The reason there are many casinos housed in big and shiny buildings in Las Vegas and

elsewhere is that most games of chance favor the house. As the famed MIT Blackjack team

and others have shown, it is possible, with careful counting and sophisticated strategies,

to win at gambling. As nearly as we can determine, the California strategy for education

can be summarized as try to increase the number of students getting Cs and graduating

from high school while making it as difficult as possible for long shots to pay off.

Implementing that strategy stacks the deck against Acalanes students, and De Anza High

students need not bother. While we would agree the intent of No Child Left Behind was

reasonable, it has failed to move many (or maybe any) children ahead. In contrast, the

Chinese strategy is to identify potential talent in whatever areas the country deems

necessary or useful, nuture as many as possible, and hope to produce a few high-leverage

individuals. Just one Newton, one Mozart or one Shakespeare is enough. Exploring

Newton's ideas has kept thousands of some of the better minds of our species busy for

centuries, and even Mozart needed an orchestra. Who can say if Cauchy would have

succeeded had his father not been a senior government official in Paris? Courtesy

Internet technology, in the twenty-first century it can no longer matter where one lives.

During the Depression, someone in England had the courage to let R.J. Mitchell design

Spitfires. Without a few pilots brave enough to fly them, Churchill would have been,

as the noted author and games theorist Norm Maclean put it, just talking to the wall.