School’s Out, by Lewis J. Perelman, predicts that America’s $600 billion dollar public educational system is obsolete and beyond reform. He believes that this entire socialistic system will implode under the weight of its own inefficient and irrelevant bureaucracies. Its collapse is imminent. Today’s labor intensive schools will not withstand the challenges of the 21^st century since they were designed for the industrial age. Perelman envisions the next century being shaped by a knowledge age paradigm that will require learning to be a continuous, life-long process rather than something that is acquired in a school building. Since knowledge will have a shelf life measured in days, the only way it will be managed is through a globe-girdling network that links all minds and all knowledge. Schools will not make that possible, but hyperlearning will. Hyperlearning is a term Perelman coins to describe the fusion of four technological threads that will become the matrix of the 21^st century economy. Hyperlearning will spell the end of education as we know it. Accompanying the collapse of schools will be the demise of credentialism and educational bureaucracies. In its place will be a privatized, market driven, system that will assess performance in terms of competencies rather than credentials.   

In School’s Out, Perelman predicts that a new world order and economy will emerge from a revolution brought about by four technological threads that include (a) smart environments, (b) a telecosm infrastructure, (c) hypermedia tools, and (d) brain technology. He envisions "cultural impacts" that will influence and determine the future learning environment. These impacts include: (a) ubiquitous learning, (b) school buildings replaced by learning channels, (c) expertise that is less in the individual and more in the network, (d) learning that spans the human life cycle, (e) learning and work merging in the knowledge sector, (f) ownership of capital replacing labor, and (g) a new definition of handicap.   

"This book is not about education. It is about an economic transformation that is being driven by an implacable technological revolution" is the description that Perelman gives to his book School’s Out: A Radical New Formula for the Revitalization of America’s Educational System. Perelman argues that the world economy has changed from an industrial economy to an information economy and that our current educational system is based on assumptions that are incompatible and counter productive to the needs of an knowledge age society. Throughout the text he systematically describes limitations of current educational practices and advocates a transformation to hyperlearning. Hyperlearning is described as a dynamic process that results from the amalgamation of four technologies: smart environments, a "telecosm" communication infrastructure, hypermedia, and brain technology. Full explanations for each of these technologies is given. Several critical components necessary for a successful shift to a hyperlearning environment are identified and described.  

1. What is learning and how does it work?
2. What technologies can facilitate learning and how do they work?
3. How does learning fit in with the overall process of human economy and ecology?
4. How do you transform or replace established institutions?