If you're looking for an education reform that could bring dramatic improvements to millions of people, consider this. Robert Epstein says Let's Abolish High School.

Who is Epstein? Dr. Epstein is no survivalist crackpot driven by conspiracy theories. Instead, this former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard says that we inflict great harm on our states and nation by stretching childhood out for decades.

High school students are young adults who will act out adulthood if given the chance. Instead, our education system has treated them as children, contributing to social pathologies and boredom. (I would add "and a whole lot of money.") He actually calls for, well, allowing child labor - - because work today isn't what it used to be. (Thankfully.)

Today's K-12 (and increasing, preK-12) system is based on fairly recent events reflecting the needs and political pressures of the time:

"The first compulsory education law in the United States wasn’t enacted until 1852. This Massachusetts law required that all young people between the ages of 8 and 14 attend school three months a year—unless, that is, they could demonstrate that they already knew the material; in other words, this law was competency-based. It took 15 years before any other states followed Massachusetts’ lead and 66 years [1918] before all states did."

He calls for significant changes in our educational system, including letting students test out of high school, and changing our mass-production culture of schooling to one of mass-customization:

"The social-emotional turmoil experienced by many young people in the United States is entirely a creation of modern culture. We produce such turmoil by infantilizing our young and isolating them from adults. Modern schooling and restrictions on youth labor are remnants of the Industrial Revolution that are no longer appropriate for today’s world; the exploitative factories are long gone, and we have the ability now to provide mass education on an individual basis.

Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults; to undo the damage we have done, we need to establish competency-based systems that give these young people opportunities and incentives to join the adult world as rapidly as possible."