Breakdown: Kids are bored and disengaged because we focus too much on the facts and content. Too much focus on the "what" and not enough on the "how". We can reliably measure whether a student can regurgitate facts, yet we ignore the that this is not a valid measure of that student's education. Education, now more than ever, needs to revolve around constructing arguments with evidence based reasoning.The fundamental problem with articles like this is they presume the principal function of school is education. It's not.
The principal function of school is indoctrination into standard culture and social mores. Schools exist so that children can learn how to adapt to each other in society. While they're there, they adopt the prevailing body of knowledge presented by their culture. Math must be taught this way because this is the way it is used from this point forth. Writing is taught that way because that is the system we all use. In 4th grade we have this common experience. In 5th grade we have this common experience. This is why history is always such a battleground: you're teaching "this is the way the world is, because of this, because our values are this." Likewise science. There's a reason evolution or not is the biggest sticky wicket of them all: you're indoctrinating the next generation into your philosophy, or the philosophy of the enemy. The stakes are high.
Before someone raises an objection over objective truth, it should be pointed out that political systems care fuckall about objective truth. If you want to feel good about yourself, American, see Lysenkoism. If you want to feel bad, read Zinn.
"But wait!" you say. "The article points out that we forget it all anyway!" Sure. Absolutely. But when we're shown the examples again, we remember we've seen them before, we remember the context, and we relive our initial experience. School is about priming, not about learning. You have no fucking recollection whatsoever what "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" means but just then, when I made you read it, your ass was in a beige chair, surrounded by 10th graders, listening to someone drone on about politics completely irrelevant to your life. And it doesn't matter what you hear, it doesn't matter what you think, because whatever someone else says about Antebellum politics, you will evaluate it in terms of that history teacher whose name you'd forgotten until just now ("Mrs. Schmidt!").
Look - kids take the summer off 'cuz they're supposed to be out bringing in the harvest. That shit hasn't been true for over a hundred years. The concept of "high school" didn't even exist until the 1890s and wasn't common until the 1940s. This marvelous touchy-feely "but think of the children" stuff is an evolution of the fact that we're finally coming 'round to the idea that maybe public school should function as more than indoctrination and warehousing of the coming proletariat.
That teachers think this shit is somehow amazeballs speaks volumes as to the respect we accord our teachers.