ACTA's Must-Reads

ACTA's contradictions build. Taxpayers who contribute relatively small amounts of money to state colleges should have some say in the curriculum. But students, and their parents, who are paying the vast majority of the expenses for their education, apparently should be told by ACTA what classes they must take and what content those classes should teach.

Now, I agree with certain basic curricular requirements. But the logical contradiction here should be addressed.

Furthermore, as I've argued before, one more course on American history isn't suddenly going to push the student over the "tipping point" from ignorance to knowledge. (And knowing contextless factoids like "James Madison was the Father of the Constitution" tells you no more about American history and politics than knowing that "James Brown is the Godfather of Soul" tells you about the history of American music.)

ACTA types tend to support a completely free-market economy, but clearly knowing things like American history has been proven to have little market necessity or viability. American students think like their American heroes -- businessmen and celebrities. If Britney needs a song, she calls in a professional songwriter. If the CEO needs to know about Constitutional law, she calls in a professor lawyer or legal scholar. Some studies attribute the rise in plagiarism and downloading term papers to this sort of thinking: "I want to be an engineer, not a writer. So I'll get a professional writer to write my paper. That saves time and divides up the labor properly."

Until groups like ACTA address the larger cultural issues at stake -- both the gutting of public education as well as the total capitalist selling-off and "deregulation" of learnedness -- such organizations can continue to repeat "college curricular reform" til they're blue in the face. But anyone with common sense will tell you that an Intro to American History course will not suddenly -- and magically -- impart history to students. College professors don't have some pedagogical juju that K-12 teachers lack. We must work to create a culture of learning across the board. (And maybe the place to start is to have politicians and business leaders who not only know but also respect history? The C-student-in-Chief is not much of a role model.)

I could write volumes on Ms Eliot's comment, but I'll stifle myself.

First, she's bifurcating.

The fact that an additional course won't solve the problem of "historical ignorance" doesn't mean that it won't help lessen it.

(To draw on her "tipping point" analogy: one can't get over a tipping point without climbing an incline to get to it . . . but by her standard, a single step up the slope is worthless.)

I'm not impressed by Ms Eliot's criticisms of ACTA in general. But one or two caught my eye as being of particular interest.

First, I hope she will provide us with evidence that ACTA believes students and their parents "should be told by ACTA what classes they must take and what content those classes should teach."

As far as I know, ACTA has recommended to state legislatures only that they press universities to find their own fixes for historical illiteracy. I'm open to evidence that I've missed something, but if she cannot provide it, then her comment is an outrageous mischaracterization of ACTA's position, one that seems to be based more on the ideology of opposition to all things ACTA than on a sober evaluation of what ACTA has actually said.

Nor is ACTA disqualified from commenting on steps Universities could take to solve the problem of historical illiteracy simply because, in Ms Eliot's opinion, the problem should be attacked earlier in a student's educational career (has ACTA ever argued otherwise?).

I could go on, but I won't.

Clawmute, the issue here is the relationship between advocacy and motivation. The complaint of the blog post used cliched, culture-war examples because ACTA seems ultimtately less interested in securing cultural literacy for all Americans and more interested in re-establishing some quasi-nativist curriculum at the university level. There, I said it. I suspect that that part of the motivation here is the old-school, George Will complaint that students are being taught politics instead of art and history. Instead, students need to know who's the father of what. Cuz that's real history.

As I've argued before, one required American history survey won't even begin to solve the problem. Ignorance of American history suggests ignorance of world history. And in a global economy, Americans can't survive with only a smattering of American history. It won't move students *any* further toward real historical awareness. Unless, that is, you can prove to me how twelve weeks of freshman history is somehow magically superior to the twelve years of learning that went on before college. If a student were literally illiterate upon entering college, we wouldn't assume that one college course could correct the situation. So if students are actually "historically illiterate," one required course isn't going to change that situatation.

But at some level, I agree with Clawmute. I'm all for having college students take tons of history and literature and philosophy and other humanities courses. Tell that to the business and pre-law and pre-med and engineering programs that are the strongest opponents to required humanities courses. You will rarely find an English professor who doesn't want more warm bodies in seats. (That means more hiring, more money, more resources, more prestige.) But why just American history? Why not Chinese history, so that Americans can understand the future rulers of the world economy? Why not Middle Eastern history, or Korean history, so that when they are sent off to war, they at least know about the people they have to defeat. And while we're at it, why not require philosophy? You can't understand the Constitution without a background in philosophy. And law. And what about math and science. Hell, let's just turn college into high school part two and be done with it. Then students can go to grad school, which will be like college used to be. Then we'll need *another* degree program to actually train professionals with specializations.

But to return to the blog's examples, can anyone explain to me how knowing "James Madison is the Father of the Constitution" means anything to anyone? Perhaps it's this view of history -- taught in patriotic soundbytes and repeated back like the Pledge of Allegiance -- that has led to American students' historical ignorance.

I still find it odd that ACTA pressures state legislatures to pressure universities. That sort of top-down thinking is distinctly, well, lefty. Why isn't ACTA spending more time selling history to young Americans? Why this blog? Why not viral videos of Jessica Simpson reading excerpts from an American history textbook?

Clawmute argues that ACTA leaves the solutions up to the universities, but that's not ultimately true. This is another situation like Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights, where state legislatures will clearly politicize the issue, overreact, and pressure universities to make certain -- generally symbolic and not terribly useful -- changes to the curriculum.

Finally, Clawmute argues incorrectly here. The blog entry above clearly states that ACTA distinctly told Arizona lawmakers "that not one of the state's three universities requires students to study U.S. history." That would suggest to me that, even if ACTA didn't directly demand required US history at the college level, it certainly insinuated that the lack of required US history was a problem in need of correction. And the only correction of not requiring US history courses is, well, to require US history courses. Which means that ACTA is asking Arizona lawmakers to narrow the freedom of students, in discussion with their parents and academic advisors, to choose their own intellectual and professional directions.

I would be in favor myself of general education requirements with more coherence and structure, but that's going to be a hard sell.

In the first place, the students and their parents are not unhappy with the present loose requirements and standards. To give just one anecdote, I recently overheard a concerned freshman with her concerned and sympathetic father nearby, inquiring into her cell phone with the registrar's office about what to do about a filled History of Motion Pictures class, saying "I have three substantial courses already and I want to have something not too demanding to fill out my schedule".

Another thing is that employers really don't care all that much about what students learn, as long as they pick up the right skills. That may be accounting, organic chemistry, or just plain simple reading writing and simple math, but it generally doesn't include anything as esoteric as American history or Shakespeare or Aristotle. The commerical world couldn't care less about what students know about the Constitution, unless we're talking about law firms. And even then, we're not talking about Madison's Constitution!

Finally, the academic departments at a typical large university are happy with the current arrangements. Acta may not be happy with "Hollywood & the Social Construction of Crime & Justice", but sociology or criminal justice or whoever teaches such stuff may think it's just fine if it juices their student credit hours and makes the administrators who dole out the money happy in our increasingly marketized, corporatized universities.

Perhaps there are some trustees or legislators out there who still care about something other than access and graduation rates. Perhaps there are some employers who recognize that learning American history is not a bad way to learn reading and writing, if not arithmetic.

Ms Eliot wrote:

"Clawmute, the issue here is the relationship between advocacy and motivation."

No -- the issue is how Ms Eliot made her case when she attacked ACTA. She bifurcated -- at least twice that I counted -- which seriously undermined her point, and may have mischaracterized ACTA's position.

Indeed, she has here mischaracterized the point of my own post, which was merely to point out flaws in her argument, and to ask for evidence of her (as yet unfounded) accusation.

And in the very next paragraph of the post I'm responding to here, Ms Eliot added an ad hominem attack to her fallacious soup:

"The complaint of the blog post used cliched, culture-war examples because ACTA seems ultimtately less interested in securing cultural literacy for all Americans and more interested in re-establishing some quasi-nativist curriculum at the university level. There, I said it. I suspect that that part of the motivation here is the old-school, George Will complaint that students are being taught politics instead of art and history. Instead, students need to know who's the father of what. Cuz that's real history."

Questioning one's motivation is an ad hominem attack. Cuz it's general effect, if not Ms Eliot's specific intention, is to distract the reader away from the issue being discussed by focussing on some shortcoming of the individual making the case, real or imagined.

(Ad hominem attacks may be relevant, but the burden of proof rests with the person making the attack to show that it is. Ms Eliot offers no evidence other than the power of her own opinion. The fact that ACTA may have different opinions than she has is not proof of motive.)

Whenever someone attempts to carry the day by attacking their adversary's motivation, I immediately think of the impossibility of proving a negative: how is the object of the attack, be it ACTA or other, to prove that he/she/they are NOT what their attacker claims them to be, even if they are innocent? It is logically impossible.

Then, I think of poisoning the well: if the target's motives are bad, how can anyone possibly trust anything they say?

I do not believe this is a good way to argue one's position.

And then, there's this:

"Finally, Clawmute argues incorrectly here. The blog entry above clearly states that ACTA distinctly told Arizona lawmakers "that not one of the state's three universities requires students to study U.S. history." That would suggest to me that, even if ACTA didn't directly demand required US history at the college level, it certainly insinuated that the lack of required US history was a problem in need of correction."

First, Ms Eliot represents a fact as if it were some sort of incendiary (yet indirect and insinuated . . .) call to arms against the University establishment. A fact is a fact, and nothing more. In this case, it is certainly relevant in discussing the topic at hand.

Second, it's one thing for Ms Eliot to infer an insinuation, as she does in her most recent post.

But it's quite another for her to claim, as she explicitly did in her first post, that ACTA believes students and their parents "should be told by ACTA what classes they must take and what content those classes should teach."

It was this bald statement that I focussed on in my original post -- but you'd never know that from reading Ms Eliot's present post.

Ms Eliot has now not only (apparently) misrepresented ACTA's position, but has also misrepresented the focus of my own post as well. (I will not speculate on why that might be.)

So again I ask: Ms Eliot, do you have evidence that ACTA wishes to tell parents and students "what classes they must take and what content those classes should teach?"

If yes, please provide it.

If no, please retract what would then be an outrageous false accusation and apologize for it, as publicly as it was made.

Clawmute, there is no significant difference between:

a) ACTA telling parents and students which classes they must take

and

b) ACTA telling lawmakers to tell Universities to tell parents and students which classes they must take.

[To use Frank Zappa's example during the record rating wars, a politician rating the moral content of an LP is not significantly different than when the wives of politicians, in a so-called "private action group," pressure politicians to pressure the record companies to label albums.]

As the pramatic philosophical tradition suggests, a difference that makes no difference is no difference at all. In the end, ACTA is directly determining what classes students take. By reminding Arizona lawmakers that state universities fail to provide required American history, ACTA is asking those lawmakers to ensure the requirement of American history.

Secondly, questioning the motives of a rhetor is not to construct an ad hominem attack. A rhetor's motives tell us the rhetor's ultimate goals in making an argument. Thus, we can question whether the action of which a rhetor wants to persuade us is only the first step in a series of actions directed toward a larger goal. For example, we can question the motives of politicians who wish to stop Americans from being allowed to burn flags. Is this the first step in a larger push to make *other* forms of anti-national speech illegal?

The logical error of ad hominem attacks is the same as the logical error of the genetic fallacy. In either case, one connects the rhetor's argument to other facts concerning the rhetor that aren't significant. For example, an ad hominem attack might be: "George Bush is wrong about immigration reform because his best friends are immigrants." But it's not ad hominem to question whether someone's argument for immigration reform is motivated by racism or by concern for American workers. Because that motivation tells us what else we might expect if we accept that person's immigration reforms.

So I continue to wonder what ACTA's ultimate goals will be, or how other conservative advocacy groups will use advances made by ACTA to fuel *their* agendas in higher education.

Ms Eliot wrote:

"Clawmute, there is no significant difference between:

"a) ACTA telling parents and students which classes they must take

"and

"b) ACTA telling lawmakers to tell Universities to tell parents and students which classes they must take."

Of course, how one chooses to further an agenda is a far cry from what an agenda is, and Ms Eliot's characterization of ACTA's agenda -- as defined by her own words -- was one of the central issues of my original post on this thread, an issue that seems to struggle for recognition in Ms Eliot's subsequent posts.

So for the third time I ask Ms Eliot to please provide evidence that ACTA believes students and their parents, in her words, "should be told by ACTA what classes they must take and what content those classes should teach."

If she cannot provide evidence of her assertion, I respectfully request that she retract it and publicly apologize to ACTA for misrepresenting them.

Further, Ms Eliot reminds us that an ad hominem attack is not always irrelevant, which is precisely why I added the following caveat about ad hominem attacks (in general) in my previous post:

"(Ad hominem attacks may be relevant, but the burden of proof rests with the person making the attack to show that it is. Ms Eliot offers no evidence other than the power of her own opinion. The fact that ACTA may have different opinions than she has is not proof of motive.)"

(Clawmute: "The grass is green!" Ms Eliot: "No! The grass is green!")

But one would never appreciate that I had made Ms Eliot's point before she did, were the reader to rely solely on her most recent post. And thus is my position misrepresented.

Of course the two salient points about Ms Eliot's ad hominem attack on ACTA, points that she does not deal with, are these: i) the burden of proof rests with Ms Eliot to support her assertion that ACTA's motives are impure; it does not fall to others to falsify her unsupported allegation, and ii) the fact that ACTA may pursue policies that Ms Eliot finds distasteful is not prima facie proof that ACTA is darkly motivated.

This is not to suggest that Ms Eliot lacks the right to believe as she wishes about ACTA or ACTA's motives, or that when she mischaracterizes ACTA's position or my own, she does so out of bad motives. (I know only that Ms Eliot and I have our differences -- I would never be so presumptuous as to claim I know whether her motives are good or bad.)

But if Ms Eliot is to persuade the odd skeptic to her position, she might want to consider that there could be several reasons why ACTA holds the position(s) it does, some of those reasons could be based on good motives, some could be based on bad motives.

So -- how did Ms Eliot rule out good motives?

Once again, the burden of proof lies with Ms Eliot to substantiate her assertion, not with others to falsify it.

"Once again, the burden of proof lies with Ms Eliot to substantiate her assertion, not with others to falsify it."

Don't hold your breath.

The jazz great Charles Mingus is reputed to have said "making the simple, complicated, is easy. Making the complicated, simple, is hard."

So it is with Ms. Eliot and her lengthy anti-ACTA screeds. She may find it hard to believe, but in fly-over America, there are lots of people who salute the U.S. flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, and sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." They also don't think GWB is Hitler, though they noticed that William F. Buckley has openly questioned GWB's conservatism.

These people -- the decent, hard-working parents of my students -- wonder why, with the U.S. a global leader in spending on public K-16 education (Greene, U-Ark.), their children aren't testing stronger.

I tell them, "be sure they are focusing on the basics -- literature, history, writing, math. You have to start at a beginning, before delivering informed critiques.

"Also, if, on Day 1, a new instructor seems like a whiny B.S. artist, drop the class ASAP. You can always get a replacement."

ACTA's mission statement includes the establishing of core curriculum in universities. How that doesn't constitute telling students what classes to take is a mystery to me.

Again, questioning motives is not ad hominem attack. It could be equated with ad homimem circumstantial logic, but the difference is that questioning motives is not simply to suggest that a rhetor's self-interest refutes his or her argument. As I wrote clearly before, the question of motives raises the question of the ultimate goals of the rhetor. If she gets us to accept X as true, is it because she's trying to lead us to accept Y as well?

As far as establishing ACTA's motive, the very fact that the whole complaint of this blog entry has been limited only to AMERICAN history, as if Americans need only know American history, leads me to wonder if the ultimate motive of ACTA's corre curriculum is a reversal of gains made by the new social history and multiculturalism. Saul Bellow, as founder of ACTA, once complained that the Tolstoy of the Zulus doesn't exist, so there's no need to recognize the Zulus as a culture. Ms. Cheney's history with the new social history is well-established.

Finally, need I repeat once more that the blog entry above explicitly states that ACTA is pressuring the Arizona legislature to pressure universities to establish core American history courses? ACTA's press statement *is* the evidence for my assertion. Just because ACTA is working with the legislatures doesn't mean that the ultimate result of such pressure will be "telling students what classes they should take." If ACTA wants required American history, they are telling students what classes to take. By definition, that's what a required class is.

JUST LOOK AT NPR

" .. as if Americans need only know American history, leads me to wonder if the ultimate motive of ACTA's corre curriculum is a reversal of gains made by the new social history and multiculturalism .."

I could go into a long-winded, pedantic diatribe about how jejune and unproductive the PC crowd is. Luckily, NPR's Daniel Schorr has provided evidence for ACTA's case on the lousy state of U.S. education.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/life/20060725/d_mediamix25.art.htm

Ol' Dan indicates that young NPR staffers don't know nothin' 'bout U.S. history.

If you don't know your own history -- how good can you be with others' history?

The PC crowd can yip-and-yap about PC until the cows return to the barn. Dan and I aren't buying their bull for 0.01 seconds. We know bull when we see it, and we call it like we see it. Get used to it.

A 30-second google search reveals that Bellow once asked in an interview, "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?" (Found here: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/bellow.htm) The claim that he meant that "there's no need to recognize the Zulus as a culture" is of course Ms. Eliot putting words into his mouth.

Instead of speculating as to what Bellow "meant," perhaps Ms. Eliot could undertake an answer to his question. And if she can't come up with a good answer, then rather than casting aspersions on Bellow's motives, perhaps she might acknowledge that in this world of finite time, where priortizing is a necessity, it might be more worthwhile -- at least in dealing with the realm of literature, regardless of the other merits of Zulu culture -- to focus on Russian, or Chinese, or French literature in preference to Zulu literature.

Asking -- and anwsering -- questions like Bellow's is essential to determining how to spend your time while acquiring an education. Ignoring them because you find the answers uncomfortable, and casting aspersions on those who ask them, is counterproductive at best, and nothing more than trendy PC at worst.

This makes for interesting reading, and perhaps explains "Ms. Eliot's" comments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Eliot

Winston--

I had no idea. That just about explains everything. You know, I was panicking: I thought she was actually entrusted with classroom instruction somewhere.

A.D. -- Steven Knapp has written eloquently that any equation between an individual and a national history is a fiction (and often one involving ideas like race, soul, spirit, and other metaphysical folk tales). You can very well be born a citizen of the US and know far more about ancient Greek history than American history and still be a good citizen of your nation.

Tom O'Bedlam -- if that is your real name -- the point isn't about studying Zulu literature. It's about recognizing every person as a part of a culture, and every culture as a series of ideological committments. Also, I don't recall anyone ever asserting that we should be reading "the Tolstoy of the Zulus." The fact that, in a debate the often centered around African-American culture, Bellow went "back to Africa," suggests that he might have more ideological similarities with Afrocenrists than with world citizens. Furthermore, in a universe of limited time, I have found African literature profoundly enriching, as I have the literatures of several other continents. (Also, I dare you to show me the Tolstoy of the Americans -- if it comes down to sheer greatness, most American and British lit can't compare to the French, Russian, and German masters. But in a world of limited time, I still would rather spend certain evenings watching *Airplane* than reading Henry James. And I spend many evenings reading Henry James.)

Winston: the depth of your research about my obviously fake name (I've purposely used different spellings of Eliot at different times) is stirring. Wikipedia is *all* you need to know!

" .. Steven Knapp has written eloquently that any equation .."

Holy good night .. she just does not get it. Madam, we are talking about ACCURATELY knowing things like FACTS and DATES, at a MINIMUM. Y'know -- like on NPR.

People like you remind me of Ted Turner of CNN -- talk, talk, talk .. "oh, what was the question?" Well, not everyone can inherit a regional media company -- most of us are supposed to accurately know FACTS and DATES, at a minimum.

If there was a reason for higher-ed charters, this woman is reason No. 1. Let her run her own school. Then, when her students cannot find jobs in their field -- even with Fidel -- she will know how good of an educator she is.

And Winston, are you the guy in that creepy novel they made them read in school back before they replaced everything with comic books? I mean, I once met a guy named Clark Kent, and I wasn't sure what to make of it?

AD: I was responding to your claim that one cannot know "other people's" history if one doesn't know "one's own" history. That is simply wrong. Furthermore, such talk of "our history" and "their history" suggests the very sort of exceptionalism I suspect lurks in all this outcry about students not knowing what James Madison fathered.

One can know one part of history quite well without knowing another part of history. Especially if, as for you, history is largely a matter of dates and facts -- or DATES and FACTS, as you'd have it (as if the caps make the argument stronger!). One can memorize millions of disparate facts and dates of American history without knowing much of anything about European history. And vice versa. And one's nationality has nothing to do with this.

Nearly every historian would agree that dates and facts make up only what historians call a chronicle. The chronicle is a pre-historicist genre. It forms the basis of narratives and interpretations, but these narratives and interpretations also determine which facts and which dates are central to historical knowledge. The relationship between chronicle and narrative/interpretation is dialectical; you can't have one without the other, and each shapes the other. Teaching students how history is written, how to think historically, is much more complicated than memorizing facts and dates.

" .. Teaching students how history is written, how to think historically, is much more complicated than memorizing facts and dates.

Madam, you are hopeless. Would you like your airline pilot to "generally, kinda" know "minor details" like geographic coordinates, fuel consumption rates, calculating flight paths, etc.? Do you want to live?

Further, in a 1st Amendment case, would you want your attorney to "generally, kinda" know the legal precedents necessary to win your case? Do you want to stay out of jail?

Madam, it is inspired, brilliant thinking like yours that has turned the U.S. into a second-class country.

The sooner your kind is required to start your own charter colleges (and, I'm certain, to fail miserably because nothing productive would be taught), the better the U.S. will be.

Good luck in your next career.

AD: I would want my pilot to know *how* to fly his or her plane. Airline pilots do not memorize routes and coordinates. Routes are programmed into computers, backup routes are offered by ground control. The pilot is trained to *respond* to this. When forced to do things manually, pilots often rely on the knowledge of ground control.

Surgeons research their surgeries before performing them. They don't rely on what they memorized in med school. Furthermore, surgeons are often so specialized precisely because hospitals don't expect every surgeon, in an emergency situation, to know off-hand exactly how to perform every surgury.

Lawyers research precedents before arguing -- they often have vast staffs who do the actual work of research. Lawyers are also specialized. A first amendment lawyer will not be your best bet for a tax case or an international business acquisition. Such specialization requires intense course work outside of some "general knowledge" curriculum. Many professors object to core curricula precisely because core courses will replace needed courses in specialized fields.

I shouldn't have to remind you about the division of knowledge, the specialization of fields.

Students in American public schools *learn* about the Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, the major elections and wars. The problem is that most humans *forget* the details of anything they learn if they aren't forced to use it on a daily basis. I studied math up to calc and symbolic logic. I haven't used any math beyond basic geometry and algebra since I was 20. I have forgotten the rest. No core curriculum will help, because I *had* the core curriculum.

(Silly example: my vet, trained largely in dogs and cats, has to look up information about rabbits when we take our rabbits for check-ups.)

(Another silly example: I teach 20th century American fiction. But to teach Ernest Renan's "What Is a Nation?", I needed to teach some basic Dark Ages European history. I studied it in high school and college. But it doesn't mean I could remember the tribes and languages and cultures of the Celts, Guals, Franks, Goths, Visagoths, the Merovingians, Carolingians, Scythians, and so on.)

A smart person: (a) knows what she doesn't know; and (b) knows how to go about finding out.

SHE JUST DOESN'T GET IT

From the original .. "According to a 2001 study by the National Center of Education Statistics, 57% of U.S. high school seniors don't have a basic command of U.S. history .."

Madam, you just don't get it. You make the case for ACTA.

Students without a basic command of basic facts -- which you pooh-pooh -- do NOT get into law school, flight school, engineering school, medical school, etc. They fail, thanks to naive do-gooders like you.

They do not pass entrance exams. They get low grades. They cannot pass entrance interviews. People are reluctant to recommend them, because they cannot accurately recall basic information and could be an embarrassment.

Looking forward to you starting your own College of "Accuracy Optional." The taxpayers will be unburdened -- if possibly providing future Fidel's and Kim Jong Il's.

AD: I never said historical accuracy wasn't important. That's one thing a student would learn when taught not *only* facts and dates but *also* the very processes by which historians write history.

I also never said that American students don't need better educations. The question is *how* to improve education. The ACTA assumption is that students don't know American history because they aren't being taught American history. But unless all 57% of those students who don't have a basic command of US history are all coming from the same high schools, we have to account for why 43% of high students *do* know that history while the other 57% doesn't. What else -- besides that they don't know US history -- does that 57% share in common? What regional, economic, ethnic, etc. characteristics? What cultural forces might be stopping that 57% of students from learning what the other 43% learn perfectly fine?

Also, you check your facts: you can get into law school with absolutely *no* knowledge of the law. The LSATs test only for abstract logical thinking (unlike, say, the GREs and the GRE subject tests). I've taught at an Ivy League university, and I've seen English majors with no political science or pre-law background gain admission into top law schools. (And the whole point of any flight school is to teach you the basic facts about flying a plane.)

But all of that misses the fact that I've never said that students shouldn't learn basic facts. If you read my comments about education, you notice that I've argued that every American should receive a rigorous, classical, trilingual education at public expense from grades K-12. Your own notion of education as "basic command of basic facts" is rather underwhelming and certainly guaranteed to leave many children behind.

But science, history, math, literature -- these are not fields made merely of "basic facts." Students need to understand the scientific method, the philosophy and methodology of historicism, the proofs and applications of mathematical processes, the formal and historical methods of interpreting literary language. Facts alone, without the knowledge of how facts are observed, interpreted, analyzed, and fashioned into a narrative or paradigm, are not enough.

SHE STILL DOESN'T GET IT

" .. I never said historical accuracy wasn't important .."

Madam, this began about ACTA column that noted "It is an accepted and shameful fact that the majority of American college students are historically illiterate .."

You begin blathering about everything political, social, cultural -- e.g., anti-capitalism, anti-militarism, new age teaching (from old wine bottles) -- everything BUT historical literacy.

Which just happens to be the main discussion point here. Which, multiple posts later, you finally acknowledge. Are you agreeing with ACTA?

Madam, you want grand educations at public expense. Well, as someone whose family was tortured by Maoists, a free piece of advice:

Mao would have never tolerated your kind of meandering, time-wasting teaching style. After he stole people's property, Mao put people like you to work on muddy rice farms in south-central China, to improve your performance and life-outlook. The man had a way with people.

I no longer have time to waste on someone who takes multiple posts to get to a point. When you get back from duty at the muddy rice farm, let us know. Have a so-so day.

This is how this began --

"It is an accepted and shameful fact that the majority of American college students are historically illiterate."

It takes eight posts to get to this?

" .. I never said historical accuracy wasn't important."

Has some record in academic slouching been achieved?