PAJAMAS MEDIA CONTRIBUTOR ZOMBIE has a fascinating series of posts on American education. The first four (Ideological Warfare; What’s the Matter with Texas?; Indoctrination Nation; and In Pursuit of Cultural Hegemony) describe the state of American education. Read them all.

Part V (Proposals for an Educational Renaissance) contain his proposals for reform. In a nutshell, they are:

STRUCTURE

• Introduce competition into the educational marketplace
• Encourage homeschooling
• Break the monopoly of public education, but keep it as a safety net

CURRICULUM

• Get back to basics
• End the practice of mass-adoption of a few major textbooks
• Form centrist national pressure groups to make textbooks indoctrination-free
• Get politics and religion out of science classes
• Introduce and popularize “skills survey” courses

PEDAGOGY

• Group students by ability, not age or ethnicity; bring back “tracking”
• Have “small schools” or “departments” within large high schools
• Allow teachers with creative ideas to be idiosyncratic

TRANSPARENCY/INDEPENDENCE

• Parental notification
• Break the teachers’ unions
• Bring back competition and individuality

Some I agree with; others not. But all are worthy of consideration and discussion.