Do schools fail democracy, as argued by E.D. Hirsch Jr., in How Schools Fail Democracy (The Chronicle Review, 9/28/2009)? Personally, I have been frustrated by public education's emphasis on skill development for check-lists, competitions, and test-taking with low reference to exposing students to common culture, core values, and must reads (i.e., classics). As a parent, I have slowly come to own the counter-cultural responsibility of intentionally teaching our common knowledge, but ironically it demands a lot of … [Read more...] about How Schools Fail Democracy