jpincus writes that the European educational system does early and rigorous testing to direct some students toward trades and others to university. This is true, but in exchange for that, the British in particular have an intense and daunting exam system, where a bad day or a bad choice at age 15 can affect one for life.

I was a high school foreign exchange student in England in 1982-83. Although the exam system has changed somewhat since then, it still has the same structure today. Every student in the country takes the same exams at age 15 (end of the high school sophomore year, in US terms) in a range of subjects. The result of national exams and a national curriculum is intense teaching to the exam all over the country. No one is expected to innovate, to make a discovery, to follow their curiosity anywhere. Not the teachers, not the students, not the schools. If it isn't on the exam, it's not taught. The girls at my school could regurgitate information beautifully, but by contrast my American peers back at home could be creative, could choose unusual topics for papers, could follow their curiosity for experiments in the sciences.

Then, after those exams in 8 or 10 subjects at age 15, the students choose three subjects to focus on for the rest of high school. Keep in mind they are choosing these subjects at age 15. Students tended to focus even then toward the humanities or toward the sciences. The reason those European peers could do so well in the first year of college in the US, is because if they studied sciences, that's ALL they studied for the final two years of high school. No English, no foreign languages, no social studies, no music. Just three subjects, like Biology, Physics, and Math, or Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. Nothing else. And those exam results are EVERYTHING. Wake up in a bad mood on your exam day when you're 18, and your academic career could be over, or severely curtailed. No GPA in other classes to buffer the occasional flub-up.

Along with all this, in English system, there is no going back. At age 16, after a year of studying nothing but physics, chemistry, and math, a student can't express that gosh, they miss a bit of Shakespeare now and then. The wheels on the exam machine are turning, and there is only forward. No missteps, no second choices.

After that year in England, I went on to college to double-major in English and Chemistry. It's an unusual combination here, but absolutely impossible in the British system. Back to those choices one made at age 15--when a British student is accepted to university at 18, it's to study a particular subject. No undeclared majors, no changing your major. No dilly-dallying through an economics class to decide for yourself that it's just not your thing. If you're accepted to university in economics, then that's what you study, or drop out.

Our system has its flaws. I don't debate that lack of universal health care cripples the American economy in a myriad of ways. I agree that the crushing debt-load our higher education system burdens young people with is terrible, but by contrast, a little self-restraint toward the VISA card might not be a bad thing either. However, adopting the European education model is the worst thing we could do. It forces students to choose a direction for their lives at a very young age, teaches them to regurgitate information at the expense creative thought, and penalizes them far into adulthood for one bad day at age 15 or 18.

I remember as a child when people used to repair things like televisions, toasters, telephones and lamps. And I'm not that old. I always wonder when some appliance or piece of electronic gear bites the dust what it would really take to recycle it, where on earth I should take it, and what could anyone really do with a dead toaster oven or VCR anyway?

At some point, won't the copper in those miles of electrical cords on obsolete applicances, plus all their miscellaneous innards, be worth recycling? I don't know a thing about the cost of recycling, other than the vague sense of unease at how cavalier we are about tossing out broken things. I do know that making recycling economically (rather than just morally) viable is all about the price of the item being recycled compared to the cost of creating a new one.

Technology is great to save the world, but couldn't we just start with the easy stuff? What about some federal and state will behind things like safe routes to schools? What if kids could walk, through neighborhoods and across busy streets with (gasp) sidewalks and (double-gasp) strategically placed traffic lights? And maybe a crossing guard or two? How many zillion gallons of diesel fuel go into school buses every year that could be prevented by getting kids out safely on their feet?

What about architecture? Can you imagine school, public, and office buildings with maximum use of skylights, with well-placed working louver systems to direct light evenly? It's already been done, here and there, experimentally, but certainly not on a large scale.

What about urban and suburban planning to include (gasp) bike lanes? Or a relaxation of suburban planning laws to allow the re-introduction of the corner market?

What about solar panels, working ones at a reasonable price, on all those millions of square feet of suburban home roofs?

I like Obama's ideas. But we need to think small as well as large.

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