May 15, 2023
The Oral Exam Is Back: How Schools Are Fighting to Keep Thinking From Getting Outsourced
A high school history teacher in Ohio told me she now grades two versions of every essay: the paper the student submitted, and a five-minute conversation where the student has to defend a sentence she circles at random. If the student cannot explain their own argument out loud, the grade drops, no matter how polished the paper looked. That small, blunt fix says more about the state of critical thinking education in 2026 than any policy memo could. The essay used to be the whole test. Now it is just the opening argument in a conversation designed to catch whether
