1. Motivating opportunity

2. Books come first

3. Teachers to come first

4. Junk food — out

5. Numbers come first

6. Relevant for today

7. Learn by using

8. Fewer and worse

A. High school students have rights protected by the Constitution like everyone else, but it is complicated. There is no one set of rules. State laws differ from federal laws, and school board regulations vary from place to place. Students discover what rights they have by trying to exercise them, and, if prevented, taking the school to court.

B. Kids who live on junk food grow up to be fat and unhealthy, so schools should teach good health. They should fill their vending machines with health foods, and lunch programs should serve nothing but nutritious meals. If some kids complain, so what? They complain about algebra, too.

C. There is a new five-year program that lets students earn a high school diploma and two years of college at no cost. It is getting kids who are at risk to become more mature in the lower grades, to take college-prep courses, study harder, and focus on a career. Once in the program, very few drop out.

D. Neuroscience (brain science) is finding out how teaching affects the brain. It has discovered pre-school kids can learn numbers and simple math because the number instinct is hard-wired in the brain. So is the language instinct, but teaching kids to read is harder. It takes longer for the brain to connect sounds with letters — up to 11 years.

E. In hard times, colleges must be relevant. Today’s students want Chinese and Arabic, not Latin and Greek. Economics is in demand; and even English classes are teaching how to network, write a resume, and present oneself in an interview. It is not a good time to be a philosophy professor.

F. Computers help with drills and practice, but they are not much help in higher-level thinking. In the lower grades, money is better spent on new textbooks, music programs and the arts. In the higher grades, there is no choice. Everyone should learn to use the electronic genie.

G. The US program, No Child Left Behind, seeks to place a qualified teacher in every classroom. But where is the pool of qualified people out there waiting to teach disadvantaged kids in the cities? US policy should provide better training and support for those already teaching. They could start a new program and call it No Teacher Left Behind.