Education is failing in the United States. By saying this, I know that I join the ranks of the self-appointed Cassandras who hurl our hands up to our foreheads and sing the doom of a nation. But its true.
And most of the wailers miss the point. Underlying the political agendas, funding battles, culture wars, and the simultaneous disrespect for and outrageous expectations of teachers, there is a much deeper failure.
Think of a moment in your life when you were completely caught up in learning something. In that moment, learning wasnt about facts, tests or grades, succeeding or failing. Instead, it was an all-consuming, joyful burst of energy and pleasure at finally discovering something. Of understanding something. To borrow from Shakespeare, it was an instance of god-like apprehension, comprehension of our place as partners in a creative universe.
How often have you had a moment like that in your educational process? If youre like most people, pretty rarely. Somewhere along the line, education became a consumerist contest of amassing skills and factoids and spewing them back to the world like game show geeks. But when we become glorified databases, we lose...