Wednesday, September 26, 2007

NJCCCS Critique

In reviewing the Core Content Standards from the NJ website, I found several useful pages. The standards are clearly written, and deal with the information students will learn or the tasks they will be able to perform. The greatest value of these standards is maintaining uniform instruction throughout the state. The value of publishing these standards on the Internet is in making parents, teachers, and students aware of the performance expectations for each class or grade level. All told, this page is effective, but certainly open for criticism. Allow me to indulge.

The block quote from A Nation at Risk seems out of place for an official government site. This quote sets an ominous, misrepresentative tone for the linked pages and the standards they address.

I do not agree with the placement of human development skills in the Career Education and Consumer, Family and Life Skills. If this sounds like a jumbled mess, it’s because it is. The classes In reality, these topics are addressed through home-economics, career counseling classes, that have a very frail identity or purpose unto themselves.
Among the standards that should be considered are self-esteem, interpersonal relationships, work ethic, and morals. I feel that these universal standards should be featured more prominently on the page. They should be considered with the same care given to discipline-specific content standards.

I also feel that consideration should be given to developing the worldview and self-identity of each student. We cordon our standards by classical disciplines, but there is little regard given to the idea that these disciplines make up the larger human experience. To its credit, the Introduction page states, “Although the standards have been organized into separate academic disciplines, this is not meant to imply that each standard can only be met through content-specific courses.” Yet this still does not explain the utility of meeting performance standards across disciplines. Further, it does recognize that there is value to establishing perspectives that transcend classical disciplinary divisions. The standards for math, science, language arts, and history are content-driven; even when these standards discuss student behaviors the language is rarely consistent across subjects. Students must be expected to fuse these disciplines into a larger, practical understanding of their world. From such a perspective, the value of content standards comes not in their substance, but in the ability for students to connect learning across disciplines or throughout time periods.

1 comment:

Nataly said...

Thank you for saying the same thing I was thinking about he quoting of "A NAtion at Risk"
It seems scare tactics are still the most prominant use of persuasion in government.