Ray Kurzweil is one of my favorite authors. For some details about his work, see http://iae-pedia.org/Ray_Kurzweil. His vision of the future includes having computers that are a lot smarter than people. He uses the term “Singularity” to describe the transition period from when computers are not as smart as people to when they are a lot smarter. This term has come into common use. There are many Web entries about this topic.

I recently read the following article:

Kurzweil, Ray (10/19/2011). Kurzweil responds: don't underestimate the singularity. Technology Review. Retrieved 11/7/2011 from http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/guest/27263/?p1=A4.

Humans have approximately 5,000 years of accumulated experience in designing and implementing formal education in schools. One might conclude one of the following:

1. We have gotten about as good as we can get—we are close to optimizing the potentials of schools.
2. Many of the factors that influence the success of schools are changing rapidly. The pace of change has led to a situation in which there are very large potentials for improvement in our schools, but we are not doing well in keeping up with the needed changes.

I like to believe that the second conclusion is correct. We have lots of past and ongoing research on how to improve education. However, people, technology, and the world are changing rapidly, and many children and adults resist these changes. Moreover, it is quite difficult to change well-researched educational theory into widespread effective practice.