Those who ignore the past … : 12 'easy' lessons for the next millennium

Efforts to improve US schools through curriculum reform, attention to teaching and, the specifications of objectives and standards for education, have been recurrent themes during the past half-century. I offer a distillation of 12 'easy' lessons that can be learned from the careful examination of ideas and practices concerning the improvement of schools. I discuss each of these lessons with respect to their potentialities and their complexities, and try to provide a summary of what can be learned from US history which can guide efforts to make schools genuinely educative institutions. Whether those lessons will be learned and applied are consequences that I do not, and cannot, confidently address. However, my arguments may promote debate that might decrease the likelihood that the past will be repeated.