My last posting proposed that we should define achievement and excellence in education in a different way -- beyond the current focus the system places on "original work." To caricature my argument, I suggested that we should reward students more highly for handing in a paper they found online, so...

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

The Internet poses a significant challenge to the focus that education has traditionally put on teaching students how to do "original" thinking....

As is often the case, the debate that is taking place in Washington about how to fix education misses the coming revolution in how, what, and why children learn. While both sides of the debate are arguing over issues like "standards" and the "politicization" of content, they each seem to...