One reason why so many students enter college with poor skills and motivation, I have long maintained, is that their teachers in high school (and earlier) don’t challenge them. Most teachers have been imbued with “progressive” educational theories that downplay working to master the material.

A nice piece of supporting evidence recently came to me. Mathematician Barry Garelick (who has written for the Pope Center) penned a piece entitled “My Day at Ed Camp.”

It is an eye-opener. His day at the camp put him in the midst of younger teachers, among whom the notion that “traditional teaching is outmoded and ineffective” is prevalent. Particularly revealing is a statement by one teacher who doesn’t believe in homework.”Show me the evidence that homework in high school prepares them for college.”

Is that teacher really unaware that lots of students who do slave away over homework are superbly prepared for college, graduate with enormous learning gains, and go on to good jobs? And conversely that many of the students who just coast through high school, getting patted on the head for “trying” either drop out of college or gravitate into fluff majors that lead to easy degrees but no future?

If we had anything close to a rational educational system, that teacher and others like him would be doing something other than teaching.

Read Garelick’s article, then laugh or cry.