Ancient Mesopotamia: A Common Core embarrassment or a clever way to develop vocabulary, language skills?

On Board Online • May 26, 2014

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer

To bolster his case against the Common Core learning standards during a recent legislative floor debate, Assemblyman Al Graf reached back a few thousand years.

“Can anybody in this chamber explain to me why a first grader has to tell me or point out for me where Ancient Mesopotamia is on a map or a globe and explain to me the contributions that Ancient Mesopotamia has made to modern-day civilization?” the Suffolk County Republican thundered during the March 5 Assembly session. “They’re 6!”

A retired New York City police officer with an affable demeanor, Graf has a post-retirement degree in elementary education from SUNY Plattsburgh and likes to joke about his experience as a student teacher in a kindergarten class. “Do I look like Arnold Schwarzenegger?” he asked, referring to the star of the action comedy film Kindergarten Cop.

Graf’s tone turns serious, though, when he talks about the Common Core standards. While he acknowledges that he has not observed the English Language Arts lessons being used in a first-grade classroom, he says it is obvious to him that the material is ill conceived.

“That’s not how you teach kids,” he told On Board. “That’s not age-appropriate for a child in first grade.”

In New York’s debate over the Common Core, the words “Ancient Mesopotamia” have come to symbolize the argument that the standards – and the curriculum materials developed to help students meet them – are flawed and misguided.

Diane Ravitch, a blogger and professor at New York University, is a prominent critic. She panned the Early World Civilizations unit, which features read-aloud stories about both Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, saying it calls on first graders to understand facts and concepts more appropriate for children in junior high or high school. She likened the unit to “a circus trick” and “an effort to prove that a 6-year-old can do mental gymnastics.”

But the designers of the curriculum say critics misunderstand the primary aim of the lessons. They are intended to help students develop vocabulary and language skills and to stimulate their interest – not to make them experts on Mesopotamia.

“It’s hearing words used over and over again in different contexts that makes them meaningful,” said Linda Bevilacqua, president of Core Knowledge Foundation, which produced the Early World Civilizations units.

Core Knowledge is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1986 by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. Hirsch is a champion of the educational philosophy that schools should not teach reading by emphasizing skills like word recognition but, rather, expose children to ideas worth communicating about.

Core Knowledge Foundation was among winners of three contracts worth $12.9 million awarded in 2012 by the State Education Department for curriculum development. Core Knowledge’s ELA materials for students up to Grade 2 are available to teachers and school districts from the EngageNY website without charge, and state education officials say the lesson plans are built with the expectation that teachers will modify and improve upon them as they determine what works best in their own classrooms.

A list on EngageNY.org of 81 things first graders should be able to do by the time they finish the Early World Civilizations unit has stoked some of the harshest criticism of the curriculum. In addition to locating Mesopotamia on a map or globe, the list of student goals includes:

• Explain the significance of the Code of Hammurabi.
• Explain the significance of gods/goddesses, ziggurats, temples and priests in Mesopotamia.
• Describe how a civilization evolves and changes over time.
• Compare and contrast (orally or in writing) similarities and differences within a single nonfiction/informational read-aloud or between two or more nonfiction/informational read-alouds.

Contrary to what critics have concluded from the list, students are not expected to memorize a series of facts about Mesopotamia, nor are they quizzed on them, said Kate Gerson, a senior fellow with the Regents Research Foundation.

“These are points in a conversation that will come out in class,” she told On Board. “But this is not about being measured. It’s about getting used to hearing stories and talking about them.”