Our Academic Programs Academic Rigor in a Thinking Curriculum      Thinking and problem solving will be the new basics of the 21st century.  Students need to be engaged in active reasoning throughout their curriculum. Learning must include commitment to a knowledge core, high thinking demand and active use of the students' knowledge.      The ability to think well goes and-in-hand with rich stores of knowledge.  In each field of learning, there is a core of knowledge and conceptual understanding that all students should learn. This knowledge core should be specified in rigorous academic standards. The standards can then serve as the basis for an articulated curriculum in which core concepts are taught and learned in considerable depth, along with skills and tools of the discipline.      Students will learn thinking abilities best when thinking is infused throughout the curriculum.  Each subject should be taught in ways that press students to pose and solve problems, to formulate conjectures and hypotheses and to justify their arguments, and to construct explanations and test their own understanding.  These high thinking demands should be the daily fare of all students.  Institute for Learning   Web site with information on The Principles of Learning including rigor.