Building a bring to the 19th century

[Recovering Cornucopian]

Diane Ravitch is an education expert who has worked for both Democrat and Republican Presidents.  I first heard of her in the early '90s, when PC battles were big on campuses, and she spoke out against stifling speech just because it offends some people. 

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

Here's a recent blog posting by her, criticizing the trend on focusing on so-called "21st-century skills," suggesting something more retro instead.  I'll bet a lot of people here will agree with much of it.

http://blog.commoncore.org/?p=88

[skepticus]

I like it!  I would add to the list rote memorization.  It is a skill that is more or less scorned in public education any more.  But really, it's the building block of learning.  How do you learn to read and write?  By practicing making the letters over and over.  How do you learn your times tables?  By practicing over and over.  When the power goes off and there's no more Google and wikipedia, people are going to discover really quickly that they don't know shit, because they never memorized anything, because they always knew that they could look it up on the internet.  Sure, there is way more to learning than rote memorization, but I would argue that it is a key skill, plus I'm sure it's great mental exercise.  I used it all the way through college.  Example:  when I had an essay exam coming up (which as a history major they almost all were essay exams) I would study by going through all the material we covered, picking out six to eight things I thought would be likely exam questions, writing up outline answers to each, and then memorizing those outlines.  I got an A on every single test by doing that. 

But yes, I like the 19th century skill list.  If I ever end up teaching some day I'll definitely use it!