Take your position pg 203

I can't really say that I completely agree or disagree with the emphasis on essential knowledge and standards. There are so many pros and cons to this situation. It does seem like the students now know less then the students 10 even 20 years ago. So I have to ask is because we are not teaching the essential or is it the way teachers are forced to teach the essentials.
I think that every student should have a database of essential knowledge and I think standards help teachers keep on track. I don't think that some students can function productively in real life situations without a mastery of the basics. And I do believe that it is the teacher's responsibility to guide the student in this mastery. But i also think that education officials have taken essential knowledge and standards to an extreme. I believe that standards are a good guide but everything has to be connected to them know. All we are doing is pounding information into the students and hoping that they will be able to regurgitate the information in order to raise percentage rates so that the country will be able to congratulate themselves on good education system. Then when those percentage rates aren't high enough we punish everybody by essentially taking away educational resources.
In this new "standards based knowledge" we have forgotten to incorporate real world education that all students need and that is frankly, more relevant to some school communities, especially those of urban schools. Most of these students are not interested in a bunch of facts whether they need to know them or not. They are concerned with other problems, like if they are going to have anything to eat or if there is going to be enough rent money. We need to not forget life skills in our teaching. We need to show students how to succeed and teachers may be the only persons in some of these students lives who can help them succeed and survive. We need to equip students with essential knowledge and essential life skills by putting equal emphasis on both.