An Interview with Robert Pondiscio: About Core Knowledge

Michael F. Shaughnessy - August 28, 2009
Senior Columnist EducationNews.org
Eastern New Mexico University
Portales, New Mexico    

1)     Robert , you run the Core Knowledge Blog. How did you first get involved with Core Knowledge?

I was a teacher in the South Bronx for several years.  It was my second career after a long time in the magazine industry.  My alternative certification training was not what I was expecting, especially when it came to teaching “literacy.”  It was all reading strategies and writing process, and explicit reading instruction well into middle school.  It had nothing in common with my own public school education which was "learn to read, then read to learn."  At first I didn’t question it.  As a new teacher, what did I know?  But even my brightest 5^th grade students demonstrated an alarming lack of basic background knowledge.  I was constantly “scaffolding” to make up for what they didn’t know.  It was pretty obvious that lack of background knowledge was getting in the way of their reading comprehension, but it was never discussed in ed school or professional development.  The only writer who seemed to have an explanation for what I was seeing in my class every day was E.D. Hirsch.  Yet when I brought up Hirsch and Core Knowledge in my grad school classes, the reaction was, “Oh, that dead white guy stuff?  Nobody takes that seriously.”  But that wasn’t what Hirsch was about in the slightest.  The more I learned about Core Knowledge , the more militant I became in my belief that the skills and strategies reading instruction as we were practicing it was doing my kids a huge disservice.  When I left the classroom, I found my way to Hirsch’s door and said, “You understand what students like mine need.  How can I help you spread the word?”

2)     For those who have been on a desert island for many years, how did the Core Knowledge movement get started?

You don’t need to have been on a desert island.  Being in a school of education is usually sufficient.  The Core Knowledge Foundation was founded by Dr. Hirsch in 1986.  A year later, he published his book Cultural Literacy, which became one of the most unexpected best-sellers in publishing history, and really launched Core Knowledge as a school reform movement.  The next step was the creation of the Core Knowledge Sequence, which is a detailed outline of the specific content children need to know to gain what Dr. Hirsch calls language proficiency.  Today there are over TK Core Knowledge schools and preschools, including TK “Official” schools that implement all or most of the Core Knowledge Sequence. This includes some of the highest performing schools in the country working with low-income, African-American and Hispanic children.  They’re the ones Core Knowledge, when it’s rigorously implemented, benefits the most. 

3)     As I recall, it used to be called “cultural literacy.”  Why did they change the name?

It’s easy to forget what a divisive time the late 80s and early 90s were in terms of the battles over language, political correctness, and the so-called “culture wars.”  Calling it Core Knowledge instead of the Cultural Literacy Foundation was a way to try to present Dr. Hirsch’s ideas for what they were—a way to improve reading and language proficiency.  Too many people still think Core Knowledge is about enshrining a particular view of history or establishing a canon.  It’s not.  It’s a recognition that reading comprehension and language proficiency require being familiar with an broad range of knowledge in science, history, the arts and other areas that speakers and writers assume readers and listeners already know.  Dan Willingham, the University of Virginia cognitive scientist, recently called Cultural Literacy, the most misunderstood education book of the last fifty years.  I think that’s exactly right.  Poor readers suddenly look like good readers when they’re reading about familiar subjects.  It stands to reason that we should be doing everything we can to make them familiar with more subjects. 

4)     I think E.D. Hirsch’s most recent book was “The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them”.  Am I off on this?

His most recent book was The Knowledge Deficit in 2007.  But we are just days away from the publication his latest book, The Making of Americans.  I think it’s Hirsch’s best book to date.    It’s a sweeping look at the history of public education in the U.S. and how we lost our way.  He makes the argument for the necessity of a sound, broad education in the early grades, and shows how this was exactly what our Founders had in mind.  Unlike us, they weren’t concerned about test scores, but whether the infant republic could survive.  They saw common schooling and education as having the power to hold disparate factions together as a single nation.  It’s an idea that has lost none of its relevance today. 

Nearly 250 years later, elementary education is still what prepares (or at least ought to prepare) America’s children to participate effectively in what Dr. Hirsch calls our “common public sphere.”  

5)     Why should general knowledge be a core value of education?

Because you will never be a strong reader without it.  Period.  Full stop.   Is that a good enough reason?  Over the last century, curriculum has become a dirty word in schools of education and the third rail of education policy.  It’s absurd, frankly.   The fundamental proposition of Core Knowledge is to say, “Look whether you like it or not there is a certain body of knowledge that writers and speakers assume you know and will not spell out for you. If you don’t share that common knowledge, you’re not going to be able to read, write and communicate effectively.”  It’s alarming how many people—even in education—don’t get this.  I’ve talked to countless teachers who say “I agree that children should get a well-rounded education, but first we have to teach them to read.”  It doesn’t work that way.  You can’t have one without the other.  If you say, “It’s not important to give children a content-rich education,” you’re effectively saying “It’s not important for children to understand what they read.” 

6)     Now, what is your position on social promotion- good, bad or indifferent?

I don’t think I can ever divorce my personal opinion on social promotion from my experience as a teacher.  I had a student who missed about half of the school year and failed the ELA test.  But he didn’t fail it badly enough to be held over.  He was euphemistically described as “approaching grade level,” which is a bar set so low, I think it would stun most people. In fact, a former Core Knowledge teacher,

Diana Senechal, recently demonstrated how it’s pretty easy to simply guess your way to that level without even looking at the test.  I had another kid who came in at ten o’clock most every day and spent most days dozing off at his desk.  When I told him he was at risk of being held back he was genuinely taken aback.  “But I do good on the test!” he said.  Smart kid.  He knew perfectly well if he was at or even near “grade level” there was no way he could be held back.  So he did no work – quite literally, none – all year.  I argued strenuously in favor of holding over both of these students but was told it was not possible. 

And even if it was, I was instructed, students who are held over even one time are far less likely to graduate from high school.  At the risk of sounding hard-hearted, I think a life lesson in the importance of showing up and making an effort would have been more valuable than an empty diploma for both of these young men.  The lesson they learned is that there’s zero value in their day-to-day schooling.  And we reinforced that lesson. 

7)     Tell us about your blog. What kind of interesting stuff would one find there?

Last month, it was the first place to see a draft of the voluntary state standards that the NGA and CCSO cooked up.  I got in a little trouble for that—both for “leaking” the document, and pronouncing it “dead on arrival.”  As written in the draft, the standards were almost entirely a list of skills, not content.  I’m for national standards as a rule, but standards without content is like tennis without a net.   Standards that tell what students should be able to do, but not what they should know reinforces the mistaken notion that things like reading comprehension, critical thinking and problem solving are transferable skills, which is one of the most wrong-headed ideas in education.  Skills depend on content.  You can’t teach them in the abstract.

In general, the blog is about all things education, but viewed through the lens of curriculum, content and teaching.  For example, we spend a lot of time on ed policy, but with a curriculum and teaching spin.  I tend to have a single litmus test in looking at ed policy, which is “will this make it more likely or less likely that kids like the ones I used to teach will get a rich, robust education?”  Unfortunately, the answer is too often “FAR less likely.”  At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, I think we have made excellent diagnoses and prescribed a lot of bad medicine.  

8)     What is the exact link or site of your blog?

You can find it at the Core Knowledge website at www.coreknowledge.org or go directly to

http://blog.coreknowledge.org/

       9) What kinds of conversations do you encourage?

It’s quite free and open. As the editor, I post things that I think the average teacher would find interesting.  As moderator, I let almost every comment stand, unless it’s anonymous and inflammatory (you can be anonymous or inflammatory, but not both).  The result has been a thoughtful conversation among educators who care deeply about what they do.  The blogs I most admire are those where the host sets the table and the guests run with it.  I’m thinking of Bridging Differences by Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch, which consistently has the meatiest, most thoughtful conversation about education of any blog.  Joanne Jacobs also has built a first-rate online community.  She could post her grocery list and an hour later have dozens of passionate comments arguing over mayonnaise vs. Miracle Whip.   I’d like the Core Knowledge Blog to be in the company of blogs like those.  On our best days we are, I think.  One of the things I’m proudest of on the Core Knowledge Blog is that we’ve attracted a smart group of commenters, mostly teachers, who are a lot more interesting to read than I am.  They’re very astute and witty in their observations, especially about policy prescriptions.

10) Call it what you will—general knowledge, world knowledge, general information---it seems that these constructs all have a robust relationship to reading comprehension and  academic excellence. Why do we not put more emphasis on these constructs?

I don’t think people in education grasp the relationship between content and reading comprehension.  We have this mistaken idea that reading is a transferable skill – learn to decode, apply reading strategies and voila! You can read anything.  The evidence from cognitive science is overwhelming that it doesn’t work that way. 

11) What have I neglected to ask?

You didn’t ask what I would wish for if granted three wishes.  I only want one: I wish every teacher, administrator and parent in America would go on YouTube and look at Dan Willingham’s video, “Teaching Content Is Teaching Reading.”  You would hear the sounds of millions of hands smacking against foreheads all across this country and saying, “Oh, now I get it!”   Dan’s a cognitive scientist, not a theorist, and he's brilliant.   I think he has the potential to be the most influential person in education of the next generation. In talking about Core Knowledge, I use the phrase “teaching content IS teaching reading” all the time.  I stole it from Dan.  Until we understand that teaching content is teaching reading—and create an education system that properly incentivizes schools to offer a well-rounded curriculum (or at least doesn’t actively undermine it)—I’m afraid we’re not going to make the kind of progress in education that we all want to see.   I have no doubt we'll get there eventually, but not before we pay a high price in years wasted and millions of undereducated children.  We've already paid too high a price.