are required to study the effects of
the French Revolution and how the
invention of writing changed human
life; they trace a topic, such as the evo-
lution of trade, from prehistory until the
19th century.
n Seventh graders in South Korea are
expected to know not just about supply
and demand, but also about equilibrium
price theories, property rights, and ways
to improve market function.
n Japanese 7th to 9th graders conduct
experiments to find out that pressure is
related to the magnitude of a force and
the area to which the force is applied.
n Eighth graders from the Canadian
1962 proclamation without a thorough
understanding of communism and the
Cold War.
When Learning Contracts
While students in high-performing
countries read literature, do chem-
istry experiments, make music, and
delve into important historical topics,
U.S. students spend countless hours
preparing to take tests of their basic
reading and math skills. No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) is not the only culprit.
In recent years, NCLB’s intense focus
on reading and math skills has dumbed
down the curriculum, but so have
students all subjects, their ability to
read falters. Cognitive scientists like
Daniel Willingham at the University of
Virginia’s Department of Psychology
argue that teaching content is teaching
reading. Prior knowledge across sub-
jects enables students to comprehend.
According to Willingham (2009a),
Remarkably, if you take kids who score
poorly on a reading test and ask them
to read on a topic they know something
about (baseball, say, or dinosaurs) all
of a sudden their comprehension is ter-
rific—better than kids who score well on
reading tests but who don’t know a lot
about baseball or dinosaurs.
No nation that scores competitively on the
PISA exam puts skills before content or
focuses chiefly on reading and math.
province of Ontario are expected to
create musical compositions, conduct a
group of musicians, and know musical
terms in Italian.
n Dutch 12th graders must know
enough about seven events connected to
the Crimean War to be able to put them
in chronological order.
n Canadian 12th graders in British
Columbia are expected to identify the
poet who wrote, “Thou art slave to fate,
chance, kings, and desperate men” and
understand what U.S. Admiral Nimitz
meant when he said, “Pearl Harbor has
now been partially avenged.”
You simply cannot put events in the
Crimean War in chronological order
without a deep knowledge of that
conflict or analyze Kennedy’s October
trends such as the 21st century skills
movement, which promotes teaching
students skills like entrepreneurship
and being media savvy in a manner that
is disconnected from content of any
significance.
Learning from the Best
As reauthorization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)
approaches, the federal government
should hold states accountable for
providing comprehensive, high-quality
liberal arts education. As currently
written, ESEA requires states to care for
little beyond basic reading and math
skills.
Common Core (the organization)
advocates a renewed focus on content
knowledge and warns against overemphasis on skills alone. Requiring
states to adopt rigorous prekindergarten
through 12th grade standards in a wider
range of subjects—including the arts,
history, foreign language, and civics—
would broaden ESEA’s emphasis. This
also would encourage states to build
arts and foreign language programs,
rather than making them the first on the
chopping block when times are tough.
