Most breakthroughs look like so much common sense in hindsight.
What needs to happen is a carefully orchestrated campaign to draw people forward from their functional paradigm roots in small enough steps that they don't feel threatened enough to rebel at each and every step. In the case of education, I suspect that an alternative system needs to evolve in parallel with the older functional hierarchy and, eventually, its success will be irrefutable. There is a parallel here with the Japanese quality manufacturing processes. They took over 30 years to change the world beyond Japan. Any hope of a shorter cycle time through revolution is probably not high.