What we do with little kids today will matter in 20 years. If you don't get it right, you will have an unlivable environment. That's the crisis I see.

Learning isn't just K-12. It starts prenatally. If you get a bead on what your children are and aren't being exposed to at school, that will suggest the kinds of experiences you want your children to have outside of school.

If Rip Van Winkle came back, there's only one institution he would recognize: "Oh! That's a school. Kids are still sitting in rows, still listening to the font of wisdom at the front of the classroom."

Collaboration is everything from getting along with others to controlling your impulses so you can get along and not kick someone else off the swing. It's building a community and experiencing diversity and culture. Everything we do, in the classroom or at home, has to be built on that foundation.

Critical thinking relies on content, because you can't navigate masses of information if you have nothing to navigate to.

Creative innovation requires knowing something. You can't just be a monkey throwing paint on a canvas. It's the 10,000-hour rule: You need to know something well enough to make something new.

Content is built on communication. You can't learn anything if you haven't learned how to understand language, or to read.