The “long march through the institutions” has been going on for over a century. This phrase was attributed to Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and then coined as a succinct mission statement by Marxist student activist Rudi Dutschke in the 1960s. He used it to describe a strategy of achieving radical change through gradual infiltration by reforming existing institutions rather than through immediate revolution.

It may seem to us as observers that the changes to our society have been quick and recent but that is only because we as conservatives and Christians have generally not been awake or alert to what has been occurring around us.

I have been reading and writing a lot recently about the Science of Reading (SOR), the Reading Wars, and the Math Wars. Most of us have only recently heard these terms or perhaps have not heard them at all. It seems to us like a new trend. 

But my mother, who was a self-described feminist sent me to a private school 50 years ago where these “progressive” ideas were in full swing. I was never taught to memorize the multiplication tables in school. 

However, I was one of the fortunate ones who was read to regularly and came from a home full of books and was helped to sound out words and thus to figure out - outside of school - how phonics worked. Students who are able to figure out how to read without explicit and detailed phonics instruction make up about 30-40% of kids. You will notice that this percentage matches very well with the number of students in Delaware - and across the country - who can read at grade level. They are likely the ones who “got” phonics on their own or with their parents’ help. 

Many states, departments of education, schools and educators today focus on equity in schools. The irony is that the education methods that they endorse are the very ones that are causing disproportionate harm to lower income students.

My mom was a math teacher before I was born and realized that I did not know my multiplication tables and tried to teach them to me and then hired a tutor to do so. She did not seem to get the irony behind her sending her daughter to an expensive private school that was not effectively educating me so that she had to pay even more money to hire a tutor.

I did not understand that I had missed out on anything until several years later when I switched to a public school where despite being in the “top” math class I knew I was slower than other kids at solving complex problems involving multiplication and division. Of course, I thought this was just because I was bad at math. It never occurred to me that perhaps I was not taught well. 

Today educators and education researchers talk a lot about “math anxiety”. I can tell you that math anxiety is a very real thing. I definitely had it and experienced much stress in my math class in which the teacher played a game called “Top of the Class” in which, if you answered a question correctly you got to stay in your seat but if you answered incorrectly you moved to the back of the room and everyone else moved up a seat. So much pressure!

Somehow, I had the guts to go to graduate school in clinical psychology which involved many years of statistics. I struggled with these classes and it never occurred to me that it might be a result of math anxiety brought on by poor teaching strategies in elementary school. I recall wondering why I struggled in math with an electrical engineer father and a math teacher mother.

Today we are realizing that a major cause of math anxiety is the fact that students are not being taught well. They are neither being made to memorize their math facts nor are they having those facts explained well to them.

The Common Core Criteria which was passed during the Obama Administration and is still used in several states including Delaware, has teachers teach students 5 ways of figuring out complex math problems. Then students are asked to write out an explanation of what they did for each of these methods. Students are not taught methods of answering math problems such as long division and if a parent teaches it to their child and the child uses it in their homework they are told that they did it wrong.

It wasn’t until my own kids were in elementary school that I realized that they were not being taught to memorize their multiplication facts and that my childhood experience was being repeated for them. I took it upon myself to create flash cards and work with them to memorize them. I learned my multiplication facts along with my kids.

The Science of Reading (SoR) is the term often used to describe direct and explicit instruction in reading. Most states have passed laws that require that teachers be taught the SoR and use it to teach students. Delaware has passed four SoR laws to require teacher preparation programs to teach future teachers about the science of reading, to assess K-3rd grade students on their reading ability, to choose a “high quality instructional material” to teach SoR from a list provided by the Delaware DOE, and finally to audit teacher training programs to ensure they are teaching SoR (SB 133, SS 1 for SB 4, HB 304, and SS 1 for SB 252). 

I am guessing that this last bill was passed because the first bill was not being enforced. Sadly the other SoR bills are not being enforced either. Districts have officially chosen a SoR curriculum but many have not implemented them nor have they taught it to their teachers. Several districts have added a SoR curriculum onto the reading curriculum that they already had. This does not work well. To learn more about SoR curriculum read Building Strong Readers in Delaware: Applying the Science of Reading.

Thus only a few districts in the state are actually teaching our students to read using scientifically proven methods. This is very apparent due to the fact that only 41% of Delaware students can read at grade level. 

Delaware has not passed a bill on the “science of math” or the “science of learning” more generally. Only 31% of Delaware students can do math at grade level. 

In fact I was unable to find any states that have passed a bill on the science of math or on the science of learning. The federal government has just recently (on March 24, 2025) passed a Bipartisan STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) bill that elevates “data science, modeling, and real world math” in informal environments. 

This bill does not emphasize the “science of math” or what research is finding regarding how students learn math well nor does it address math in the classroom. “Math wars” have been taking place that mirror the “reading wars” that have been going on for decades. 

One side of the argument says that teachers should focus on having students memorize multiplication tables and other math facts while the other side states that teachers should work to foster “deeper conceptual reasoning”. New research concludes that this “war” sets up a false choice. Instead researchers propose a three-stage cycle in which facts and concepts reinforce one another. They have found that math fluency starts with understanding, improves with timed practice, and deepens through reflection and discussion.

With continued, targeted practice – ideally in short, carefully timed bursts – these explicit strategies become automatic, freeing up mental resources for higher-level problem solving. This mirrors the findings regarding what occurs in the brain as students move from sounding out words to automaticity. For more information see The Reading League.

Despite the strong evidence base, many teacher-preparation programs devote limited time to the cognitive science of math learning. I agree with researchers who are calling for more explicit coursework to help future educators evaluate instructional materials through the lens of learning research.

Because of these ineffective ideological methods of teaching kids to read and do math the United States is falling behind (ref) other countries.

I tell you all of this to urge you to see the seriousness of our current situation. Many Christians try to “stay out of politics” but given how progressive ideology is hurting our students it is unethical to “stay out”. A quote on this topic which has been attributed to various authors is:

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless." 

Please follow my research on education by signing up for the free newsletter at www.caesarrodney.org.