Got an early morning wake-up call from a teacher in Ohio whose daughter is studying Chinese in Beijing. She said her daughter has to whisper to her in English because she’s not allowed to speak anything other than putonghua (Mandarin). Got me to thinking.

Education sure is about going out there and taking risks, conquering life and taking on new responsibilities in order to achieve what is sometimes the unknown.

Which makes me think again about education in this country. When was the last time a student entered a public high school and was greeted with a “how can I help you today?” That option doesn’t exist, does it?

We don’t look at students as consumers of knowledge, who make their own decisions about what they want. We see them as the required population that must attend schoool, learn what we tell them to learn and then exit ready to, then, finally, do what they want in life.

I had teachers tell me that. I know. They would say, “Just get this done, and you can go on to the next thing. You will be able to do whatever you want to do in college.” College, that mysterious other land where learning is about choice.

It would be great to see students given a choice in high school. If we could cater curriculum to them, find ways to teach “the fundamentals” but in a way that makes sense to them and their desires for growth and for success in life.

Right now, we know that does not happen. With technology, it could. If my school district can’t teach me, there has got to be another school district that can. It’s about two states away, but it’s a good thing I have this laptop, a blog, and a video cam link up. I can talk to a professor at Auburn, or Georgia Tech, home of some of the finest math and engineering schools out there, and get tutoring for some of my thoughtful and puzzling questions about “the fundamentals.”

Or, if it’s not a professor, then it’s a grad student.

What do you think? Can we outsource within our own country to people who know more than us, who know more than our teachers, and fill in the blanks?

Can we start first by asking, “How can I help this student today?”