Through ongoing rapid-fire changes in the nature of communications, the social, professional, and political landscapes of our time are rapidly transforming. But the prevailing paradigm in most schools and school systems is a relic of the industrial revolution. Schools and school systems must adopt a new paradigm for learning if they are to remain relevant and able to prepare children and young people for life and work in the 21st century world. The necessary shift is from a mechanistic mental model involving the transfer of a standardized, explicit body of knowledge from teacher to student to an organic paradigm that personalizes the development of tacit, more than explicit, knowledge and understanding around each individual learner.