Things I don't know:
Things I do know:
When I tried to learn more about the Common Core standards as standards, it became clear to me that teachers of all stripes distrust the private-sector backgrounds of the standards' authors (they pretty much all work at The College Board). That may be fair, though personally I think it's not as bad as it seems. Unfortunately however, the focus on where the standards came from has limited the discussion on the actual substance of the standards.
As a middle grades ELA teacher, I've found that substance to be an excellent attempt at education by first principles, even if this potential is overlooked in almost all of the instructional materials designed for the standards.
The purpose of this article is to look at how a teacher can use the CCSS as first principles in the classroom.
First principles, according to Aristotle in his Physics, are “the basis from which a thing is known.” Personally, I think of them as that elusive final answer if you keep asking someone "Why?" (to find the reason behind something) or "How?" (to find a process).
For example, in his Poetics, Aristotle establishes that plot – rather than character, setting, or diction – is the first principle of tragedy. He does so by answering the question "Why tragedy?"
Through examining the history of the genre and contemporary examples, Aristotle finds that tragedy is the representation of “elevated” action to evoke “pity and fear accomplishing the catharsis of such emotions,” (emphasis added). Thus, the reason for tragedy is the purification (catharsis) of negative emotions, which is accomplished by the events of the plot. Plot, therefore, is the most fundamental element of the genre. That is, the first principle.
This process of finding the most fundamental element of any thing helps us realize how to weigh the importance of its discrete elements (eg, to focus more on the plot of a tragedy rather than its diction).
For ELA teachers, a more relevant example might be found in composition.
If the answer to Why composition? is To communicate ideas, then the next question we need to ask is What is the most fundamental element in communicating ideas?
It's hard to argue that the topic sentence is the most fundamental element in communicating ideas. Though the topic sentence is a useful tool for any writer (and her readers), transmitting an idea does not require one, so it is not a first principle.
It may be, however, a main idea. Without the writer knowing her main idea before writing, she cannot reliably transmit ideas. Because it is necessary to achieve the purpose of composition (and composition cannot be achieved without it), a main idea can be said to be a first principle of composition. (Although perhaps even more fundamental is the writer's purpose.)
Similarly, CER, RACE, RAD, MAAM, the 5-paragraph essay – all of these have their uses and limitations as frameworks for expressing thought, but none of these are themselves first principles of expressing ideas.
If nowhere else in the building (except for maybe the math department), first principles have a critical place in the ELA classroom. This because of the language arts’ own first principles.
To find the first principles of any thing, it’s useful to establish that thing’s purpose. So why do we teach ELA? And why is it one of the two tested subjects?
To answer these questions, another, larger question must be asked: "What are the language arts?" And one way to start answering that is by analyzing the parts of the language arts.
We study two types of text in ELA class. CCSS calls them the literary and the informational. They might also be called stories/poems and essays, or the narrative/poetic and the expository, or any other two terms that demarcate a point between the two poles of literature’s psychological-literal spectrum.
Any set of terms can be useful for differentiating the two, but in reality any division will be blurry. Still, defining these two types of text helps us better understand the whole that they form in our ELA classes.
The latter type – the informational or expository, eg, essays – is easier to make meaning from.
Humans use language to share information across space and time. Sitting in modern-day Vietnam in the year 2021 AD, I can learn about tragedy from Aristotle, who wrote on the subject living somewhere in "Greece" over 2,300 years ago. That’s pretty neat.
ELA class then, in part, must ensure the continued transmission of the skills that enable this communication of ideas and information. Doing so requires more than just being able to read the words. It also must include identifying main ideas and details, weighing evidence, establishing points of view, and more. You'll find these skills in the CCSS.
The purpose of the other half of ELA class is less clear and can even appear to be frivolous. In part, the seeming frivolity of literary text is due to the type’s popularity. “Why do we need a class on literature?” a STEM-inspired student (or teacher or administrator) might ask. “I can just go the library and pick up a book if I wanted to read!”
But this reasoning misses the purpose of literature and learning to read literature. ELA is not “the joy of reading” (though one proficient in the language arts is more likely and better equipped to find such joy than one who is not). ELA class instead aims at – or should aim at – enlightenment. “Enlightenment” not at all in a new-age sense, rather in the practical sense of empowering one to come to terms with oneself coming to terms with the world.
If a student is interested in satellites, that student must be equipped to make sense of the best information there is about satellites. That’s RI. But in order to take part in and further a healthy society, that student must also learn to understand what it is that he sees in satellites which excites him.
Some may say that these questions are beyond the purview of any language arts class. I contend that questions such as these – those that speak to what it means to be human – are at the heart of any worthwhile discussion of language arts. Language and literature are among the most fundamental differences between humanity and other species; it is our job to teach language and literature.
Explorations of humanity should already hold a central place in ELA classes. The Common Core State Standards themselves rightly demand as much through their selection of exemplar texts.
The list goes on. Besides the fact that these questions span the globe and human history, they plumb the depths of the human condition regardless of their creator’s geography or era. Arguably, this timelessness (and placelessness) is what makes the works in which these questions are posed literature.
All of which is to say that the CCSS are not so far removed from the essential role of literature, that is, an exploration of humanity. Nonetheless, that this connection is merely implicit in the standards and their suggested texts does not guarantee that students use literature as a tool for exploring the human (their own) condition.
Even less certain – and the most important aspect of engaging with language arts for secondary students – is that students use works of literature to learn how to make their own meaning.
At Redeemed Reader, Janie Cheaney provides a compelling critique of CCSS. She writes that teaching the standards is comparable to instructing students on the rigging of a ship but that students ought instead be allowed to use the works as vessels to freely sail to new worlds.
I think this is half right. Students do need to “travel” via the written word. But past a certain age, in order to do so effectively, students must learn a bit about how the vessel operates. When does one pick up Ogden Nash versus Shakespeare versus Whitman? Why? When does one emulate Nash versus Shakespeare versus Whitman? How?
A reader may eventually be able to answer these questions naturally without any explicit instruction in literature's form and substance, but that is far from guaranteed. Better to teach would-be explorers the differences between a frigate and canoe.
In any case, we need sailors.
As a society, we are in desperate need of those explorers and merchants and fishermen who set their prows (of all types and sizes) into the waters of language arts because language is the most basic tool for thought. This, I'd argue, is likely the first principle of ELA.
Clear-headedness, an understanding of and engagement with our intellectual traditions, and concision in communication are necessary for a society’s health. Language arts is at the root of them all. If we can agree to that, then the question we must ask is how can we teach language arts to optimize for mastery of those necessary skills?
The answer to that question would look a lot like the ELA Common Core State Standards.
Here I might have undertaken a standard-by-standard defense of the CCSS as first principles. But that would have been boring for both us. Instead I’ll challenge you to find a superfluous ELA standard, especially in the central categories of “Key Ideas and Details” and “Craft and Structure.”
(Additionally, I intend to begin releasing, as Open Educational Resources, my CCSS ELA curricula, which make this argument in their method of instruction.)
More than likely, you haven’t found anything too extraneous among those 6 or so sentences. In fact, it’s my contention that they have the opposite problem.
A teacher can create 1,000 drills to practice finding main ideas. Unfortunately, that same teacher can then distribute those drills to his students in order to pass the time for a class period, a week, a month, or even an entire academic year.
For the vast majority of his students, the point of diminishing returns will arrive early – if not after 2 such drills, then definitely by 10 – and just as quickly those drills will begin harming the students forced to complete them. The harm happens in two ways: one is by greatly reducing the students' intellectual curiosity; the other is in terms of opportunity cost, that is, the infinite amount of more productive activities that students could have been doing with that time.
All of which is to say that a knowledge of first principles is necessary for engaging with texts, but is not sufficient to use the language arts for their intended purpose – that is, the use of language as a tool for thought.
If a class which purports to teach language arts is not equipping its students to do this, then it is not teaching the language arts.
Language, grammar, the alphabet, composition: these are all tools designed and perfected over thousands of years in order to help us think better. Instructors of the language arts are responsible for transmitting this knowledge to a new generation of users, that is, every thinking and feeling person in the world.