Paul Horton: Common Core and the Gettysburg Address
Guest post by Paul Horton.
All of those concerned with the decline of history as a discipline in our schools should examine very carefully Valerie Strauss' recent post on how the Common Core Standards teachthe Gettysburg Address.
No one will deny that the Gettysburg address is an important document. But what should concern history teachers, history buffs, and anyone concerned with how our students learn history is that teachers teaching this lesson are instructed not to place the document within any kind of historical context.
This address is to be taught as a document, a collection of words that have a set of meanings much like any other document.
The reading of the Gettysburg Address for the authors of the Common Core Standards is an exercise in the acquisition of literacy. The document is cut away from any context that would allow students to understand its historical significance.
This idea, after all, is the whole point of the postwar evolution of the "New Criticism": literary value is determined by a work's internal complexity: the tensions between elements or particulars and
