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Ari's Education Review 1
Recall, online worlds, phones in schools, math and reading failures, conceptual understanding, risky schools, and more.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
Recall: Natalie Wexler: "Cognitive scientists have found that [memorization or retaining information is] the necessary foundation for all learning and higher-order thinking. The more factual information you have about a topic, the easier it is to learn more about it—and to think about it analytically. Googling information is far more inefficient. . . ." I want to recognize the importance of learning facts while pushing back on Wexler's claim about its relative importance. Walking encyclopedias might do well on trivia night but otherwise be fairly useless. I'd say selective recall is important; someone should know the significance of the years 1776 and 1789 for North American history, but memorizing the dates of all the battles of the American Revolution would not be helpful to anyone except maybe a specialist. We want to learn essential facts that underpin conceptual understanding, with "essential" here depending on context. What you need to know about paleontology varies by interest and specialty. In a class that Wexler describes, students "memorize 23 dates in American history." That seems very manageable, but this is a useful exercise only if students can tell you about the significance of those dates, as apparently these students can. The school in question is a KIPP charter school; there's one of these in Colorado.
Online Worlds: Eli Stark-Elster via Cowen: "For some children, the internet may be one of the last remaining spaces where they can grow up doing what children everywhere have evolved to do: independently play and explore with their peers." Cowen: "So many schools are just deadly dull and not very intellectually stimulating," and "often what is on the phone is in fact more interesting and sometimes more instructive as well."
Phones in Schools: Hunt Allcott et al.: "For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero. High schools see modest positive effects, particularly in math, while middle schools see small negative effects. We find little evidence of effects on school attendance, self-reported classroom attention, or perceived online bullying." Cowen: "It is fine to want to run a school that way, but do not expect huge educational gains, if any. The evidence on this is accumulating, but many seem unable to accept the results. In any case it is not worthy of a major moral crusade." I also tend to think that the real problem is that much of what goes in in schools is so mind-numbingly boring that many students seek escape in their phones.
Reading Failures: Chalkbeat: "Kids are in a 'reading recession' as test scores continue to decline." Education Scorecard (main): "The United States entered a “learning recession” in 2013, as student progress in math and reading stalled and achievement began to decline. In reading, the average annual loss in achievement immediately before the pandemic (2017–19) was just as large as during the pandemic (2019–22). Grade 8 reading scores in NAEP are now at their lowest point since 1990 and Grade 4 is at pre-2003 levels. . . . All of the states which improved in reading between 2022 and 2025 were implementing comprehensive 'science of reading' reforms." Matt Barnum: "Scores in both math and reading are still far below where they were over a decade ago."
Math Failures: Although I think "inquiry-based" math instruction (basically, jumping in and trying to figure things out with limited formal instruction first) has its place, I also think it's obviously true that explicit math instruction is the core of effective mathematics education. A first, second, and third article from the Center for Educational Progress argues that some recent claims in favor of inquiry approaches are overblown.
More Math Failures: Chalkbeat interviews a UCSD student who got As and Bs in high school math but then had to take remedial math in college and even change her major because she was so far behind.
Traub Against Progressive Education: James Traub rightly points out that, insofar as "progressive" education downplays factual learning, it is destined to fail: "A more effective way of teaching, in this view, is to engage their wish to ask big questions, to engage in critical inquiry and so forth, and, through that, they will come to know things. I don’t think that’s how most educated people got educated. Educated people got educated because they learned, they loved to learn, they found a way of learning. When you learn things well, you are naturally launched into the world of critical inquiry and thinking critically." No sensible person thinks that meaningless rote memorization is a good idea, but that hardly counts as an argument against conceptual structure and the teaching of facts.
Hierarchy Matters: Samantha Lippert: "When foundational skills aren't automatic, working memory is consumed before reasoning can even begin."
Conceptual Understanding: Barry Garelick is skeptical of the idea that "conceptual understanding" is necessary to learn math at a certain level. He writes, "How many 2/3-ounce servings of yogurt are contained in a 3/4-ounce container? One student knows why the invert-and-multiply rule works and the other doesn't. Both students solve the problem correctly. I maintain that I cannot tell which student knows why the rule works and which one doesn't. What I do know is that both understand what fractional division represents, and how to use it to solve problems." I, on the other hand, hold that it's very important to demonstrate to a student why some method works as they learn the short-cut. How I would approach this is to start with very simple examples. 8 divided by 6 is 8/6, which is the same thing as 8 times 1/6. Then I'd move to how many 2/3-ounce servings are contained in a 4/3-ounce container. I'd also show visually, with a box drawing, how many times 2/3 (or 8/12) goes into 3/4 (or 9/12). You can thus work yourself up Socratically to conceptual understanding. Such deep understanding is not the enemy of fluency but a crucial aid toward it.
NPR's Conceptual Muddle: NPR's Cory Turner first contrasts charter schools with "public" schools and associates the former with a "free market," before conceding, "Technically, Blietz's charter school is part of the public system." Technically, then, Turner's earlier characterizations are bullshit.
Homeschool Growth: Angela Watson (ht J. D. Tuccille) says that homeschooling has been on the rise since 2023. I'm skeptical of her numbers, though, as they seem to rely on official counts that may or may not reflect underlying trends. In Colorado, for example, most "homeschoolers" technically are enrolled in private "umbrella" schools, so the official count is much lower than the actual number of people who practically are homeschooling. I don't know how reliable other states' estimates are. You can also look at polling data, but that brings its own problems.
Dangers of School: Eli Stark-Elster: "School is way worse for kids than social media."
Good Kid Shows: I wanted to record some thoughts here for future reference. Daniel Tiger has excellent practical and moral lessons. My child very much enjoyed Last Airbender, and it seems to offer some good lessons. A Kind of Spark, two seasons through BYU TV (of all places), is an outstanding portrayal of autistic sisters (and their autistic friend). Life by Ella (Apple) is outstanding although it has some difficult themes owing to the girl's cancer diagnosis. Amber Brown (Apple) is a very nice family drama.