We should all be very happy and excited for Newark. Newark native and Facebook founder David Zuckerberg has made a $100 million grant to benefit the Newark public school system. He is also working toward raising an additional $100 million from similarly inclined donors.

The Newark public school system is apparently as much of a shambles as numerous other public school systems and can no doubt use the money. Hopefully it will be spent more wisely than past funds may have been.

I experienced all my usual problems dealing with large numbers on an eight-place calculator, but if I am correct it will take just under $20 trillion of private contributions to put all of our public school districts on the same footing as Newark's. Good luck.

Newark may be the butt of a lot of jokes, and way down on most people's lists of places they would like to live, but at least it has Mr. Zuckerberg. Most of the rest of the country is not so fortunate.

Education has suddenly leapt to the forefront as perhaps the only issue on which all parties in our national political debate can agree. They can agree that it is in an abysmal state, and that we really, truly, finally have to begin thinking seriously about how to make it better. Some time.

We have an economy that requires an increasingly high number of skilled workers, and an educational system that provides a correspondingly increasingly high number of dropouts. That is perhaps the single most important reason that the unemployment rate remains high as jobs are shipped overseas to people capable of performing them.

If the past few decades have proven anything, it is that money alone will not solve the problem, Mr. Zuckerberg notwithstanding. My previously discussed example of Kansas City's forced expenditure of $2 billion under federal misdirection is a case in point.

Last week, the NBC network took on the cause of education across its various television channels with commentaries and interviews and statistics examining where we are and where our leaders think we need to go. The subject of education is turning up frequently in publications of all political stripes. There seems to be consensus around a few key points.

Most frequently mentioned is the teachers union, which is accused of putting its members ahead of their students and fighting a rear-guard action to maintain the status quo. This is what unions do, but there are pockets of improvement, and even this liberal administration has taken the union to task.

Administrators are blamed for being too numerous, overpaid and incompetent.

School boards are blamed for complacency and lack of expertise.

Lack of standards and inconsistent curricula are favorite culprits.

Parents and neighborhoods are faulted for lack of support.

That is a depressing list, and there is truth in all of it. Still, one educational component is hardly ever mentioned: the kids. They need to be motivated and pay attention. Sure, part of that is the job of parents and teachers, and kids are, after all, only kids; they have not tuned in to the life that lies ahead. But the buck has to stop somewhere.

The same technology that allows them to sit in the back row and twitter or play electronic games will put them in touch with news and commentaries around the world. Some of the energy spent on fashion (uniforms, anyone?) or gossip could be used more productively pursuing academics. You get the idea.

The point is not to steal their childhood, though that is exactly what some of our global competitors are doing; the point is to have kids buy into their own educations, to recognize that school will end but life will go on. If the nation is finally willing to tackle the list of problems above, it is not too much to ask of the students to pitch in.

Fred Wolferman lives in Southern Pines. Contact him by e-mail at fwolferman@sbcglobal.net.