As Professor Kirk in the first Narnia book said -- appalled that these young children weren't thinking logically enough -- "I wonder what they do teach them in these schools."

We were just talking on another thread about rhetoric -- something they didn't teach me back when and aren't teaching now. I'd like to see it: sound thinking, reasoned analysis of argument.

They *were* teaching geometry when I was in school, that is, Euclidean proofs. In my home state, at least, they've stopped doing that. Geometry is now descriptive -- "that's a square; that's a circle" -- and proofs are gone. (Possibly as a result of this trend, a math prof at a local college admitted to me he thinks some of his majors graduate without understanding how to do proofs. That's sort of like graduating an English major who can't read.)

I started thinking of this when a preacher I heard commented that whereas in the past, most people knew (or thought they did) the basics of the Judaic and Christian world view, the modern school system has inculcated ignorance of such things, and it's worked beautifully -- more people know next to nothing of this than ever before! But it occurs to me that although this was a special focus, our school system has also eliminated an understanding of how to think logically (by removing proofs). We don't get the basics of philosophy even in college (at least, I didn't, and I did take two philosophy classes).

To a sometimes partisan but less sweeping degree, parts of history have disappeared (and some have been disappeared for a long time). That can be fixed by better textbooks.

Geography also disappeared entirely from the curriculum while I was in school, which explains why we kept hearing about people who thought New Mexico was a foreign country.

What else is missing? What parts are worth fixing?

What will you do with your own children, if you have any, so they won't miss out on what our schools won't teach?

...and if you think this far, what materials will you be using?