Nowhere is this misplaced progressivism more clearly at work than in the educators' argument that what really counts is teaching kids how to learn, how to think critically, how to solve problems, and that what really does not count is subject matter. But as Professor Hirsch points out, there's no such thing as critical thinking without something to think about. You can't think critically about chess if you don't know anything about chess, he says. The same goes for farming, sailing or any other topic you can name. Trying to teach skills without teaching knowledge inevitably means that neither gets taught.
Students end up ignorant and unskilled.
Schools must teach facts, Professor Hirsch maintains. He goes further. He advocates a core curriculum that is taught nationally, with national standards of what should be learned in each grade. Here is reform that would be true reform. Many conservatives have been making similar arguments for some time.