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space in the world of American higher education at Wyoming Catholic.edu. We have with us today,

David Steiner. He's the director of the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University.

He was dean of education at Hunter College before that. He served as Commissioner of Education for the state of New York as well.

He is with us today to explain exactly what needs to happen in public schooling in America today.

It's a very small, small request out of you. David, welcome.

Welcome to be here and delighted to join you, Mark. The answer to your question is that we just have to

teach better and teach better materials better. It really isn't very complicated. We underteach

American children, largely underprivileged children the most, but we actually underteach

almost all of our kids in the United States.

And that has very deep historical as well as economic, social, and political roots.

Of course, the details are more complicated.

Yeah, you know, David, I actually never heard that term underteaching.

Is that something of a technical term in education studies and research?

No, I've largely made it up, but I'm certainly not the first person to think this way.

One only has to go back to Hofstadter and his famous book, Richard Hofstead, anti-intellectualism in America.

And I believe I'm quoting here accurately when he wrote, I believe ours is the only education system in the world,

vital segments of which have fallen into the hands of people who joyfully and militantly proclaim their

hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual

promise. So the anti-intellectualism in America makes it very difficult to put academic

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