Progressive Education did it. It is the reason why American students fail in international competition.
Education writer Sol Stern explains the reason: 'Progressive Education,' the style inappropriately categorized as education, yet the dominant style in government schools.
It is no wonder that America is faring poorly in educating children, but it is a wonder that the public allows it!
1. " ... PS 87, the famous New York City public school my sons attended from 1987 to 1997.... on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. My wife and I were delighted when our older son was admitted to the school. It had just been ranked byParents magazine as one of the country’s ten best elementary schools—public or private—and the New York Times profiled it as one of the few city schools that middle-class parents still clamored to get their kids into. PS 87 had a reputation for adhering to the “progressive education” ...
a. ... instead of sitting in rows facing the teacher, as I did when I attended the New York City public schools, the children in the early grades sat in circles on a rug and often worked together in groups. I was told that this was the “open classroom” reform, introduced in the 1970s.... I soon received a crash course in educational progressivism.
2. ... the school’s teachers were trained at such citadels of progressive education as Columbia University’s Teachers College and the Bank Street College of Education, where they learned to repeat pleasant-sounding slogans like “teach the child, not the text” and were told that all children are “natural learners.”
3. PS 87 had no coherent, grade-by-grade curriculum. Thus, my son’s third-grade teacher decided on his own to devote months of classroom time to a project on Japanese culture, which included building a Japanese garden. Each day, when my son came home from school, I asked him what he had learned in math. Each day, he happily said the same thing: “We are building the Japanese garden.”
4. .... expressed our concern to the teacher about the lack of direct instruction of mathematical procedures, but he reassured us that constructing the Japanese garden required “real-life” math skills and that there was nothing to worry about. But I worried a lot, and even more so when my son moved up to fourth grade.
His new teacher assigned even more “real-life” math problems, including one that asked students to calculate how many Arawaks were killed by Christopher Columbus in 1492 during his conquest of Hispaniola.
5. PS 87’s children were taught almost nothing about such foundational subjects as the American Revolution, the framing of the Constitution, and the Civil War. I can still vividly recall a conversation with my younger son and several of his classmates when they were in the fourth grade. ... asked what, if anything, they knew about the famous Union commander for whom their school was named. They gave me blank stares.
6. More disturbing was what PS 87’s principal said when I informed him of my conversation with my son and his classmates. “It’s important to learn about the Civil War,” he granted, “but it’s more important to learn how to learn about the Civil War. The state of knowledge is constantly changing, so we have to give children the tools to be able to research these things and, of course, to think critically.”
a. [Progressive educrats] had abandoned common sense in favor of progressive education fads, backed by no evidence, which did more harm than good.
[One can see the results daily in the posts of Leftist members: they believe what they have been told to believe whether there is any evidence for said beliefs, or even when evidence to the contrary is provided. Very progressive!]
7. “The unacceptable failure of our schools has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty education theories.”
This didn’t happen by chance or because of professional incompetence, according to Hirsch. Rather it was intended, quite deliberately, by the schools of education. It wasn’t that professors of education favored the wrong curriculum, but that they stood for no curriculum at all. Citing romantic theories of child development going back to Rousseau, the progressives argued that, with just a little assistance from teachers, children would figure it out as they went along. That’s because students were capable of “constructing their own knowledge.”
The Redemption of E. D. Hirsch by Sol Stern - City Journal
The icon of Progressive Education is communist John Dewey.....some coincidence, huh?
With the evidence available, and it continues to pile up year after year, concerned citizens cannot believe that the dismal result is accidental.
Progressives are determined to doom this nation.
Education writer Sol Stern explains the reason: 'Progressive Education,' the style inappropriately categorized as education, yet the dominant style in government schools.
It is no wonder that America is faring poorly in educating children, but it is a wonder that the public allows it!
1. " ... PS 87, the famous New York City public school my sons attended from 1987 to 1997.... on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. My wife and I were delighted when our older son was admitted to the school. It had just been ranked byParents magazine as one of the country’s ten best elementary schools—public or private—and the New York Times profiled it as one of the few city schools that middle-class parents still clamored to get their kids into. PS 87 had a reputation for adhering to the “progressive education” ...
a. ... instead of sitting in rows facing the teacher, as I did when I attended the New York City public schools, the children in the early grades sat in circles on a rug and often worked together in groups. I was told that this was the “open classroom” reform, introduced in the 1970s.... I soon received a crash course in educational progressivism.
2. ... the school’s teachers were trained at such citadels of progressive education as Columbia University’s Teachers College and the Bank Street College of Education, where they learned to repeat pleasant-sounding slogans like “teach the child, not the text” and were told that all children are “natural learners.”
3. PS 87 had no coherent, grade-by-grade curriculum. Thus, my son’s third-grade teacher decided on his own to devote months of classroom time to a project on Japanese culture, which included building a Japanese garden. Each day, when my son came home from school, I asked him what he had learned in math. Each day, he happily said the same thing: “We are building the Japanese garden.”
4. .... expressed our concern to the teacher about the lack of direct instruction of mathematical procedures, but he reassured us that constructing the Japanese garden required “real-life” math skills and that there was nothing to worry about. But I worried a lot, and even more so when my son moved up to fourth grade.
His new teacher assigned even more “real-life” math problems, including one that asked students to calculate how many Arawaks were killed by Christopher Columbus in 1492 during his conquest of Hispaniola.
5. PS 87’s children were taught almost nothing about such foundational subjects as the American Revolution, the framing of the Constitution, and the Civil War. I can still vividly recall a conversation with my younger son and several of his classmates when they were in the fourth grade. ... asked what, if anything, they knew about the famous Union commander for whom their school was named. They gave me blank stares.
6. More disturbing was what PS 87’s principal said when I informed him of my conversation with my son and his classmates. “It’s important to learn about the Civil War,” he granted, “but it’s more important to learn how to learn about the Civil War. The state of knowledge is constantly changing, so we have to give children the tools to be able to research these things and, of course, to think critically.”
a. [Progressive educrats] had abandoned common sense in favor of progressive education fads, backed by no evidence, which did more harm than good.
[One can see the results daily in the posts of Leftist members: they believe what they have been told to believe whether there is any evidence for said beliefs, or even when evidence to the contrary is provided. Very progressive!]
7. “The unacceptable failure of our schools has occurred not because our teachers are inept but chiefly because they are compelled to teach a fragmented curriculum based on faulty education theories.”
This didn’t happen by chance or because of professional incompetence, according to Hirsch. Rather it was intended, quite deliberately, by the schools of education. It wasn’t that professors of education favored the wrong curriculum, but that they stood for no curriculum at all. Citing romantic theories of child development going back to Rousseau, the progressives argued that, with just a little assistance from teachers, children would figure it out as they went along. That’s because students were capable of “constructing their own knowledge.”
The Redemption of E. D. Hirsch by Sol Stern - City Journal
The icon of Progressive Education is communist John Dewey.....some coincidence, huh?
With the evidence available, and it continues to pile up year after year, concerned citizens cannot believe that the dismal result is accidental.
Progressives are determined to doom this nation.
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Just look at her posts. 
