Many wonder why American public schools are so dysfunctional. This question is more easily answered than you might suppose. Throughout the 20th century, the Education Establishment devised scores of seemingly sophisticated pedagogies. Aggressively sold as ways to make schools effective and students smarter, these celebrated methods invariably turned out to render education less effective and students more ignorant. Let’s take a quick look at a half-dozen of the most famous concoctions. I predict you’ll have a startling realization: all of these things are counterproductive. Worse still, they seem to be that way by design. 1) PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND SELF-ESTEEM: Consider...