I decided that a comment to Ben Watson's blog on "How Bill Gate's is overhauling High Schools" would get lost. So I feel compelled to respond with another blog.

I think Bill Gates is misguided. He is using an expensive technological bandaid to try and fix a system that is inherently broken. I'm not surprised at the frame he's using. Nor am I shocked at the results he's getting. All the technololgy in the world will not change a broken system. And the system is broken. The sad part is, in a world desperately short on resources, he's wasting his money.

Ironically, he knows what must be done, but has no clue about how it needs to be fixed. He is aware that it is more critical now than ever before to make the American educational system shine like it did up to the middle of the last century, or we will lose our lead in the marketplace that is now found everywhere and anywhere, in a flat world, driven by knowledge, and guided by a digital revolution that has barely begun.

I have a strong suspicion that many readers have not heard of John Taylor Gatto

The reason is simple. He is one of the most experienced and highly praised high school teachers of the century. He has also been branded by the very establishment he tried to change a 'radical thinker' and a 'heretical antiestablishment deamer'.

Odd how our best minds are always kept away from the conversation.

If you are truly interested in changing the way America learns before kids ever get into the workplace, as well as after, read John's latest essay "Against School" published in Harper's Magazine, September, 2003.

And if you want to read more, you can get the tenth anniversary release of his classic book Dumbing us Down at his website.