Posted on 12/31/2011 1:21:00 PM PST by appeal2
Are you fed up with the near complete failure of the American educational system? We may finally be at the cusp of a solution. The combination of technology and the current system’s un-sustainability, could lead to sweeping change and improvement of education at every level. The wealthy always had access to the best tutors to make their children literate. Public education was created to allow the non-wealthy to do the same. Unfortunately the system become classroom/lecture based, rather than student centered, thus the personal intimacy of tutorial education was lost.
The advent of the Kindle/Nook/iPad could be an important part of the solution. While the quantity of information and downloadable books and courseware has never been greater, information management and the ability of a parent to choose the courses and publications, that they feel will be the most advantageous to their children, could mean a new golden age in American literacy. Plus, many universities are making their best educators and courses available at no cost on the web.
At the same time. traditional classroom education has hit a brick wall. On a price vs. performance basis, much of the educational establishment should have been shuttered long ago. However, teachers’ unions and their political benefactors have turned schools into indoctrination centers that seem completely unconcerned with their students functional illiteracy. The parents are forced to idly sit by, while their children’s futures are gutted. But economics and technology are quickly finding a way out. And more importantly, those who escape this tyranny will be free-thinking productive members of society pursuing their dreams and passions from a very young age.
Public schools: a Stalin era relic.
No.
Until compulsory education ends after eighth grade, nothing else will matter.
The Prisoner went up against technological learning in a good episode called The General. Technology is great and helpful but it is the human factor that determines overall effectiveness. Currently, I would say no and scrap education and start over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jIxDV_PDlE&feature=related
Education is a function of student desire, curiosity, motivation, and ability. All of these are personal characteristics. Technology is simply a system of delivery. Until our culture produces students with these characteristics, no amount of theory, technology or money will change things.
What gobbledegoop you speak.
Children by nature have all of those attributes you’re bloviating about, and they have it going in. It’s the idiot diet they are force fed, or should I say “the diet, idiot”? Have you no kids, no clue, no knowledge, no access to reality? If not, you are the perfect product of the gobbledegoop you have been fed and one more useful idiot marked by the system. Or else, you’re fourteen, sixteen tops?
You need to update your profile.
Means of education have always been there. Many new technologies are helpful, but there’s nothing wrong with books, pencil and paper, and a workshop full of tools, either.
The problems with American education are systemic and ideological, not technological or material. It’s good that there are new media and methods for those who want them, but expecting this to make a difference in the big picture is unrealistic.
Technology can allow parents to bypass the democrat recruitment and reward system and that's the first step toward actually educating children rather than turning them over to the State for "socialization" and possible advancement within the party. Only by destroying the current "education" machinery and starting over will we ever be able to once again provide public schools that actually educate the students entrusted to them. And only by destroying the existing recruitment and reward system the schools have become will it be possible to totally destroy the democrat fascists as a national political party.
JMHO
Regards
I worked with my kids’ private school to hook up with a Christian online high school. Now they offer K-12 instead of K-8, without hiring many more teachers or accreditation.
Families now get private Christian high school without driving 30 miles or home schooling or taking the GED, while still having in person Spanish lessons, track team, science labs and field trips.
Many students who have desire and ability find schools boring, for the program is slowed so that those who have the least desire and ability can keep up. Changing the technology will only change learning if each student can be challenged to the point of her ability and is promoted according to her mastery of the subject matter and not according to the calendar.
Public school system, as in urban areas?
Nothing will fix that if the parent, singular, does not believe in education. As long as the fallback is Uncle Sugar, why strive to excel?
Privatize education NOW!
I agree - technology won’t solve the problem. It starts too early and turns “learning” into a game while allowing “teachers” to be lazy and stupid. Leaving it out of the classroom until at least 9th grade won’t hurt anyone and will allow some real teaching to occur. We develop military courses and PowerPoint has supplanted lesson plans and actual teaching activities - leaves both the student and instructor bored spitless.
Check out http://www.khanacademy.org/
Also check out his Ted Talk @ http://www.khanacademy.org/video/salman-khan-talk-at-ted-2011—from-ted-com?playlist=Khan+Academy-Related+Talks+and+Interviews
Now there’s a blast from the past. Loved watching that show every Saturday, when I was just a little kid. “I am not a number! I am a free man!” I remember little about it now, except that at the beginning of each episode, he’d try to escape, and this bubble gum bubble would come out across the water and swallow him up. Do I remember that right?
I have two daughters, both well-educated and successful in spite of the public school system and our culture. Children, if they have “it” going in, lose “it” quickly if they do not learn a few attributes of academic success early on from parents and teachers. We are probably on the same page, but you are way too hostile (and I am being kind) to recognize that fact.
Pretty much correct.
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