I'm currently reading this book, Dumbing Down Our Kids (Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add) by Charles Sykes. I found this author and his books by complete accident while researching some of the ignorant math methods that the local school has taught my son. These include "touchpoint math" and "lattice or box multiplication". My son is now 12 in his first year of "junior high" and is miserably failing his math course. He has straight "A"s in all his other courses. I objected to these methods when they were first teaching them. I insisted that these methods were destructive because they don't teach children how to do the math, they only provide a gimmick in order to get an answer. Teaching them touchpoint addition doesn't teach them the needed foundation for subtraction, multiplication or division. Remember learning the multiplication tables? Not anymore. When I expressed my concerns to my son's teachers, they responded by telling me that these new methods made it easier for all children to learn math, not just the smart kids. I argued that these methods don't teach anyone anything. The teachers just kept coming back to "including everyone", "leveling the educational field" and "making sure kids pass tests". They just didn't get it. So now, a few years later, I'm beating my head against trying to reteach my son math because his school didn't. This book, "Dumbing Down Our Kids" is full of facts and study result after study result proving what I already knew. This "Outcome Based Education" has been crippling our nation for decades. I see this book in the same way I see Atlas Shrugged. As a warning. Just like Atlas, it presents a harmful practice which society has ignored and accepted and shows us the consequences of our complacency. teaching children like this, that failure doesn't exist, that pandering to the lowest common denominator is not only okay, but expected: it's not wonder America's youth and young adults are so full of a misplaced sense of entitlement and believe anything should be theirs just because they want it. How do you teach right and wrong in a world where the concept of "wrong" isn't allowed to exist? I'm sorry for the rant, but this subject really makes me angry. These practices highlighted in this book are creating the looter and moochers Rand warned about in Atlas Shrugged. We need to take our country back, and we need to start with our children.