Excerpt from Stacie Vos's  article on recent debates about literacy instruction in US schools:

"As a parent of students in a Manhattan public school, he was concerned about his children's lack of knowledge about crucial facts in American history. He writes, "When I complained to the school's principal, he reassured me: 'Our kids don't need to learn about the Civil War. What they are learning at P.S. 87 is how to learn about the Civil War'" (Stern, "E.D. Hirsch's Curriculum for Democracy"). 

The problem with this approach is that, of course, once students get to practice their "skills," they will attend classes that require prior knowledge of key historical concepts and events. 

 How will the historian's skills help them then? Read more...