I'm trying to address a certain unreality, a certain abstraction,  a certain dishonesty, where children are  said to be learning 21st-century skills, critical thinking, collaboration, resilience, and so much more, but they don't know where Panama is on a map of the world. They don't know what 7×8 is. They don't know what a moon is.

They are as ignorant as bricks.

And here is a little secret. Our Education Establishment has accomplished this weird emptiness by constantly denigrating knowledge, facts, information,  memorization, and actually knowing anything so you can say, for one of many examples, "George Washington was the first president of the United States."

  My thesis is that children should learn as much as each one of them can handle. That's the idea developed in this article "What's education for? Let's have a national debate on this issue."

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3228898/posts

 Suppose you learn some stuff in the fourth grade that you don't really need to know, is that so bad? Your brain and your further experiences will sort out what things you need to keep in your head, and what things you can let go of.

What's happening in our public schools now is that children are kept in a sort of hot-house ignorance. I say this is dangerous for the children; and it's dangerous for the society.