Should we expand or contract what we’re doing in our schools to make them better? The answer is: yes!

But what should be expanded and what should be reduced?

I happened upon an interesting video by American investor and hedge fund manager Ray Dalio — a broad presentation of the cycles of changing world order, as he sees it.

Specifically, I liked what he had to say about education. It is the second indicator, he says, of whether a civilization is adequately dealing with the changing world order or not.

He says that schools should not only spread knowledge, but they should also foster other important skills.

He identifies strong character, civility and work ethic among the other things that schools should foster.

This represents some of the “expanding” part of what schools need to do. We need to prepare students to live in their world, this world, not the world of the past.

Where do teachers get the time to do all of this? That’s where the second part of reform comes in: contraction.

To do this, we need to reduce or eliminate much of the “learning” that has come down through the ages that is not relevant to this age.

So much of what is taught is useless. Not in the first few grades, where essential skills are taught, but in the bulk of school years afterward.

Many students already possess basic skills even before they start formal school. My 6-year-old granddaughter is in the first grade, and she can already read and write full sentences!

Let me go a little deeper into the “contraction” part of reforming. Most of what we “learn” in school — the “content” of education — comes from “outside”: teachers, books, the syllabus, the principals, administrators, the textbook industry, the government, the parents.

Most of it you forget. That is what should be contracted.  (This might be a good time to revisit Father Guido Sarducci’s “5 Minute University” talk on YouTube!)

What, then, is “education”? It is the “expansion” part: To expand what is already in students — their formulating, searching, re-searching, expressing, comparing, asking, discussing.

The time for doing that could be taken away from much of the content that teachers and books are trying to deliver now. Virtually all knowledge can be googled on the Internet anyhow.

We don’t know what students are capable of. Several months ago I wrote about my little grandson’s insatiable desire to learn.

He is almost 2 years old now and can walk well. We have to “baby-proof” the house when he comes over.

He is the consummate explorer. Every knob has to be pulled, turned or pushed. Every hole needs a finger or stick or something to go in it. Every stick needs to be placed into something. Every door or drawer has to be opened.

It’s not that he has any goals yet. He simply must explore.

The purpose of exploration is simply: “I want to know, I want to explore my universe, I want to find out!”

What happens to that almost desperate desire to learn, to discover, to know? I suggest that every human being has that desire diminished by our current school system and the philosophy behind it.

What if school were based on “the search of the individual” and not the needs proscribed by school boards and principals and teachers and governments?

I know I am not the first to write about this. Thousands of reformers have tried and are trying to create learning situations in which the students  pursue what they want to pursue, what they want to know.

Maria Montessori started doing this a century ago. Dozens of reform systems have followed, but they all bump up against “the system,” or the Educational Industrial Complex.

Here is my bottom line: Most thinking comes not from reading and listening, but from writing and speaking.

That’s where and how we do our thinking. The most valuable learning comes from pursuing what students want to know, not what teachers want them to know.

In my next essay I will give teachers — and students if they can talk their teachers into allowing them to do it — a way to game the system, to push learning activity back into the heads and hands of the students.

Stay tuned! It will be my Christmas present to teachers and students of the world!