The following post was written in response to an article in <\/em>The Atlantic. Unfortunately, that publication rejected my response, citing it as too complex. \u00a0Really? \u00a0I mean, really?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Plato\u2019s Apology<\/em>, we learn that many who claim to have wisdom actually know far less than they claim to know. This is not the same, of course, as saying that those who claim to know nothing are henceforth wise.\u00a0 It is, however, a fair interpretation to suggest that wisdom means speaking and writing about that which we truly know. Or, as Michael Godsey implies in \u201cThe Wisdom Deficit in Schools,\u201d<\/a> that wisdom does not mean knowing facts so much as it does understanding how to live, as perhaps Aristotle would have it.<\/p>\n It is in this vein that I admire and support Godsey\u2019s concerns that a place for wisdom in public schools continues to challenge teachers.\u00a0 As a teacher of English for 28 years\u2014everything from debate and composition to AP Literature and digital literacy\u2014I have seen years and scores of students succumb to the allure of Beavis and Butthead and Seattle grunge, Instagram and \u201cWhat Does the Fox Say?\u201d, never suspecting that Descartes\u2019 dualism or Conrad\u2019s \u201cThe horror\u201d could be significant moments for true reflection.<\/p>\n No wonder, then, that Godsey looks upon the newest rounds of school reform with an appropriate level of skepticism.\u00a0 Addressing the Common Core standards and Smarter Balanced assessment movements, Godsey writes that \u201cIt all amounts to an alphabet soup of bureaucratic expectations and what can feel like soul-less instruction.\u201d\u00a0 Any teacher with even five years\u2019 experience can sympathize: school reform often does feel<\/em> bureaucratic, the language technical and artificial, and sometimes it is appropriated by non-educators with an agenda of their own, perhaps knowing far less than they claim to know.\u00a0 Godsey and I have more than 50 years teaching between us, however, and we surely agree that there is a difference between healthy skepticism and a nostalgia-ridden longing which drives us to despair.<\/p>\n So where do teachers find spaces to allow students to reflect, to find wisdom, to raise the questions that we know truly resonate across their lives?\u00a0 One place is likely the Common Core.<\/p>\n Godsey suggests that literature is banished in favor of non-fiction texts.\u00a0 He laments that information is privileged over poetry. But a quick look at the standards themselves<\/a> reveals a story at odds with this assertion. \u00a0Some key phrases include understanding \u201cthe figurative and connotative meanings\u201d of words, \u201cincluding words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful.\u201d\u00a0 Those last imperatives sound fairly provocative to me, even refreshing.\u00a0 More, in studying literary structure, we discuss a text\u2019s meaning \u201cas well as its aesthetic impact.\u201dAnd while Godsey claims that Shakespeare is the only content mentioned, the benchmarks are both more open and more directive than he allows, requiring study of \u201cfoundational works of American literature.\u201d In fact, nine of 10 of the reading literature strands apply to the very literature he mourns as lost.<\/p>\n But I said that Common Core is more open, and I mean that unlike our dusty memories of grizzled poetry teachers reciting John Donne to our Love Boat<\/em>-fogged minds, Common Core requires us to connect literatures in the most creative and powerful ways.\u00a0 This fall, for instance, I was caught in one of those amazing moments of teaching when my freshmen were completing To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> just as the Grand Jury passed down its verdict on Ferguson. Suddenly we had opportunities to research documents around the case, to listen to contemporary poets, and to reflect, debate, and write about whether 14-year-old Pat\u2019s claim was right that \u201cracism is over now.\u201d\u00a0 Is Atticus needed anymore?\u00a0 Are there Boo Radleys of a different kind in our neighborhoods?\u00a0 How important is it that we read a novel of the 1930s South?<\/p>\n None of these questions for my student reflections are particularly innovative.\u00a0 But this is important: Common Core and Smarter Balanced don\u2019t necessarily change what we do, but they remind us of what<\/em> we perhaps should always have been doing<\/em>.<\/p>\n Godsey is right to be wary of those who may illogically or unwisely see standards and benchmarks as a \u201cthis and only this\u201d proposition.\u00a0 And he is right that good teachers may be pushed to follow a regimented menu of lessons in seeming opposition to teaching the whole person.\u00a0 I am not quite so anxious, and I resist the idea of an either\/or proposition. Even the best written benchmarks (and tests) have yet to speak to the totality of teaching. And so, like most all education reforms, the new standards can be seen not only as ceilings to reach, but as floors from which to ascend.<\/p>\n\n
Common Core and Smarter Balanced don\u2019t necessarily change what we do, but they remind us of what<\/em> we perhaps should always have been doing<\/em>.<\/span><\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n