Historically the adults taught the common knowledge of the group and how to use it (common sense or empirical logic) This is why humans have progressed so much further than animals because of language that enables teaching
-We've had endless discussions on the subject of content vs. methodology. As you know, my view is that either one without the other one is a failure and K-12 won't get better...so, prioritizing one over the other is a fool's errand...not implying you're a fool.
-Fixing the content and leaving a good curriculum in the hands of some 4 million teachers, mostly taught and certified by left leaning academic institutions, using a failed pedagogy of attempting to teach 30 students of wildly different competency to a grade level standard instead of a mastery knowledge level is also dead on arrival in fixing our wildly expensive and even more wildly underperforming K-12 education.
-Having error filled curricula being taught by proven modern pedagogy (i.e; one-on-one tutoring with knowledge level teaching all enabled by AI education platforms) is also dead-on arrival in fixing education.
-Plus, don't forget that about 80% of students are actively disengaged in education for various fixable reasons. A disengage student cannot learn. So, students must be motivated to engage in their own education. Some platforms do this but by-in-large, public schools don't. Just ask a cross section of students in public schools if the love school. You know what the answer will be.
-So, this, like so many other things the solution to K-12 is not an "either/or", but a "do both" and stop worrying about one is better than the other or one should be done first.
-Let's spend our time on fixing the curricula and fixing the pedagogy in a scalable and affordable fashion as soon as possible.
Don: Your response did not address what was in my commentary.
Further, it is NOT let's do both as essentially no one is fixing the public school curriculum (e.g. for Science) in ANY state — yet they are experimenting with pedagogy.
Curricula don't matter if kids can't read, so we do need at least some balance between improving curricula and improving pedagogy, especially in the first few years. We're pretending as if USA is the only place where education has ever been invented and practiced, so we have to invent any improvements ourselves. But that's clearly not true. Look at what others do and copy at least some of it (that actually works). Start with, for example, Malaysia (because they use the Latin alphabet and English is a frequent second language) — or even Mexico. And read Lance Izumi's books, for example "Chaos in the Classroom" and "The Great Classroom Collapse."
Its most disturbing that our educational system has contributed to wiping out the glands in the brain, which contribute to the ability to think, to memorize and to learn...in its promotion of the childhood vaccines in order for children to go to public school. Our country has gone downhill physically and scholastically in the last 70 years, because of the Medical Industry being given the green light to promote its products in our school system, which have damaged the minds and bodies of every recipient. Children can't learn, if their brains have been damaged and their emotional development has been harmed. My mother was a teacher for 52 years and saw how the students changed...from being interested in learning to being unable to learn.
Hi John, this is very good. And thanks for your continuing efforts over these many years.
I agree with Terry and would add that Louisiana and Mississippi have both pioneered transformative literacy reforms grounded in the "Science of Reading" (SoR)—a phonics-based approach emphasizing phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension." Whole Language and Fuzzy Math are products of Progressives. They need to go and the evidence is in plain sight - since the advent of these methodologies test scores have declined, and Special Education has exploded. It should not be a heavy lift for schools to adopt evidence based improvement plans.
Content, or ideological realignment, on the other hand, might require school boards to be taken over by Conservatives in order to effect change. As is well known, D/Ps tend to be overrepresented because of their activist bent. A call to arms needs to go out to encourage Republicans to get involved locally. We have a tendency to want to be left alone in the pursuit happiness absent government entanglements, but civic duty cannot be overlooked.
Steve: Good to hear from you — and TY for the support.
You didn't mention what I view as the worst K-12 subject standards: NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards. The State Boards of Education of 49 states (including Louisiana and Mississippi) have approved this very inferior material.
Yes, STATE School Boards are the importat ones, and few people are aware of that. The State School Boards: 1) approve subject standards, 2) approve subject books, and 3) oversee State subject tests (which are about #1).
I will bring this to the attention of my Senator on the Education Committee. Perhaps he can ask for a hearing. I see from a quick search that Massachusetts pre-2010 had superior standards that could serve as a model for VT. Your 9/2/25 commentary has a good summary. Thanks!
Thank you for your comment. I have not seen children rushing to the computer to look up words they don't know and I have not seen teachers encouraging students to do so. We need to get children to have the idea that they can be more causative over what they learn.
Since the 1920s, regressive (for that's what they really are) educators such as John Dewey and John Heard Kilpatrick demeaned subject content in favor life skills, project learning, and socialist indocgrination. (Dewey was a socialist who was enamoured of the Soviet experiment). It was the start of a century-long dumbing down of American education that infects K-12 education today. You can read this sorry history in Diane Ravitch's Book "Left Back: A Century of. Battles Over School Reform." They also dumbed down reading with whole language and other non-phonics-based approaches to reading ninstruction, such that we now have 43 million people in the United States who are functionally illiterate and 130 million who read at a 6th grade level or below. They also dumbed down math, with the New Math, the New New Math and other approaches that abandoned memorization of basic math facts (like memorizing the multiplecation tables). It wasn't until 2000 that the National Reading Panel finally proclaimed phonics as the superior form of teaching reading. But there have been holdouts still wedded to their failed methods, chiefly Lucy Calkins, who did much damage to millions of schoolchildren. In my town of Guilford. CT, the superintendent, Paul Freeman, proudly introduced a "phonics initative in 2021, i.e. 21 years after the National Reading Panel's proclamation. So much for the vaue of an EdD.
This reminds me of something Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education for eight years, wrote in his book "How Schools Work." It's one of the dumbest things I have ever read by a so-called educator, and why we are deep trouble:
"We don't need rote knowledge anymore: we have the Internet and Wikipedia for that. What we need are kids who can learn anything and continue to be able learn anything for the rest of their lives. We need kids who can think and not just recall. We need kids who are comfortable solving problems in a group, working together, supporting and challenging each other and bringing out the best thinking in everyone. That's what education reform is after: figuring out ways to better equip our children with skills and habits that will make them successful for the rest of their
lives."
I can only imagine the results coming from a group of equally empty-headed kids all working together. It's like the blind leading the blind. Duncan obviously never rubbed elbows with cognitive scientists who understand that a pre-existing knowledge base is essential for critical thinking. Of course, it's simple common sense, even if you're not a cognitive scientist.
Bruce Deitrick Price describes critical thinking as a two-step process. "First, students learn a lot about a topic, whether in history, science or art; then theylearn to arrange the information in new ways, to set one fact against another, to discover original insights about this knowledge.
Not anymore. Today's educators don't bother with the first part. They jump dorectly to step two. In this scenario, students who know nothing are expected to talk intelligently about it. Imagine the depth." This is the aproach taken by something called "Portrait of a Graduate," that the excuse for a superintendent introduced in the Guilford, CT Public Schools. The central component of POG is critical thinking. The problem is that it's a program designed for seniors in high school who have already spent 12 years (K-11) absorbing very little knowledge of substantive upon which to think critically. In essence, it's a pathetic attempt to fool parents into thinking their ldarlings are going to become critical thinkers after the schools have wasted 12 years of their lives without inculcating knowledge.
One final note. After Hirsch's book "Cultural Literacy" became a bestseller, he offered to teach a course in the Education School at UVa. Hirsch was a professor of English literature. The first three times he offered the course, only about ten students signed up--this after it had become a national bestseller. Finally, a student in his third class came up to him after class and said: Do you want to know why not many kids are taking your class? The professors at the education school told us not to." Such is the animus about learning substantive information (FACTS], that they typically demean as "rote memorizatinn" or "mere facts," just as Duncan wrote. This is a relic from the days of John Dewey and William Heard KIlpatrick at Columbia Teacher's College who destroyed teacher education beginning in the 1920s because it coincided a growing national demand for education professors to fill slots at normal schools around the counrty. That educational cancer metasticized across the country, and is still with us today.
If you want to know more, I highly recommend Hirsch's books "Cultural Literacy" and the Knowledge Deficit," Natalie Wexler's "The Knowledge Gap, and cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham's "Why Don't Students LIke School." And , of course, Diane Ravitch's "Left Back."
We definitely need a return to the “Common School”, ie. Classical Education. Content matters. Pedagogy, like content, has also been captured. I say ditch teacher certification altogether and teach teachers to teach via on-the-job training. Seasoned teachers (GOOD seasoned teachers) should mentor new teachers so that they can learn their craft through observation and meaningful feedback. Co-teaching and team-teaching would be beneficial in the early stages. Teaching teachers to teach isn’t hard. Undoing years of indoctrination is.
In many of my 1-6 grades (they didn't have K in my town) we had student teachers watching the real teacher. I assume that's stopped now. I never heard any of my kids mention them.
I so appreciate your views on education and especially on critical thinking.
One of the best ways to give the educational choice back to the student is PUT DICTIONARIES back in the class room. Webster's 1828 is the best. Next is Oxford school. At least the student has a fighting chance to know what the words mean. Webster did his dictionary so "people;" would know the words. Certainly the left has altered the meanings of words but if the student keeps going to the dictionary to see what things mean, then he can develop his own knowledge.
By the time I went to school, 40s, 50s, they had taken phonics out of school curriculum and NO dictionaries. We were told to guess the meanings. Our Founding Fathers would have had much to say about that. No wonder those in Congress don't understand the Constitution.
Historically the adults taught the common knowledge of the group and how to use it (common sense or empirical logic) This is why humans have progressed so much further than animals because of language that enables teaching
The Key K-12 Issue: Purpose.
John,
-We've had endless discussions on the subject of content vs. methodology. As you know, my view is that either one without the other one is a failure and K-12 won't get better...so, prioritizing one over the other is a fool's errand...not implying you're a fool.
-Fixing the content and leaving a good curriculum in the hands of some 4 million teachers, mostly taught and certified by left leaning academic institutions, using a failed pedagogy of attempting to teach 30 students of wildly different competency to a grade level standard instead of a mastery knowledge level is also dead on arrival in fixing our wildly expensive and even more wildly underperforming K-12 education.
-Having error filled curricula being taught by proven modern pedagogy (i.e; one-on-one tutoring with knowledge level teaching all enabled by AI education platforms) is also dead-on arrival in fixing education.
-Plus, don't forget that about 80% of students are actively disengaged in education for various fixable reasons. A disengage student cannot learn. So, students must be motivated to engage in their own education. Some platforms do this but by-in-large, public schools don't. Just ask a cross section of students in public schools if the love school. You know what the answer will be.
-So, this, like so many other things the solution to K-12 is not an "either/or", but a "do both" and stop worrying about one is better than the other or one should be done first.
-Let's spend our time on fixing the curricula and fixing the pedagogy in a scalable and affordable fashion as soon as possible.
Don: Your response did not address what was in my commentary.
Further, it is NOT let's do both as essentially no one is fixing the public school curriculum (e.g. for Science) in ANY state — yet they are experimenting with pedagogy.
Curricula don't matter if kids can't read, so we do need at least some balance between improving curricula and improving pedagogy, especially in the first few years. We're pretending as if USA is the only place where education has ever been invented and practiced, so we have to invent any improvements ourselves. But that's clearly not true. Look at what others do and copy at least some of it (that actually works). Start with, for example, Malaysia (because they use the Latin alphabet and English is a frequent second language) — or even Mexico. And read Lance Izumi's books, for example "Chaos in the Classroom" and "The Great Classroom Collapse."
Van: The curricula for teaching children how to read is inferior, which is what the story is with Writing, Math, Science, History, etc.
Its most disturbing that our educational system has contributed to wiping out the glands in the brain, which contribute to the ability to think, to memorize and to learn...in its promotion of the childhood vaccines in order for children to go to public school. Our country has gone downhill physically and scholastically in the last 70 years, because of the Medical Industry being given the green light to promote its products in our school system, which have damaged the minds and bodies of every recipient. Children can't learn, if their brains have been damaged and their emotional development has been harmed. My mother was a teacher for 52 years and saw how the students changed...from being interested in learning to being unable to learn.
Hi John, this is very good. And thanks for your continuing efforts over these many years.
I agree with Terry and would add that Louisiana and Mississippi have both pioneered transformative literacy reforms grounded in the "Science of Reading" (SoR)—a phonics-based approach emphasizing phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension." Whole Language and Fuzzy Math are products of Progressives. They need to go and the evidence is in plain sight - since the advent of these methodologies test scores have declined, and Special Education has exploded. It should not be a heavy lift for schools to adopt evidence based improvement plans.
Content, or ideological realignment, on the other hand, might require school boards to be taken over by Conservatives in order to effect change. As is well known, D/Ps tend to be overrepresented because of their activist bent. A call to arms needs to go out to encourage Republicans to get involved locally. We have a tendency to want to be left alone in the pursuit happiness absent government entanglements, but civic duty cannot be overlooked.
Steve: Good to hear from you — and TY for the support.
You didn't mention what I view as the worst K-12 subject standards: NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards. The State Boards of Education of 49 states (including Louisiana and Mississippi) have approved this very inferior material.
Yes, STATE School Boards are the importat ones, and few people are aware of that. The State School Boards: 1) approve subject standards, 2) approve subject books, and 3) oversee State subject tests (which are about #1).
I will bring this to the attention of my Senator on the Education Committee. Perhaps he can ask for a hearing. I see from a quick search that Massachusetts pre-2010 had superior standards that could serve as a model for VT. Your 9/2/25 commentary has a good summary. Thanks!
Steve: Good idea. I'd be glad to talk to any open-minded legislator.
Thank you for your comment. I have not seen children rushing to the computer to look up words they don't know and I have not seen teachers encouraging students to do so. We need to get children to have the idea that they can be more causative over what they learn.
Since the 1920s, regressive (for that's what they really are) educators such as John Dewey and John Heard Kilpatrick demeaned subject content in favor life skills, project learning, and socialist indocgrination. (Dewey was a socialist who was enamoured of the Soviet experiment). It was the start of a century-long dumbing down of American education that infects K-12 education today. You can read this sorry history in Diane Ravitch's Book "Left Back: A Century of. Battles Over School Reform." They also dumbed down reading with whole language and other non-phonics-based approaches to reading ninstruction, such that we now have 43 million people in the United States who are functionally illiterate and 130 million who read at a 6th grade level or below. They also dumbed down math, with the New Math, the New New Math and other approaches that abandoned memorization of basic math facts (like memorizing the multiplecation tables). It wasn't until 2000 that the National Reading Panel finally proclaimed phonics as the superior form of teaching reading. But there have been holdouts still wedded to their failed methods, chiefly Lucy Calkins, who did much damage to millions of schoolchildren. In my town of Guilford. CT, the superintendent, Paul Freeman, proudly introduced a "phonics initative in 2021, i.e. 21 years after the National Reading Panel's proclamation. So much for the vaue of an EdD.
This reminds me of something Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education for eight years, wrote in his book "How Schools Work." It's one of the dumbest things I have ever read by a so-called educator, and why we are deep trouble:
"We don't need rote knowledge anymore: we have the Internet and Wikipedia for that. What we need are kids who can learn anything and continue to be able learn anything for the rest of their lives. We need kids who can think and not just recall. We need kids who are comfortable solving problems in a group, working together, supporting and challenging each other and bringing out the best thinking in everyone. That's what education reform is after: figuring out ways to better equip our children with skills and habits that will make them successful for the rest of their
lives."
I can only imagine the results coming from a group of equally empty-headed kids all working together. It's like the blind leading the blind. Duncan obviously never rubbed elbows with cognitive scientists who understand that a pre-existing knowledge base is essential for critical thinking. Of course, it's simple common sense, even if you're not a cognitive scientist.
Bruce Deitrick Price describes critical thinking as a two-step process. "First, students learn a lot about a topic, whether in history, science or art; then theylearn to arrange the information in new ways, to set one fact against another, to discover original insights about this knowledge.
Not anymore. Today's educators don't bother with the first part. They jump dorectly to step two. In this scenario, students who know nothing are expected to talk intelligently about it. Imagine the depth." This is the aproach taken by something called "Portrait of a Graduate," that the excuse for a superintendent introduced in the Guilford, CT Public Schools. The central component of POG is critical thinking. The problem is that it's a program designed for seniors in high school who have already spent 12 years (K-11) absorbing very little knowledge of substantive upon which to think critically. In essence, it's a pathetic attempt to fool parents into thinking their ldarlings are going to become critical thinkers after the schools have wasted 12 years of their lives without inculcating knowledge.
One final note. After Hirsch's book "Cultural Literacy" became a bestseller, he offered to teach a course in the Education School at UVa. Hirsch was a professor of English literature. The first three times he offered the course, only about ten students signed up--this after it had become a national bestseller. Finally, a student in his third class came up to him after class and said: Do you want to know why not many kids are taking your class? The professors at the education school told us not to." Such is the animus about learning substantive information (FACTS], that they typically demean as "rote memorizatinn" or "mere facts," just as Duncan wrote. This is a relic from the days of John Dewey and William Heard KIlpatrick at Columbia Teacher's College who destroyed teacher education beginning in the 1920s because it coincided a growing national demand for education professors to fill slots at normal schools around the counrty. That educational cancer metasticized across the country, and is still with us today.
If you want to know more, I highly recommend Hirsch's books "Cultural Literacy" and the Knowledge Deficit," Natalie Wexler's "The Knowledge Gap, and cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham's "Why Don't Students LIke School." And , of course, Diane Ravitch's "Left Back."
Kendall: Thank you for the lengthy commentary. I like Price's description of critical thinking, and would say that they do neither part today.
We definitely need a return to the “Common School”, ie. Classical Education. Content matters. Pedagogy, like content, has also been captured. I say ditch teacher certification altogether and teach teachers to teach via on-the-job training. Seasoned teachers (GOOD seasoned teachers) should mentor new teachers so that they can learn their craft through observation and meaningful feedback. Co-teaching and team-teaching would be beneficial in the early stages. Teaching teachers to teach isn’t hard. Undoing years of indoctrination is.
In many of my 1-6 grades (they didn't have K in my town) we had student teachers watching the real teacher. I assume that's stopped now. I never heard any of my kids mention them.
Nard: Yes we need more traditional schooling, using the Socratic method...
I so appreciate your views on education and especially on critical thinking.
One of the best ways to give the educational choice back to the student is PUT DICTIONARIES back in the class room. Webster's 1828 is the best. Next is Oxford school. At least the student has a fighting chance to know what the words mean. Webster did his dictionary so "people;" would know the words. Certainly the left has altered the meanings of words but if the student keeps going to the dictionary to see what things mean, then he can develop his own knowledge.
By the time I went to school, 40s, 50s, they had taken phonics out of school curriculum and NO dictionaries. We were told to guess the meanings. Our Founding Fathers would have had much to say about that. No wonder those in Congress don't understand the Constitution.
Terry: TY for the support.
These days children do not use dictionary books, but rather do it online.