'Culture of Ideas' Lacking in America's Classrooms

Newswise — The educational establishment is largely oblivious as to why American schools are poor at educating students, according to Gerald Graff, UIC professor of English and education. The key problem, he says, is that classrooms from the primary to college level lack an intellectual culture of ideas and argument. "Colleges and universities have done little or nothing over the last century to clarify this intellectual culture, either to their own students or to elementary and secondary school teachers." Graff, who authored "Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind," can comment on curriculum, testing, standards and the politics of education.