Mar 23 2009
E.D. Hirsch says reading is not a skill
In a New York Times op-ed today, Hirsch criticizes reading comprehension tests as barking up the wrong tree. Is he on to something?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/opinion/23hirsch.html?_r=1&hp
2 Responses to “E.D. Hirsch says reading is not a skill”
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There’s something to this proposal. Composition has similarly been awakening to the importance of *content* in the *writing* we assign, as more and more of our research has demonstrated that “writing” is not apart from content, but dependent on it. Teachers who understand what their students are reading and writing about because of having background and some expertise in that content are better teachers, other things being relatively equal. And it’s both researched and common educational sense that the more connections we establish across curricula, the more intense students’ learning.
So, why *aren’t* we already using other course content in the reading tests?
(I write, by the way, as one not ideologically opposed to “teaching to the test” if what’s being tested is what needs to be learned to begin with. Tests don’t damage students, stupid test-writers damage students.)
Hirsch is indeed onto something. In my recent book (Inside Urban Charter Schools Harvard Ed Press) I identified very LOW cognitive demands being made on students in HIGH performing charter schools. This is because of the quality of the state mandated tests (in this case the highly regard Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System–MCAS).
Because of the low bar set by these tests, schools teach children more procedure than concepts and it is questionable whether these children are being taught to think–to analyze, to assess, to hypothesize.
This is due to the limited nature of these tests; change the tests and we will see children educated to think for themselves.