John hit the nail on the head, schools are too concerned with standardized testing and that seems to be the point of the curriculum. The other problem is so called "esteem building" that everyone does, all this has done is to allow mediocrity to become the norm. Johnny got an A today, but so did all of the rest of the class because if we gave anyone a lesser grade they might not feel good about themselves... School should go back to teaching the basics, I listen to one of my instructors complain about the students in his 300 level class that can't read or write at that level. How did they get there? It's simple nobody stopped them, they all let them get by.