In America alone, we now spend $536 billion dollars a year on government-run K-12 education – nearly $9,000 per student. (And if you think that’s not so much money, realize that average private school tuition is 
about $6,800.)
So we are spending a lot on education in America, but are we liberating young minds? Are we giving our kids the tools they’ll need to thrive in this fast-paced, knowledge-intensive and globally competitive era?
Are we preparing them to achieve financial independence – and, thereby, expand their spheres of personal happiness?
That's the challenge ahead. But it's not likely that we will see great innovation within the bureaucratic boxes of our existing education system.
Consider these recent comments from Future Shock author Alvin Toffler:
The public school system is designed to produce a workforce for an economy that will not be there. And therefore, with all the best intentions in the world, we're stealing the kids' future. Do I have all the answers for how to replace it? No. But it seems to me that before we can get serious about creating an appropriate education system for the world that's coming and that these kids will have to operate within, we have to ask some really fundamental questions. And some of these questions are scary. For example: Should education be compulsory? And, if so, for who? Why does everybody have to start at age five? Maybe some kids should start at age eight and work fast. Or vice versa. Why is everything massified in the system, rather than individualized in the system? New technologies make possible customization in a way that the old system -- everybody reading the same textbook at the same time -- did not offer.
As he sees it, fundamental change is inevitable. But he is not convinced it will come quietly: "The only question is whether we're going to do it starting now, or whether we're going to wait for catastrophe."
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