E27-Educational Design-Reforming the Core

NewTech High Blog
March 12, 2026

From the beginning of time, high school-wise, there are four main pillars that have been placed front and center as the most meaningful subjects in schools. Social Studies, the Sciences, Mathematics and Language Arts. From the Committee of Ten in 1892, these things have remained. When you really think about it, these institutions we refer to as schools are a relatively new part of human history. And, the institution we call high school is even newer than that. I could probably write and write and write on this topic, but will spare you the details of that and try to convey a relatively simple message. 

After Horace Mann visited and studied Prussian elementary schools around 1840, there was a quick "disruption" to youth and family life in civilized societies. Rural, country schools and township schools became ubiquitous across the world by 1880. Pretty soon, most everyone was now going to school and learning to read in organized education. It wasn't required, but desired. Compulsory enrollment was not completely required by all states in the US until 1918. Yet, before the turn of the century, any education may be ended for students as early as 8, 10 or 12 years old. Basically, once you learned to read, write and do a little arithmetic, you had about all you needed to be a worker in a largely agrarian existence. If you were in a city, you were likely doing some form of manual labor or something pre-robotic, like a factory worker. 

As our world became more mechanized, there was also less need for year-round work for youth at their farms. As the century turned, discussions about something called the "high school" came into vogue across the country. 

Consider that in 1892, there were virtually no high schools other than in Metro areas, rural boarding schools or prep schools for the elite or for future clergy. Even those high schools or boarding schools at that time were there to prepare the elite few students to go to college to become professionals with a need for licensure. Rural students were lucky to be able to go through Grade 8 at the time. There wasn't much need in the society for advanced education, but certainly colleges were now there, and they needed more students to grow, diversity and meet the country's need for more skilled labor.  

The second major "disruption" of high schools popping up in nearly every town from big to little happened as quickly as the first major disruption almost fifty years prior, which were the elementary, or primary schools. We are now just over 100 years beyond this relatively recent invention called high school. 

The lion's share of the curriculum has not changed in that time, nor have the pedagogical practices that disseminate that curriculum. The reality is that the work done in our high schools are relatively the same throughout the America's or throughout the world. 

The mission and purpose of high schools has been buffeted by some notion that we have this rite of passage for our children at age 18 that champions owning a high school diploma as your entry ticket into adulthood. There are actually philosophers out there who now discuss how our society has even extended this adolescent phase up to age 25 or 30. 

With all the changes in technology and access to information, we are actually extending the time frame in which individuals experience more meaningful, skills-based challenges educationally. This is done at the same time when our access to all information and learning is available much, much earlier in life. It is kind of a no-brainer why many of our students would be bored with this type of low need, low purpose type of activity. It is mandatory that we look at the major building blocks of the high school institution. Yes, I am referring to the Big Four Core subjects in high schools as a necessary place to look. 

For decades, we have looked to the electives and CTE-like subjects to sustain interest from our students. On top of that, we tout the participation in activities and athletics as another reason it is important to do well in these subjects. If you don't, you may deemed to be ineligible for the things you want to do, the activities that you really are engaged in. Those students who have no desire for college, or who are not in these activities, almost ubiquitously unmotivated by the glut of things that comprise high school curricula. They may do de minimus, or a little bit more than that, to keep their parents and teachers off their backs. 

How can we change core aspects of schools, the Big Four, into some other facet of our high school that is of high interest, high movement and high relevance? Instead of just having Algebra I, Geometry and Algebra II for all, what if we included other topics like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Large-Language models (LLM), statistics, number theory, data science and computer programming in our math curriculum? This is the type of inquiry I want us to have. Who is the source of that discussion in your high school? How can you bring this to the forefront of planning? What if our subjects were more broad and interdisciplinary? What if our goal was not to acquire grades and credits, but durable skills for translation into adult life? What if high school subjects were actually used as a mechanism to make school more interesting. I'm gonna leave this brief and incomplete excursion into this topic here for future reference, but it is the type of thing we are discussing in NewTech High schools. We can have these discussions in virtually any subject area. 

Agentics / Agentic AI

The study of agentics is an exciting one as we explore the future of AI, and how it may be used across systems, like education. This is an informative article written just last month out of MIT. If you want a shortcut to knowledge of Agentics AI, I'd recommend you read that or the Dario Amodei article below. I think it will be something that will help you to contemplate the future. 

The big picture: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently described the current state of software engineering as the "centaur phase" — a reference to the half-human, half-horse creature of Greek mythology.

• Just as a chess player aided by a computer could once beat any standalone machine, an engineer paired with an AI agent may now be the most powerful unit in tech.
• Amodei argues that this hybrid phase may be "very brief" — perhaps only a few years, before AI systems can independently outpace even the best human-led teams.

Zoom in: Major AI labs have spent the past year pitching "agentic workflows" as the industry's next frontier.

• That vision snapped into focus last month with the explosive rise of OpenClaw.
• Unlike chatbots that live in a browser or an app, OpenClaw gives agents "hands" on a user's local machine — letting them autonomously manage files, run terminal commands and message teammates.
• OpenClaw's founder, Austrian developer Peter Steinberger, was poached by OpenAI to lead its "personal agents" division.