<i>The structure of School is so deeply rooted that one reacts to deviations from it as one would to a grammatically deviant utterance: Both feel wrong on a level deeper than one's ability to formulate reasons.</i><p>The problem with comments like this is that they depend on what you mean by "structure." Although I want to agree with it, I do so only because I think of "structure" as the basic idea behind the school day: you go to class for six to eight hours, divided into chunks of about an hour each and by subject, and then you go home. As near as I can tell, that's been the basic form of school since the formalization of public education.<p>But one could easily be talking about structure as something else, like the way teachers are hired and paid.<p>One problem with the idea of reforming a school's "grammar" is that a) schools are so vast and b) the stakeholders in schools, most notably teachers and their unions, have a greater stake in schools than any other. That's one reason I linked to all the articles here: <a href="http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get" rel="nofollow">http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get</a> in a post on how "Susan Engel doesn’t get the problems with schools, but she’ll tell us to “Teach Your Teachers Well” anyway." The problems with public education are largely structural, but probably have more to do with the way teachers are rewarded and incentivized than any other factor. At least that's what the educational research of the last decade or so seems to show.<p>Although you <i>might</i> over time be able to change that, I'm not sure you'll be able to change everything. For example, lots of people complain (justifiably) about grade inflation and other aspects that are problematic about grades. But what are you supposed to do instead? There's not anything major or obvious, as discussed here: <a href="http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades" rel="nofollow">http://jseliger.com/2010/02/17/the-validity-of-grades</a> .
I'd offer this as a rebuttal to his conclusion...<p><a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11653" rel="nofollow">http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11653</a><p>When individual reformers can't change things you need systematic reform. That's exactly where education is right now.