Progressive educators think that the way you redesign curricula is you throw out all traditional content and introduce dozens of soft skills,  strange new literacies, and 21st century this-and-that.

The people proposing this sort of redesign are the same people who have controlled education for 75 years. Do you believe in your heart that they will now do a better job? You know they won’t. (You probably suspect the truth. They don’t want the schools to do…

A lot of people think John Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal System. No, that was Melville Dewey.

John Dewey is America's premier educator. He is often called the Father of American Education. He was the guy, about a century ago, who started all the liberal/collectivist/progressive/experiential/socialist/cooperative stuff.

 He wanted children to work together in an harmonious group. He didn't want anybody learning too much, because that would create…

 Suppose you had a $1 billion grant to dumb down the country.

  Would you need to do a lot of fancy research to find the best ways? Not at all. Hang on to your money. According to this article, what they're doing  now in the public schools works perfectly, thank you very much.

 Here are the six essential techniques, boiled down. 1) Make the classroom as fact-free as possible. 2) If there is information left, efficient teaching is not allowed. 3) Nothing…

By way of  setting the stage, dyslexia is  for sure a huge topic. It is probably a huge fraud. And there seems to be a significant shift in attitude about this subject.

 What we know for sure is that the public schools use dyslexia as an excuse for the bad results they get in reading. Dyslexia is also used as a hook for fundraising by the International Dyslexia Association.

 The Cynic’s Guide to Education would tell you that our public…

An article in the New York Times, signed by everybody on the editorial board,  argued that every problem in the schools is due to a shortage of money, and racial problems.

 Basically, the New York Times claims this. Gov. Cuomo claims this. And the Regents claim this. Each ends up in the same spot, although coming from different directions and with different emphasis. Money and race. Race and money. That's what they want to talk about. And the goal in every case is money, more…