ABSTRACT
Let me introduce the core ideas of the educational approach that I embrace. I believe that every person ought to master a central body of curricular materials and approaches, though I am not thereby wedded to a specific canon. For this chapter I have selected the examples of evolution and the Holocaust – though they are not without controversy – because I think that they lie comfortably within the ensemble of ideas that every educated person should have encountered, grappled with, and mastered. (In my book The Disciplined Mind [2000] I have added to the true [evolution] and the evil [the Holocaust] an example of the beautiful [the music of Mozart]). I depart from traditional educators – and from their allies in psychology – in the assumption that such topics need to be taught or assessed in a single way.
