Some might think I'm flippant when I compare reigning educational theory with a common street con.

 No, I'm entirely serious. The common denominator is verbal and intellectual sleight-of-hand.

 Anyone who teaches reading or wants to understand our reading crisis should take a few minutes to explore this article and the accompanying…

True story. A very aggressive parent pushed and provoked a principal until he blurted out all the dirty secrets.

Nothing the parent said could change his mind on anything. If the parent's child wanted a better education, the kid will have to go somewhere else. Etc.

 This short article got 350 positive comments so you know it's interesting material. Many people wonder why the schools seem to actually favor ignorance. It's all part of a…

 Schools will immediately become better if reading is taught correctly in the first few grades. in fact, all the phonics experts say you can do it four or five months.

 The problem now is that many teachers do not realize they have been given hopeless methods and unreachable goals. The only thing sadder than the situation just described is that so many teachers put up with it.

 So let's cut to the chase. Children cannot be…

BACK-TO-SCHOOL ALERT

Beware. Sight-words are the nation’s most common intellectual virus. They infect every aspect of our school system. 

Everyone who takes 10 minutes to understand what the Reading Wars are really about will oppose sight-words. Conversely, these people will promote phonics, which is the natural way to teach and learn a…

Anyone who studies American public education will come to a fork in the road: either the people in charge are incompetent or they are subversive.

 Almost 8 years ago I bit the bullet. I decided that, even if you're talking about inmates in an asylum or people on heavy drugs, there is no way that so much mayhem and malfeasance could result from incompetence.…

Forgive me if I repeat an important theme.  Our Education Establishment has got the country so bamboozled, it's a real struggle for anybody to think clearly about why children can't read and don't know very much.

  So let's get some clarity. What to teach is the first fundamental question. Every school needs to decide what…

Is it a good thing? Should students learn lots of it?

 The reality of our K-12 system is that knowledge is in disrepute, and children don't learn much knowledge anymore.

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 Jesse Watters and Mark Dice conduct interviews in the street, asking people easy questions. A lot of people don't know the answers. It's easy to find videos by these two men on YouTube. (It's also instructive to watch the people…

If you know all about saccades, you may not need to read this short article.

But there are millions of people teaching school who never heard the word saccade. That means they can't possibly…

We all like lists, especially if they are short and to the point. Here's a good example:

http://www.educationviews.org/9-big-reasons-public-schools-wallow-mediocrity/…

 If people understood the process, then they could help prevent it.

 Semi-literacy is the main thing killing our country now. Fixing this epidemic is the easiest way to fix the whole school system.

 Kids used to go to school for a year or two and they could read. That's how real education starts. The only way. Now we have an elaborate scam where public schools pretend to…

 Here is one of my favorite themes: Almost everything we see discussed is the SURFACE of education. The skin. The outside. The superficial stuff that doesn't really matter.

 I think our Education Establishment is truly brilliant at keeping people distracted and bewildered. The trick is to get people discussing things that are not primary. Throw out five or 10 excuses for why the schools are bad – kids are lazy, parents don't care, there's not enough money, the Internet is…

I have a new article on American Thinker about how academic decline is spreading upward into colleges. I've just read through the 150 comments. Really,  that was a depressing experience.

 The article is based on the wishful premise that the elite universities are still elite and that they will want to protect that…

 Yesterday I was reading about a teacher's effort to find the perfect way to handle every classroom situation. This teacher made it very clear that at ed school, she had never been trained in "classroom management" or anything similar. So here this unhappy woman was having to reinvent the wheel every day,  to figure out things ed school should teach.

 I think this is very sad. It's shameful…

This is a huge theme running through all of contemporary education.

So what is the correct strategy? What sort of education would actually provide the most help to the poor?

This debate was played out nicely in the contrasting…

Socialism is one of those words we hear 1000 times and we're still not sure what anybody is talking about.

 The word is often on my mind because our Education Establishment (I conclude) is basically a socialist project inside our society. That is, everything Obama has been trying to do to the society at large, John Dewey and his successors were doing to K-12 for almost a century. Let's say that John Dewey is a…

When the Education Establishment tries to blame parents, students, and teachers (that is, anybody but themselves), you know this is hugely self-serving. Blaming everyone but yourself is called CYA all around the world.

  Now, why would the people actually in charge of the public schools be held responsible? The Education Establishment would like to ask that question as they…

Education Revolution ran an article listing what they said were the really bad things in K-12 education.

 I disagreed. They were the worst things from the progressive point of view. But if you asked an average person, you would probably find a blank stare. What's so bad about that?

Progressives think that children having to stay at their desks is hell on earth. I…

Of all the hundreds of questions provoked by the K-12 morass, here is the fundamental one: are the top people incompetent or are they subversive?

 Anybody who studies K-12  will come to this impasse: is the Education Establishment clueless or conspiratorial?

 Charlotte Iserbyt wrote a famous book which you can find free on the Internet: "The Deliberate Dumbing…

Here's an article about public schools in West Virginia circa 1931. Those long-gone public schools were far superior to the schools we have now. Isn't that weird, not to mention tragic?

 We could get rid of the entire Department of Education, Common Core, everything the Education Establishment wants to impose on us; and do exactly what the people in West Virginia did 80 years ago. We would save a trillion…

This is one of my favorite themes. I condemn Constructivism because it seems to be an all-purpose excuse for not teaching. Teachers are actually ordered not to teach! I think we should do the exact opposite, that is, teach more and teach better.

 This nonsense has now spread through the K-12 system, top to bottom, side to side, in every single course. The amount of facts presented to children in a given year has…