In his essay, Theodore Sizer almost criticize the high school system saying that the majority of the schools do practice the same rituals for years, students taking all kind of subjects in a systematize order without really benefiting anyone, neither the student or the society. Students not only that enjoy taking different classes, keeps them busy during the day and off the labor market until after graduation. Plenty of energy is spend in searching for a solution to the problem of students exiting the public schools without being adequately educated, however no one has looked at the most responsible for this problem: the students themselves and the community. For most of the people school is a place where children are gathered under the force of the law to pursue the learning of what the community believes is important. My experience is and I believe strongly that there must be compromises between the people and the community in which they live. If the community sends the message that school is important than children will have a different attitude towards school.
Also, children, and especially older children and adolescents, learn much more outside of school than within it. The kids watch the older all the time, learning from what they see, admiring or not what they do and how they do it, whether are family members or neighbors or representations of people and places displayed in the media. If what is "outside" of school rewards a child and gives access to that which is valued within school, a symbiosis results. If the "outside" neglects what the place called school values, the child is at best confused in school. "How could this be important when I see so few people in my own neighborhood valuing it?"
Schools are small communities alliances of teachers, children, parents and their relevant neighborhoods. All are places where the necessarily endless