In my opinion, drawing on my past experience as a teacher in a very impoverished area, there has to be a sliding scale. Facts are facts; my middle school stude

In my opinion, drawing on my past experience as a teacher in a very impoverished area, there has to be a sliding scale. Facts are facts; my middle school students were expect to learn long division, but many struggled with addition, some even still counting on their fingers. Phonics, math facts, sentence structure: some of these should be indoctrinated at an early age, so as to enable later on the higher levels of inquiry that represents true intellectual freedom. On the other hand, you have some people trying to sell "woke kindergarten" aaaand...its not going well for the students and their ability to reach academic goals consistent with early primary school.