“Learning
is the process of turning information into knowledge. That is, establishing information in your
memory that can be recalled and used.
The two main strategies are repetition and elaboration.”[1] “While the Common Core State Standards share
many features and concepts with existing standards, the new standards also
represent a substantial departure from current practice in a number of
respects.”[2]
The Common Core Standards set consistent and clear
expectations for what students must know at the completion of each grade from
Kindergarten through high school. The
standards establish expectations in three academic areas: mathematics, English
language arts, and Literacy. “The
literacy standards establish reading and writing expectations for students in
social studies, science, and technology. These standards provide few specifics
on what students need to read or
write, focusing instead on how
students should read and write in these courses and how to evaluate what
qualifies as good writing.”[3] There are a number of fundamental literacy
components in the Common Core Standards that educators, students, and parents
should focus on adopting. They include:
improving reading comprehension, honing writing skills, and cultivating
speaking and listening skills.
“Instructional materials will need to challenge students to read and
understand more complex texts, build vocabulary, and extract details from texts
to use as supporting material in essays and other written work.”[4]
“What
I find troubling is the lack of concern of what a colleague of mine calls
unwarranted self-regard.[5]
Marlene Zuk is a professor of ecology,
evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota and has published several
treatises on evolution and science. A
reviewer of her book “Paleofantasy – What
Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live” wrote, “As Zuk compellingly argues, such beliefs
incorrectly assume that we’re stuck—finished evolving—and have been for tens of
thousands of years. She draws on fascinating evidence that examines everything
from adults’ ability to drink milk to the texture of our ear wax to show that
we’ve actually never stopped evolving. Our nostalgic visions of an ideal
evolutionary past in which we ate, lived, and reproduced as we were “meant to”
fail to recognize that we were never perfectly suited to our environment.
Evolution is about change, and every organism is full of trade-offs.[6] Zuk’s article regarding student self-esteem
is along similar lines of thought. That
students de-couple their own level of intelligence and reasoning from test
scores or exam results. Zuk states, “Maybe
it’s all that self-esteem this generation of students was inculcated with as
youngsters, or maybe it’s the emphasis on respecting everyone else’s opinion,
to the point where no answer, even a mathematical one, can be truly wrong
because that might offend the one who gave it.”[7] While her opinion is forceful and direct, it
is opinion and not fact. Students may or
may not on the whole have high sense of self-esteem. Equally students have a low sense of
self-esteem and are in a critical phase of self-identity and self-confidence
which compounds their ability to learn or properly engage in the
classroom. Issues of high self-esteem
are not nearly as important as educational resources and supportive instructional
curriculum.
[1] Londe. The Biology of
Learning. 1
[2] Rothman. Nine Ways
the Common Core Will Change Classroom Practice.
[3] California Common
Core State Standards, http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/finalelaccssstandards.pdf
[4] Idib.
[5]
Zuk. Right, Wrong..What’s the Dif?
[6]
http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=24733
