Apr. 01, 2006 - 19:54 MST

TRINE TA UNNERSTAN

Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News and usually on Saturday or Sunday I see her column. Today's points out what part of our problems in this country are. In full then (Bolds and Italics mine):

IT'S EVER CLEARER THAT IT TAKES KNOWLEDGE TO ACQUIRE IT

"E. D. HIrsch has a new book, "The Knowledge Deficit," laying out the growing evidence that a curriculum rich in content -- like the Core Knowledte curriculum he supports -- is more effective in closing the achievement gap than vacuous process standards."

"Hirsch's point -- not a new one, of course but with each passing year, it becomes clearer that he is right -- is that understanding what you read depends on your being able to fill in from your own knowledge all the things the writer assumes readers will know and therefore doesn't mention."

"Learning to decode -- that is to identify printed words with their spoken equivalents -- is challenging enough for many children, especially if their teachers have been stuffed full of romantic nonsense about how easy and natural reading is. (It isn't.) But it isn't even close to sufficient for successful academic performance beyond the early elementary grades."

"Many disadvantaged children enter school with less exposure to the kind of language they will hear there, and significantly smaller vocabularies, than their more fortunate peers. That already makes learning to read harder for them. but matters get worse as they get older, because by fourth grade or so, children begin to acquire both new words and new knowledge from what they read."

"If there are one or two unfamiliar words in an extended paragraph, you can still figure out roughly what the passage means, and also, in that context, what possible meanings the unfamiliar words could have. Encounter those words over and over, and in time you will know what they mean and how to use them, without any conscious effort to memorize their definitions (a highly ineffecient way to learn new words, Hirsch points out)."

"But if the passage has too many unfamiliar words, you not only can't understand it, but you can't use it to bootstrap yourself into a larger vocabulary."

"Hirsch's everyday example, which would be unintelligible for people who know nothing about baseball, is, "Jones sacrificed and knocked in a run." But I could easily find a sentence from a journal abstract that would be unintelligible for most of my readers (and for me as well) because the subject is unfamiliar. If everything you're asked to read in fourth grade is as hard for you as that, or harder, you're probably not going to read or learn very much."

"So it is essential, Hirsch believes, that the material children see and hear in the early grades helps to familiarize them with the knowledge their books will take for granted later. Otherwise, the gaps that are already present simply grow larger over time. Some researchers, he notes, have called this "the Matthew effect." If you immediately recognize this as a Biblical allusion (to Matthew 25:29) your understanding is enhanced. If you don't, the name adds nothing to your understanding. That is Hirsch's point."

"He also discusses the distinction between informal and formal speech, between speech as used with intimates and with strangers, or, as it is sometimes called, between "restricted code" and "elaborated code." Succinctly, its the difference between "Move !" and "Will you please get out of Daddy's chair ? He needs to rest." No imputation of inferiority is intended by the term "restricted code," only that it rests on a wide base of shared experience that doesn't need to be stated explicitly. But "elaborated code" is what children will encounter in school. "Young children go to school knowing how to talk and listen at home," he says, "they need to learn how to talk and listen in the wider world." The more time parents themselves spend in the world of print, the more likely is that their speech even at home is elaborated. Their children bring that advantage with them to school (Matthew again). But there is plenty of time for others to gain ground, provided that the schools use that time effectively and intensively."

The vocabulary gap can be narrowed as well, if time is well used. An advantaged child learns on average 2,000 to 5,000 words a year from age 2 to age 17 -- that means take the number of words the young person knows by age 17 and divide by 15, not that it's a materr of so-many-words-a-day. But the rate of acquisition begins to slow down toward the end of that period, because apart from the words used in specialized study, there aren't that many new words coming along. So a child who starts behind may still be gaining toward the end of high school."

That is, if the school doesn't spend inordinate amounts of time drilling lists of new words. Not only is that not a very good way to appreciate the subtle differences in usage between similar terms, it's very inefficient. Maybe 400 words a year could be taught that way, at the expense of more diffuse but far better grounded knowledge acqiored bu reading or listening."

"On many fronts Hirsch's book challenges the conventional eductional wisdom. Parents ought to check it out."

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Her column has made understandable to me why I had difficulties in some things in school. Perhaps it might just be me listening to what I want to hear, but it sure beats reading the escapades and combats of the far right and far left in a free for all about most anything. It is a little late for me to get the book, but I shall recommend it to my kids and parental grandkids.

Sort of like a comedy skit, "I heard what he said, but what did he mean ? I'm TRINE TA UNNERSTAN

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