Educational Article

The Education Establishment wants us to believe that American students are burdened by having too much knowledge, and the solution is to teach them more skills.

Isn’t the premise silly? Many American students can’t find Japan on a map.

Anyway, this battle will be unfolding for years and maybe decades. This battle will probably get tangled up with the debate over so-called National Standards. Here’s something to watch out for: those Standards might be defined as emphasizing skills, and emphasizing skills will turn out to be another way of diminishing content. That’s what the Education Establishment has tended to favor for the last century. (Why these people disdain content and knowledge is an interesting thing to ponder.)