. Like all really good stories, the story of Morse School carries a wider significance.
First of all, it’s important to notice that in those days there weren’t any other Core Knowledge schools in the Boston area, so John Kelleher and Jim Coady and their colleagues were sailing on strange seas of thought alone, without any local charts to guide them. How did they have the guts to do that? Well, that’s the first element of the story that has wider significance, the element of courage. Making that change took a lot of courage on their part.
In my experience, intellectual courage mainly comes from intellectual conviction. You will remember that in Cambridge in the early ‘90s there were slings and arrows for wrong thinking about what children should learn. It was uncomfortable for Jim and his colleagues to be accused of Eurocentrism and many other cultural and pedagogical sins, including racism. It would not have been prudent for these pioneer parents and teachers to subject themselves to such righteous disapproval unless they were absolutely convinced of the validity of their course. Their courage came from intellectual conviction. But where did their conviction come from?
To answer that question not only about the Morse School but about a lot of other schools in the Core Knowledge family is to tell another cheering chapter of the Core Knowledge story. This chapter, which I would title “Independent Thinking,” has been enacted in a hundred places in the United States. Conviction and courage didn’t come to these people from listening to hyper claims or catchy slogans. It came from knowing how to understand and analyze a scholarly argument. New ideas can only bring change into the world if people are willing to entertain them. For these early supporters of Core Knowledge, conviction came from evidence and argument, from a willingness to follow a valid argument even against the tide. It’s true that people are not always as rational as they should be, but here is a precious example to the contrary, where significant change has come into the American educational scene, even if slowly, because of the power of ideas. It was ideas that started the Core Knowledge movement ten years ago, and it is the power of ideas that has preserved it in the face of rather fierce denunciation.
But a scholarly idea is based on evidence and argument. No person owns a scholarly idea. That is fundamental to the scholar’s creed. It has been disconcerting to me as a scholar to be identified as an educational guru. Gurus are religious leaders. Scholars and scientists are fallible workers in the vineyard, destined to be overtaken by other scholars and scientists who will get ever closer to the truth. To somebody who thinks of scholarship as a vocation, as I do, it has been disconcerting to see Core Knowledge labeled “The Hirsch Curriculum.” It’s an honor I don’t deserve, and an accusation that isn’t warranted. We in the movement call it simply “Core Knowledge.” We know that personalizing this idea is just a way of diminishing it and making it a fat, easy target. People who oppose the idea of specific content can always play a trump card by saying “So who decides the content? Why should Hirsch decide what my kids should know?”
Of course that’s a justifiable objection. No single person has such a right. But just to ask “who decides?” is already a distortion of what Core Knowledge is. The accurate answer is that no single person or interest group decided this content. It was an open, collective decision-making process, carried on over a long period by many people, and — this is the critical point— it was based on sound research principles that do not belong to any person. After many years of revision and field-testing, thousands of people have participated in this decision process.
The Core Knowledge idea is at bottom simple, even though the science behind it comes from a number of different scholarly domains, including sociology, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics. Being able to comprehend what you read and being able to learn something new depend on your sharing assumed knowledge with other educated people in your society. Back in the 1960s, psychologists were beginning to discover that reading comprehension and ability to learn depend not just on decoding the words on the page, or identifying the words you hear; they depend on having the background knowledge that gives meaning to those words — the knowledge that was silently taken for granted by the writer or speaker of the words, not stated in the words at all. My favorite story illustrating the point was the Princeton lady who went to hear Einstein lecture, and remarked, “I understood all of the words; it was just how they were put together that baffled me.” What she lacked was relevant background knowledge, and she was in exactly the position of the third grader who comes into class without the needed preparatory knowledge.
Another thing researchers found out in the 1960s and ‘70s was that lack of this background knowledge is the main reason for income inequality and the black-white test score gap. Those who possess that shared, enabling knowledge can comprehend what they read and hear. Those who lack that knowledge cannot. Students who have it can learn what the next grade has to offer; students who lack it cannot. High school graduates who have it can thrive at college or hold down good jobs; those who lack it cannot. It is the very essence of equality of educational opportunity. Despite the ink that has been spilled on the test-score gap, this fundamental role of knowledge has not been adequately recognized or dealt with.
Since the knowledge that enables learning and communication is shared, it is finite; it can be surveyed and studied. Every newspaper reporter has learned to gauge what can be taken for granted versus what needs to be explained to readers. The Associated Press even has a stylebook that spells out to new reporters what that taken-for-granted knowledge is. Yet nobody calls Core Knowledge the “Associated Press Curriculum” — which they could just as well do. No, they call it the “Hirsch Curriculum,” because by doing so they personalize the idea and make it sound arbitrary — which, as you know, is a very effective method for resisting any specific core curriculum. Those of you who participated in that 1990 ratification conference know that the process by which the contents of Core Knowledge were identified and sequenced still continues. It has taken a lot of people a lot of work, and the main early effort lasted about twelve years, from 1978 to 1990. Core Knowledge has been the work of hundreds, then later thousands of participants. The Sequence did not come down on stone tablets from Mount Sinai, and my middle name is not “Moses.” On the contrary, our strength is as the strength of ten because we are NOT in the grip of guru. We are in the grip of a valid idea.
The foundation of our movement in ideas was illustrated in the very first Core Knowledge School — Three Oaks in Fort Myers, Florida, led by Connie Jones. Connie had been enrolled in a course at South Florida University, and her professor, Jay Lutz, had assigned Cultural Literacy as one of the required books. Lutz, like John Kelleher, had read and analyzed the argument. He read the whole argument, not just the list of items at the end, and he became convinced by its logic and evidence. The same thing happened to Connie. It was logic and evidence that led her to transform her school.
That pattern was repeated first in a few places like Mohegan in the South Bronx, and Morse in Cambridge, then in more schools. First, somebody became convinced by evidence and argument. That person persuaded a school principal, who in turn persuaded his or her teachers. Then a lot of teachers had to start working hard. Really hard. I recently told Connie that we ought to insert a warning when a school asks for information. Maybe we should put up on our home page a quote from Winston Churchill’s great speech of May 1940: “[We] have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.” Or we could equally well quote a typical teacher refrain: “Core is great, but the first year is hell.”
I have been talking about three chapters of the story: ideas, conviction, and courage, and a subchapter, hard work. But ideas and the ability to analyze them, and the courage to act on them, are not the only chapters of the story. Without ideas people are blind, but without people, ideas are empty. The ideas had to be made real by people and for people. Teachers who live far from one another had to be brought together to join in a common purpose. That’s the fourth chapter of the story.
Up in my ivory tower I had assumed that ideas were everything. I once had the notion back in 1983 that I could just write an article in American Scholar, called “Cultural Literacy,” people would see that it was right, and I could go back to literary theory. I never imagined that it would be important to start convening conferences. I will concede that I was not hugely enthusiastic ten years ago when Connie planned the first national Core Knowledge conference for a few dozen people in the cafeteria of the Three Oaks School. My experiences with conferences during my life as a scholar had been confined to the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, which we used to call “the slave market.” The main reason most of us went there was either to find a job or interview people for a job. I thought of a conference as a kind of purgatory.
But now I am converted. These Core Knowledge conferences really are different. People share a common purpose and an infectious enthusiasm. Most attendees find the sessions they attend to be worthwhile, and sometimes even inspiring. We owe the idea of these conferences to Connie Jones, and I think this movement would not have become a reality on the national scene without her recognition that conferences are needed. We in Core Knowledge are still in a minority in holding the ideas we do. We still need to provide each other mutual support, not just to confirm the importance of rich content in schooling, but also to help each other implement that idea more and more effectively.
While I’m on this nostalgia trip I want to mention another group to whom we owe a critical debt. In the very early days we did need a bit of money, though not much, and you can be sure that mainline foundations were not willing to help us because of all those bad names we were being called. Liberal foundations thought we were conservative, and conservative foundations thought we were liberal, and, alas, both were right. We were conservative to the extent that the knowledge everyone needs in order to read the books in the library is rather stable knowledge, because literacy itself has a conservative tendency, as sociolinguists have pointed out. But equally, we were liberal, because the most urgent aim of the Core Knowledge movement has been and remains social justice, the aim of giving all children an equal chance in life regardless of who their parents are.
But as a result of the name calling, liberal foundations thought we were conservative, and conservative foundations thought we were liberal. Nobody was eager to get criticized for helping what might be seen as an evil or misguided cause.
But even in the earliest days, there were some visionary philanthropists who deserve our thanks. They had to be visionary because they came to us. Very early, back in the 1980s, I got a letter from Bob Payton, head of the Exxon Foundation, urging me to start putting the Core Knowledge ideas into effect. He offered the Foundation a direct grant of $50,000 to buy furniture and rent a tiny office. Then my mother, since deceased, and not really rich, sent us a few thousand dollars every year. I received a call one day in the early 1990s when I was in the mail room at the University of Virginia English department from Nancy Brown Negley who wanted to know if our organization would like some help and if I would like to come discuss it. That was the start of critical support from the Brown Foundation of Houston.
Then there was B.J. Steinbrook who wandered into that cafeteria conference at Three Oaks ten years ago, took a look, and offered to fund subsequent Core Knowledge conferences. That was a great boon. A few years later, I was asked by a person named Stewart Springfield if perhaps we could use some help from the Walton Family foundation. Sadly, Stewart suddenly died last year, but his great help and good deeds live on in several projects that are going to be permanently useful to all teachers, not just those in Core Knowledge. I’m also happy to add to this honor roll Janice Riddell of the Olin Foundation for helping us create materials for more content-rich teacher education.
There have been a lot of helpers in this long effort, but first and foremost stand teachers. [Core Knowledge] is fundamentally a grassroots effort, a teachers’ movement. I dedicated my last book to Core Knowledge teachers, and if I write another, I’ll do it again. Their support has been the truly great surprise of this adventure. It is no surprise that parents have been activists for Core Knowledge. They want the best for their children. But it also turns out that teachers want the best for their children. It’s you teachers who have truly created this movement, and made it live. Like your eager young students, I will continue to be grateful to you. Thank you all.
At these conferences, we have had a tradition that I would say a few words about some research aspect of Core Knowledge — which is appropriate, because that’s where my sentiments and abilities lie. Much as I’d like to be an inspirational speaker, it’s a wise man who knows his limitations. What inspires me is scholarly research in pursuit of a worthy purpose.
Last year I talked to this group about psychological research that showed why it’s not enough to give students accessing skills so they can look things up. They need to know quite a lot to look things up. This year, instead of debunking yet another unscientific but popular slogan, I’d like to talk about what research suggests we need to do in the future if we want to fulfill our mission of equal educational opportunity.
That phrase, “equal educational opportunity,” should remind us of the great scholar James S. Coleman, main author of the 1966 Coleman Report, called “Equality of Educational Opportunity.” It was famous for showing that in present-day public schools, the family is a bigger factor in educational achievement than the school. Less well known was his finding that the disadvantaged child profits more from an effective school and is injured more by an ineffective one than an advantaged child. Those two findings conflicted. Schools potentially count for a great deal for disadvantaged children, yet currently they do not. So Coleman devoted his later work to resolving that conflict, and he found, much to the anger of the schools he criticized, that schools can count for a great deal in overcoming the achievement gap if they become more academically intensive, by extending time and making better academic use of it.
What implications does that finding have for the equity ambitions of Core Knowledge? What it says to me is that we at the Foundation have an obligation to set forth some very explicit models that show how time can be effectively allocated and used to enhance the knowledge and vocabulary of all students. If we do that for our students, then the disadvantaged ones will gain proportionately more, our schools will have an equity effect, and the achievement gap will be narrowed. But how do we accomplish that?
One of the great attractions of Core Knowledge is that it leaves how to teach up to the wisdom of the individual teacher. That’s a virtue, but it has also meant that we at the Foundation have been ducking some of our responsibilities. We don’t tell you and we will not tell you how to teach, but we can still devote a serious effort to figuring out and illustrating how the precious commodity of time can be used most effectively. We have an obligation to set forth what the ablest Core Knowledge teachers and writers say about the ideal allocation of time in teaching the various topics of Core Knowledge. How much detail and how much time should be devoted to each topic in order to enhance the knowledge and vocabularies of our students in the most effective way? We haven’t tried to do that, and my bet is that you teachers would appreciate it if we did do so, whether or not you decided to follow our advice.
In undertaking this big effort to make a truly detailed set of lesson plans, we can build on the treasure trove of Core Knowledge lesson plans that you teachers have already created and have made available to other teachers. But we at the Foundation should now undertake the further task of pondering the whole complex task of the teacher, day by day, mapping out at least one model for how students can have an engaging and coherent school experience that makes good use of time. When I think of how much work and brainpower will have to go into the effort of making a very explicit and coherent set of lesson plans (it will probably take a dozen people more than two years), and when I think that each of you teachers has to do it on the fly while also teaching several hours a day, then it’s clear how much we expect of our teachers.
Let me give just one example of how a careful allocation of time would help students and teachers. As you know, a lot of time in the early grades has to be spent on language arts. There is a research consensus that the most efficient way to teach early reading is in a step-by-step analytical way. First we teach the basic code, with the most frequent sound-letter relations. Then we teach the less frequent sound-letter relations.
But if it is true that early reading skills are best learned in a systematic way, then it is a contradiction to take a less thoughtful approach to knowledge, which is also best learned in a systematic way. Authentic reading means understanding what you are reading, and understanding is always based on knowledge. Knowledge is just as much a part of reading as decoding is, and we need to be just as systematic and thoughtful about teaching knowledge as we are about teaching reading skills. In a sense, that is what Core Knowledge inherently is — a systematic approach to teaching the knowledge that is most useful and valuable. It selects the knowledge that will give students the best possible preparation for learning and for life. The principle of Core Knowledge is inherently a principle of using time effectively in school, which is why all the independent evaluations show that Core Knowledge enhances equality of educational opportunity.
So I believe it is incumbent on the Core Knowledge Foundation to show teachers how to combine the teaching of knowledge and the teaching of skills during the many many hours spent on language arts in the early grades. That is going to have a tremendous effect on equity. We need to show teachers how to integrate Egypt and Aesop’s fables, how to integrate science into reading and writing — and not just restrict the language arts periods to ephemeral stories. If we show in detailed lesson plans how that integration of knowledge and skills can be accomplished along with any good reading program, we would give a tremendous boost to closing the achievement gap.
Since equity is one of the main goals of Core Knowledge, this new project of integrating knowledge into language arts is going to be our number one priority in making new materials for Core Knowledge teachers. The number two priority is going to be to weave your collective ideas about teaching Core Knowledge into a detailed set of hour-by-hour lesson plans and diagnostics for all the other subjects and periods of the school day. We intend to tailor these detailed lesson plans not only to a variety of materials but also to the various state standards. All this will be available on the web for free. For new teachers, that is going to be a superb resource. For experienced teachers, it is going to be a valuable source of ideas. This is going to be an immense project for which you teachers have already provided much help in the lesson plans you have contributed, and we will be asking you for more help.
My thought for the evening is that there is a contradiction in advocating a systematic approach to skills and not advocating a systematic approach to knowledge. Cognitive psychology tells us that an explicit, well-thought-out approach is best in both realms. When we get together again in a year, I hope I’ll be able to say to you that we are far along in taking this next important step in the Core Knowledge adventure.
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Last updated: Thu, May 22 2008
