The issue I have with the article provided by Longstreet is the editorial bias of the piece. The article privileges an interpretation of what it means to be educated that is situated in a set of cultural values. These values, as useful as many have proven to be, are constructs.
If we define intelligence as the ability to learn, if we define education as a domain of knowledge that allows people to make informed decisions, and if we define a meaningful life as a life in which a person develops a sense of self-efficacy, the question is not "Are today's youths learning what we think they should know?"
Instead, the question is "Are today's youths learning what they need to know to live the lives they want to live?"
The first question is about indoctrination. The second question is about education.
In my view, the two challenges are:
- finding an appropriate balance where students accept the assumption that learning what we think they should know will prove at least as helpful to them as their learning what they want to know. And,
- understanding that today's learning environment offers a slightly different set of opportunities and challenges than the learning environment we experienced (or even prefer).