FPP worthy.

My face to couch time has been on a steady uptick this month.

People have been slamming the writing style.

As one of my previous bosses would say, "Long winded and redundant. Cut it by half and start making the pitch after 500 words."

I love the writing style! Compare it to The Atlantic article arguing an almost opposite point of view about the California gardening curriculum. Yeah, it's redundant, but in a poetic way. However, when he says:

Considering where the rising arcs of our ignorance and our deference lead, what could represent a better investment? Given our fondness for slogans, our childlike susceptibility to bullying and rant, our impatience with both evidence and ambiguity, what could earn us, over time, a better rate of return?

he doesn't consider the Bush rejoinder of:

If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.

It's not a given that the goal of this country is to have people capable of doing other than they're told. Democracy now means doing what real Americans would do as interpreted for them by those who are keeping them safe, explaining the will of God, or paying their wages.

I like the writing style but disagree with about half of his argument.

When he points out that education should be about creating the most thoughtful citizens, not the most productive workers, I would agree in valuing the former over the latter but I think both are important - even philosophers have to earn a living and I think it's in part reflective of the author's privilege that doing so has been pretty successful for him.

When he says that we are currently trying to measure everything in terms of its economic value, including education, I agree and I think it's a damaging trend.

But when he says that teaching too much math and science is the problem, I would tend to disagree. Skepticism and reasoning are at the heart of what we are teaching when we teach math and science, and in a civilization with very advanced technology, they are important facets of the education of any thoughtful citizen. Which is part, a big part, of why I am a math teacher - because I get to make my students tell me "why" every day.