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After a recent school review, I was asked whether I had any recommendations for Cornerstone. I said that I had made the case in earlier reviews that people engaged in the program should be introduced, before anything else, to the concepts that lie behind the definition that we put at the beginning of every report. The key ideas - as I interpret them - are that children should be encouraged and expected to think in depth, and that speaking, listening, reading and writing are the means whereby they express that thinking. As I have said before, I have misgivings that literacy may too easily be associated only with what goes on in the literacy block - not surprisingly, since that is its title. The subject matter that promotes the thinking can be anything that comes their way. On the occasions when I have observed classes outside the literacy block, I have sometimes seen a use of language that far surpasses any of the language inside it. For example, I once saw a math lesson in which 2nd graders were discussing the idea of symmetry, striving to find the words that would lay down the conditions and modify their definitions in the light of their empirical observations. I was prompted to write this by a kind of belated revelation during our oral report at one of our Cornerstone schools. I was listening to one of my colleagues saying that students, when asked why they were doing some task or other, never got beyond the idea that it was because the teacher had told them to do it. We talk in every review about this and generally find it a deficiency. But I suddenly thought, it's because the teachers don't know why they're doing things, and that's why they often pretend that the district, or the state requires it. (They don't admit, though it's true, that they often do things because the workbook requires it.) If they were to ask themselves why they were doing something, the answer might lead them to doing it in a far more effective way, because the old way simply didn't satisfy the underlying reason for doing it. But I'm afraid they are too much in the habit of looking to be told what to do and not having to think about it at all. If this is true, it may well be why some teachers reject Cornerstone as "just another program." Of those who try to go along with it, there are those who look for the superficial, just as they might with any other program such as phonics or scripted math. You simply try to follow the instructions, and don't bother to work out why having students make connections, for example, is desirable. To deal well with Cornerstone, they have to realize that it is not just another program but something like a declaration of faith in the intellectual capacity of students, which inevitably leads to a redefinition of the roles and activities of teacher and of those taught. I don't know how thorough the introduction is to the Cornerstone philosophy or when it is assumed that its emphasis is no longer necessary. My experience in the schools suggests a greater call for a real grounding in the philosophy that undergirds the work of Cornerstone. |
