I'm doing a lot of consulting in many parts of the country, working especially with teachers
and librarians to figure how are they going to deal with the Common Core?
And one of the biggest questions that comes up is this matter of point of view.
Because when you had a textbook, and especially if you think of an elementary school teacher
who may not have any context, training in social studies or science, and is basically
using the textbook as her guide, and therefore feeling that this is pretty reliable.
Now she's asked to look at point of view, "how am I supposed to know which is right,
which is wrong?"
Well, first of all, that's the wrong question.
And the perfect and beautiful and I'm-so-grateful-to-it answer to this, is my younger son was in preschool
a couple years ago, and they did a little play, and it was a class debate on "is Pluto
a planet?"
Pluto is our gift, because every preschool kid early learns the planets.
Except how many planets are there?
Are their eight?
Are there eleven?
Are there thirteen?
The very latest is they may be back to nine, because it all depends on what's a planet.
Now, we have a set of very good books that have been coming out, which are exploring
this, because here's a perfect illustration, we're going away from memorizing nine names
and having a convenient mnemonic that allows you to do it, to see this is a discussion.
This is a debate.
There isn't a right answer, there are interesting questions to be asked, and certainly for some
kids, this is going to be distressing.
"Wait, wait, wait!
I need the answer!
I gotta memorize this!"
And understandable, kids do start out in a more concrete place, and we don't want to
overwhelm them, but we are also at this very beginning age, just as we can do the same
thing with why did the dinosaurs die out.
Okay, now most theories believe it's the comet, but people are not completely sure, and we've
got a lot of dino books.
So, what we can start to do is have the future be comfortable in that there's a discussion.
There is a debate.
And so I'm working with two other educators, Dr. Myra Zarnowski of Queens College in New
York, and Dr. Mary Ann Cappiello of Lesley University, and what we're recommending for
teachers and librarians is to develop the idea of a cluster.
And that is that instead of relying on a book, a textbook, which synthesizes everything and
gives it to you in this predigested, mulched-up form, that what you do is you bring kids show
kids three or four books that are in juxtaposition.
That may have different answers, or may be written in different voices about the same
subject.
And so it's less about making sure kids get the nine in order, and it's not nine anymore,
but rather that they understand that different books, different nonfiction texts can have
different takes on the very same subject.
Now, this also opens a great door for me as a writer.
Because it means that I can have point of view in my book.
Because I am not saying my book is the one, the only, the answer, the textbook.
It's my book.
It's the book that I've written, here's my evidence, here's why I think that's so.
Check my sources, disagree with me, but I'm giving you my take, and I invite you to challenge
that take.
I want you to, that's exciting, just like the 4th grade girl who asked the question
that I hadn't asked.
And so I think the teachers in kind of the elementary area, where they may not have a
grounding in what's the most sophisticated new theory on Pluto, can have a grounding
in introducing kids to the juxtaposition of points of view.