Basic skills

Basic skills can be compared to higher order thinking skills. Facts and methods are highly valued under the back-to-basics approach to education.

Teaching methods that emphasize basic skills tend to be compatible with traditional education rather than student-centered standards based education reform. Materials that are primarily marketed to homeschoolers such as Saxon math and Modern Curriculum Press are based on emphasis on basic skills. Such curricula typically require much less teacher training, less expensive and smaller books, and do not require purchasing expensive expendable materials such as scissors, paste, paint, beads as is required by reform mathematics curricula such as Investigations in Number, Data, and Space.

Most local, state and federal education agencies are committed to standards based education reform, which is based on beliefs which conflict with the outcomes of traditional education. The goal is that all students will succeed at one high world-class level of what students know and are able to do, rather than different students learning different amounts on different tracks, producing some failures and some successes. Higher order thinking skills are emphasized by the new standards. A widely cited paper by Constance Kamii even suggests that teaching of basic arithmetic methods is harmful to learning, and guided the thinking behind many of today's commonly used mathematics teaching curricula.

In the United Kingdom, basic skills education is literacy and numeracy education for adults who for some reason did not acquire these skills or a level sufficient for everyday adult life when they were at school. It is therefore often referred to as "adult basic skills". Skills for life is a basic skills programme running in further education colleges, taken by young people over 16 and by older adults. Students on vocational courses and apprentices are often required to take "key skills" units in communication, application of number and information and communication technology (ICT)....

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