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In a sense, yes. What I'm getting at specifically is that:

- Although we teach people to read, we don't necessarily put enough focus on comprehension and understanding.

- Although we teach people to write, we tend to focus on mechanics rather than on writing clearly and in a way that emphasizes our meaning.

- We don't just focus on functional math, but teach much more complex math to virtually everyone that goes through high school.

You can argue where exactly to draw the line on math (and don't get me wrong I loved math and was very good at it, at least the way it is taught in the US), but I'm not sure everyone needs to become as highly specialized as we attempt to make them in that area at that age.

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> Although we teach people to write, we tend to focus on mechanics rather than on writing clearly and in a way that emphasizes our meaning.

That's not really true; the five-paragraph essay form and it's fractal expansions that dominate grade-school writing is all about clarity and focus on meaning.

It's a horrible as a model for anything other than persuasive writing for a number of other reasons, and given the way the target output influences process, it's an impediment to critical thinking compared to alternatives like thesis/antithesis/synthesis (or IRAC, which while pretty much taught exclusively in the context of legal writing is a very good model for general-purpose analytical writing.)

it's fractal expansions

Maybe their not as horrible as your saying! :)

YMMV, but only in the last two years of high school do I recall these five-paragraph essays being a substantial part of classes. We certainly did them from time-to-time before that, but we also did a lot of other writing of many different forms, and in the last year or two also did a couple "research papers" (in the classic sense, not in the grad student moving a field forward sense).

IRAC = Issue, Rule, Application, Conclusion (I had to look it up)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAC

now I wish I'd gone to law school!

That sort of thing can just as well make you wish you'd gone to real estate school.

"A-I-D-A. Attention, interest, decision, action. Attention -- do I have your attention? Interest -- are you interested? I know you are because it's fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks! Decision -- have you made your decision for Christ?!! And action."

Thank You for the condescension! :-P

It's a quote from Glengarry Glen Ross. That is one of Alec Baldwin's lines.

Ah! It sounded familiar.

OK, my bad! withdrawn (Can't edit any more). Apologies to pvg

I don't know, these exact things are what's on the SAT. I don't mean to debate its qualities as a test or whether these are things one should be testing but the notion that they are somehow not the focus of primary and secondary education while also being a key factor in college admissions doesn't quite add up.

I think it's unfortunate that people wont argue their point with you and are only downvoting.

I think a lot more of the SAT is about gaming their system these days. You could argue that making an "educated guess" by eliminating clearly wrong answers is useful maybe...but i dont think it really stacks up to what their hoping for. I dont think eliminating obvious bad choices is critical thinking, or if it is then it's a very low level of it.

Right, but as I said, I'm not talking about whether the SAT is a good test or not. Just that the fact it explicitly tries to test precisely reading comprehension, basic writing, 'practical' mathematical skills belies the notion these are not goals of primary and secondary education. If they weren't, this wouldn't be a test for US college admissions.

The LSAT is as much about test taking critical thinking as it is about critical thinking for the questions.

We don't necessarily need to teach more-advanced math, but rather more proofs.

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