Mountaintop Learning

I wonder what effect our societies’ low expectations of adolescents has on their development? What does it do to one’s identity when often we give our teenagers so very few meaningful roles or real work to do? That the five hours they spend in classes a day often results in rote learning that is frequently memorized the night before an exam and then forgotten. What if instead, high school students spent five hours a day constructing an identity while responding creatively to their moment in history? What if they were told they can change the world now?