1) As a young novelist, I collected examples of bad prose. Some of the worst English in my file of jargon and obscurity was by educators. How could this be? Wouldn’t you expect educators to set high standards of clarity and precision?
2 If you have ever watched Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking,” you know that Americans don’t know very much. Endless surveys confirm this. Our students don’t compare favorably with students from other countries, especially when our much larger expenditures per pupil are factored in. Is this the best we can do?

3) As a practical, somewhat scientifically minded person, I was haunted by the suspicion that education could be organized more efficiently than was normally done. American education during the 20th century seems to have had an odd affinity for bad ideas. Worse, I began to sense that this affinity was not accidental but premeditated. As I researched the matter, I found more and more quotes from early educators indicating that they hoped to turn schools into mechanisms not for elevating students but for leveling them. Would the American people vote to have their children dumbed down? Of course not. Educators had to resort to stealth. “Dumbing down” is a common phrase, but not the whole story. A more revealing phrase is: “dumb by design.” ————————————————————————————–
My guess is that we need to confront these bad ideas one by one, and deliberately replace them with better ideas. My site Improve-Education.org is intended to be part of this renewal.