New Delhi, June 10 -- The expansion of human knowledge is a magnificent phenomenon. Over the centuries, we have mapped the human genome, understood the cosmos better and untangled the chemistry of life-and every day, we know more.

Yet, this very expansion creates a serious and growing problem for school education. As knowledge multiplies, we attempt to load more and more of it onto the school curriculum-into the same number of hours and classrooms with the same teachers.

The timetable does not stretch. Teacher capacity does not multiply. But expectations do. And that, it turns out, is only one part of the problem.

Over the past few weeks, I had three similar conversations. The first was with someone who has done extraordinary work on t...