What to Do About These Four Things

Abstract

This chapter digests the first four things before moving on. These initial challenges are about vision and personnel. The chapter looks at how personnel could be recruited, trained, supervised, and promoted differently than they currently are. This part of the chapter proposes some concrete ideas to create a gender balance in the elementary schools. It also proposes a radically smaller Administration composed of actual teachers who are promoted for educational success in the classroom. Supervisors would cycle out of the Administration and return to the classroom after a maximum of five years. The last part of the chapter looks at the vision component of education and the stakeholders who should be involved in formulating this vision. The first thing schools must aim to do on this front is to give children a sense they are involved with a mission to save the world from what ails it, making the world better, perfect even. Who are the kinds of personnel who are uniquely able to prepare children for such an engaging adventure? They are smart, but they are also extraordinary people, people who themselves have embarked upon a course of adventure and high purpose.