A few years back I included a little imaginary detour into a book I was writing about education, but one of my reviewers suggested that it showed I had "an attitude" about education. I granted that he was right, and deleted the story, accepting that my attitude was undoubtedly a flaw. Years have gone by now, and not having an attitude has done me no good whatever, so I might as well let my attitude out to tromp around in people's front yards if it wants. The point I was making was just that it's not hard to figure out how to get deep learning in education.

Here's the story I told. You can decide if it insults hardworking teachers: Let's say that on a lark and for a handsome salary, you decide to teach for a year in a tiny island dictatorship in the South Pacific. Your students are a number of palace children and the dictator's son Kim. Arriving there, however, you're alarmed ...

It was dismaying last week to hear President Obama discuss education. In sum, "Our system doesn't get the results we want. We don't know why, but we're going to spend money to try to fix it."

If you know anyone who has the President's ear, please pass on to him that both the problem and solution are simple if anyone wants to look. Perhaps Governor Palin could pay him a friendly call. Both Democrats and Republicans need to understand this.

The problem started back in the early 1900s. Before that, eighth graders often knew more than do college students today. The reason? Educators believed that knowing was important and that classroom activity caused it--intent and method. And while it ignores the issue of method, the No Child Left Behind Act has returned all US schools to the bar used before 1900: Do students know? To find out, ask them questions.

But in t...

I walked outside one day and proceeded down the middle of our quiet street. There, exactly in its center, was the flattened body of what apparently was a small rat, spread out in perfect symmetry like a Rorschach inkblot. My imagination is too limited to appreciate fully the terror of the rat as the car bore down on it, or the driver's anxious swerve before hitting the rat anyway.

Yet the fate of the rat spoke loudly to me just then, that there are basic realities bearing down on us. I felt impatient with myself and everyone for evading the full implications of what we say we believe, with acting in "ones and twosies when tens and twenties are required" (in the words of a 1960s community organizer whose name escapes me now), with ignoring that we each build a comfortable cocoon of familiar assumptions, hoping it will keep the rain from us, and then are surprised when the wind ...