What Your Child Needs to Know Transcript

Hello. My name is Susan C. Anthony and this transcript is of my workshop "What Your Elementary Child Really Needs to Know." The handouts for this workshop are available in portable document format on my web site: www.SusanCAnthony.com.

The purpose of this workshop is to help you as home educators feel more focused and more confident about your teaching. If you're like most educators, you sometimes feel overwhelmed and discouraged about the sheer volume of information you are attempting to impart to children. Being clear about priorities can help.

Before we begin, I should tell you a little about me. I grew up in the Colorado Rocky Mountains 35 miles west of Denver. I went to elementary school in a tiny, two-room mountain school, graduated from Nederland High School in a class of 25, and went on to the University of Northern Colorado where I earned a degree in Elementary Education. I moved to Alaska in 1979 and taught intermediate grades for 10 years with the Anchorage School District. My mission is to help and encourage you as educators by providing ideas, resources and support. I have not been blessed with children of my own, so it is my great privilege to offer you assistance with your kids.

As a teacher, I found myself increasingly frustrated by expectations. Each year, I was asked to teach more and more content and curriculum. At the same time, children were entering my classroom less and less prepared. There was a growing gap between what I was expected to do and what I realistically could do. I finally reached a breaking point and realized I had to prioritize, for my own sanity.

In 1988, I was assigned to teach 4th grade after having taught 6th grade. To my surprise, the math books were practically identical. The progression of chapters was the same, with a few more chapters at the end of the 6th grade book. The problem was, most of my 6th graders couldn't add or subtract, let alone multiply or divide. It occurred to me that maybe they couldn't add because they were being pushed into multiplication by the age of 8. I put the books aside and decided I was going to make sure my 4th graders had mastered addition, subtraction, multiplication and beginning division by the end of the year, so their 5th and 6th grade teachers could move on.

Once when I was teaching 6th grade, we met with the 7th grade teachers from the school our kids would enter. They begged us to make sure the kids could add, subtract, multiply and divide by the time they entered Junior High. If kids know that, they said, we can teach them everything else.

Since no one else was setting priorities, I finally had to do it myself. What I'll share today is to give you a starting point. It's not the last word. An hour is not enough to share all the specifics of what kids need to learn, but I've included most of them in the handouts. In this workshop, I'll share the process I used to arrive at what I consider to be most important. Hopefully, this will make the task of prioritizing easier for you.

Remember that a workshop like this by necessity involves opinions and a guess at what the future will hold. No human can accurately predict the future. Newsweek printed an article called "Cloudy Days in Tomorrowland" on Jan. 27, 1997. Here are some of the predictions from the last century that didn't come true.

Charles H. Duell, the U.S. commissioner of patents, resigned from his job in 1899, saying, "Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Wilbur Wright said the following, "I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years… Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions."

Western Union president William Orton rejected Alexander Graham Bell's offer to sell his struggling telephone company to Western Union. He said, "What use could this company make of an electrical toy?"

Kenneth Olsen, president and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said the following in 1977: "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

And my favorite, a statement by Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox in 1946: "Television won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

Anyway, there were three things I did in order to decide what's most important for kids to learn:

First, I read what everybody else wrote. Many of you have probably seen or read the books by E.D. Hirsch, What Your First Grader Needs to Know, What Your Second Grader Needs to Know, etc. Here's an excerpt from a newspaper article about his core curriculum. Dr. Hirsch thinks that:

Kindergarten children should learn about Native American peoples, counting 1 to 31, and the seven continents.

First graders should learn about early civilizations in Africa and Mesopotamia; Christianity, Judaism and Islam; and the three states of matter (solid, liquid, gas).

Second graders should learn about the U.S. Constitution, civil rights, the 50 states and cells.

Third graders should learn about Ancient Rome, the 13 colonies, classification of animals.

I taught sixth grade for years and most of the kids didn't know the seven continents. They absolutely should know the continents by then, but not necessarily by the end of kindergarten.

Dr. Hirsch did an excellent job of outlining what an educated adult must know in order to have enough background knowledge to read books, newspapers and magazines. When he divided that knowledge into grade levels, however, he didn't seem to have taken into account that first and second graders cannot realistically be expected to learn 1/12 of the content a high school graduate should have. It concerned me that parents like yourselves might feel tremendous pressure to push your child along faster. That's why I did this workshop, to encourage you to be realistic and to trust your own judgment when things you read do not match what you know. In other words, use resources such as Dr. Hirsch's books, but don't be pressured by them. You know your kids and how fast they can learn better than any author, including myself.

In addition to Dr. Hirsch's books, I looked at textbooks, scopes and sequences and standardized tests. A lot of the material in the handout comes from these sources.

I also reviewed surveys of what employers think entry level workers often lack. Whenever I meet someone who is responsible for hiring or supervising entry level workers, I ask them what they wish these young adults knew. Common answers are vigilance, a work ethic, the ability to pay attention and focus on the job, the ability to draw on past knowledge and apply it, and the ability to measure.

A survey printed in the Washington Times on January 3, 1992, was entitled "Passing School, Flunking Life." According to it, employers say:

Notice that a lot of what's missing is character rather than academic knowledge. While the ultimate purpose in life is not to please employers, this is some food for thought!

When faced with the task of setting priorities for kids, it's most important to be aware of God's priorities. In I Corinthians 2:2, Paul writes, "For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."

As Christian parents, your #1 priority is your children's salvation and eternal destiny. If your children are saved, comfort yourself with that thought whenever you feel discouraged. If they are not saved, continue living a life that makes the gospel of Christ attractive to them, and keep praying, for as long as it takes. Some mothers have prayed for years before their prayers were answered. Take comfort in the knowledge that you are not responsible for your children's decisions. You are responsible for doing your best. I think you'd all agree that the best teacher in history was Jesus Christ. Did all his students get it? Your job is to teach kids; their job is to learn and choose.

Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge, and to knowledge, self control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

Notice that goodness precedes knowledge on this list. Goodness is the desire to do what is right and good. Without that, knowledge can be used for evil.

Do your children have self-control and perseverance, the ability to set goals and achieve them despite discouragement or setbacks? I read an article several years ago about what distinguished world-class athletes from those who were just as capable of winning but never quite made it to the top. The most remarkable difference was the top athletes were much more able to deal with failure. They were able to put their failures out of their minds and move on. Here's an example from a Nike ad you might remember:

The athlete is seen arriving at the game, heading to the locker room. His stride is easy, his smile secretive and knowing as he moves down the gauntlet of fans and well-wishers. He walks like a winner.

Yet in the voice-over, he says, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot--and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

The athlete is Michael Jordan, the basketball player said to have "shackled gravity." Note what he believes is the secret to his success.

We often do everything in our power to shield children from failure, and there's reason for that. Most people need about a 90% success to want to continue doing something, and until your kids have built their confidence, you don't want them to face failure after failure or they'll just give up. But when failure occurs, take the opportunity to teach them how to deal with it and rise above it. It could turn out to be one of the most important things they ever learn.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.

These are the two great commandments. Because our bodies are God's temple, physical education and health are high priorities.

Integrity is the alignment of thoughts, words and deeds. Only God's integrity is perfect but ours should become as good as we can get it. What we say, we do. What we promise, happens. People should be able to depend on our word. Model this to your children, teach it, and reward it whenever you see it. It is a rare commodity these days, and should set Christians apart from others in the world.

After reading everything I could find that others wrote, I clarified my philosophy of life. A Calvin cartoon I found illustrates the importance of philosophy. (Calvin and Hobbes cartoon on philosophy from The Days are Just Packed, p. 36.)

Philosophy might seem like an intimidating word, but the meaning is simple. It means the love of wisdom and the pursuit of truth. We all have a philosophy, although it may not be conscious, consistent or well-thought out.

The last step in my process of setting priorities was to clarify the 3-4 things I most wanted kids to have after a year in my classroom:

The second thing on my list was confidence. I want to distinguish between self-confidence and self-esteem. Confidence is a firm belief or trust in yourself, a sense of self-reliance. Esteem is a favorable opinion of yourself, a high regard for yourself. Some synonyms for self-esteem are pride, egotism, arrogance, narcissism, conceit and a sense of superiority.

Psychological Review published a scholarly article in January 1996 entitled, "The Dark Side of Self-Esteem." It traced the relationship of high self-esteem to criminal behavior! Career criminals most often have high, inflated self-esteem. This is often accompanied by a sense of entitlement. This mindset, combined with a perceived slight by others, often leads to criminal behavior.

As a teacher, I was continually urged to enhance my students' self-esteem. A Calvin cartoon not only brought a smile but a reality check for me. (Calvin and Hobbes cartoon on self-esteem from The Days Are Just Packed, p. 22.)

I was doing that. Because of pressure from parents, mostly, I was lowering my expectations to the point where they were already met. When I first began teaching, my expectations were far too high. Kids weren't reaching them. So I lowered them to a more realistic level. Kids still didn't reach them. I lowered them again, wondering if it would make a difference. They still didn't reach them. What I finally realized is that they were learning far more when my expectations were high than when they were low. The secret is to have high realistic standards, and to focus more on quality and mastery than on pushing kids to learn more and more at an earlier and earlier age, which I encouraged you NOT to do earlier in this workshop. Try edging your quality standards always higher, but be willing to back off if you realize it's not working. Sometimes kids are capable of a lot more than we give them credit for.

The third item on my list, after self-confidence, is a framework of knowledge and skills. The ultimate goal is to produce an educated adult, with a vast, interconnecting web of knowledge in their heads and very little floating loose. You must help children learn to organize their brains! Libraries are useful to us because the books are organized and accessible. If the books were scrambled and dumped all over the floor, they wouldn't be nearly as useful. We could perhaps access information we wanted by chance, but it would waste a lot of time and energy.

Many kids' brains are like the scrambled library. There is a lot in there but it's not organized or accessible when needed. One reason is our fast-paced, media-rich culture. When I was a child, I had lots of time to put ideas together and evaluate them. Kids don't have that these days. They need your help to organize their minds. Once they have an organized framework in their heads, help them connect new information to what they already know in as many ways as possible. The more connections the better.

If you see someone in a grocery store that you recognize, your mind probably goes into a scan mode. You scan the people at church, your kids' parents, your friends and friends of friends. This scan probably continues in the background as you continue shopping until your brain finds a match. The more ways you know that person, the more connections you have, the sooner you'll figure out how you know them. Your kids' minds won't automatically scan, and unless they make connections, they will have no way of retrieving what they know. Unorganized knowledge can be worse than no knowledge because the more pieces of information there are floating around loose, the harder it is to sort through them to find what is needed.

I do a workshop called Fun with Facts that gives a lot of practical ideas for building a framework and teaching kids how to connect and anchor new knowledge. Examples of what constitutes the framework are a map in the mind and the major eras of history. These are "pegs" on which to hang new information.

The handouts show the basic objectives for elementary kids in reading and math. Remember, true expertise requires a mastery of fundamentals. Don't rush on and on. Expert musicians practice their scales every day. It's not that they don't know the scales. It's that they know their expertise and ability to reach high levels rests on a foundation of fundamentals. Make sure your kids know their math facts, the core spelling words, the seven continents.

I have what I call the "Flesh and Bones" curriculum. Facts and skills practice are the dry bones of the curriculum. Fun subjects, experiences and creativity are the flesh. You need a balance, with both parts working together. For a musician, practicing scales is the "bones" while composing is the "flesh." Don't neglect one in favor of the other.

There are four questions to ask yourself when deciding what's most important: Where are we going? How fast do we have to get there? Who's in the driver's seat? What's the power source?

It can be difficult in the pressure of everyday life to keep focused on what's really important. To some degree, it's different for each child. The Readers' Digest article I mentioned earlier was entitled "Win with your Strengths." It reported a Gallup study in which 250,000 highly successful professionals were interviewed to see what they had in common that contributed to their success. This was the conclusion:

The highest levels of achievement come when people are matched with activities that use their strengths. Instead of spending time trying to correct your weaknesses—as many of us are taught to do—our experience suggests you should focus on your special talents. For every strength you have, you also possess a multitude of nonstrengths. It would be a huge waste of energy to try to fix all of your weaknesses.

It's easy to get discouraged when we focus on kids' weaknesses, or our own for that matter. We need to break that habit and learn to focus on and notice success. There's an old story about an animal school. The course of study included swimming, climbing, flying and running. Animals of all types attended. The duck was excellent at swimming and flying, but she had to cheat to "climb" the tree. She wasn't a good runner, so was enrolled in remedial running. This resulted in her webbed feet starting to wear out. Her grades in swimming suffered. Each of us is uniquely created for a special purpose. Very few of us are excellent in all areas.

I want to close with a true story that illustrates the importance of finding and focusing on your child's strengths:

I met Mark Harris when he was about 4 years old. He was the fourth of five children in his family, and his oldest sister was my best friend in high school.

Mark’s dad was a diplomat with the United States Information Service. Theirs was an unusual life style. Every few years, Dad would be given a different assignment and the whole family would move. They had slides and artifacts and stories of all the exotic places they’d lived, and even though they were only in Colorado for a year while Dad earned his masters degree, our families have stayed in touch for the past 30 years.

Two summers ago, I received word that Mark’s parents were driving up the Alcan Highway and would give us a call in Anchorage. During their stay, I heard Mark’s story for the first time.

Because he was the fourth of five children, his parents knew from early childhood that he was different from the other kids. He didn’t catch on to things quickly and he had trouble learning to speak.

When he went off to first grade (no K there), they expected to get a call from the teacher. When no call came, they called her, and were told that Mark was doing fine. At the first parent teacher conference, they pressed for details but were told that everything was OK.

At the end of that year, Mark’s dad was transferred and Mark started second grade in a new school. This time, the teacher called immediately. He was not at all ready for second grade, she said. He should be tested for special services and he should repeat first grade.

Needless to say, the parents were angry with the first grade teacher. But there was nothing to do now but move take care of the situation.

Mark struggled through elementary school, never doing well. Because of his speech defect, he was not very verbal and he wasn’t especially popular. His brothers and sisters were model students. He was fortunate, however, to have a valued place at home. His parents knew there was more to life than academic success.

His sixth grade teacher was concerned about his shyness. She called his parents and asked, “Is there anything Mark can do really well?” “He can ride a unicycle,” they said.

So the teacher talked to Mark and said, “I understand you have a unicycle and you know how to ride it! I can’t even do that. I bet the kids would be really interested. Would you be willing to bring it to school?”

He did and was an instant hero with the kids. They saw him in a new light, and he began to see himself in a new light. Little by little, his confidence increased. He began to study especially hard at school and his grades improved.

Before he entered ninth grade, the family moved to Spain and enrolled the children in a strict British prep school.

Again, during the first week of school, the teacher called. “Mark really does not fit in with the other children at this level,” the teacher said. “He knows so much more than the other 9th graders that we recommend he be skipped up to 10th grade.”

So Mark graduated on schedule and went on to college. From there he joined the Navy. He’s became a fighter pilot in the Navy, and is married with two children.

He never completely overcame his speech defect. He still has some problems with reading. But he's made a good life for himself in part because he was fortunate to have people who would not give up on him, even when he was tempted to give up on himself.

We have no idea what God has in store for our kids. Every child is uniquely created with a special purpose. Set your priorities, write down your goals, keep putting one foot in front of the other, and pray. It's the long haul that counts.

High self-esteem that is unjustified and unstable puts kids at risk of turning violent. You risk raising a generation of kids who cannot tolerate frustration.

Schools often contribute to the problem by viewing self-esteem as a cause of success rather than the result of achievement. They ladle on the praise indiscriminately, rather than focusing on helping the child achieve something to deserve it.

The sad truth of the matter is that most parents really do not want high standards. What they want is for their own children to get high grades. Period!

It is hard to imagine that a majority of voters can be drawn from the U.S. population that will demand that every child leave high school prepared to succeed….if it means that their own child must at first experience failure.

Psychologists believe that one key to mental toughness is the ability to cope with failure. The paradox of coaching is that many athletes reach the peak of their skills at such a young age—particularly in sports like skating and tennis—that they have little experience coping with adversity, either in competition or in life.

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not.

Animal School

Once upon a time, the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problem of a “new world,” so they organized a school. They adopted a curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming, and flying, and to make it easier to administer, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming, better in fact than his instructor, and he made passing grades in flying, but was very poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school and also drop swimming to practice running. This was kept up until his webbed feet were badly worn and he was only average in swimming. But average was acceptable at school, so nobody worried about that, except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but had a nervous breakdown because of so much make-up work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class where his teacher made him start from the ground up instead of from the treetop down.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the tree, but insisted on using his own way to get there.

In the end, an abnormal eel who could swim very well and run, climb and fly a little held the highest average and was valedictorian.