You remember the conveyor belt in school: You arrived early, appeared at the first “station” and underwent a modification as facts were stuffed into your brain. You then proceeded to the second, third, fourth, fifth and final stations. At each stop there was a worker who was in charge of too many products being generated at too fast a pace, but you were altered in some way at each step, making you feel like an assembly line product.

When you got to the last station in the factory, you were given a diploma and sent off into the world to make something of yourself. With this type of 19th-century model, is it any wonder our children are bored by high school? At Oakton High School, an excellent school by all measures, students would chuckle ironically at the notion these were “the best years” of their lives.