An Irresistible Invitation From Diane Ravitch
I was surprised and delighted by a recent shout-out about one of my Huff Post entries by Diane Ravitch, a brilliant and tireless crusader to save public education in the face of the Common Core State Standards. Diane claims in her post that she and I disagree about the CCSS. Make no mistake, I am a HUGE fan of Diane Ravitch and I'm thrilled and honored that she has noticed me. At the end of her post she says: "I wish I could share her [my] enthusiasm for the Common Core standards. I fear that their purpose and their goal is to mass-produce standardized children. She disagrees. Disagreement is healthy. Let's keep talking about it."
Okay, Diane, that's an offer I can't refuse. As background, I am an author of children's science books. I have been free-lance for years. This means I work alone and belong to no institution, so maybe I don't know much about the politics of organizations. As a writer of science for children I have fought with editors to bring my own voice to my writing, to integrate art and text into a seamless learning experience, to integrate text and hands-on activities so that my reader understands the purpose of the activity is to illuminate a concept, and to bring highly stylized fine art to books normally illustrated with photographs. I have fought against reiterating information in the traditional flat, dispassionate, didactic way of textbooks and other books written for the school market. I am not alone in what I do. I have many colleagues who take information about the real world, in all disciplines, and craft it into books designed to captivate children into learning more.
The genre we write for, children's nonfiction literature, has long been a step-child genre, marginalized as "enrichment" for students, not the "meat" of the content material textbooks cover. My question to the educational community is "why?" Why do you give kids