Imagine you are a wiggly, bright-eyed kindergartner sitting in a circle with 24 classmates. You have just been encouraged by your teacher to look them in the eye and greet them “properly” saying, “Hello, I’m using my right hand to shake your right hand.”

You do this because, according to the Appleseeds curriculum being used by your teacher, “Shaking hands teaches American social skills.” Although you know all your letters and can write some words, you will spend the next 30 minutes sitting on the floor while you orally blend sounds and review letter names and rhyming words.

This will be followed by 20 minutes spent reading the following story together as a class: “Kit’s Pants Kit had red pants. Kit’s pants got lost at camp. Kit’s mom got mad at Kit. Kit’s mom can’t stand lost pants.”

In the time you are in kindergarten, you will read five sets of stories like this one. Four of these will have white main characters and all will feature families with one mom and one dad. You will see no images of people like yourself in the Appleseeds student reading materials. You will see no families like yours in the stories you read.

Appleseeds is adapted from the Core Knowledge Foundation materials originating with E.D. Hirsch. The Core Knowledge Foundation materials are open-source and can be used for free. Appleseeds is designed to teach reading in grades K-2. The Appleseeds materials used in Massachusetts come from the Tennessee Department of Education version of these materials.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is offering Appleseeds, including printed materials, free of charge to all school districts in the commonwealth. This is part of the early literacy project undertaken by DESE to close the reading achievement gap.

In selecting this curriculum, DESE has invoked terms like “evidence based,” “science of reading,” and “high-quality” to justify its choice. But although the early literacy project also includes a commitment to culturally and linguistically sustaining teaching, this choice of curriculum conflicts with that idea both in content and approach.

We have made DESE aware of the problematic nature of this curriculum, and they have removed some stories, including one called “Wong from Hong Kong,” a story in which a “gran” brings back a black snake called Wong from her travels to Hong Kong. While we appreciate the effort, the underlying problems with the curriculum remain.

What is happening here is part of a growing movement across the United States, fueled by popular media such as Emily Hanford’s podcast, “Sold a Story.” This movement cherry-picks research and uses rhetoric like “evidenced-based” to advance particular political purposes and move decision-making out of the hands of teachers and researchers.

As a result, young children will spend hours in school with curriculum like Appleseeds. Is this what we really want for our children in Massachusetts?

Camille Cammack is program coordinator for early childhood education at UMass Amherst. This was written in collaboration with Maria José Botelho, also a faculty member in the UMass Department of Teacher Education, and Deb Patterson, an education professor at Western New England University.]]>