I have always been good at English: reading, writing, comprehension, etc. In my state, on one of the English Exams that is given each year, there were 60ish students who scored Advanced, and I and one other student in my school of 400 were two of them. She and I were both avid readers. The other students who made up the top percentile of GPA and test scores were all avid readers from an early age. My friends and I who all read the Wheel of Time series, Star Wars, Sword of Truth, and many other Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels were all the smartest students in the school by a considerable margin. Learning reading comprehension was something that, in my own experience, is self-taught. Getting over that hurdle also allowed us to understand the need for other knowledge like mathematics. The only regret that I have is that I didn’t know to educate myself in economics until my mid 20’s.

TL;DR (for those who can’t read good lol): An interest in reading at an early age generally makes for smarter people.

I whole heartedly recommend the School Sucks Podcast and the extensive works by Brett Veinotte, http://schoolsucksproject.com/

We did both in grammar school; we had a whole class called “reading” where we read pieces AND did skills work. It’s totally akin to practicing scales and whole pieces of music.

Credentialed to Destroy: How and Why Education Became a Weapon by Robin S Eubanks

http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/

What is the title of the book by Thomas Sowell that Tom mentioned? I can go back an listen again, but if you know it would save me time.

Does anyone have a link to Dr Milgram’s letter mentioned in here ?

I found it: Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? by Thomas Sowell, 1984.

The problem is central planning. They assume they can get it right, or more right than others. Everyone must accept the same education. And this is a result of the age old problem of do-gooders. Hey, I got NO problem with do-gooders, as long as they don’t have the law and guns on their side. But history is full of the bones of victims of do-gooders. Just remember, collectivists don’t care about your daughter, they care about the hive. A few victims don’t matter. Collectivists don’t trust others. They can’t be leaders in the traditional sense because they can only delegate at the barrel of a gun. You may be correct, common core has some good elements. So what? Compared to what? Are teachers incapable of building a curriculum? Is a school incapable? What is the advantage of a “common” core? The disadvantages are extreme and obvious. The term “eggs on one basket” comes to mind.

One of the reoccurring themes is “learning how to think”. Many times I’ve read opinions by people looking back on their information-free “liberal arts” educations, saying that they know perfectly well that they didn’t learn any _thing_ useful, what they learned was how to _think_, which then made it possible to learn whatever it was they found themselves needing to know later on.

When I was teaching my own children, I focused on reading and math. We did the usual science stuff, too, but the real point that they both understood was that once they knew how to read they could learn anything.

And in this show, and elsewhere, what is the one thing being systematically destroyed by government schools? READING.

A conspiracy theorist might conclude that was deliberate.

When I was in school, we moved a lot. At that time “the new math” was in vogue. At one school, I would learn how to convert base 6 to base 12 and Babylonian arithmetic (with lotus flower symbols and such). At another, my teacher was a Pennsylvania Dutchman with a very old school approach. I moved to another school for the last two months of one year to encounter them having a test on everything they had learned that year in math (none of which I knew as it had a heavy geometry focus). I was fortunate to be rather bright. I studied the book for two weeks and made a 90 on the test. I am still proud of how hard I worked to do that all these years later. We moved again and it was more new stuff. I thought since 7x meant 7 times (something) that 7a must mean seven add (something). I was perplexed when I saw 5n (wait, no operation begins with n). These experiences left me with less resistance to a centralized and uniform curriculum than I otherwise might have (given my preference for decentralized solutions in nearly every other context). I also had sympathy for kids moving into my class in the middle of the year having learned different stuff elsewhere. On the other hand, I had no textbook when I taught world history. I made up the curriculum as I went along using primary sources and used quite a bit of creativity to build a memorable course (at least I tried). I would not have had this freedom had there been a rigorous centralized curriculum. I can kind of see both sides of the debate.