An ongoing study has found that the "basics" in contemporary educational theory are actually the smallest, most easily isolated and most easily testable fragments of knowledge in a discipline--abstractions produced by complex analysis. The project is exploring an alternative version of "basicness" in which the complex, often ambiguous realm of a…

English and writing teachers are often pressurized to return to the basics of grammar, despite the evidence that drilling grammar does not improve students' writing skills. A great disparity exists between public perception of effective education and the perception of professional educators, which is the main reason why parents and government…

The basic skills movement is viewed as a reaction, by sections of the middle class, to educational changes of the 1960s and 1970s. Curriculum changes during those years threatened the ability of the educated, white-collar worker to pass cultural advantages on to his or her offspring. (PP)