Is there a connection between the raging health care debate and education in America today? You bet, argues Checker in this piece on NRO (which also will run in our weekly Gadfly newsletter). In the piece, Checker poses and attempts to answer the question: What kind of education would one need to make sense of the current health care debate??? He argues that not only basic literacy and math skills are needed to dissect the issue, but also a great deal of background knowledge. Quoting just three short paragraphs from President Obama's recent health care speech, he lists a slew of concepts, historical figures and definitions that one would need to know in order to fully understand what the president was discussing. You probably don't need to know many of these things in order to make it through college or to succeed in the workplace, he admits. "But you really do need to know them to be a constructive participant in modern American life," he writes.
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Barack Obama