The Problem With Middle-School Education

In his review of The War Against Excellence, George Leef concludes the book “is bound to increase the number of parents who bail out of government schooling.” What information revealed by Minnesota’s former education commissioner, Cheri Pierson Yecke, leads to this statement? Leef writes that Yecke believes so-called progressive education theorists have infiltrated schools, particularly middle schools, with notions that have resulted in little, if any, improvement. For example, she explains, are their beliefs in equality of educational outcomes, questioning the value of individualism, supremacy of the group over the individual, that advanced kids must help others even at the expense of their own needs, and that competition is negative. Read his complete review in the September issue of The Freeman or visit the Foundation for Economic Education.