The problems with American education are a staple of public debate (and of Firing Line programs). Suggested solutions tend towards things like vouchers and charter schools--in order to improve quality by competition--or towards national testing and computers in the classroom. Comes now Leon Botstein (a regular on Firing Line Debates) with a radical proposal: abolish high schools. In this high-energy session--which ranges over the problem of teachers' colleges ("Our teacher training system is the most corrupt, old-fashioned, and useless of any civilized nation") and our "segmented" education system, in which the college professor is seen as doing something radically different from the elementary-school teacher--Mr. Botstein supports his idea brilliantly: "We lose precious time in developing [adolescents'] real passion for learning by a system of education, the high school, which was designed for very big children but is now used with young adults.... In the 19th century people went from home schooling directly to college at 15. This is not a terribly new idea, but there is here now a serious biological basis for it, since probably the age of menstruation has dropped since the mid 19th century to the late 20th century by over three years."