The problem with explain your answer

Im not sure how I missed  it  when it came out, but Barry Garelick and Katherine Bealss Explaining Your Math: Unnecessary at Best, Encumbering at Worst, which appeared in The Atlantic last month,  is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand just how problematic some of Common Cores assumptions about learning are, particularly as they pertain to requiring young children to explain their reasoning in writing.    (Side note: Im not sure whats up with the  Atlantic, but theyve at least partially redeemed themselves for the very, very factually questionable  piece they recently ran about the  redesigned SAT. Maybe the editors have realized  how much  everyone hates Common Core by this point and thought it would be in their best interest to  jump on the bandwagon, but dont think that the  general public has  yet drawn the connection between CC and the Coleman-run College Board?)   Ive read some of Barrys critiques of Common Core before, and his explanations  of  rote understanding in part provided the framework that helped me  understand just  what supporting evidence questions on the reading section of the new SAT are really about.   Barry and Katherines  article is worth reading in its entirety, but one point  that struck me as particularly salient. Math learning is a progression from concrete to abstractOnce a particular word problem has been translated into a mathematical representation, the entirety of its mathematically relevant content is condensed onto abstract symbols, freeing working memory and unleashing the power of pure mathematics. That is, information and procedures that have been become automatic   frees up working memory. With working memory less burdened,  the student can focus on solving the problem at hand. Thus, requiring explanations beyond the mathematics itself distracts and diverts students away from the convenience and power of abstraction. Mandatory demonstrations of â€Å"mathematical understanding,† in other words, can impede the â€Å"doing† of actual mathematics. Although its not an exact analogy, many of these points have verbal corollaries. Reading is also a progression from concrete to abstract: first, students learn that letters are represented as abstract symbols, and that those symbols correspond to specific sounds, which get combined in various ways. When students have mastered the symbol/sound relationship (decoding), their working memories are free to focus on the content of what they are reading, a  switch that normally occurs around third or fourth grade. Amazingly, Common Core does not prescribe  that students compose paragraphs (or flow charts) demonstrating, for example, that they understand why  c-a-t spells cat. (Actually, anyone, if you have heard of such an exercise, please let me know. I just made that up, but given some of the stories Ive heard about what goes on in classrooms these days, I wouldnt be surprised if someone, somewhere were actually doing that.)   What CC does, however, is a slightly higher level equivalent namely, requiring the continual citing of textual evidence.   As I outlined  in my last couple of posts, CC, and thus the new SAT, often employs  a very particular definition of evidence. Rather than use  quotations, etc. to support their own ideas about a work or the  arguments it contains  (arguments that would necessarily reveal   background knowledge and comprehension, or lack thereof), students are required  to demonstrate  their comprehension over and over again by staying within the four corners of the text, repeatedly returning it to cite key  words and phrases that reveal its meaning   in other words, their understanding of the (presumably) self-evident principle that a text means what it means because it says what it says. As is true for math,  entire approach to reading confuses demonstration of a skill with deep possession of that skill.   That, of course, has absolutely nothing to do with how reading works in the real world. Nobody, nobody, reads this way.  Strong readers do not need to stop repeatedly in order to demonstrate that they understand what theyre reading. They do not need to point to words or phrases and announce what they mean. Rather, they indicate their comprehension by discussing  (or writing about)  the content of the text, by engaging with its ideas, by questioning them, by showing how they draw on or influence the ideas of others, by pointing out subtleties other readers might miss†¦ the list goes on and on.   Ã‚   Incidentally, Ive had adults gush to me that their children/students are suddenly acquiring  all sorts of higher level  skills, like  citing texts and using evidence, but I wonder whether theyre actually being taken in by  appearances. As I mentioned in my last post, although it may  seem that children being taught this way are performing a sophisticated skill (rote understanding), they are actually performing a very basic one. I think Barry puts it perfectly when he says that It is as if the purveyors of these practices are saying: â€Å"If we can just get them to do things that look like what we imagine a mathematician does, then they will be real mathematicians. In that context, these  parents/teachers reactions  are entirely understandable: the logic of what is actually going on is so bizarre  and runs so completely counter to a commonsense understanding of how the world works  that  such an explanation would occur to virtually no one who  hadnt spent considerable time mucking around in the CC dirt.   To get back to the my original point, though, the obsessive focus on the text itself, while  certainly appropriate in some situations, ultimately serves to prohibit  students from moving beyond the text, from engaging with its ideas in any substantive way.  But then,  I suspect that this limited, artificial type of analysis  is actually the goal.   I think that what it ultimately comes down to is  assessment    or rather the potential for electronic assessment.  Students own  arguments are messier, less objective, and more complicated, and thus more expensive, to assess. Holistic, open-ended assessment just isnt scalable  the same way that computerized multiple choice tests are, and choosing/highlighting specific lines of a text is an act that lends itself well to (cheap, automated)  electronic  grading. And without these convenient types of assessments, how could the education market ever truly be brought to scale?