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And then I heard, “Mr. McCourt, the principal is at the door.” My heart sank as the principal entered, along with the superintendent of schools. Neither acknowledged me. They walked up and down, peering at papers. The superintendent picked one up, showed it to the principal. The superintendent frowned. The principal pursed his lips. On their way out, the principal said the superintendent would like to see me. Here it comes, I thought. The reckoning. The principal was sitting at his desk; the superintendent was standing. “Come in,” said the superintendent. “I just want to tell you that that lesson, that project, whatever the hell you were doing, was topnotch. Those kids were writing on the college level.” He turned to the principal and said, “That kid writing an excuse note for Judas. Brilliant. I just want to shake your hand,” he said, turning back to me. “There might be a letter in your file attesting to your energetic and imaginative teaching. Thank you.” God in heaven. High praise from an important person. Should I dance down the hallway, or lift and fly? Next day in class, I just started singing. The kids laughed. They said, “Man, school should be like this every day, us writing excuse notes and teachers singing all of a sudden.” Sooner or later, I figured, everyone needed an excuse. Also, if we sang today we could sing tomorrow, and why not? You don’t need an excuse for singing.

Beyond such undeniable excesses, a quiet reappraisal of helicopter parents is underway. Some researchers have begun to argue that late adolescence and young adulthood are such minefields today - emotional, social, sexual, logistical, psychological - that there are valid reasons for parents to remain deeply involved in their children’s lives even after the kids are, technically speaking, adults. Moreover, they say, with the economy in a deep swoon, helicopter parents may have a vital role to play as career counselors or even as providers of financial aid to their offspring.

The noted philosopher once said, "I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance." My fear is that instead of knowing nothing except the fact of our own ignorance, we will know everything except the fact of our own ignorance. Google has given us the world at our fingertips, but speed and ubiquity are not the same as actually knowing something.

Socrates believed that we learn best by asking essential questions and testing tentative answers against reason and fact in a continual and virtuous circle of honest debate. We need to approach the contemporary knowledge explosion and the technologies propelling this new enlightenment in just that manner. Otherwise, the great knowledge and communication tsunami of the 21st century may drown us in a sea of trivia instead of lifting us up on a rising tide of possibility and promise.

A child born today could live into the 22nd century. It's difficult to imagine all that could transpire between now and then. One thing does seem apparent: Technical fixes to our outdated educational system are likely to be inadequate. We need to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Think transformation of the way teaching and learning is done in your district, as opposed to integration into it as it exists.

Learn what they learn.

don’t filter the very usefulness out of the web