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 students should learn. (I would suggest making a list of the thousand pieces of information that every adult needs to know. Teach that list and then keep going.)

 How to teach that information is a completely separate matter. If you let professors at Harvard tell you that constructivism is the best way to go, you've already been defeated. Direct Instruction – logical, clear, starting with the easy and building to the complex – will be the most successful every time it's tried.

 This article deals with separating the two big questions facing all school administrators:

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/bprice/160714

"What to teach. How to teach...Two different issues"