An Ivy League education, capped with a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics is a magical door opener and a gilt-edged beginning to a promising career. And if your Ph.D. is unique – for example, interviewing the top 40 leaders and opinion-formers of Egypt and Israel and receiving a Peace Medal for your efforts – you will be even more impressive. †I know this because that’s my history.

But I also know that all these badges and displays of elitism do not convey much about the quality of the learning – an indicator, yes perhaps, but not confirmation.

Although there is justifiable pride (despite the issue of high cost) in our secondary education system, we are losing ground – America has dropped from first place to 12th in the world in terms of college graduates. But the real concern lies in our lost ground in teaching and learning in our public school system. According to PISA 2009: (the Program for International Student Assessment) “Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy in an International Context,” shows the U.S. now ranks 25th in math, 17th in science, and 14th in reading out of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (Shanghai was first in all three). Stanford reports that if US students in this category could raise their performance by just 5% it would add $41 trillion to the US economy over the next 20 years.

There is a marked difference between America and Canada too – so near, yet so far. The quality of education in† the US puts America in†16th position among†17 other OECD countries, while Canada ranks second behind Finland.

We have worked extensively in the field of education helping to raise the standards of leadership among students, so that they inspire each other to greatness. Some of our successes are chronicled in my latest book The Spark, the Flame, and the Torch. One of our clients has been ranked as the Best Urban School District in America. Others have had great success too in focusing on the level of student inspiration which is the precursor for student achievement.

Students generally learn in four different ways, and each of them favors one of these styles. They will only be inspired to learn if we understand the specific learning style for each student, and then teach from -†and to -†that learning style, so that individual students are then inspired to learn. Whenever we are inspired, we yearn to learn, and when we are not, we don’t. So the key to greatness for individual students, schools and educational systems – and therefore societies and countries – is to learn how to become an inspiring teacher. This should be the heart of the curriculum for teacher education.

In some cases, radical experiments, such as turning over the school to the students, has resulted in remarkable outcomes. If students are not inspired to learn, and are not inspiring themselves to do so and to play a bigger game in life, then a continual erosion of academic standards is inevitable.

And this raises the subject of how we teach. Sal Khan is providing us with an insight to the future. Realizing that making millions as a hedge-fund manager would not lead to a fulfilling life, he began tutoring his 7th-grade cousin, Nadia, with remote tutoring math sessions. She moved from struggling with math to advancing several grade levels in ability, and this led to other friends and family calling for help. He began recording the lectures online and this led to the creation of the Khan Academy whose video lectures on YouTube are now viewed by tens of thousands of teachers and students every day. This pattern is spreading. The future of teaching then, looks like this:

1. Physical schools may become less necessary and the purpose of school buildings will change dramatically.
2. A streamed video lecture by a world-class professional expert will often be of superior quality than an in-person lecture by a local teacher.
3. The lectures will be completed in the evening so that tutoring can take place during the day, giving teachers the opportunity to spend more of their time offering personal guidance to each student.
4. Graduation will not be a criteria – having a full grasp of each subject will be.
5. Tomorrow’s teachers (and those of today who wish to excel) will learn how to become inspired again as teachers, and how to inspire their students to learn – and therefore make a difference in the world.

Above all, inspirational leadership that inspires teachers and students alike, and which is embraced as a shared responsibility among both groups, will ignite the fires of passion again – for students and teachers.