First, of course, I want to congratulate you for your courage and success in daring to reinvent our political process from the grassroots up. Many of us who worked and spoke on your behalf feel part of the process of participation that you are bringing to a renewed democracy.

I want to speak to you about education. I do not speak from an armchair. I have been involved in successful alternative education for adults and now with teenagers for over thirty years. For the past two years, I have been involved in bringing a fresh pedagogy to inner city teenagers in the Oakland, California, school system, believing it is time to reinvent education from the inner city out. As you know, 72 percent of black boys do not graduate from high school today. I don't think this says much about the intelligence of the kids, but it does shout something about the failure of our models of pedagogy at this time in history.

No Child Left Behind is such a disaster that we are leaving behind not only the kids but also the best teachers! When I was speaking in Napa a year ago, a woman came up to me and said: "I am a teacher. A great teacher. I love teaching. And I am quitting. All the good teachers in my district are quitting because we did not become teachers in order to give kids constant exams. We became teachers to do what you are talking about-bring out the wisdom that is in the kids and turn them on to learning the rest of their lives."

The key to education is getting kids excited about learning. We are failing at that. Many parents are failing at that. Excitement about learning does not come from piling exams on top of exams. It comes from kids being motivated and excited about their capacity to learn new things. It comes from the experience of awe that kids can have when they learn about the new cosmology and our place in the universe and when they are encouraged to put that learning into their own, unique, creative expression. Let them rap and make DVDs about such things. First you get them excited about their capacity to learn. Then you can guide them to the three Rs.

In my recent book, The A.W.E. Project: Reinventing Education, Reinventing the Human, I set out my philosophy of education. "A.W.E." stands for "Ancestral Wisdom Education." We find kids are genuinely interested in this approach to education. Facts and knowledge are readily available on the Internet, YouTube, and other media that young people have access to today. But wisdom? That is in short supply.

The key ingredient missing in No Child Left Behind and the countless exams it espouses is creativity. Kids are creative, but their creativity is rarely being educed at school. One senior in our program last year said, "This is the first time in four years of high school that anyone has asked for my creative side to come out." This is why kids are so "bored" at school. Where is the place for their creativity to flourish? Creativity is the door to awe and therefore to wisdom.

The Dalai Lama points out, "Education is in crisis the world over." I think this is a very important observation. Education is not just an American issue but also a global issue because today's young people, members of this first postmodern generation, are growing up in a very different world. We elders have not yet refashioned our thinking and structures of education and adapted them properly to the needs of this generation.

I speak of the ten Cs of education that are needed to balance the three Rs. These ten Cs are as follows:

• Cosmology. Where do we come from? How special are we as a species? Our place in the universe is key to getting young people interested in learning and today we have a whole new cosmology from science that holds awesome stories about our bodies, our history, our expanding universe, and our ecological struggle.
• Chaos. Inner city kids have Ph.D.'s in chaos. But rarely are they instructed in today's science, which rediscovers the role of chaos in all of nature's creative unfolding-including human imagination and creativity.
• Creativity. This is what most distinguishes us as a species-it is our strongest suit and can get us out of the dead ends such as global warming that we paint ourselves into-but it is also what makes us the most dangerous species on the planet. It needs attention at all levels of education.
• Contemplation/Meditation. Our capacity to be still is required for our survival as a species. We must move beyond the reptilian brain of action/reaction to the mammal brain of bonding and compassion-and meditation does that for us.
• Compassion. Who is the spiritual teacher East or West, North or South, who does not teach us to bring alive our mammal and compassionate brains?
• Critical Thinking and Consciousness.
• Community.
• Ceremony and Celebration.
• Courage.
• Character and Chakra Development.

With these ten Cs, we have a curriculum that gets kids excited and involved in learning again. We encourage the students to create DVDs, rap, poetry, theater, and music around these themes and in the process they learn skills that can serve them for years to come. Once teachers have awakened this excitement, children will be motivated to learn the three Rs and all that follows. I hope you consider our work when your administration tackles the Reinventing of Education.

Thank you for your attention.

Dr. Matthew Fox is director of the YELLAWE project in Oakland, California and author of twenty-nine books including Creativity: Where the Divine and the Human Meet and The Hidden Spirituality of Men.