What is required to change education for the better is nothing short of a proverbial paradigm shift. Such change always requires questioning fundamental presuppositions. The root presupposition, in this case, is nothing short of the seventeenth century notion that the universe and its parts form a giant mechanism; and that, consequently, all of its parts are similarly mechanical. (I expect the connection of such a grand idea to education to be somewhat mystifying. In such a short space I can only hint at the connection).

Education, in its current form, requires end-setting FOR others (e.g., teachers and students) - see, for example, the student comments in a post above. This requirement condemns education to mediocrity. Since the ends that I must set are not my own, I need to be coerced to adopt them (e.g., by pay, grades, or fear of some punishment). In this case, I adopt the educational end - the task at hand - merely as the means and, consequently, engage in it to the minimum extent required to attain my true end (the promised incentive). By setting ends for others educators, thereby, hinder engagement.

The current system embodies a lack of faith that fundamentally organic systems (students, teachers, classrooms and schools) might "know where they are going" - or contain ends of their own toward which they tend. What is required, in nut shell, are some of the core ideas that are contained in Ministry of Education document "Living and Learning" (1968) and which are, incidentally, indefensible on a standard mechanical view of the universe (e.g., teacher, school and classroom autonomy).

There is nothing inherently wrong with objectives or with the measurement of the extent to which they are attained. These objectives should, however, be set WITH others and not FOR them. "What shall we do?" is far better than "We are going to... - that is, because the objectives have been set for us."