"Back to the basics." It's a phrase that's tossed around much but has varying definitions depending on the speaker and audience. For some, "back to the basics" means focusing on the 3 Rs—reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic—before (and sometimes instead of) anything else.
We have to get back to basics in education, like ensuring that our children are developing the reading and writing and math skills they need to effectively compete in a very tough and increasingly global job market.—U.S. Representative Nick J. Rahall (D-WV) in "Getting Back to Basics in Education"
And it's not just individuals using this definition.
One month after the New York Times hosted the "Is Cursive Dead?" debate, North Carolina declared that cursive is very much alive. House Bill 146, nicknamed the "Back to Basics" bill, was given final approval by the state senate last Thursday and awaits Governor Pat McCrory's signature. The bill requires public elementary schools to instruct students in cursive writing so that kids can "create readable documents through legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade."...The "Back to Basics" act, effective this upcoming school year, will also mandate that students "memorize multiplication tables." The national standards require that students know how to solve problems using multiplication and division by Grade 3 but offer no recommendation of how those operations are to be taught in schools. Critics of the bill have called it an example of legislative overreach in the classroom, but supporters suggest that it merely aims to ensure that schools are teaching the time-honored "basics" of elementary education.—Lindsey Grudnicki in "North Carolina's 'Back to Basics' Education Revives Cursive Handwriting," National Review
This is not the "back to basics" we are talking about. This is not our definition. Our definition underlines the Improving Schools: Back to Basics—Struggling with Semantics — Whole Child Education
4-26-14 THE WHOLE WEEK @ The Whole Child Blog — Whole Child Education
The Whole Child Blog — Whole Child Education:THE WHOLE WEEK @ The Whole Child Blog Growing Our Middle Grades Educational “Gardens”After a long winter season with continual blankets of snow and ice sleeping on the ground, the warmth of spring is finally waking up the soil. Seas of grass are rising in front yards and eager blooms are curling upward toward the sun. Like careful, measured areas of hop