THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 2, 1995 TAG: 9412310256
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: REWRITING THE LESSON PLAN
BACK TO BASICS
Are kids learning enough about the "basics" in school?
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH THIEL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DURHAM, N.C. LENGTH: Long : 170 lines
In the back-to-basics debate, R.N. Harris Elementary School has moved toward center.
The school this year embraced a new curriculum developed by E.D. Hirsch, a University of Virginia professor. The curriculum, called Core Knowledge, is based on Hirsch's controversial book, Cultural Literacy, which identifies facts, vocabulary and literature Hirsch asserts all people should know to be considered reasonably educated.
About 150 schools in 30 states, including three public and one private school in Virginia, are experimenting with Core Knowledge.
The curriculum spells out facts and concepts students must learn at each grade level, from first through sixth grades. It is expected to be expanded to include kindergarten and seventh and eighth grades next year, said John Holdren, director of the Charlottesville-based Core Knowledge Foundation.
Critics say Hirsch favors Western culture too much in defining what constitutes a reasonable education. They also have called his lessons regressive, an attempt to take schools back to the classrooms of decades ago, when memorization and recitation of facts formed the basis of learning.
``Rote, right-wing, back-to-basics learning,'' Holdren said. ``It's none of the above.''
While Core Knowledge emphasizes giving kids a foundation of knowledge, Holdren said, it's up to teachers and schools to find ways to get the lessons across.
``We're not saying this is everything you need to know,'' he said. ``What we're saying is that if schooling is going to be effective, then children need to move through a very clear order of learning. In other words, the second-grade teacher has to be able to rely on children having learned certain skills in first grade, so that she can build on that.''
The classrooms of R.N. Harris are far from the rigid ones of yesteryear.
Collages of children's artwork cover the walls. Groups of desks ring the rooms. Teachers roam among the kids, bending down to their levels, getting in their faces, inciting their participation in lessons.
Core Knowledge, Principal Gertrude Williams said, has provided a framework so teachers know what they and everyone else should be teaching at certain grade levels.
R.N. Harris will become a magnet school next fall. Students from all over Durham County will be invited to put their names into a lottery to attend.
Now, though, it is an inner-city school with more than 80 percent of its kids qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches. Williams searches for programs that will help her students learn, and Core Knowledge is but one of them.
``We wanted our children to be exposed to a type of information that would put them on the level with their more affluent counterparts,'' Williams said.
Last year, the school kicked off what Williams calls the integrated arts program. Teachers work together to make sure all lessons contain elements of basic academic disciplines, such as writing and math, and kids are immersed in art projects designed to help them understand academic concepts.
In a social studies lesson about ancient Egypt, for example, children might color Egyptian burial masks while learning the scientific principles behind mummification and writing paragraphs about the ancient civilization.
Carol A. Landreth, a second-grade teacher, said Core Knowledge has solved a problem she's detected in rearing her own three kids, now teenagers.
``I've noticed that year after year, they're studying the same things,'' Landreth said. Broad state guidelines tell teachers the concepts children must learn, but not enough specifics.
Under North Carolina guidelines, for example, fourth- and fifth-graders are supposed to learn about the movement of people, ideas and goods. But students could learn about the Roman Empire two years in a row if both their teachers chose the empire to demonstrate the concept.
Core Knowledge requires students to study specific aspects of the Roman Empire each year, so there should be no repetition.
``It gives you structure, in the sense that I know which topics I'm going to hit,'' Landreth said. ``But I have lots and lots of flexibility for how to cover those topics.''
For a lesson about simple machines, Landreth had her students assemble a pulley system, over which they are allowed to pass notes - with approval - during class.
In Charlotte Hundley's third-grade class, students spent December learning about Colonial America and its 13 colonies.
She divided her classroom into ``stores'' like those on an early Boston street. One store was an apothecary, where students ground nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves for gingerbread cookies to learn how Colonial Americans mixed medicines.
To discover how early Americans clothed themselves without going shopping, the students visited a nearby farm where the owner raises sheep and angora rabbits. Students helped shear the sheep's wool and gather rabbit fur. They washed and dyed and spun it into yarn. They pressed wool into pans with soap and water to make felt, like that used in old-style hats.
The activities may have been fun, but they also were instructive. Students were divided into groups for assignments, such as defining words associated with the era.
Brooke L. Spells, 10, fresh from a limbo contest during a lesson about the Caribbean Islands, raves about school.
``It's real fun,'' the fifth-grader said. ``You get to do fun things and you learn more about things if you do fun things and projects.''
Principal Williams and R.N. Harris' teachers credit a gain last year in standardized test scores, at least in part, to starting the Core Knowledge curriculum in January.
In reading and math, the number of fourth-graders performing at grade level went up almost 9 percent from 1992-93 to 1993-94. And 15 percent more fourth-graders were writing at grade level.
Those were among the biggest increases in the Durham school district. MEMO: PROPOSED CHANGES FOR MATH, SCIENCES
The Commission on Champion Schools has recommended that revised
standards of learning in math and science, developed over the past six
months, be approved by the governor and the state Board of Education.
Last updated in 1988, the standards spell out what students in each
grade should be taught. The commission said the standardsare
academically tough, objectively measurable and easily understood by the
public. Revisions for language arts and social studies have not been
finished.
Below is a synopsis of changes in the standards for math and science
at one grade level.
MATHEMATICS
For sixth-grade math, the revised standards would:
Introduce students to several new concepts, including algebra,
geometry, probability and statistics.
Place more emphasis on practical applications of math problems and on
analyzing data and ensuring that students can express mathematical
concepts both orally and in writing.
Require the use of calculators.
Organize objectives under specific areas of knowledge, such as skills
involving ``computation and estimation'' or ``numbers and numbers
sense,'' making them easier to read and understand.
SCIENCE
For sixth-grade science, the revised standards would:
Ensure that students are shown a connection between science and
mathematics.
Draw a more direct link between science and modern social problems,
such as prevention of waste and managing nonrenewable resources.
Place more emphasis on hands-on investigations that involve
scientific reasoning and logic and presentation of data.
Add history and technology of space exploration to unit on the solar
system.
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
We asked a group of South Hampton Roads high school students to take
the following quiz. Of the 34 who participated, 23 failed, scoring 60
percent or less. No one got all of the answers correct. All students
knew who said, ``I have a dream . . . ,'' but two kids thought Betty
Friedan was the woman who made the American flag.
Test your knowledge of basic facts:
1) In what decade was the telephone invented?
2) At what temperature (Fahrenheit) does water freeze?
3) What's the equivalent of a kilometer in miles?
4) What's 15 percent of $39.99?
5) Who said, ``I have a dream...''?
6) Which of the world's oceans is the largest?
7) Who is Betty Friedan?
8) Who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey?
9) What's the significance of 1865 in American history?
10) What's the capital of New York?
Answer key: 1) 1870s; 2) 32 degrees; 3) five-eighths, or .62, miles;
4) About $6; 5) The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; 6) Pacific; 7) An
American feminist; 8) Homer; 9) end of the Civil War; 10) Albany.
[For a related story, see page A1 for this date.]
KEYWORDS: EDUCATION CORE CURRICULUM by CNB