Why do we still have this problem?

Many children in school fail.  For a great many, this failure is avowed and absolute.  Close to forty percent of those who begin high school, drop out before they finish.  For college, the figure is one in three.  Many others fail in fact if not in name.  They complete their  schooling only because we have agreed to push them up through the grades and out of the schools, whether they know anything or not.  There are many more such children than we think.  If we ‘raise our standards’ much higher, as some would have us do, we will find out very soon just how many there are.  Our classrooms will bulge with kids who can’t pass the test to get into the next class.

But there is a more important sense in which almost all children fail:  Except for a handful, who may or may not be good students, they fail to develop more than a tiny part of the tremendous capacity for learning, understanding, and creating with which they were born and of which they made full use during the first two or three years of their lives.  Why do thy fail?  They fail because they are afraid, bored and confused." 
This excerpt was taken verbatim from the "The best selling book that tells why bright children do badly in school." How Children Fail  by John Holt written in 1964.  Not one word was changed in this writing. 
Did you get the year, 1964…1964…1964?  It's 2012, that was 48  years ago!

Now do you agree that we clearly have a problem…,And have obviously had one for a long time?  I have another question.  Why hasn’t it been solved yet? That statement reads like a statement that could easily have been spoken by one of our top educators yesterday…..but according to the copyright date in the book I have on my shelf….it was 1964! 

Realistically, how many of our children will be able to compete in the world of work?  Look around you again….this time with a targeted eye?  How many will be able to succeed based on spirituality, education, confidence, or just sheer ‘gumption’?  How many?  Why do we still have this problem?