Looks to me like a lot of other complicated, plausible-looking, fatally-flawed schemes to reform schools. Another rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic. The month-long literacy course on college and career planning sounds particularly crap-tastic.

Our school changes its bell schedule every year. Changes groupings of English and history (some years they’re separate, some years they’re combined). Middle school itself is the product of this belief that if we only rearrange the deck chairs, the ship will not sink.

When will we stop these haphazard stabs at reform? When will we start building a school system on solid principles and tiny incremental changes like Japan’s? Toyota does not radically overhaul its car designs from year to year. It assiduously conserves what works and makes minor tweaks each year. We seem to wipe the slate clean, build a shoddy little contraption and, when –surprise! –it doesn’t run that well, wreck it and start from scratch again. No wonder the quality of American schools remains so poor.

To Andrew: Japanese schools are Spartan cinder-block shells. What counts is the intellectual endowment and orientation of its teachers and students. All we talk about is our kids’ emotional needs, as if we were all primarily counselors or foster parents. Our schools are rich in gadgets, colorful posters, and “caring” adults, poor in intellectual capital.