The tragedy is that the pressure on wealthy parents to not give their kids an education that sets them apart reduces experimentation for better schools/alternatives. We've deemed education "too important" to ever be improved by the processes that improve other goods & services.
Separately, we're still grappling with a crisis over the purpose of education: Is it to produce expert test-takers with a vast range of narrow skills, or to hone the natural human capacity for reflection, adaptation, problem-solving and iterative self-refinement?
I think the two are related, because once a parent feels permitted to be fully driven by their love for their child, unobscured by external expectations and social pressures, it becomes a bit clearer what the goal ought to be and how it can be aimed at. Excuses fall away.
It's easy enough to recalibrate. Is the kid coming home exhausted but energized, desperate to keep chewing or working on the day's ideas? Or is he defeated? A child that can be described as "defeated" should be the abnormality. We've let it become *much* too close to the norm.
Parents know what their kids look like when they're "in the zone" re: the thrill of learning something or developing their mastery of some skill. The real question is why they feel so helpless to find or create a situation where they're in that mode most of the time.
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