At this point, we're about 10,000 miles away from the actual article -- which did not contain a single mention of overall education quality, not one fact about how education has changed over time, precious little evidence for or against widespread poor teacher quality, etc. The sample size was seventeen, for hecks' sake, and it was about how if you put "math is hard" Barbie up in front of girl students, they do worse at math!<p>&#62; modern education in America is exceptionally poor compared to recent history<p>This is an assumption that you and the grandparent both hold very dearly. But is it even true? Nobody <i>ever</i> provides anything but anecdotal evidence for this claim.<p>A 'debunk' site:
<a href="http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=6&#38;n=1" rel="nofollow">http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=6&#38;n=1</a><p>Historical literacy rates in the US: 
<a href="http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp" rel="nofollow">http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp</a><p>If our education is so poor compared to recent history, why hasn't literacy fallen?