The History Matters Campaign is a project of the Knowledge Matters Campaign. I was thrilled to see the Knowledge Matters Campaign and our recent Knowledge Matters School Tour visit written up in Saturday’s New York Times, as part of Dana Goldstein’s piece, “Has America Given Up on Children’s Learning?”
The answer is emphatically no—not here, and not ever. The Knowledge Matters Campaign was founded to cut through the noise and focus on what matters most to teaching and learning, and our School Tour visits are guided by our commitment to “find the good and praise it.”
The power of this approach is evident in the article. Here’s Goldstein’s description of a classroom in Ouachita Parish Schools, where students and teachers use high-quality, knowledge-building curricula based on the science of reading, and our role in uplifting this work:
“One recent afternoon at Highland Elementary School, where 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a diverse group of fifth-graders sat, rapt, as their teacher, Lauren Cascio, introduced a key insight: that the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation all occurred during the same period of human history.
“Ms. Cascio reviewed vocabulary words that students would need: heretic, rational, skepticism, heliocentric. Then, over the course of an hour, 10- and 11-year-olds broke into groups to discuss why Leonardo da Vinci was interested in human anatomy. They wrote about how the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo differed from those of the ancient Greeks.
“Unlike in many elementary-school classrooms, the students did not have computers or tablets on their desks. They had open books, which they were avidly marking up with highlighters and pencils.
“The work in Louisiana has been celebrated by the Knowledge Matters Campaign, an effort led by Barbara Davidson, a policy advocate and veteran of the Department of Education under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Ms. Davidson supported the goals of No Child Left Behind. That is why she feels a responsibility now to correct for that era’s excesses. Knowledge Matters tries to draw attention to schools that demonstrate strong reading results, often through teaching a notably rigorous, history-heavy curriculum to elementary school students.
“Ms. Davidson has worked to amplify the ideas of a loosely organized network of educators, curriculum-writers, parents and local policymakers who are rejecting ideological approaches to education, and instead, are focused on how to maximize learning.”
I couldn’t be more excited to see the Knowledge Matters Campaign and the wonderful work in Ouachita featured in the New York Times. The educators and leaders we talk with every day haven’t given up on learning, and we’re committed to ensuring that their insights reverberate far beyond the classroom.
I hope you will read and share widely (here’s a gift link).