Toward a New Era of Learning: Untangling Our Next Public Education

Book excerpt: What will our next public education system and its schools be like? It is a good question, but not one, unfortunately, that is on everyone's mind, at least not for now. We are too busy trying to fix the system we have, too busy to look ahead. We do not have to look very far. Our next public education system, and its new approach to learning, is already revealing itself. It is visible in the pressures from parents and their ceaseless efforts to influence profoundly the quality of the experience their children have in school. It is visible in the creative efforts of many dedicated teachers and school administrators as they surmount, day after day, the dehumanizing tendencies of large-scale mass education. This book is a look into the future. We must rethink the meaning of the values and beliefs that drove the creation of the public schools over 100 years ago. We must translate them into a new kind of learning that responds to the challenges and opportunities of our time and place in history.