An amusing Common Core irony
Diane Ravitch, the education historian, former assistant secretary of education, and titular leader of the movement against corporate school reform, edited a book decades ago titled “The American Reader: Words That Moved a Nation.” It is an anthology of speeches, letters, poems, songs, documents and essays by people who have “inspired, delighted, enraged, and roused America.”
Ravitch is also a fierce critic of the Common Core State Standards (as she wrote here). It turns out — as Ravitch wrote on her blog — that the book is listed in Appendix B of the Common Core State Standards as a “text exemplar” in the category of Informational Texts: History/Social Studies — but she is not mentioned as the editor. Three spots above “The American Reader” on the exemplar list is “An American Primer,” whose editor, Daniel J. Boorstin, is mentioned.
In fact, if you look at the complete list of text exemplars, there are plenty of anthologies with the editors’ names listed. For example:
