High school is boring, writes the author, in part because lock-step diploma requirements crowd out personalized and engaged learning. It is also boring because current content standards are based on traditional, subject-area notions of curriculum instead of on the essential question, What do students need to be well prepared for their adult lives? Wiggins gives a historical look at attempts to standardize the high school curriculum, from Herbert Spencer in 1859 to the Committee of Ten in 1892 to the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education in the early 1900s. Today's state and national standards, he writes, are developed by committees of people who "merely rearrange the furniture of the traditional core content areas; they replicate the past that they feel comfortable with." He advocates engaging in a national conversation about the mission of schooling to develop standards that are "forward-looking, client-centered, and flexible."