There’s a lot of talk about what should be done to fix education in America, like increasing federal funding, decreasing class sizes, increasing teacher salaries, and investing in better teacher preparation. These are all nice ideas, but they’re totally abstract and conceptual. They’re not things any modern country could actually do.1
If we really want to fix American schools, we need more Learning Outcomes. Learning Outcomes are the things that captivate children. Learning Outcomes help children to identify, comprehend, and synthesize their dreams.
When I was a child, my teacher took us into the woods in the fall and let us collect leaves. She showed us how the leaves caught the sunlight and magically transformed it into energy. Then she explained how the season’s waning light resulted in chlorophyll breakdown, which caused an explosion of pigments that created the kaleidoscope of patterns and colors we held in our hands. It was like stepping inside a story where the leaves were characters who lived in a fantastical forest.