'Building a Society That Can Actually Do Things'
Photo by Sam HodgsonChris Lawrence
Posted: Friday, February 11, 2011 2:11 pm |Updated: 3:55 pm, Fri Feb 11, 2011.
The first time I met Chris Lawrence, I had just wrapped up moderating a panel on the dropout rate. Lawrence complained the panel was full of "vacuous nonsense," as he later put it. His frankness impressed me. So I do what I do when I meet someone interesting: I asked him to get coffee with me.
Lawrence, who teaches physics at Mira Mesa High School, is a good person to get coffee with. He's a big thinker who once flew planes for the Navy and decided to go into education after the release of the landmark report A Nation at Risk.
In San Diego Unified, he started a new program that trains students in renewable energy and once fought an overhaul of its physics programs. But he's worried we're still at risk. And he has ideas for a