What I tried to design into that scenario was a balance between core understandings of fundamental literacies and skills that would be needed to operate within the information economy, and the ability to be flexible in terms of the content areas that would be addressed at any given time. As I say in the book, demographic changes, the expansion of knowledge, and changes in our use of information are making our current focus on content mastery obsolete. Teachers function as the intellectual leaders of schools, continually reviewing curriculum to determine what is foundational knowledge and what new skills or understandings students need in order to keep up with the ways in which the world is changing. So if we're not performing well on the economic front, there must be a problem with the educational process that's bringing illiterate people into the workplace. I think there's a way in which education has to market its own success and its own innovations, to see itself as connected to society but not as the place where problems in society get trash binned because other people would rather not take responsibility.
Teachers are some of the hardest working, most creative, and most well-rounded people in society.
Following is more of this interview with author Jabari Mahiri. The article to this point was originally published in the June Council Chronicle. It helps to shift from the notion of standard English to a concept of edited English. This approach is something that I pulled from the NCTE bylaws of 1974. But changing the terminology itself becomes important because it's the terminology that invites people in.