In this book, it is argued that the so-called crisis in education is really a crisis in childhood and that the unit of change is not the school but rather the larger community. Schools inherited from the industrial age are structured to develop a mass of students who, at best, are equipped with basic skills and the ability to follow orders. The…

The 21st Century Learning Initiative is a transnational program concerned with improving education by changing outdated assumptions about how humans learn. This paper summarizes issues behind the organization's work. The first is the biological nature of learning; discussion of this issue includes a description of new research on the very young…