xvi Preface This lack of understanding about what learning really is like, and what teaching must be like in order to be useful, has caused us to set up school in a way that really does not work very well. When students complain about school, when politicians say school isn’t working, we understand that there is a problem. But we don’t understand what the problem is. We think we can fix schools by making them more friendly, or safer, or paying teachers better, or having students have more say, or obsessing about test scores, but none of this is the case. The problem with schools lies in our conception of the role of school. We see school as a place to study academics, to become a scholar, when in fact very few students actually want to become schol- ars or study academics. AS a society we have gotten caught up in a conception of school from the late 1800s that has failed to change in any significant way, despite the fact that universal education has made the system un- stable. Universities dominate the discussion, and everyone listens to what academics have to say because they don’t see the alternative or know whom else to listen to. But, if we understand how learning ac- tually works, and how teaching actually should work, the alternative becomes much clearer. It is establishing that clarity that is my goal in this book. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023746