The School of Hard Drives?

In the Sunday NY Times Magazine each week they post a conversation with a public figure. This past week it was with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The interviewer, Deborah Solomon, asked the secretary this question:

Did you see the study that showed that the only category in which American students remain No. 1 is self-esteem? We have great confidence in ourselves, even if our competence has declined.

Mr. Duncan replied this way:

As a country we have dropped. The brutal truth is that we have fallen from first to ninth in the world in the percentage of college graduates in a generation.

When will we realize that we cannot simply follow the same path and get different results? My father said that this is the definition of insanity. And the reality is that we need to stop paying athletes and start paying teachers. Start paying attention to our kids and how they learn. How can we inspire them to WANT to learn? How can we instill them a creative pursuit of knowledge? When will we get started?