What Is Wrong with Our Schools? the Ideology Impoverishing Education in America and How We Can Do Better for Our Students

"What is wrong with our schools?" is the question everyone seems to be asking, or more like screaming nowadays. Standard answers point to everything from school funding to unions to bureaucracies and more. In this book, Daniel Buck provides a different answer: flawed ideas-ideas about instruction, curriculum, even human nature itself-are the root cause of American schooling's dysfunction.

Touching on philosophy, contemporary educational studies, cognitive science, and his own experience in the classroom, Buck argues that so long as we build our system on incorrect first principles, all other reforms are for naught. In place of the progressive education that pervades our schools, Buck argues for a traditionalist approach-classic literature, direct instruction, sequenced curricula, clear rules and consequences-as the education we need for the future.

About the Author
Daniel Buck is a senior visiting fellow at the Fordham Institute, editor-in-chief of Chalkboard Review, and author. He earned his master's degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Daniel's work has appeared in various publications including National Review, The Wall Street Journal, RealClearEducation, and the New York Post. He has taught English literature and English as a second language in public and private schools at the middle and high-school levels.