David Brussat Diagnoses a Source of Opposition to the Common Core

In today’s Projo, David Brussat explains the intellectual roots of at least one major strand of opposition to the common core (the one coming from the political left) and to school testing in general…

During the 1970s and ’80s, deconstructivists in schools of law, departments of literature and other academic fields sought to use [Jacques Derrida’s] ideas to undermine legal, literary, sociological and other knowledge. If better social and political systems were to be built, they claimed, society’s intellectual structures had to be dealt with first. The main method was to destabilize meaning.

What’s that you say, Brussat’s column is actually about architecture? Well, the ideas he describes have deeply impacted education too.

After all, how can students be expected to pass basic reading and math tests, when there is no common meaning to anything that anyone can be expected to learn?

By pure coincidence, the alternate view is summarized in today’s headline story at Politico Magazine, explaining why E.D. Hirsch (along with David Coleman) placed eighth on their list of thinkers, doers and dreamers who really matter (h/t Robert Pondiscio)…

At a time when education theory was dominated by progressives who claimed facts were unnecessary and teachers best served as “guides on the side,” Hirsch’s argument was revolutionary: All children, regardless of background, should be taught the shared intellectual foundation—from Euclid to Shakespeare to Seneca Falls—needed “to thrive in the modern world.”

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