At the turn of the twentieth century, an early "progressive" Vermonter named John Dewey kick-started a makeover of America's education system. At the conclusion of the second of his seminal works, The School and Society and The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey offered these bits of wisdom. "But save as the teacher knows, knows wisely and thoroughly, the race-expression which is embodied in that thing we call the Curriculum, the teacher knows neither what the present power, capacity, or attitude is, nor yet how it is to be asserted, exercised, and realized." Even in this final sentence, as in the...