We are used to expecting business, industry and science to innovate. New products replace old and much of the time the new products are better. There are usually many alternative products to choose from. We can meet our individual needs as we each think best and spend our money where it counts the most.

School is different. It is very slow to change. Most people who worked to create and apply knowledge a century ago would find current jobs and workplaces quite different and puzzling. But schoolteachers of 1907 would recognize most of what goes on in school today. They would readily pick up on classroom computers, because schoolchildren use them mainly for updated forms of drill-and-practice, note taking, presentations, and looking up information.

Teachers (and therefore parents and students) are bound by a minutely detailed net of imperatives and restrictions. This would be fine if learning were a simple process and the state of Maine knew all about it. But learning is more complex than oil production, the Microsoft Windows operating system, or putting a person on the moon.

It is safe to say that neither our state leaders nor leaders of any other state know all about it, or even a substantial part of what we would like to know. Attempts to script public education down to every least motion seem to work about as well as the attempts in some countries to legislate every detail of business and industry. School needs more intelligence, innovation and scientific respectability, not more detailed control.

Education Commissioner Susan Gendron has noted that administrative consolidation will “allow the state to get all schools working toward the same student achievement goals.” She has also said, “Maine has some of the toughest standards in the country, but what we see is there’s varied interpretation about what those standards are.”

But what is this same thing that all schools should be doing and why should everyone be doing the same thing? The kinds of skills and knowledge that make the world go around are great in number and highly varied. The extent and variety of human knowledge dwarfs what can be learned in school. Is the Department of Education wise enough to decide for everyone what and how to learn? The evidence contradicts that.

In the face of state mandates, and perhaps because of state mandates, school continues to go on pretty much as before. There are many controls on schools. For example, the state of Maine, like most other states, tries to force school improvement (though not significant change) through standardized testing. It is rather like making your television work by kicking it.

The Maine Educational Assessment is a school test; it tests what the state has decreed to be important and it is designed to be acceptable to federal and state bureaucracies, and ultimately to the majority of citizens. But decree does not make for any kind of scientific validity. The consequences over the next hundred years of standardized thoughts – about what is learnable, what children should learn, and how they might go about learning it – are unknown.

A science of learning, which would help us make sense of the choices for an individual or society, does not wholly exist yet. It is risky and dubious to read too much into a test such as the MEA. It would be prudent to foster a variety of opportunities and approaches.

School has a strong social meaning for most of us. Where social norms are concerned, it seems that we all have a tendency to think alike and to penalize those who don’t conform. In the past, that may have sometimes kept us from self-destructive anarchy.

But we can think about school and learning in less restrictive ways without descending into chaos. There are many possible choices in education, and no one knows exactly which mixes of them would be best for our society. When we empower federal and state regulators to uphold our accustomed expectations for school, we devitalize efforts to find out. Some government oversight of schools is necessary, just as for restaurants, transportation companies, and chemical plants. But too much control is stifling.

Free-market thinking could be an antidote to school stagnation. To move forward in a competitive world, it would be healthier to allow innovators to innovate. The results could then be judged by “consumers” – parents, students, colleges and employers – and analyzed from a scientific and social perspective. We should tune our expectations to reward thoughtful, careful, but real and productive changes in education.

No one group by itself can plan this sort of complex development, any more than a single group can be responsible for the development of technology, science or any other field. Many originators are required.

Let’s turn public discussion to an educational system that incorporates more free-market characteristics which allow parents, students and society a variety of choices. It would be better to become entrepreneurs now rather than wait until panic about competition with developing countries forces us to scramble in the future.

Max Crain is the technology coordinator at Tremont School on Mount Desert Island and also works at Pemetic School.