Reply #23: Try writing a curriculum for it, then try and find teachers who can teach it.

[SmokingJacket]

It's not so easy. In a decent school, about one-third of the teachers can do this, and are ALREADY doing it -- or are trying to in the face of opposition from the administration.

It takes immense intelligence, creativity, energy, and an administration who is on your side to be the kind of teacher who can really put the fire into kids. Unfortunately, everything is now stacked against it, from NCLB on down, particularly the whole teacher education system.

It's one thing to complain in an editorial -- something else altogether to put together a truly workable proposition for education reform that will get the people and the bucks behind it.

I'm highly suspicious of these articles, anyway. Some of them disguise a strong, anti-public education agenda. Public schools are flawed, yes indeedy, but the alternative that some are calling for (letting parents alone be responsible for the education of their children) will lead to a society where the bottom half of the socio-economic stratum will be illiterate, another quarter will be barely literate, and the top quarter will control EVERYTHING.

(Not so different from now... but at least public schools, at their ideal, give most kids a chance at something.)