Many years ago John Gage, then chief science officer for Sun Microsystems, had an idea. The idea: "NetDay," a grass roots campaign to wire our schools.
Gage, like so many others today, was frustrated that our schools were not getting connected to the Internet fast enough, and that a whole generation of young people would suffer. The NetDay concept has grown and the campaign to wire our schools led to the concept of "smart schools," schools fully equipped with a computer on every desktop and broadband access to the Internet.
So much for the history of the smart school. Less clear is how safe even our smartest schools are in light of recurring school violence, a national epidemic really. The entire nation is now searching for solutions.
Leon Botstein, president of Bard College and author of Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, argues that the American high school is obsolete; that it has become "the breeding ground