The
Note
From common core page 35—Reading Standards:
Note on range and content of student reading
To become college and career ready, students must
grapple with works of exceptional craft and thought whose range extends across
genres, cultures, and centuries. Such works offer profound insights into the human
condition and serve as models for students’ own thinking and writing. Along
with high-quality contemporary works, these texts should be chosen from among
seminal U.S. documents, the classics of American literature, and the timeless
dramas of Shakespeare. Through wide and deep reading of literature and literary
nonfiction of steadily increasing sophistication, students gain a reservoir of
literary and cultural knowledge, references, and images; the ability to
evaluate intricate arguments; and the capacity to surmount the challenges posed
by complex texts.
Discourse analysis questions from Gee's chapter 2 (the 7 things
language is enacting/building):
1) Significance. Question: How is this piece of language being
used to make certain things significant or not and in what ways?
The
note works to make certain works to be read, and certain ways of reading
significant. The note uses certain
words, and combinations of words as signifiers of works and the reading of
those works to result in “college and career” readiness, including: ‘extends
across genres, cultures, and centuries,’ ‘human condition,’ ‘thinking and
writing,’ ‘seminal documents,’ ‘classic,’ ‘timeless,’ steadily increasing ‘sophistication’—all
in all, the note is describing a literary canon, or a to be red list combined
with a how to read list. We are made to
assume that reading these works (and ‘grappling’ with them) will make students
more college and career ready.
2) Practices (Activities). Question: What practice (activity) or
practices (activities) is this piece of language being used to enact (i.e., get
others to recognize as going on)?
The
note pushes the idea that the act of reading (to become college and career
ready) follows along a few linear paths: from less complex to more complex;
from being about history to being about the present; from being about one’s own
culture to being multicultural; and from being literature to being nonfiction.
3) Identities.
Question: What identity or identities is this piece of language being
used to enact (i.e., get others to recognize as operative)? What identity or identities is this piece of
language attributing to others and how does this help the speaker or writer
enact his or her own identity?
The
note is trying to see that it is providing a map towards college and career
readiness. If one follows the
suggestions therein, they will be college and career ready. The identity of the speaker is that of an
authority.
4) Relationships.
Question: What sort of relationship or relationships is this piece of
language seeking to enact with others (present or not)?
The
note actively discusses students’ relationships with written texts. In being a document about education,
relationships range from student to teacher; student to school; student to
family (care provider); student to community/society; student to college and
career—plus many more possible relationships. It would also be possible for one
to interchange the participants in the aforementioned relationships—for example,
student to teacher could become parent to teacher—there is a large range of relationship
possibilities enacted by the note.
5) Politics (the distribution of social goods). Question: What perspective on social goods is
this piece of language communicating (i.e., what is being communicated as to
what is taken to be “normal,” “right,” “good,” “correct,” “proper,” “appropriate,”
“valuable,” “the way things are,” “the way things ought to be,” “high status or
low status,” “like me or not like me,” and so forth)?
The
note communicates a proper set of events that ultimately leads to college and
career readiness (which this note works to claim is a high status). Plus informational texts seem to be given a
higher status than literature (if you follow the logic that as you progress
from grade to grade informational texts are given more attention).
6) Connections.
Question: How does this piece of language connect or disconnect things;
how does it make one thing relevant or irrelevant to another?
The
note connects reading to what it is to be human and works to create a
connection between reading and writing as a way to connect humans from the past
to humans in the present, and to what being human may look like in the
future. It also works to connect reading
certain texts in certain ways to what it is to be college & career ready.
7) Sign Systems and Knowledge. Question: How does this piece of language
privilege or disprivilege specific sign systems (e.g., Spanish vs. English,
technical language vs. everyday language, words vs. images, words vs.
equations, etc.) or different ways of knowing and believing or claims to
knowledge and belief (e.g., science vs. the Humanities, science vs. “common
sense,” biology vs. “creation science”)?
As
previously stated, this note privileges informational texts over literary texts. It also privileges certain texts as being
those that lead to and represent college and career readiness. Complexity is privileged over simplicity.
