Despite the liberal (and conservative) use of words like "change" and "reform" the recent presidential debates offered the same ideas that have been propagated since the 60s. More choice vs more money remain the current, and it seems, perennial options. There's no need to take the candidates to task for this - God knows they are beating each other up far more than we citizens possibly could at this point. Besides, it's not just them. Various bureaucrats are espousing the same solutions in one form or another, all putting forth explanations as to why American students perform so poorly in the classroom relative to the students from even some third world nations.

None of these solutions (which are as old as Senators McCain and Obama combined) has worked. It might be because. none of them addresses the core cause - the true independent variable that is creating the problem. To find that variable simply requires observing a typical American classroom for a few class periods. With that it becomes clear that it's not the fault of teachers, who are actually far more compassionate, giving of their time and versed in their subject matter than those who taught the baby boomers. Nor is it a lack of money, because learning always takes place in the interaction between teacher and student.

The real culprit is a two headed monster, created from the nuts, bolts and electrical jolts of American culture and human development.. Despite its complexity it can be referred to by a single name - student motivation (or more specifically, lack thereof). With some exceptions, the typical classroom in America will feature bored students, with heads slumped on desk, daydreaming, acting out, barely managing to process the teacher's remarks, glassey eyed and fidgety from having to attend to inputs that are at best meaningless, at worst, aversive to them.

Education has many purposes, but in the USA its purpose has been obviated by cultural factors. For example, education is a medium by which one ostensibly attains greater prosperity and material access. Yet that message is lost on students who (rich or poor) all seem to have what they need - i pods, expensive basketball shoes, the latest clothing accoutrements, and of course computers. Thanks to the credit card the concept of upward mobility has been obviated by impulse buying. "Plastic" seems to be an insidious cancer metasticizing in our education and economic systems. The fact that people to buy more than they can afford is obviously a motivation killer.

Another purpose of education has traditionally been increased status, based on the idea that educated people are more highly valued than "commoners." Yet American society does not trust intellectuals. They are marginalized in the culture, viewed as eggheads, weird scientists, too "corny" and "too white," with no flash, no style and no social standing. Consider that the smartest students in public school are often the lowest on the totem pole. The modus operandi of the intellectual: reading in the quiet of their office at the university, stooped down, peering into the tiny aperture of a microcscope simply do not make it in our current zeitgeist of self promotion.

Such factors are prohibitive when it comes to motivating students in the classroom. But then the question becomes, is there another way besides the traditional teacher talks - students listen format that could, despite all these cultural distractions, once again make students eager to learn? I believe there is a method that could revitalize education in this country. My confidence is based on the fact that this method would be intrinsically rewarding - no promises of future prosperity required, nor threats of "working in a fast food chain for the rest of your life without an education" threats being necessary.

In discussing this, two items must be considered. First, a number of studies have shown that not all American students do poorly or have poor attitudes about school. Up to roughly the fourth grade, most of our students seem to do just fine. Obviously when pre and post adolescence arrives, things change. Why? Because at that point the teaching format is about as incompatible with their developmental mandates as it could possibly get. For example:

Adolescebts are inclined to socialize, form hierarchies, establish individual identities and in general, strut their stuff with the opposite sex and with same- sex peers. Meanwhile school asks them to blend in and remain quiet for the better part of six hours each day.

They are inclined to think on their own, not merely due to rebellion, but to the fact that with their newly emerging operational thinking capacities, their brains now have a filter through which all inputs must pass before being assimilated. More simply put, they are disposed by nature to argue and to challenge ideas before arriving at solutions. Meanwhile the typical classroom teacher asks them to absorb facts for the sake of absorbing facts.

They are also inclined (neuro-humorally) to emote, to think, speak and fell things more intently. They are passionate and want to learn and behave in passionate terms. Meanwhile school is, for the most part, passionless.

The question is; what new method would ameliorate these problems? Here is one possibility. What if public education involved a two part format. One part would be dialectic, and would consist of classes devoted to debate, discussion and the refutation or concurrence regarding scientific, historical, moral, even mathemetical concepts. That would recruit fluidly the developmental aspects of adolescence into a unified effort to learn. Would this reduce acting out, boredom, academic apathy, and felings of alienation in the classroom, or the number of students currently diagnosed with special needs-relaterd syndromes? It might, although research studies would be required to confirm this. A more central question is; could a format that maximizes student motivation revitalize the education system by producing happy, pro-academic, participatory students who used rather than battled with their developmental proclivities in class? Under the best of conditions, that is a strong possibility.

This format would not be without snags- as any experienced teacher reading this would immediately recognize. For one thing, some students might be anxious about expressing themselves in class. Yet there is a solution to this problem. If an introductory and preparatory dialectic curriculum were offered in elementary school, students would enter middle school already in the habit of confidently analyzing facts, criticizing ideas and breaking down concepts along empirical lines - as John Dewey suggested we do long ago. Arguably, practice in that area might reduce anxiety, alienation and perhaps other psychopathologies that arise in the classroom.

A second potential problem is perhaps less easily resolved. Obviously students have to learn those boring facts and since they don't usually know them up front the teaching format must be didactic (teacher imparts - students absorb). Yet here too it is possible to use the dialectic method to the advantage of both teacher and student. Psychologist David Premack discovered a behavioral principle many years ago which he referred as probability reinforcement theory. It holds that if a person is asked to perform a less-preferred task for the opportunity of engaging subsequently in a more preferred task he will eventually come to enjoy the former as well as the latter. In simpler terms, if you do something you don't like for the opportunity to do something you do like, you will come to like the initially non-preferred task. By arranging classes so that nomal academics are followed by dialectic classes...for example... period A social science/academic, period B social science/dialectic, students would first have to absorb facts from period A in order to participate in period B. and second. according to Premack, would eventually come to enjoy factual-academic classes in any event.

Developmentally, students in this format could emote, distinguish themselves, socialze, individualize, even participate in group affiliations (also a staple of adolescent development). There could be team debates, team grades, perhaps even team report cards in some instances. A final thought. In such a format, morality - previously approached gingerly at best by educators based on the constitutional pinciple pertaining to the separation of church and state - could be addressed in a dialectic format. Plato and Aristotle did this very effectively.

Instituting a two tiered academic program consisting of didactics and dialectics would entail a certain amount of training in the dialectic method (which has rules of discourse but is really nothing more than the introduction of conflicting bits of information whittled down to essential points and resolved through logic). It might even be too cumbersome or foreign for current educators. Yet if we continue down the road of "either more money- or more choice" and neither works, it might be something to consider.