What is the key to improving education in America? Stuart Buck says that Barker Bausell’s book, Too Simple to Fail: A Case for Educational Change , provides the answer:
His main thesis: that the only thing that improves education is spending more time on instruction at a given child’s level. In his words:
All school learning is explained in terms of the amount of relevant instructional time provided to a student.
That’s it: more time + suitability for a child’s level.
This may seem too simplistic at first glance, but Bausell marshalls evidence that his theory explains, well, a lot. Possibly even the achievement gap. Studies of home behavior have shown that middle-class families spend much more time talking and reading to their children at a high level. This is the most elegant explanation for why those children do better in school — they have had much more time devoted to their learning.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Rome and the Church in the United States
Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste…
Marriage Annulment and False Mercy
Pope Leo XIV recently told participants in a juridical-pastoral formation course of the Roman Rota that the…
Undercover in Canada’s Lawless Abortion Industry
On November 27, 2023, thirty-six-year-old Alissa Golob walked through the doors of the Cabbagetown Women’s Clinic in…
