Reddit reviews The Schools We Need: And Why We Don't Have Them

What makes you an expert on the subject?

I'm not going to claim I'm an expert either, but as part of my sociology of education course, I've read several books (Unequal Childhoods, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, and Ed School Follies) and the gist of what I've learned from them is: 1) There is a huge difference in the quality of education received by children who happen to go to well-funded schools (and therefore probably live in upper class areas, and therefore probably have upper class parents) and those who don't. In other words, class absolutely plays a part in education. 2) The variation in curriculum from school to school/district to district/county to county/state to state is so huge that those who have to move regularly are at a huge disadvantage (i.e. you move to a new district, and that district taught the basics of something in 1st grade, but you were in a different district in 1st grade, and your district planned to teach the basics of that thing in 2nd grade, but you're now in 2nd grade learning the complexities of something you don't even understand the basics of). Poor people tend to move a heck of a lot more due to complications or trying to pursue opportunities. The quality of curriculum overall is pretty poor (in that it's not rigorous or specific enough in a lot of cases), in fact. Which, again, is a disadvantage to poorer people who don't have the advantage of having well-resourced, well-educated parents to make up for lacking school curriculum. 3) The teachers of the teachers are the biggest fuck ups; the set of ideals they have about children make it difficult to properly prepare teachers to actually teach students material. There's a lot of detail to this and I'm not going to summarize the entire book(s), but the focus of our education is more on not "harming" children by teaching them certain things too early or in teaching them things in a "boring" way (not talking about complex stuff here; basic stuff, like how to read). There's a focus on letting children develop naturally, rather than teaching them facts.

So... those are my understandings of what is wrong with the education system. I actually have no doubt that attitudes towards education are an issue, but they're clearly not the only issue. Feel free to provide me with some information, studies, or books I can read up on to give me a more broad understanding of why you think attitude is the only issue. I'm totally open to the idea that everything I've read is bias and uncomprehensive.

EDIT: Added links to the books I mentioned to give context.