-—This is a MAJOR WARNING SIGN to me. Teachers were (and are) also very enthusiastic about Fuzzy Math (i.e., using calculators starting in Kindergarten) and Whole Language.-—
All true. But take it up a level.
Who says that anyone needs to learn math, beyond adding and subtracting? I graduated from engineering school, changed careers, and have never used math beyond simple arithmetic. Yes, math can be beautiful, useful, and crystal clear, but for most people it’s esoteric and useless.
My point is that we need to focus on the larger questions regarding education. What is a good education? Does education have to be formal? Who has the authority to determine what a child should learn?
My answer is that parents should be a child’s primary educator, and that they should be given wide latitude in determining their child’s course of education. I’m equally happy with the elimination of compulsory attendance laws, and/or the establishment of a voucher system. If the latter, the only criteria for accreditation would be reading instruction, grammatical instruction for young children, training in logic for older children, natural law, and basic math. The rest is optional.
Why? We want citizens to be able to communicate their ideas, and to know how to think and argue. These skills allow children to learn on their own.
I have deliberately left out the most important object of education, which is religious instruction, since eternal life with God is man’s final end. But this is the province of parents, and they should be free to choose a school in line with their beliefs.
This is a question I think about a lot. I spend a lot of time pondering the world which my grandparents lived in. How did that world accomplish so much, given how few of them had college degrees and in my grandparents cases, not even high school degrees. Yet the "uneducated" generation, built the skyscrapers in NYC, they built aircraft carriers for WW2, they built airplanes, roads, machines, tools. They farmed the land. (Unfortunately, they also sowed all the seeds for deviating from the constitution, but that's another story)
Society has been snookered about what an education is, its importance, and where it truly comes from.