The author of The Innovator's Dilemma applies his theory of disruptive innovation to education, showing why it's so hard to change the current school system and predicting that a computer-based learning model will break out into mainstream use by 2019.

Christensen's theory makes a lot of sense: he claims that a well-established organization CAN'T successfully change its own fundamentals, because the gain from massive change is always much smaller than the gain from incremental change. (Organizations that create independent skunk works or spin-offs which can innovate are the exceptions that prove the rule.) However, the shrinking resources and tightening focus of study in schools are creating opportunities for better teaching software to grow up in the gaps left by the schools. This software is already tracking on an s-shaped growth curve, and will -- like transistors or iTunes -- break out into the mainstream sooner than you might think.

I hope he's right. The only thing that bugs me about this viewpoint is that it ignores an educational model that is already doing all the things that our computer-based saviors are supposed to do. Montessori schools already provide learning environments customized to fit different learning styles and learning speeds, where teachers are guides and coaches instead of lecturers. They don't even get a name check here, which is too bad -- had Christensen done a little more homework, he might have had an easier time catching up with what Maria Montessori figured out over a century ago.