Behind the push toward a national set of “common core” standards in English and math is the attractive idea that every kid in the nation should be more or less reading, writing and arithmeticking at the same level at the same age.

I rapped on a wall to make sure I wasn’t on the set of Little House on the Prairie.

I wasn’t. I’d just entered the world of Waldorf education.

The plan: Stop tinkering with an outdated school model, and start talking about types of learning that will help Santa Fe thrive today.

In a sprawling neighborhood in the south of Bogotá, among the unfinished brick homes of tens of thousands of Colombia’s poorest, 15 teenagers lounge on the floor of a brightly painted room. Electronic music chugs from a laptop in the corner while they work quietly, sketching flowers and trees on oversized paper.

It’s not because the pay sucks. I can hack the salary.

It’s definitely not the kids.

I'm quitting teaching because of a golden opportunity just missed—a revolution in education that never came to be.

I held her legs. My brother held the knife. Our friends held their breaths. And the 9-month-old lamb, lying on her side beneath us, held nothing except, perhaps, a foreboding instinct that things were not going her way.

Last winter, after failing yet again to borrow a truck and chain saw to cut my own firewood, I headed over toward Woodcutters’ Corner on Old Las Vegas Highway.

Ice caps may melt, empires may crumble, but so long as a wall is standing, a handballer will be there, whacking the hell out of a little blue ball.

Terrified, I gave away the few balls that landed at my feet and was soon relegated to goalie, but over the course of that summer (and the ensuing 20 years) I learned what it meant to take a 30-yard cross on the chest, to scrap, to shoot with power, to slide tackle—to play, as they say, with “cojones.”

The fact that 70 percent of high schoolers in Santa Fe County reported taking a drink in a recent 30-day period, well above the national average of 45 percent, makes me think there’s an explanation specific to the teenager different. And  my hunch is it has something to do with our schools.