to critically think. And therefore what I always think should be the basis of education

is not answers but questions. We should teach kids how to question. Now having said that

of course to be a productive adult there are certain skills that are required – reading,

writing and in the old fashioned days we used to say arithmetic. Now we say mathematics.

And it’s important that we provide students those basic skills. And in that sense I’m

in favor of a common core because I think there are certain things that most reasonable

educators and most reasonable mathematicians and scientists and historians would agree

are a part of what every modern literate person should have as a tool to go out and look at

the outside world.

I am in favor of saying okay, let’s get teams of educators and experts in certain

disciplines to say what are the basic things that we think are an essential part of an

early education for people. Put them together and create as well as possible a set of goals

and tools to learn those things. One thing I cannot understand and people are probably

going to be upset about this is why local school boards have control over educational

content. Because local school boards are inevitably made up of individuals without any training.

One of the reasons we send kids to school is to help protect them from their parents

– in a good sense. I mean most parents want their kids to learn good but the point is

the reason kids are outside the house is so they can get exposure to things that might

take them beyond the biases that they learn at home. And if we send them to school we

should take them beyond the biases that are present in local school board members. There

should be standards that are based – that are determined by educators, not by people

who for one reason or another run for election to a local school board. So a common core

is something I’m in favor of. What I’m not in favor of by the way is standardized

tests however. Testing always inevitably means you teach students to be able to do tests.

And I’ve seen it at all levels including by the way at graduate school. We have many

grad students say from China who are excellent at taking physics tests but when they want

to become researchers just being able to regurgitate information is not what makes you a creative

researcher. And I think the same is true for a young person. Being able to know specifics

to pass a test is not the same as being able to understand how to go about answering those

questions.