William Richardson, a father who spent 20 years of teaching in public schools and 10 years as an educational blogger and author, talks about the cool (yet uncool) educational moment we're living in.

Richardson frames his candid Ted Talk by discussing what a great moment it is to be a learner right now — to have grand, unfettered access to information and instruction about passions and interests. “Our kids,” he says, “can pretty much learn whatever they want, wherever they want.” At the top of the talk, Richardson shares an anecdote involving his teenage daughter, in which she is learning to play Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing from a YouTube video balanced on the edge of the piano (a welcome departure from endless rounds of Ode to Joy). Given inspiration and access, students feel energized and empowered by learning. A cool moment.

Decidedly not cool, Richardson says, is being in education right now, as a teacher. “The way that people are discussing teaching is really difficult at this moment.” In the current educational culture, “better” teaching is defined by higher test scores. People agree that there are great problems in education, but by and large, the solutions offered have stronger test scores as the end goal and the definition of success.

The so-called education solutions include firing all the bad teachers, as Newsweek suggested back in 2010, linking teacher salaries to test scores, designing a common core curriculum and a national assessment, or more collosal investments like the one from Mark Zuckerberg to the city of Newark, New Jersey. Maybe other cities and towns and districts are still Waiting For Superman.

So what do these solutions look like once adopted? Richardson has been in classrooms to see for himself. Schools amped up for success on tests have 3rd grade teachers reading from scripts off of index cards, and elementary school instructors wearing wireless earbuds for sideline coaching when things aren’t going well (“like in the NFL,” Richardson quips). All of this is geared toward one thing: raising the needles on test scores.

"If that is the definition of better” Richardson says, “you can have it. I don’t want this for my kids. I don’t want this for any kids, for that matter.” It is becoming increasingly apparent that the importance of schools is getting lost in this hyperfocus on test preparation. “If you want test prep, you don’t need schools. You can sit your kids down in front of a computer.” But this focus, this mandate for teaching, “is taking all of the imagination, all of the creativity, all of the engagement right out of students. I see it in my kids all the time. And you see it in yours too.”

Richardson argues that we have to confront hard truths — that schools as they were originally created no longer adequately prepare kids for their world — and reinvent the educational system for a different purpose. “Schools now,” he says “have to be places of deep inquiry, where [kids] are solving real world problems.” Schools, and teachers, need to collaborate with students and parents, and help them to discover their passions, support their path of discovery, and promote lifelong learning.

”None of that is the stuff of test prep,” Richardson says. “All of that is the stuff of life prep. We need to scream — literally scream — that test prep and learning are two very different things, and one is being lost at the expense of the other right now.”