Is Handwriting a Moral Issue?
            

            Dear Peggy,

            I confess with embarrassment that I didn't do my homework: that is, I didn't
go to the Core's Web site to see just how Bennett's lists are treated by the
originator himself, E.D. Hirsch. I took Bennett at his word that his vast lists
did not mean that first graders were to make it all the way from Mesopotamia to
ancient Mexico to the American colonists, but that they would "study topics
such as" those. By that I assumed he meant they would pick from among them.
(And even Hirsch can be a little obscure on his Web site, emphasizing that the
lesson plans are not meant as "recipes"--though they certainly are presented
that way.) I suppose I was misled by Bennett's own avowal that he did not have
in mind "a grand game of Trivial Pursuit." And I was encouraged by the few
occasions on which the authors elaborate and suggest projects such as analyzing
a 1945 newspaper report about the Yalta conference, reading immigrant diaries,
staging a re-enactment of the surrender at Appomattox, having a visitor come in
to talk about life in the Depression.

            All that sounded like plenty of pausing to do in-depth, interesting work. It
sounded better than the fancy new textbook one of my kids used last year to
study the Middle Ages, which aspired to spend equal time on the non-Western
world--and so ended up spending much too little time on anything. Similarly, it
has struck me that my other child might benefit from more writing of paragraphs
and less discussion of "rubrics" and "hamburger model graphic organizers" in
her writing periods. And some of the new new math, in its hands-on emphasis,
does often seem to add up to busywork--lots of cutting and pasting, to take
last night's assignment, even though the concept of square feet and yards had
sunk in after the first few snips. I fear my reading of Bennett's lists was
clouded by a wishful vision of more purposefully directed, but still active and
innovative, learning. Then again, that's what makes books like these
bestsellers: In a format as broad as this, it's possible to find some version
of what you want to find.

            But you're right, my confusion and your criticism of Hirsch's hectic pace
point to the need for a serious discussion about a standardized curriculum, and
what it might look like, which Bennett, et al., would prefer to avoid, being
champions of localism in education. Hence their enthusiasm for reform by
grass-roots parental agitation, the problems of which you spelled out very
well. And there's another one: Even if constant parental lobbying at school and
hounding at home could possibly be as conflict-free and effective as they
suggest, what would the results look like? It seems to me this is a recipe for
widening the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Guess which
parents are going to be poking their noses into the classroom all the time, to
say nothing of turning "those garden chores into botany lessons." The ones
whose kids hardly need a superdose of after-school enrichment.

            As for character education, I'm all for it, but not for preaching endlessly
about it and calling it "training," as Bennett, et al., do in proudly
old-fashioned style. I don't like values clarification any better in the
trendy, therapeutic incarnation that also seems to be popular: schoolwide
discussions of teasing one month, being compassionate the next, combatting
media stereotypes the one after that. As a contrived package of traditional
wholesomeness, the more authoritarian values of respect, order, obedience, and
cleanliness can prove stultifying, distracting. (Legible handwriting has
practical, not moral, virtue.) So can the progressive virtues of critical
thinking, independence, creativity, and community solidarity when served up as
the only enlightened approach, or as self-esteem-building therapy.

            Religious schools have an easier job in this realm. But Bennett's favorite
ecumenical form of character instruction, of course, is moral stories. As
Bennett points out, Herbert Kohl favors the same, on the other side of the
spectrum. The problem both encounter in trying to script the lessons in too
didactic a way--rule out Babar as colonialist, racist, sexist (Kohl),
rehabilitate Goody Two Shoes (Bennett)--is that they often end up with duller
stories than children deserve, tidily presented with trite interpretations. The
homiletic approach, in my experience, seems to work best in connection with
sports, where all the uplifting talk--"talent is what you have, effort is what
you give," play by the rules, practice makes perfect, etc.--goes along with
real action (and, often, very obvious consequences). For kids in school, rising
to academic challenges posed by admired teachers, it seems to me, offers the
best route to building the responsible, committed attitude everybody hopes for
in youth--better, surely, than any special workshop is likely to. "People think
that making right choices is a consequence of having a strong, well-integrated
personality," Bruno Bettelheim once wrote. "Actually, it's the other way
around: it is making choices--right ones--that builds a strong personality."
Schools should be one important place that children have the chance to make
those choices.

            Speaking of choices, without launching into a debate on school choice, I
wonder whether you see a growing gap between public and elite private
schools--I don't mean in quality, however one might define that, but in the
pedagogical culture that prevails. It's a question raised by my own
observations of pretty stark contrasts (plenty of homework in the early primary
grades in public school vs. next to none in private) and by Bennett's book. Is
it increasingly a choice between back-to-basics traditionalism in the
test-conscious public school system and a considerably more progressive, or
"constructivist," ethos in private schools? Or am I making this up?

            Ann