High Falutin' Rhetoric
The thought of spending my valuable time on David Coleman, President of the College Board, exhausted me before I even got started. However, the thought of not taking the time, to me, is the equivalent of knowing there is a tainted drug on the market and you are about to give it to your child – I could not, in good conscious, close my eyes to that.
It would appear one of Coleman’s duties as the President of the College Board is to write tedious essays in furthering his propaganda on the teaching of the Common Core ELA standards. The essay I'm referring to is titled, Cultivating Wonder. Associate Professor Nicholas Tampio of Fordham University recently exposed Coleman’s "vision" for ELA in his article David Coleman’s Plan to Ruin Education.
Tampio revealed that Coleman would prefer we skip all thoughtful dialogue in the classroom completely. From his article: ‘“Throughout the document, (Coleman) reiterates that students need to identify key words in a text. There is minimal discussion of historical context or outside sources that may make the material come alive. For instance, he suggests that teachers ask students, “What word does Lincoln use most often in the address?” rather than, say, discuss the Civil War.””
I’ve been following Professor Tampio’s writings for over a year now and I have the privilege of corresponding with him privately from time to time but to be fair I did read Coleman’s essay so I could balance it against Professor Tampio’s insights.
Lord love a duck I had to stack books under my chin to keep my head from slamming onto my desk. Three reads – it took me three reads to get completely through Coleman’s essay.
It’s not a difficult read – it’s just meaningless, it lacks meaning, there is no meaning in it, it’s not meaningful. Do you get my meaning?"
Using the Gettysburg Address as a case in point, Coleman belabors Lincoln’s use of the word dedicate by asking,
“How does Lincoln use and refine the meaning of the word “dedicate” over the course of the Gettysburg Address?
This question arises not from our preoccupations before reading the text but instead responds to the preoccupation in Lincoln’s words and makes it our own.
An earlier question might have been: What word does Lincoln use most often in the
address? It turns out he uses dedicate six times in his short speech. Perhaps an
editor would have told Lincoln to mix it up a bit. Our question expresses simple
wonder—why does Lincoln use dedicate so often in so short a space? How is
dedicate so central to what he is doing at Gettysburg and in this address? Does the
meaning of dedicate stay the same, or gain new resonance in its repeated use?”
Who cares? Who truly cares about this issue in this setting? I think Coleman really misses the mark with his “vision” of what makes for good teaching and good teachers. To begin with The Gettysburg Address, in my mind, should not be an ELA lesson – PERIOD. Coleman may argue its text, vocabulary, structure or anything else his heart desires but the Address is a piece of American history that remains forever just that – history.
Professor Tampio makes a great point when he asks why isn’t Coleman promoting a discussion of the Civil War itself – that’s the bigger issue – there’s the critical thinking – not a word count of dedicate. This is the slight of hand that the Common Core propagandists are so adept at - they busy us with nonsense in the hope that we will not notice that such great pieces of American history like the Gettysburg Address or our founding documents or the speeches of Martin Luther King should not be dissected word by word but should be discussed for their greater purpose – in a HISTORY class. I suggest Coleman stand knee deep in dead American boys and men, while addressing a nation, and see if his word count is editorial perfection.
My point in sharing this with all of you is that sometimes I think we can get caught up in fancy dialogue and slick diatribes that side track us from the true concern. We parents cannot afford to do that - we have to be on top everything that is brought into the classroom and who is bringing it into the classroom is just as important. As I told Professor Tampio, while I was reading Coleman’s essay my mind began to wander and my thoughts traveled to Jonestown (all Koolaid jokes aside) and I couldn't help but think this is how good people follow bad ideas. Coleman is simply playing a mental game of word-chess to make people think there is something more important in counting words and focusing on one small aspect of a text rather than the text itself. It’s an inane argument.
Professor Tampio summed it up nicely in an email to me, reprinted here with his permission. “Coleman uses high falutin rhetoric to describe what the Common Core will (in his mind) accomplish and discusses great works of literature. But when you boil it down, Coleman's essay justifies a testing regime based on regurgitating words from small snippets of text. It's an absurd pedagogy.”
Well said, Professor.
You can follow Professor Tampio on Twitter @NTampio.
