The author tries to find a common ground between the "intertwined taproots" of conservative and progressive approaches to education, presenting a set of ten commandments on two tablets (one conservative, the other progressive). "Traditionalists," he writes, "need to stop ridiculing progressives as anti-intellectual bleeding hearts, and progressives need to stop deriding traditionalists as pedantic, insensitive crushers of freedom." I think there's some merit to the ten points listed, but the author's approach will satisfy neither adherent, since what they oppose is precisely what is not listed on the other's tablet, and what they support is precisely what this compromise will not give them. To pick one example: I have no particular issue with the need to keep the disciplines separate, as the author suggests, but when the list of disciplines to be "kept holy" does not include, say, critical thinking and reflection, it gets my dander up. Sure, keep the disciplines holy: but which disciplines? Therein lies the rub.
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