With his new hit video Word Crimes, “Weird Al” is doing a great service for American education.

In particular, he’s attacking the non-teaching of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and everything else. He's got people talking about these important issues.

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He does not mention the slinky sophistry that…

It’s a common feature throughout public school education: methods that not only don’t work but seem designed not to work.

This is so puzzling that when you first encounter the possibility, your mind rejects it. Why would people in education design methods that defeat education?

 I think New Math was a glaring example. Reform Math continues the same tradition. The Internet is full of videos of children crying because they cannot understand the…

One of the things I notice – and it seems to be getting worse – is almost a complete disconnect between the ideas discussed as possible cures in education, and the problems In the public schools that are actually fatal to learning.

In other words, if somebody’s got cancer, it’s fatuous to focus on whether they need new shoes.

Schools have almost stopped trying to…