Education in America

Slate.com, in an essay ostensibly about a travel guide, has inadvertently provided an excellent one-paragraph summary of America's reigning educational philsophy:

Rather, my Time Out destination guide was written by and for people who think the optimal amount to know about anything is a little. Knowing nothing is bad, because it shows. But knowing too much about one thing is bad too, because it takes up brain space you could devote to shallower things, like the names of all the nominees in the lesser Oscar categories. The Time Out mind-set is all about achieving a vast, shallow pool of knowledge.