The Three-Legged Stool

• Throughout the book the three-legged stool is used as a metaphor. Such a stool can be placed on an uneven surface without rocking. The legs supporting students are the school, the family, and the community. The authors point to Finland, where students are consistently at the top of international testing, for how this can work well. Students start school at seven, attend small schools near home, and don’t take a single standardized test until they are sixteen. Schools design their own curricula and teachers with six years of training chose their own teaching styles. In places like England and the US, children get a standardized, micro-managed education that treats them like non free-range chickens.

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