There is a conspiracy against testing. Clearly, the Education Establishment hates testing. We hear the jeers and catcalls every day in the media. In fact, this hostility has been a continuing chorus for 75 years. Do you wonder why? Simple. Ever since the time of John Dewey, the Education Establishment has been in love with […]

Will slick sophistries never cease!?! One of the big ones now is that our public schools are exactly like factories. Relentless and robotic, they move kids along conveyor belts, stuffing them with esoteric facts, pasting labels on them, ruthlessly packing them in metal drums for shipment to profit-crazy corporations across the country. There is only […]

Judging by the record, our Education Establishment believes in teaching as little as possible. Indeed, the prevailing attitude seems to be one of pious horror. Teach X, Y, or Z?? Heaven forbid. Presumably, these elite educators want students to know their own names. Once you reach that achievement, our Education Establishment seems bereft of any […]

Okay, folks, place your bets. Was it clueless incompetence on a cosmic scale? Or, was it John Dewey’s collectivist wet dream turned Clockwork Orange?

Summary: There is a current in American history that favors control and manipulation; that strain became especially prominent in education. Many elite educators are overly concerned with social engineering, when they should be focused on intellectual engineering. “Brave New World” opens with a scene in the factory where embryos are deprived of oxygen, so they […]

Summary: An excellent way to learn about the Reading Wars. You\’ll meet one of the first and greatest fighters in that war. Here’s how I happened to encounter Mary Johnston, the very model of what an educator and intellectual should be. An upcoming book (“Planned Illiteracy in Australia?”) prompted me to search that intriguing phrase […]

Summary: Sight Words and Dolch Words are the problem, not the answer. An intellectual virus called Whole Word infected our public schools starting around 1932. The result, to date, is 50 million functional illiterates. Whole Word was also known as Look-Say, Sight Words, Dolch Words, Whole Language, and several other terms which all mean the […]

Summary: Law enforcement officials should take a special interest in literacy. Why? Because one thing the majority of criminals have in common is they can’t read. Let’s make the public schools do a better job. There is a very simple way that police chiefs can help their communities AND save the lives of some of […]

Recently, a retired general wrote an article in the local paper that started this way: “Is our troubled educational system posing a threat to our national security? The Defense Department estimates that a shocking 75 percent of young Americans are not able to join the military–and one of the leading reasons is poor education.” His […]

[Following is the script or copy for a short graphic video with the same title; find it on YouTube] improve-education.org presents HOW TO TEACH ANYTHING & EVERYTHING 3 little rules —————— First, decide to teach it. You make a list of things you want your students to know. You commit yourself to making it happen. […]