Much of education as we remember it is therefore obsolete. Our schools and colleges may still serve some function as social centers or juvenile prisons, but they have less and less to offer as places of learning. The university is now the greatest anachronism of all, a throwback to the days when scholars had to congregate around a few scarce libraries if they wanted to consult references or interact with intellectual peers. Today an immense library is accessible through any phone jack. Meanwhile, once-great universities no longer need libraries at all, as they are too busy teaching the oral traditions of lesbian headhunters in New Guinea.
Some teachers do just that, with consummate skill.
Parents and students recognize them quickly enough. Offer ready access to the greatest teachers, and many a student will confound the pessimists. Electronic means for mass marketing such teachers are already close at hand. What we need now is the commitment to deploy the necessary technologies and the courage to shut down the outmoded classrooms that provide employment to so many incompetents today. Nothing is ever going to stop teenagers from feeling twitchy in spring, and no lecture on the biology of reproduction, whether live or by wire, is every going to be more interesting than direct, off-premises research.