Crazy. Everyone thinks we can just “add more time” to a broken system to fix it. Insanity. I currently homeschool half days yet run roughly 2-3 grades ahead. And don’t tell me America couldn’t teach like this; at $10k per student, teachers could teach 6 kids at out of their home and get paid about $50k, and produce a superior product. But of course, this would ruin the whole education scam, eh?

So I disagree that lack of time is the problem. Rather, it’s a broken institutional system with a bad learning environment, one that treats every child as a clone. More time will merely lead to burnout. Typical ed solution.

Regarding the teaching content IS teaching reading claim: why not turn this around? How about “reading IS teaching content?” I’ve found reading good books about the Civil War has a much higher retension rate than mere memorizing names/dates/places from some dry “history” textbook. So I disagree, and believe one should master reading, vocabulary, and math first, and then practice these skills by becoming well read. The content comes naturally to the agressive reader.

It’s hard to ignore the reality that many children are merely pushed forward in our schools based on age only, not subject mastery. If one can’t read or do math well, learning via content becomes very painful to the slow learner and just doesn’t happen. So the kid tunes out and drops out. Slower kids get lost in the “content over reading” system and fall further and further behind every year because they lack the core fundamentals.