We all know that excellent schools are the glittering diamonds of outstanding communities. They not only educate the young, but also help to build the symmetrical beauty of a community's physical and emotional safety, employment opportunity, rich cultural treasury, responsible governance, civic involvement, and more.

Unfortunately, we have too few outstanding schools, that is, schools in which teachers and learners are actively engaged in the exchange and mastery of knowledge. Yet we continue to support an educational system built on a failing business model.

An education system built around Industrial-Revolution-era ideas about conformity, interchangeable parts, hierarchy, strategy, centralization, and economies of scale no longer works in our time. We've all read the axiom, “Every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it achieves.” And our education business model is perfectly designed to produce nineteenth- and twentieth-century results.

But, of course, education should mirror twenty-first-century business realities! In other words they should reflect a wellness culture, intrinsic versus extrinsic values, fulfilling needs instead of creating wants, open communication platforms, Lean structures, niche markets, responsible sustainability, and rapid iterations of our products, services, and even ourselves.

Over two years ago, Paragon Furniture, Inc., was invited to participate in an extraordinary cohort of education stakeholders. The K–12 MindShift served as the locus for changing the way in which Paragon began thinking about our purpose. We now see that our company creates furniture that assists in the transformation of culture, helps to ignite student curiosity, facilitates positive teacher influence, and contributes to the health of the whole person.

Humanizing the Education Machine is like a perfectly built and tuned amplifier. It pumps out a pure, rich, and powerful message. However, our educational system is tone deaf to the music. But, with our front row seats on the concert of collaborative research and synthesis behind this book, we were blown away by the power of the book's signal transmission and broad range frequency.

Rex has created a high-fidelity story that everybody in any community should know and share. In that way, we can all help to create a relevant and rich learning culture. And remember, however great the costs of change may be, it is far more expensive not to change.

—Ricky Kassanoff, CEO,

and

Mark Hubbard,
President, Paragon Furniture, Inc.