Horror stories abound about the state of education, or miseducation, in the United States. These types of problems have existed within the system for decades now and the supposed solutions consistently involve dumbing down the curriculum even more.  The weaknesses have been there for all to see and Common Core is just a new name for an old problem. One very important form of thinking that has been removed from teaching, is that of lateral thinking. Supposedly that ability does not develop naturally until puberty, so why force it on children who are not "ready" for it? Lateral thinking is the ability to see connections between different areas of knowledge. Apparently people are not born with this ability and tend to compartmentalize their thinking.  As an example, students are given vocabulary words for spelling, but until they learn lateral thinking they don't recognize that those spelling words can and should be used in writing.  So -- it's...(Read Full Post)