We have reached a challenging junction at which, on the one hand, teachersand schools face increased pressure to prepare students for standardizedtests, whereas, on the other hand, they face a generation of students whoregard the school curriculum as largely irrelevant to their own lives. Ithas become all too common to develop curricula and teach domain contentdistinct from the people, places, and situations through which the contenthas meaning. While it is expected that the information learned will somehow,later, be connected to those situations in which it is useful andmeaningful, this is rarely what occurs. All too often the knowledge students“acquire” in schools remains inert (Whitehead, 1929),something demonstrated on a test in a school context where it can be tradedfor a grade but not applied to a situation in which it has intrinsic worth(Lave, 1991, 1997; Wenger, 1998).

Unless we begin to engage youth in rich situations that add meaning todisciplinary concepts – as part of the learning process – thecontent of schools will be perceived as a thing to be acquired and exchangedfor a test score (having exchange value) and not as auseful tool that has direct functional value in the world or to thelearner.