The U.S. has two types of schools: - excellent, well-funded schools in areas not experiencing socioeconomic stress - underperforming, underfunded schools serv

The U.S. has two types of schools: - excellent, well-funded schools in areas not experiencing socioeconomic stress - underperforming, underfunded schools serving troubled areas These ideas would be nice additions/improvements to take the good schools to the next level. Unfortunately, systemic issues are challenging and would be exacerbated for the troubled schools. Also note that it is really hard to teach things like critical thinking. Also note that while creativity is super important, forcing everyone to take art classes hurts more than it helps - math, science, and engineering are all deeply creative in their own way, but the whole 'forced to do it for school' thing really kills all that. Rarely have I seen an art class that is more fundamentally creative than a traditional lecture. I would love to see more emphasis on real-world projects and exploring things that are interesting to the student, ideally tying the personal interest topics in with the mandatory topics. My high school really focused on a 'depth over breadth' concept where students would do in-depth research on a topic (using modern tools), then compile and present the research in some creative way. That is a really powerful way to learn, promotes research and critical thinking, and helps form a base of long-lived knowledge. One example: while learning about 'the gilded age', we went to an art museum with artwork from the area, read one of a selection of novels, wrote a research paper about art styles at the time, then painted a scene from the book we chose in an art style we learned about. That knowledge stuck a lot more than any of the test-memorization things I learned later; another take on quality over quantity, with the twist that too much quantity leads to absolutely nothing in the long run.