Bruce Deitrick Price column
Bruce Deitrick Price is the author of six books, an artist, a poet, and an education reformer. He was born in Norfolk, Virginia, earned Honors in English Literature from Princeton, served two years in the Army, and then lived many years in Manhattan.
Price explains educational theories and methods on his ed site Improve-Education.org (founded in 2005; now being rebuilt). He has 400 education articles and videos on the Internet. More forcefully than most, Price argues that the public schools are mediocre because our Education Establishment wants them that way. His relevant book is Saving K-12
Bruce’s weekly podcast is called Let's Fix Education. His novels are described on his literary site, Lit4u.com
Price explains educational theories and methods on his ed site Improve-Education.org (founded in 2005; now being rebuilt). He has 400 education articles and videos on the Internet. More forcefully than most, Price argues that the public schools are mediocre because our Education Establishment wants them that way. His relevant book is Saving K-12
Bruce’s weekly podcast is called Let's Fix Education. His novels are described on his literary site, Lit4u.com
Subscribe to Bruce's columnBruce Deitrick Price
October 28, 2024
Dear reader, this article can serve two purposes: to bring you up to speed on Artificial Intelligence; and to illuminate why we have so many problems in K-12.
. . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
July 8, 2024
Anyone observing American culture has to be mystified by the steady declines in one sector after another. Schools, inflation, the border, national debt, social . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
April 10, 2024
Around 1990, journalist/author Rita Kramer (1929-2023) toured the country to study premier schools of education. She was already an expert on our K-12 schools, . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
August 14, 2023
The traditional view is that students are entitled to as much education as they can handle.
Please discuss this manifesto as a catalyst for finding new . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
June 1, 2023
A CONSERVATIVE PODCAST ABOUT EDUCATION?? Yes, check it out. Episode 100 just published.
When I was seventeen, my girlfriend gave me a book of cartoons . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
March 13, 2023
Senior citizens will tell you, when they were in school, classes were orderly, students well-behaved. That was the norm. Nobody thought much about it; but . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
December 8, 2022
For many decades, the Education Establishment has shown itself unable or unwilling to improve public schools. I suspect they actually prefer wallowing in . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
August 6, 2022
(Background: When a local group wanted to start a new school some years back, they asked me to write a proposal. Here is that proposal, which anyone may use for . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
May 23, 2022
It's a safe generalization that creative people disproportionately end up calling themselves liberals. Conservatives tend to be, comparatively speaking, not so . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
May 8, 2022
I met my first robot 40 years ago and ever since that time, as a hobby, I've tracked the field.
I had read about this robot in a magazine and wanted to . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
March 25, 2022
Want better schools? Let’s talk about the best way to teach in every situation.
To start, let's for a few seconds wonder what happened to classical . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
November 23, 2021
Study our public schools for any amount of time and you will probably agree they are handicapped by a variety of counterproductive theories and methods.
. . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
October 10, 2021
My answer is, yes. One-thousand times, yes. The subject is in fact painful for me because I was for so many years naïve and trusting toward the media.
. . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
August 3, 2021
In the computer’s early days, when complex code was still spawning unpredictable results, almost every new piece of software had bugs. Clever product managers . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
June 8, 2021
Why not? They've done it to millions of other people. Some of them probably better educated than you.
If you're a typical person with little background in . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
May 3, 2021
Our Education Establishment brags about its wonderful doctrines and the many advances seen in our public schools. The real story is quite the opposite, and . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
April 18, 2021
Cheating is all too common in our public schools. Bad students want all the help they can get. Even the best students might steal an advantage if they think . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
January 31, 2021
The subtitle of this article might be The Strange Semantics of Subversion. Oh, the irony of it all.
I remember reading, years ago, that Liberals and . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
November 16, 2020
If our irresponsible media would do its job, if our politicians and community leaders would be more involved in ending the great national embarrassment, if . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
October 26, 2020
Errol Flynn is probably the most famous and beloved Hollywood star of all times. He's been dead 60 years. But a gushing fan on a tumblr page recently needed all . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
September 14, 2020
Linda Goudsmit is the author of The Book of Humanitarian Hoaxes, a wonderfully informative work that every American should read. It explains quickly and . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
June 6, 2020
May 19, political pundit Dave Rubin appeared on the Buck Sexton Show to talk about his New York Times bestseller Don't Burn This Book.
Buck and Dave sounded . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
May 18, 2020
Sad to say, the Reading Wars continue in the USA.
Millions of children are made to memorize sight-words, a proven road to illiteracy. Hundreds, perhaps . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
March 29, 2020
Cursive has been controversial for years. The striking thing is that the Education Establishment feels really, really strongly about cursive. They hate it. But . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
February 10, 2020
For those who enjoy a good puzzle, K-12 education is more intellectually entertaining than most people imagine. Classrooms are full of convoluted theories and . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
January 6, 2020
The Gulag Archipelago was Stalin's personal penal system, 1934-1953, where roughly 2,000,000 people died from hunger and exhaustion. Hundreds of prisons were . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
October 31, 2019
It's amazing how many ways our schools find to discourage any interest that students might have in literature. Is there a secret laboratory where education . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
September 12, 2019
Every time I hear about an industrial accident or a Navy ship catching fire, I wonder if the real cause is that the workers can't read the manuals.
On the . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
July 17, 2019
Suppose you have been accepted to a major university and all you think about is the joy of attending lectures delivered by brilliant minds. Your life will . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
June 25, 2019
(A look back. This article was first published seven years ago. The public didn't know this sort of information, but you can be sure the people running . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
May 14, 2019
"Keep it simple, stupid" is a famous formula for good writing. It's also a formula for good teaching. It works in every situation for every child.
The good . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
April 5, 2019
Bottom line, many of my articles conclude that our public schools operate at an unacceptably low level; that this mediocrity is the result of a strategy . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
March 21, 2019
During the last year I realized there were two themes flowing through almost every discussion of education, but these themes are often submerged and overlooked . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
January 17, 2019
The biggest promises in K-12 involve reading and sight-words. Children are told: Learn your sight-words and you will be good readers!
There is a strange . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
December 11, 2018
The goal of education has always been to achieve critical thinking.
Needless to say, this involves a two-step process: first, students learn a great deal . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
November 1, 2018
A real OMG moment occurred last week when the New York Times published the truth about reading.
Yes, it's true. The New York Times came right out and told . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
September 9, 2018
Okay, kids, gather round the campfire. There is something you need to know. Something scary.
You are a participant in a vast psychological war. Believe it or . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
August 6, 2018
No less an authority than Robert Sweet, President of the National Right to Read Foundation (NRRF),
said there are a dozen good phonics programs and which . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
May 18, 2018
It's a common problem in the US. Children in the second and third grades, even the fourth and fifth grades, are struggling readers. They guess; they skip ahead; . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
March 8, 2018
Q: What is your main feeling about K-12 education today?
A: Sadness. There is a perennial waste of energy and money, both taken in great quantities from . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
January 13, 2018
I think it's a fair suspicion that our Education Establishment lie much too often. If not that, their ideas are narrow, their horizons limited. Most . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
December 7, 2017
Memo to parents, teachers, and community leaders. In matters educational, don't be so darn trusting. Don't be so gullible. Don't be such an easy mark for the . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
October 5, 2017
Here is a chart of the top 30 currency symbols in the world. Can you name them instantaneously?
I assume that most people on Wall Street can do this. How . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
July 2, 2017
How do we thank our heroes, the ones who worked hard all their lives and built this country, who sacrificed for a better future, who battled against enemies . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
April 17, 2017
The Reading Wars were always chaotic and confusing. Here's the gist:
On the one side, you had earnest, sincere people warning the country about the dangers . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
February 22, 2017
The only thing most Americans agree on is that the public schools are mediocre. As to why this happened and what we should do next, there is a total bedlam of . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
January 26, 2017
K-12 education is a dangerous part of town. Swindlers and carnies rule the streets. You'll see rigged roulette, craps played with loaded dice, and three-card . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
December 8, 2016
Many people, especially liberals, were surprised that Trump won the election. The surprising thing for me was that so many people were so surprised.
What, do . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
November 14, 2016
It's a long-running motif in American intellectual history. Critics of public schools are said to be misinformed, vicious people who want only to destroy . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
September 19, 2016
Thomas Jefferson made the gloomy prediction that we can be ignorant or free, not both. Given how ignorant the country has become, our prospects are sinking.
. . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
September 2, 2016
The Reading Wars in the United States go back to roughly 1930. That's when the common-sense phonics approach was demonized and discarded. Every officially . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
July 14, 2016
Most discussions about education blur two separate questions: What should be taught? And how should it be taught?
Typically, our Education Establishment . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
May 13, 2016
Judging by columns that appear occasionally in our newspapers, the Defense Department is not happy with the quality of students coming out of our K-12 system.
. . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
March 23, 2016
Thanks to Bernie and Hillary, Socialism is on everyone's mind. These politicians, like so many in our media and universities, claim it's a glorious idea.
. . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
March 9, 2016
Not long ago Forbes Magazine ran a column titled "Is education reform a pipe dream?"
Long story short, the columnist steered the discussion into financial . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
February 3, 2016
The last 80 years have seen one of the weirdest intellectual debates you can imagine. The Education Establishment constantly argues that phonics is wrong or . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
October 17, 2015
Let's look back 30 or 40 years. The USSR (Communist Russia) was vast and powerful. The Kremlin had control over the Iron Curtain countries – East Germany, . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
September 10, 2015
First, a note about counterfeit money. It doesn't matter if the bill is 99% perfect. If a single word or squiggle is incorrect, the bill is counterfeit. It also . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
August 24, 2015
This list of 45 Communist goals was introduced into the Congressional record in January 1963.
The list provides a snapshot of Communist thinking in the . . .
Bruce Deitrick Price
August 15, 2015
The most striking thing about our public schools is that they have been in perpetual decline for many decades. Why?
The government has its own tests called . . .
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