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Here’s what we’re talking about: the alphabet, how to count to 50, the names of colors, animals, seasons, days, holidays, basic science, history, geography, maps, etc., etc., etc.

Head Start or any other program that purports to help poor children has got to immediately address the knowledge gap. Everything that children in a richer home might automatically know must be taught, AS A CRASH COURSE, to the children from poor families. This is how you create the equality that liberals always say they want; but then they refuse to create it.

I think Occupy the Classroom is an unhelpful name. What we need to do is Occupy the Education Establishment and try to make it support helpful, practical ideas, for a change.

Ever since the time of John Dewey, our top educators have been hostile to basic knowledge. How to spell correctly, the multiplication table, where Spain is--all the stuff that is just second nature to families further up the social scale tends to be neglected in poor families. Ergo, the public schools have to fix this immediately.

So the real enemy here is the kind of empty, so-called education that is basically a low-cal confection made from a stew of slick sophistries, with names like Whole Language, Reform Math, Relevance, Constructivism, Self-Esteem, Cooperative Learning, 21st Century Skills, Critical Thinking, Learning Styles, Prior Knowledge, Multiculturalism, and another two dozen. Harvard, in fact, is one of the main culprits in perpetrating this stuff.

Well, here’s my vote. Get rid of all the folderol and start teaching facts and more facts, basic skills, and mastery.

GIVE POOR KIDS PRECISELY THE EDUCATION THAT RICH FAMILIES PAY FOR AT PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

Here is our mantra, provided by no other than John Dewey himself: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.”

(For more on slick sophistries, see “56: Top 10 Worst Ideas in Education” on Improve-Education.org.)

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(And on the anti-academic literary front, Lit4u.com has been redesigned. Name means "Literature For You." Not pretentious and opaque, but fun, feisty, and unexpected.)

Here’s what we’re talking about: the alphabet, how to count to 50, the names of colors, animals, seasons, days, holidays, basic science, history, geography, etc., etc., etc.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I don't know what's going on in homes or in the lower grades, but year after year I get kids in 7th grade who cannot add or subtract numbers in double digits, do not know their multiplication tables, do not know the difference between a city and a state, or a city and a country, have no idea where any country is except Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and the US. Think Paris is a country near Turkey, could be easily convinced that China is in Africa, can't tell time on an analog clock, have no idea when the Civil War was or who fought it or why or who won... Can't tell you what 50% of 6 is... and I'm supposed to "draw upon their prior knowledge" to teach them recurring theme in bell hooks and Gary Soto's writing. They can't spell "would" or "because". (Not all of them, but huge numbers, are at this level.)

Empirically, Head Start is a waste of time and money. We have had the data since the seventies to prove it. Second, Most poor people are poor because they have well below average intelligence, meaning poor judgment, attention span, concentration and learning skills. The average unwed teenage mother, who produce most of the at-risk children we are really talking about, has an IQ of about 75-80.

Allowing for regression to the mean, they will still produce offspring with serious cognitive deficits. You can put them in a rich home and surround them with stimulating goodies but they will still be below average. You can look it up--it's been tried. Everything has been tried-- except abstinence for the stupidoes.

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