National Subject-Matter Standards? Be Careful What You Wish For

By Marion Brady

“American education,” said Buckminster Fuller, “has evolved in such a way that it will be the undoing of the society.”

Fuller, the visionary thinker and inventor whose work spanned fields from architecture to philosophy, was about to address a 1988 conference of business executives at Rockford College in Illinois, but was first reacting to a speech just concluded by the college’s president.

Looking at the president, he continued: “What you fellows in the universities do is to make all the bright students into experts in something. That has some usefulness, but the trouble is it leaves the ones with mediocre minds and the dunderheads to become generalists who serve as college presidents. And presidents...