Summary: Schools don't teach facts, apparently because the Education Establishment prefers empty-headed kids who can be told what to think. But kids need facts, want facts, and can learn facts.

Ask ninth graders about American history, about geography, about science, about what 7 x 9 is. You might be stunned to find a vast emptiness.

Some of these students will go to college where they will immediately be assigned to remedial education classes. Others will try to join the Army or work in factories. Same deal. A big percentage will need remedial education of some kind because they learned so little in school.

Why? Is there something wrong with their brains? Do they suffer from adolescent amnesia? Are they different from the children of 1950 and 1900?

Here is another interesting question. What, in fact, do they actually know? I think you would be stunned at how much.

Consider: the NFL has more than 30 teams, each with a name, city, quarterback, coach, other stars, colors, stadium --kids will know many such names. Probably average teenagers know 100 facts just about pro football. Then we go to the NBA, major league baseball, college sports, etc.

We haven't even mentioned TV shows, rap songs, video games, movie stars, and current events. How many notable names do kids know? I predict that a typical 14-year-old will know more than 200 facts. But 400 wouldn't be a surprise.

Here is a very interesting point: none of these facts was taught in school. None of these facts was taught at all. The child learned them, without much effort.

So we can safely conclude that these young brains are in excellent working order. There's no problem with learning facts.

The problem is that the schools have stopped teaching facts. The goal, ever since John Dewey, was to create a blizzard of activity (one of the big methods was actually called the "Activity School") but to design the whole process so that nothing much actually happened, not educationally at any rate. There was much talk about social and psychological goals. It was not officially stated that the educational goals largely ceased to exist.

The premise of Progressive Education is that kids don't need to learn intellectual content; and they don't want to learn intellectual content. What is the justification for this nonsense?

In truth, the educators pooh-pooh intellectual content because it gets in the way of their ideological goals. They want leveling; they want simple-minded, nearly interchangeable kids who will do what they're told and be comfortable with social engineering.

Education as that word was traditionally understood simply does not interest the Education Establishment. It's like the exchange rate in Tahiti or the weather in Chile. Who needs to know such things to go about our daily existence? Let kids focus on the important things: taking the right bus to school, getting along with others, learning how wonderful other countries are, etc.

So it's helpful to understand what the educators think they want: a blank slate on which they can write their collectivist schemes.

Conversely, it's important to understand the countervailing truth, which is that the human brain just loves information. Loves knowing new stuff. Why do you think shows like the $64,000 Question and Jeopardy, and games like Trivial Pursuits, are so popular? We are fascinated by facts and knowledge. An animal or human that doesn't remember where the nearest food is located is finished. So the human brain is wired to want new information, and to retain that information. In fact, scientists have found that opiates are released in the brain to reward us when we learn something new.

So the dumbed-down classroom that the progressive educators like so much is actually a painful and depressing experience for most children. Their brains are hot to trot. They are ready to gobble down a three course meal; but the schools insist on serving two saltines and a day-old slice of lettuce.

Bottom line: progressive educators would insist that they love the future society they're building and the possibility of what humanity can become.

But in the process they are recklessly indifferent to actual children. I'd go so far as to say they don't care about children any more than they care about knowledge. When it comes down to choosing between their ideological goals and the actual children in front of them, their reaction is, to heck with those kids, we have a future to build.

That's why kids don't know Jack.

(For related analysis, see "45: the Crusade Against Knowledge--The Campaign Against Memory" on Improve-Education.org.)