Seeking Edutopia

By Milton Chen

“My own experience in public school was quite frustrating. I was often bored. Occasionally, I had a teacher who engaged me, who made me curious and motivated to learn. I wondered, ‘Why can't school be interesting all of the time?’”

—George Lucas

Much of the contemporary education debate can be summarized as proposals to improve a current system deeply rooted in the distant past. Allen Glenn, a professor and the former dean of education at the University of Washington, may well be right when he says, "The biggest obstacle to school change is our memories."

Creating schools for the 21st century requires less time looking in the rear-view mirror and more effort anticipating the road ahead. Filmmaker George Lucas, the chairman of the educational foundation where I work, is well known for his prescient view of the transformative effects of technology in the world of entertainment. His work in digital filmmaking is a result of his impulse to, as he puts it, "run down the path more quickly than others and come back and tell them what I've seen." At the foundation that bears his name, our mission is to help educators and the larger public glimpse the future, through a World Wide Web site, films, books, and CDs. Our idealism is unabashedly reflected in the title of our newsletter: Edutopia .