Daddy always asks me and I never know what to say”.

I am convinced that the best learning takes place when the learner takes charge.

Undoubtedly, there are kids with intellectual deficiencies or neurological problems. But a lot of kids shunted into special education classes are deficient only in a willingness to conform to the school pattern.They are just honest, brave kids who say, "I just won't take that, and I don't believe in what you're doing." If you give them an alternative to the usual classroom, they break free of a lot of inhibitions and bad associations, and they begin to learn.

I don't like MTV, and I don't like the culture that goes with it. It's OK in very small doses, maybe. Nevertheless, it's a social reality and has influenced how kids perceive things around them, the pace of life and the way people do things.

One might say the computer is being used to program the child. In my vision, the child programs the computer, and in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intense contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.

I do think that we'd do better if we just offered all the bureaucrats in the Department of Education very attractive early retirements. But whether you want to abolish the department is another matter. Maybe there's room for recruiting a lot of visionary people who would do very good things: develop new techniques, new ideas, foster innovative models, disseminate those ideas.

Until very recently, most knowledge was inaccessible to people who couldn't read text. But this is changing. The computer opens up other channels of gaining knowledge. If someone is blind, we now have very good machines that will read to him. If someone can't recognize letters, he also will have access to knowledge through sound and images.