Emmaline 's Public Library

Another teacher called it "institutionalized child abuse."

There are no systemwide rules for test prep. Individual schools decide how much is necessary.

Principals are partially evaluated on test scores, so "naturally, they want the scores up, [and] that's our priority," one teacher said. "Actual education is second."

"The kids can't tell you who the president was during the Civil War," she said. "But they can tell you how to eliminate answers on a multiple-choice test. And as long as our test scores are up, everyone will be happy.

"That's education?"

The teacher, who requested anonymity, said she was ordered by her principal to "forget about everything except test prep" over the four weeks prior to this month's statewide English tests.

"All anyone cares about now are test scores," she lamented.

Lastly, and the reason for this explanatory piece, the policy of judging a school by the success of its special education students on standardized tests affects student responses to their educational program. One bright student, perhaps reflecting her parent's comments, was recently overheard: "Campus West is a "bad' school because we have "dumb' kids taking these [standardized] tests."

Much more could be said, but to me, this statement reflects the darkest underbelly of the unwarranted use of standardized testing and provides its own commentary.

Integrate the curricula.

Yeah -- the culture, the technology, all these things.

Like real life.

Like real life, yes! And, like in real life, there is an enormous, enormous bank of knowledge in the community that we can tap into. So, why shouldn't a kid who's interested in mechanical things or engines or technology meet people from the community who do that kind of stuff, and who are excited about what they are doing and where it's going? But at the rate of change, the actual skills that we teach, or that they learn by themselves, about how to us his gizmo or that gizmo, that's going to be obsolete -- who knows? -- in five years or in five minutes.

So, that's another thing: Much of what we're transmitting is doomed to obsolescence at a far more rapid rate than ever before. And that knowledge becomes what we call obsoledge: obsolete knowledge. We have this enormous bank of obsolete knowledge in our heads, in our books, and in our culture. When change was slower, obsoledge didn't pile up as quickly. Now, because everything is in rapid change, the amount of obsolete knowledge that we have -- and that we teach -- is greater and greater and greater. We're drowning in obsolete information. We make big decisions -- personal decisions -- based on it, and public and political decisions based on it.

It's a tough juxtaposition. So, what to do? Suppose you were made head of the U.S. Department of Education. What would be the first items on your agenda?

The first thing I'd say: "I want to hear something I haven't heard before." I just hear the same ideas over and over and over again. I meet teachers who are good and well intentioned and smart, but they can't try new things, because there are too many rules. They tell me that "the bureaucratic rules make it impossible for me to do what you're suggesting."

How does that system fit into a world where assembly lines have gone away?

It doesn't. The public school system is designed to produce a workforce for an economy that will not be there. And therefore, with all the best intentions in the world, we're stealing the kids' future.

Do I have all the answers for how to replace it? No. But it seems to me that before we can get serious about creating an appropriate education system for the world that's coming and that these kids will have to operate within, we have to ask some really fundamental questions. And some of these questions are scary. For example: Should education be compulsory? And, if so, for who? Why does everybody have to start at age five? Maybe some kids should start at age eight and work fast. Or vice versa. Why is everything massified in the system, rather than individualized in the system? New technologies make possible customization in a way that the old system -- everybody reading the same textbook at the same time -- did not offer.

You've been writing about our educational system for decades. What's the most pressing need in public education right now?

Shut down the public education system.

That's pretty radical.

I'm roughly quoting (Microsoft chairman) Bill Gates, who said, "We don't need to reform the system; we need to replace the system."

Why not just readjust what we have in place now? Do we really need to start from the ground up?

We should be thinking from the ground up. That's different from changing everything. However, we first have to understand how we got the education system that we now have. Teachers are wonderful, and there are hundreds of thousands of them who are creative and terrific, but they are operating in a system that is completely out of time. It is a system designed to produce industrial workers.

Let's look back at the history of public education in the United States. You have to go back a little over a century. For many years, there was a debate about whether we should even have public education. Some parents wanted kids to go to school and get an education; others said, "We can't afford that. We need them to work. They have to work in the field, because otherwise we starve." There was a big debate. Late in the 1800s, during the Industrial Revolution, business leaders began complaining about all these rural kids who were pouring into the cities and going to work in our factories. Business leaders said that these kids were no good, and that what they needed was an educational system that would produce "industrial discipline."

Engaged and Enraged -- Thinking about Marc Prensky's Ideas

Students from the lowest-income families suffer the most. Inexperienced teachers (those with less than three years on the job) frequently land in classrooms with the need-iest and often the most challenging students. Beginning teachers frequently start their careers at hard-to-staff schools where resources may be scarce -- in other words, urban schools -- simply because there are more jobs available there.

It's a recipe for disaster for both teachers and students, says Barnett Berry, president of the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Low-performing schools in high-poverty areas often cannot retain a critical mass of veteran teachers, says Berry. "Not only are teachers who are new to these schools more likely to be under-prepared, they're also more likely to be underqualified."

Also, obviously, there are lots of things we want to teach children that there isn't time for in the school day, because it's increasingly reserved for basics such as math, English, history, or science.

I think we need to be careful, because a lot of people are saying after-school programs are a great opportunity where you can learn about culture, music, art. And I absolutely agree: I think that's a strength of such programs. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be happening during the school day, too. It can be complementing it. Our emphasis is making those after-school hours as productive as possible.

My daughter was in an after-school program last year, and they would study various cultures and heritages each month. She was in kindergarten, so we're talking young kids. But they would eat the foods of that culture. They would study the history. They might do drawings and paintings from that era. They'd look at some of the traditional dress. It was a holistic approach to something in a fun way.

Here in Washington, DC, there's a lot of diversity, especially with the World Bank and all the embassies, so if any of the kids had a certain heritage, they could talk about it. In another area, you might have a large Native American population, and that's where they're teaching language and keeping the heritage alive. It's all about engaging the kids and doing so with a holistic approach.

How does the accessibility of after-school programs break down across different economic levels, classes, and cultural backgrounds?

We've found that kids of color are disproportionately poorly served. Their needs aren't being met. But more than 70 percent of families have either a single parent that is working or both parents in a two-parent family who are working. This is a huge, universal need. It's not just low and middle income but upper income as well. And I think that's a strength of after-school programs: Everybody realizes a high-quality program is going to benefit all kids.

The truth is that for a lot of the kids who are better off, their families find ways to provide them with these kinds of extracurricular activities, because they know how valuable they are. And if we want to create a level playing field, let's find a way to make these available to all kids.