Education reform is a hot topic during election season, and most
solutions involve tweaking the federal code, blaming the
federal/state/local government, blaming teachers, blaming
parents, and blaming students. These explanations look at
symptoms and not the actual problem. The issue in modern
primary, secondary, and tertiary education isn’t that teachers
can’t teach, that the media preaches ignorance, or the
government is too involved (though some of these may be true on
a case by case basis). It is that our system is operating
backwards. In the modern educational system, we begin by
teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. This is a great
start. Students need to be able to read critically, write
critically, and do basic mathematics. But, other subjects need
to be added: logic and rhetoric. Students need to be equipped
with these understanding tools from an early age. The ability to
speak your ideas and formulate complex concepts is important in
a free society. At the early levels of education, we should t