Common Core and Martin Luther King Jr.: Is this any way to teach his famous letter from jail?
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., right, and his close associate, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, are released after eight days from a jail in Birmingham, Ala., on April 20, 1963. (AP Photo)
Educators are still sounding off on what they see as significant problems with the Common Core English Language Arts standards.
One problem became clear in a New York Times article by Kimberly Skillen, a New York school district administrator, who was quoted about the Core dictate that more nonfiction be taught to students in all classes, including English. She said that this has led to the “elimination” of some literature, but that “we look at teaching literature as teaching particular concepts and skills” and students don’t have to read an entire novel to learn “the concepts” in it. (For that matter, they could just read the Spark Notes to get the “concepts.”)
Then there’s the way that David Coleman, one of the principal authors of the ELA standards and now president of the College Board, wants teachers to present literature to students. Coleman has explained that he wants students to do what is called “close reading” of text by looking only at what the author has written, without drawing on any background information in the text analysis.
Peter Greene, a veteran teacher of English in a small town in Pennsylvania, wrote on his lively Curmudgucation blog, that Coleman’s reading concept is “not anchored in anything.” Referring to an essay Coleman wrote called“Cultivating Wonder,” Greene wrote:
When I looked at his long essay on reading, I saw the Coleman who wants to read works in a vaccuum– let’s look at the “Gettysburg Address” without talking about the Civil War, or “The Sun Also Rises” without considering the Great European War or Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” without looking at what he was doing in the jail in the first place. How, I wonder, do you consider a work of literature out of time, out of context. How does it make sense to read the poetry of Anne Bradstreet without knowing anything about the Puritan faith that informed her every word?
A teacher named Daniel E. Ferguson took a critical look at how teaching “Letter from Birmingham Jail” would look like through Coleman’s approach, which follows. Ferguson taught elementary school and high school debate in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and he is currently a preschool teacher in New York City as well as a doctoral student in curriculum and teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University.
A version of this piece first appeared in “Rethinking Schools,” a magazine that balances classroom practice and educational theory while also addressing key policy issues. It is published by a nonprofit of the same name and writers include teachers, parents, researchers. This version has removed or updated Common Core and Martin Luther King Jr.: Is this any way to teach his famous letter from jail? - The Washington Post: