A Trial Run for School Standards That Encourage Deeper Thought

In three years, instruction in most of the country could look a lot like what is going on at Hillcrest, one of 100 schools in New York City experimenting with new curriculum standards known as the common core.

Forty-two states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands have signed on to the new standards, an ambitious set of goals that go beyond reading lists and math formulas to try to raise the bar not only on what students in every grade are expected to learn, but also on how teachers are expected to teach.

The standards, to go into effect in 2014, will replace a hodgepodge of state guidelines that have become the Achilles’ heel of the No Child Left Behind law. Many states, including New York, lowered standards in a push to meet the law’s requirement that all students reach grade level, as measured by each state, in English and math. President Obama has expressed a desire to rewrite the law, and many experts predict the common core will be a centerpiece of the effort.

The new standards give specific goals that, by the end of the 12th grade, should prepare students for college work. Book reports will ask students to analyze, not summarize. Presentations will be graded partly on how persuasively students express their ideas. History papers will require reading from multiple sources; the goal is to get students to see how beliefs and biases can influence the way different people describe the same events.

Muito do que aqui se defende fazemos nós com os nossos estudantes...enfim, por enquanto, porque a tendência é imitar o sistema americano de há uns anos, isto é, questionários de resposta fechada, textos superficiais e resumidos, etc. Os exames que agora são moda, mesmo nas humanidades mostram a tendência, errada, penso, do sistema de ensino. Trabalhar para o mínimos dos mínimos baixando sempre a fasquia. Naturalmente que assim os alunos têm tendência a sair das escolas cada vez mais mal preparados.

O que muita gente ignorante não percebe quando faz elogios à MLR é que foi ela, sobretudo, quem levou o laxismo, a falta de exigência e a falta de rigor ao ensino e o destruiu no que tinha de melhor, promovendo os vícios e o que tinha de pior. A infantilização já vinha de trás da Ana Benavente. Agora estamos como estamos...