Fifty Million Futures: A Proposal for a Radically New Public School System

The many books and papers written about our public school system are bitterly divided over what to do, but share one thing in common - they identify the problem as reforming our current system. They propose changing some specific part of the system as the key to transforming it. This book is entirely different. It proposes a completely new model of how a modern public school should be designed and function. It starts from the premise that the current system is beautifully designed to satisfy out of date objectives, and inherently resists changes, either by rejecting them or by rendering them ineffective.

The only way out of this dilemma is to design a new system, whose parts fit equally well together to meet new objectives in new ways. This book proposes such a new system, including the principles needed to guide it, and specific prescriptions for many of its aspects, including the roles of students, parents, teachers and the State; the key legal and financial controls, and the more typical topics such as the standards, the curriculum, the assessments and the classroom. Technology eventually plays a key role as an enabler, but features mostly in Chapter 5, where we discuss how knowledge is changing.