The historian (and grape grower) Victor Davis Hanson’s family has attended the public schools in his small town since 1896-and they have all acquired the basic literacy skills for life. But Hanson has noticed an illiteracy epidemic even there. Why is this?
“Of course, most critics agree that the root causes for our undereducated youth are not all the schools’ fault. Our present ambition to make every American youth college material — in a way our forefathers would have thought ludicrous — ensures that we will both fail in that utopian goal and lack enough literate Americans with critical vocational skills.
“The disintegration of the American nuclear family is also at fault. Too many students don’t have two parents reminding them of the value of both abstract and practical learning.
“What then can our elementary and secondary schools do, when many of their students’ problems begin at home or arise from our warped popular culture?
“We should first scrap the popular therapeutic curriculum that in the scarce hours of the school day crams in sermons on race, class, gender, drugs, sex, self-esteem or environmentalism. These are well-intentioned efforts to make a kinder and gentler generation more sensitive to our nation’s supposed past and present sins. But they only squeeze out far more important subjects.”