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There are all kinds of ideas about making schools better. True, there is little agreement about what that means, and all kinds of things are being tried, but in any case, there is more to school than the school.

That first day of school is memorable, a watershed moment, and it changes everything, but school, or education, however defined, begins before that moment, before the student goes through the door. Even if we are talking home schooling, before sitting down at the kitchen table, the mind of the student has been shaped by the parents, by the grandparents, and, in fact, by generations before.

Consider two children on the first day of kindergarten. One, (A), has lived the first five years with a couple of siblings, one older, one younger, and parents whose own parents were active in community activities in a small town. (A) has been permitted to view a screen, any screen, but for five minutes a day. Consider then, (B), an only child growing up in a single parent home in a low-income area in a large city. (B) did have a sibling; it was a screen, big or small, and it was always there.  Obviously, there will be great differences in the minds of the two. 

Now in both cases, if on that first day, the teacher reads, say, the story of Pinocchio. A and B will hear different stories. They will bring to the story of Pinocchio their different worlds, and they will walk away into different worlds. Some to better; some to worse. Some more like Pinocchio, some less. Thus it has always been.