I don't think it's that difficult, but I think people spend way too much time arguing about the last half of the syllabus (what we should be teaching high schoo

I don't think it's that difficult, but I think people spend way too much time arguing about the last half of the syllabus (what we should be teaching high schoolers) and ignoring the fact that a quarter or a third of students aren't even making it past the very beginning of the syllabus. It's like, arguing whether a kid should focus on computer science or Shakespeare, when the kid can't read. And obviously, there are tons of kids who are at the point of choosing between CS and Shakespeare, but it just seems like such enormous low hanging fruit to just make sure that everyone in the world can read and do basic arithmetic.