Knowledge Matters : O-ZON-campagne in de VS  (herscholing i.p.v. ontscholing)

 1.Knowledge Matters is a campaign to make building knowledge Job One for American education.

Nearly every major educational goal—from improving reading comprehension and critical thinking to problem solving and creativity—is knowledge based. Without a solid foundation of content knowledge built from the first days of a child’s school experience—in history, science, the arts and more—the ambitious goals of raising academic standards and improving student outcomes simply cannot be met. Our Children Need Knowledge Champions

Fifty years of research definitively shows that knowledge is vital to language comprehension—the starting line for all other learning and analysis. Broad, shared knowledge is vital to citizenship, too, yet the curriculum of many schools has narrowed. To address this challenge, we must ensure that history, science, geography, art, and music are generously taught to all students, especially those least likely to gain such knowledge outside school.

2. Initial Supporters

Knowledge Matters is a new initiative; the planning phase is being spearheaded by:•Leslye Arsht, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of StandardsWork•Michael Casserly, Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools•Ron Fairchild, Chief Executive Officer of the Smarter Learning Group and Senior Consultant for the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading•Chester E. Finn, Jr., Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute•Kati Haycock, President of The Education Trust•E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation•Joel Klein, Chief Policy and Strategy Officer of Oscar Health Insurance and former Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education•Ralph Smith, Senior Vice President of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Managing Director for the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading•David Steiner, Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and former New York State Commissioner of Education

Staff

•Robert Pondiscio, Executive Director, as well as Senior Fellow and Vice President for External Affairs of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute•Lisa Hansel, Director

For more information, please email Lisa@KnowledgeMattersCampaign.org.

3. Get the Facts

“The mistaken idea that reading is a skill,” notes University of Virginia cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, “may be the single biggest factor holding back reading achievement in the country. The knowledge base problem must be solved.”

3.1) Reading comprehension depends on broad knowledge and a large vocabulary.

From newspapers to novels, all texts for literate adults omit basic information—they use terms, draw analogies, and make references without offering definitions or explanations. In short, they assume that the reader has a base level of knowledge. In order for children to grow into literate adults that read widely with ease, all schools must make building broad knowledge—teaching all the knowledge that writers assume readers have—job one.

•To learn more, read "Can Reading Comprehension Be Taught?" by Daniel Willingham and watch Willingham's video, "Teaching Content Is Teaching Reading."

3.2 Critical thinking and problem solving depend on broad knowledge and deep knowledge.

Broad knowledge is necessary for comprehension—so it’s also the starting place for critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. Try analyzing the primary causes of the U.S. Civil War without knowing much about America in the first half of the 19th century. Try designing a study to compare water-filtration technologies without knowing much about waterborne diseases or filtration methods. There simply are no all-purpose thinking skills that can be deployed effectively without knowledge.

•To learn more, read “21st Century Skills: The Challenges Ahead” by Andrew J. Rotherham and Daniel Willingham, and "Education in the Age of Google" by Annie Murphy Paul.

3.3 Knowledge increases IQ.

Although many people in Western cultures believe intelligence is genetically determined, a more accurate view is that intelligence is influenced by both genes and the environment. Learning new knowledge actually increases intelligence. Just like practice in sports leads to new skills and better performance, time spent reading and studying leads to higher achievement and greater ability.

•To learn more, read "Schooling Makes You Smarter" by Richard Nisbett.

3.4  Knowledge is like an interest-bearing savings account: The more you know, the faster you learn.

Starting a subject from scratch is tough; adding a few more facts and concepts to something you already know a lot about is easy. Another way to think about your knowledge is like a sticky web. The bigger your web, the more stuff will stick to it. The smaller your web, the more information will pass on by without being added to your store of knowledge.

•To learn more, watch Robert Pondiscio's presentation on “The 57 Most Important Words in Education Reform.”

3.5  The early grades are critical for building knowledge and vocabulary.

While building knowledge is always beneficial, the early grades are especially important. Some children build lots of academic knowledge at home, but others rely on their schools. In the early grades, the gaps are still relatively small and the odds of catching up are better.

•To learn more, read "The Word Gap" by Laura Colker and "Building Knowledge" by E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Also, watch Susan Neuman explain "Why Knowledge Matters."

4. Seize the Day

The fact that insufficient knowledge is a major cause of the achievement gap is great news. Compared with many of the challenges that impact learning, the lack of knowledge is relatively easy to address.

Start building knowledge today:

•All of us can spend more time—at school and at home—teaching our children about the world. We can share nonfiction videos and texts, discuss current events, and make time for museums and libraries.

 •Individual teachers can devote more time to the facts and concepts that are central to each discipline. They can avoid jumping from one topic to the next by creating text sets to immerse students in topics for several days. And if they have a mandated literacy block that is stealing time from other subjects, they can develop text sets on science, history, and the arts to use during that block.

•Teams of teachers can review the topics being taught in each grade to be sure that students are building knowledge in a coherent, logical, cumulative manner. They can introduce an array of topics in the early grades to build vocabulary and come back to those topics in later grades to deepen understanding.

•Administrators in charge of curriculum purchasing can seek out knowledge-rich materials. A recent report from the Center for American Progress found that highly effective curricula do not cost more than less-effective materials.

•Policymakers can shift their focus from teacher quality to teaching quality, realizing that the materials teachers are given (or required) to teach with strongly influence results. Research shows that higher-quality materials have just as large an impact on achievement as higher-quality teachers.

5. Learn More About Why Knowledge Matters: Longer Takes

These longer articles offer a wealth of information on how thinking and learning work, and why knowledge matters.

"A Wealth of Words: The Key to Increasing Upward Mobility Is Expanding Vocabulary" by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

"Literacy Is Knowledge" by Robert Pondiscio

"Why Don't Students Like School? Because the Mind Is Not Designed for Thinking" by Daniel Willingham

Kortere Artikels:

The Core Knowledge Blog

Knowledge Equalityby Lisa HanselJune 11th, 2015

I’m for knowledge equality. Most days, it seems about as popular as marriage equality was in the 1950s.What I mean by knowledge equality is all children having equal opportunities to learn the academic knowledge that opens doors. The knowledge that really is power. The knowledge that represents the history of human accomplishment. The knowledge that stands the test of time because it is beautiful.

The knowledge that privileged children acquire at home, in libraries and museums, and in school.Under the banners of local control, diversity, and individuality, we’ve spent decades pursuing universal skills while deemphasizing shared knowledge. But it isn’t working and it can’t work. Skills depend on knowledge, so knowledge equality is the only path to skill equality.

Fortunately, there is room for both knowledge equality and individuality: The well-educated mind is always open to learning more. There’s no reason why our schools could not all offer the same powerful foundation of knowledge and then also engage students in their passions (which would be quite broad thanks to the well-rounded foundation).

No reason except being afraid of having the discussion, of debating what constitutes the powerful foundation of knowledge. Thirty years ago E. D. Hirsch and colleagues took on that challenge as a research project. While that effort has been updated and is thriving through Core Knowledge, perhaps it is time for another effort. One that involves millions of teachers, parents, and concerned citizens—a crowdsourced outline of a well-rounded education.

It would be hard—but not as hard as allowing the achievement gap to persist. The achievement gap is a knowledge gap. Knowledge equality is the only way to close it. Aren’t both of these children equally deserving of a rich, well-rounded education? Don’t both need to be immersed in the sciences and arts, US and world history, music, civics, and more? (Image courtesy of Shutterstock.)

Kids Love Knowing Stuff  09/10/2015 11:58

Karin Chenoweth

A commonplace idea floating around schools is that learning facts is the wave of the past. The basic argument goes like this: Now that we can Google any facts we want, why would anyone need to learn them? They're so boring! Instead, kids need to learn the skills of "critical thinking" and "problem solving."Or, as my kids' elementary school principal used to say, it doesn't matter if kids know where Nebraska is as long as they can find out where it is.

A lot of cognitive science argues against this point of view, and some of it can be found here.

But the point I want to make today is that kids love knowing facts. You can almost see them puff up with pride when they can tell a fact to a grownup who doesn't know it. It puts them on the same plane as adults when they can talk confidently about what they know -- like the habitats of iguanas or the differences between igneous and sedimentary rock, or that the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter is pi and its decimal representation is infinite -- that means it goes on forever!

Certainly facts in isolation can be boring, but when kids see how they're connected and understand their import -- they love knowing them.I was reminded of the thrill kids have in learning facts a while back when I visited Edward Brooke Charter School in Roslindale, Massachusetts. Brooke's students are mostly African American (73 percent) and Latino (25 percent), with 82 percent qualifying for free and reduced-price meals. Students at Brooke Charter outperform students in the state by a lot -- for example, 91 percent of third-graders met or exceeded state English language arts standards in 2014, and 100 percent met or exceeded math standards -- compared with 57 and 68, respectively, in the state.

I had asked to speak to students in different grades. The principal set up a little focus group with two third-graders, two fourth-graders, and two fifth-graders and then left us alone. A little chatterbox third-grader who had gone to a different school for kindergarten said, when I asked her to compare the two schools, "I never had the experience of learning in kindergarten." The whole day, she said, had been devoted to blocks, play, and recess. When she arrived at Brooke, she said, she was startled by how much she was expected to learn.

I'm sure she was exaggerating somewhat, but another third-grader with a similar experience chimed in to say that he, too, had played most of the time in a previous school. That's when one of the wise sages in the fifth grade explained that "here at Brooke, we learn most of the time, and that's how we get a vast knowledge."

Her fifth-grade colleague added that he was learning about pi and he was able to help his seventh- and eighth-grade cousins who were in different schools with their math homework.Both fifth-graders were quiet and dignified about their learning, but anyone could tell that they were proud that they knew stuff -- stuff that helped them understand their world better and gave them the power that only knowledge confers.

I'm going to bet that those kids are going to be pretty amazing critical thinkers and problem solvers -- not in spite of having had a rich, comprehensive curriculum that includes a lot of facts that help them gain a "vast knowledge" - but because of it.