I had a revelation last week. Perhaps it was because of the extremely cold temperature coupled with the complete and utter lack of any snow days. Or, perhaps it was because I was getting a simple epiphany.

The fact of the matter is that I found out Wednesday morning that I wasn’t going to plan making the trek into the blizzard outside, no matter what. I assure you it wasn’t out of any form of laziness; I just measured the extra measures I would have to go through (longer walk-time, thicker coat, navigating through the feet of snow banks scattered through the off-campus area) and decided that all that just wasn’t worth it to sit in on one 48-minute lecture. I ended up just staying home, catching up with the materials I found online.

This signaled something much deeper, however, and made me question how our educational system works. For as long as I can remember, we’ve been educated simply by sitting in chairs in front of some board hearing a lecturer drone on and on. The only factors that have changed are the desk types, whether we have a blackboard or whiteboard, and the general aptitude of the lecturer. This model of learning has been the de facto standard for hundreds (if not thousands) of years). If you were to time warp a teacher from centuries past into our 21st century classroom, they could hit the ground running with virtually no adjustment to their teaching style. That’s disturbing.

If I remember correctly, however, the most exciting classes (for everyone) were the ones where the teacher veered off of the material, focusing not on lecturing but on interactivity — a concept we’re deeply missing nowadays.

Shmuel Meitar, a famous enigmatic Israeli entrepreneur, agrees. He recently financed a company out of his own pocket, to the tune of $60 million, to tackle this problem head-on. The compnay, Time To Know, is attempting to completely advance our educational system, starting with kindergarten, making our system more relevant and interactive.

If you look at your classes this week, you’ll probably see the same thing. How many people, out of the total students enrolled, are even there? Of those, how many are actually paying attention and not just doodling or staring at their computer? And who can really blame them? Many lectures are given to a huge number of students and are presented in an uninteresting manner.

I can’t claim to know exactly how we should solve this problem, but clearly we have to use our technological prowess to make our courses more relevant, engaging, interactive and unique to each student. We have to take a strong step in the right direction as soon as humanly possible to guarantee that all our students get what they need out of college. Today’s students are different. In this global age where we’re inundated with social media and technology, a centuries-old teaching style just isn’t going to cut it.