[W]e have not begun to rethink our core institutions nor the core standards by which measure the success of those institutions for a new century.  Our emphasis on specialization, on rote memorization, on multiple choice answers to a prescribed curriculum, and even on individual achievement are all products of the late nineteenth century Industrial Age when it was imperative to train an unskilled workforce for the factories.  Whether immigrants coming to the U.S. from many different countries or farmers moving into the cities for work, many of the institutions of what were called “graded schools” were designed to teach the regularity of factory life to those who might do the chore at hand, when the sun was up, on a schedule dictated by what needed to be done.   As many have noted, there is a reason that the school bell became the symbol of public education.  We’ve had over a century to hone the institutions and the forms of assessments that educate children for the workplace of the twentieth century.

What are we doing, on a national level, to educate our kids for a new digital age?  In a world where any knowledge is at your finger tips, is multiple choice really the way to be teaching kids about how to search and how to evaluate what you find?  Is extreme field specialization, so crucial for a segregated and hierarchical workforce, the right way to train kids for a future that might include three to seven career changes? 

Futurist Alvin Toffler has said that, in addition to reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic, the most important “'literacy' for the twenty-first century is the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn.”  Do our schools today teach that ability to rethink one’s assumptions and try again?