Michael Knowles on Harvard: ‘The Crème de La Crème of American Students Can’t Do Basic Algebra’

EXCERPT:

KNOWLES: “Who’s responsible for that one? Well, also, even beyond it, I understand why certain students around the country would show up to college less prepared than they ought to be. Last I checked, Harvard still as a pretty low acceptance rate. I think — couldn’t they find the 6% of American high school students who know how to solve for X? You’re telling me that, because they were home-schooled on Zoom for a few years, they can’t do a math discipline that they should have learned in seventh grade? That doesn’t check out for me. What else happened around 2020? What happened around 2020 was Harvard ended the requirement for SAT and ACT in admissions, and they announced last year that they’re going to re-institute that requirement. They let the standards collapse. The first thing I would do is re-implement standards. That would be the word. I think this is — if the buzzword of the 2024 presidential election was common sense, I think the buzzword of what we’re looking at forward is standards."