It's the second half where I think this goes off the rails. McCullough starts making recommendations that seem to me to perpetuate much of what he just complained about. Example:
"We're too concentrated on having our children learn the answers," he summarizes. "I would teach them how to ask questions—because that's how you learn."
No. History is composed of facts. Teach the facts. Give people the answers. If all you do is ask questions, then you inevitably steer people toward open-ended mushy thinking that will promote an ideological agenda. There are no answers. There are simply opinions and emotional reactions toward vague events in the murky past.
“Teach the facts.”
You’ll get a fight from Liberals over this. They do not want to teach ‘facts’ because ‘facts’ expose the Liberal lies and are inconsistent with the Liberal agenda.
They will challenge ‘facts’ as being too absolute. (Of course, Liberals slammed the door on the concept of an ‘absolute’ long ago-so for them, absolute ‘facts’ CANNOT exist.) For them, everything is relative… so your absolute facts are irrelevant!
See how we got here?
Your points are good ones. However, I read his comment to mean that the students are being taught the “answers” or want the “answers” for the tests. His point about taking pages from a book, removing the page numbers, and telling the students to put them in order was a good one.