Six impossible things before three o'clock

Jon Carroll has been thinking about how to design a school.

We want grades to be important, but not too important. We want our children to suffer with homework the way we did, but not so much that it makes them crazy. We fret about the weight of children's book bags, but we don't do anything about it. We worry if our child is obese, but we still drive him to school. We are just bundles of mixed messages that the teachers are supposed to decode, and if they fail, it's probably because they're underpaid or lazy - - pick one from the menu.