Posted on 03/23/2008 6:51:28 AM PDT by FreedomPoster
I agree. Much of the information could be put on-line. Testing could be through Sylvan Centers, and the students could meet at regular intervals for intensive lab sessions.
The clinical rotations would need to be on-site.
There is NO, NO, NO, reason a medical degree should cost a quarter of a million dollars or more!
The last time I checked an on-line law degree through Kaplan was about $25,000. Unfortunately, I believe the graduates are only allowed to take the bar exam in California.
But,,,licensing restrictions on the professions will erode. What is needed is an ISO to certify the student's knowledge, (as the author suggests) NOT an professional organization that certifing the schools.
The reality is that you can have the biggest, most powerful search engine in the world and it doesn't mean a thing if you are searching for information about Brittany Spears. Being able to search is founded on a knowledge base that tells you that you need to search, that a search of a particular sort may be useful, and the whether the result are meaningful.I agree with your post with a qualification: I'm not sure if you and I would agree on the definition of a "classical education".So instead of dumping all that silly "knowledge" stuff, the internet makes it MUCH more important. Ironically, the best education right now is a classical education. Very broad and designed to instill context. The internet is meaningless without that info being put in context.
I'm certain that we would both agree that it includes a very strong emphasis on learning how to read and understand books, as opposed to websites, but I wonder if you would agree with me that a truly well-rounded "classical" education will spend as much time on science and math as on philosophy, history and literature.
I would even go so far as to teach the little tykes organic chemistry, when they're still young enough to find it fun and puzzling.
Of course, nothing interesting is going to be learned in a public school. Some private schools are probably ok. A homeschooling environment is probably the best.
Public schools exist for the purpose of disseminating public propaganda, keeping public trough-feeders well-paid, and promoting the only social goal left in America: Diversity Uber Alles.
A CD/DVD format would be a lot less costly (and profitable).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In my profession, that has been ( and is) being tried. Often the students print the material onto paper, because reading from a computer is more tiring, and jotting notes in the margins is not possible. Also, it is not possible to use a computer while standing in a subway with one hand on the overhead strap. (In professional school every minute is needed for study, even while standing in a subway train.)
The goals of government schools are:You're right about #1, if that includes getting as many leftist dunderheads on the payroll as possible and making sure they get as much cash and benefits as can be squeezed out of the beleaguered taxpayers.
1. Perpetuation of the government school system.
2. Indoctrination of teacher union dogma.
3. [irrelevant - everything else is subordinate to
1&2]
Your #2 I have a problem with. It's not the teacher unions who set the dogma. They are just willing and ecstatic robot warriors advancing the dogma handed down to them by the leftist professorial/media elite who have determined that socialism, diversity and appeasement are the only moral values in America.
Homeschooling is the best and most natural way to raise up a child. Thoughtful, intelligent, and caring parents see the evidence of the indisputable superiority of homeschooling and are choosing it for their children. This is why homeschooling continues its rapid growth.
Please read my tag line. Homeschooling is a good idea and is in the process of winning!
the new game- “Grades 1- 16”I love it! Learn calculus... advance to the next level! Great idea.
I admitted that government education was an abject failure 19 years ago when I first started homeschooling my 5 year old son.
The entire system of government schooling needs to be scrapped.
Hopefully it will collapse like the Berlin Wall! It is cruel to warehouse children (who have committed no crime)in prison-like buildings and treat them WORSE ( in many respects) than real prisoners in real prisons. Real prisoners, at minimum, are not subjected to non-stop proselytizing in the government religion of god-less, secluar humanist Marxism!
And of course searching has always been an important skill. Going to the library, talking to the prof at the local university, calling your friend's friend who's an expert in some subject -- just like internet searching, these require you to have a sense of what you need to know and how to ask the right questions. It seems to me that using the internet is kind of like talking on the telephone. It's not so much a new trick -- since talking or searching are not new -- as much as the old trick with a lot less leg work.
Tell your kids to look at Amazon and eBay for used textbooks. My daughter even bought a used calculus book from Australia when none could be found in the US.
Well, yes. That is a classical education. There's a balance between knowing enough stuff and knowing how to learn more (libraries, internet, books). You may not be a statistician, but without the background knowledge of what statistics does, you don't know to frame something as a statistics problem and look it up.
I agree. The author is right that technology is undermining the education establishment. But wrong that the problem is the educrats are stuck trying to convey "knowledge" rather than "search skills." The biggest problem is, the educrats want to give up on the notion that a broad knowledge base is essential. That's hard. Letting the kids goof off on the internet pretending that searching is the most important skill is easy.
It's as if, when I was in school, the entire curriculum had been about the dewey decimal system. So I'd be great at finding books. But i would have no idea what books to look for or what they meant. So, as a kid, I would spend my time efficiently finding cowboy novels and science fiction favorites. Not learning how to factor a polynomial. One is easy and fun. The other is hard. Education is there to force the little buggers to learn the hard stuff. They'll learn the easy, fun stuff on their own.
But the author buys into the educrats idea that somehow, kids don't need knowledge anymore. IMHO, the "searchability" revolution in education is just another excuse not to teach the hard stuff.
The greatest sin perpetuated by an educational system is to waste a student’s time.
That is, “Either teach or get off the pot.”
Before, when students were confronted by torpor and inefficiency in the educational system, caused by innumerable and almost insurmountable reasons, they had to grin and bear it, precisely because there was no other *way* of getting information.
That has changed. Now, with technology, information exchange is accelerated to an incredible degree. Instead of a student having to go to a library, locate a book, and locate a *single* fact within that book, in the same amount of time they can discover dozens or even hundreds of facts on the Internet.
But raw data and memorization are just the lowest level of education. The next *technological* evolution up the pyramid of education is ordering and correlating information. From there, analyzing and discrimination of information, interpolation and extrapolation, criticism and argument, and finally synthesis of new concepts derived from existing knowledge.
But how to achieve this?
There are some commonalities with modern education, obviously. At first, in early education, students must learn the abstracts of knowledge, such as the alphabet and grammar and arithmetic. But from there, as is already somewhat the case, they must learn to interface with the technology they will need.
It used to be that typing was learned in high school. Now it is taught, it *must* be taught, in kindergarten or 1st grade, for the student to be at a contemporary level of achievement with their peers, and to be able to progress further.
In the future, it will be just as essential to teach one or more of the several known techniques of memorization. This will *have* to be done for the student to be able to digest the vast amount of data they will need for their advancement.
But it goes beyond that. Students must not only be taught to memorize for recall, but to memorize in a *structured* way. The way information is taught today is an almost random jumble in a vaguely linear manner. This is too consumptive of intellectual resources. Instead it must, from the very start, be replaced with a minimum of a “two dimensional” ordering of information.
An easy way to conceptualize this is with a multiplication table. If students are taught multiplication in a random, but vaguely linear way, such as “six times seven is forty-two, and eight times five is forty”, students will have to use a huge amount of mental resources to consume and integrate that knowledge.
They will be forced to count with their fingers, or use individual mnemonic devices to remember particular things. And even then, the knowledge will be so linear, that while they might know that “eight times five is forty”, they will be puzzled if asked “What is five times eight?”
However, if their knowledge has even a two-dimensional organization, they not only understand the *progression* of the “eight multipliers”, but the *progression* of the “five multipliers”. To themselves, they will say either “8-16-24-32-40” *or* “5-10-15-20-25-30-35-40”, and get the correct answer. “Five times eight is forty. Eight times five is forty.”
Importantly, just a two-dimensional ordering system not only gives them the right answer, faster, but it also gives them a *check* on their answer. Verification that they are correct.
Now imagine the power if children are taught a THREE-dimensional organization of knowledge?
Taught right on top of memorization techniques, students at very low levels will have at their command knowledge and confidence in their knowledge.
Beyond this, the entire curriculum of even elementary school or its equivalent changes, because students will be *able* to absorb so much more information, order it, and use it *faster*. Subjects long ignored will re-emerge precisely because there is the *time* for them to be taught.
But even that can be multi-dimensional. For example, say a student is studying biology on their personal computer multimedia system. They are watching and listening to a recorded but interactive multimedia presentation, like a documentary, that is regarded as top notch. His teacher downloaded it from a national educational intranet, after selecting it from perhaps a dozen equivalent program blocks on the same subject. Each have a standard and similar organization, but very different content.
The student is both continually interacting with the program by typing in words, or speaking them into a microphone where they are interpreted. They are asking and answering questions, reviewing and being evaluated at the same time.
But they are also learning the lesson in both English and German *at the same time*. So they are learning *both* biology and the German language. Their typing is evaluated for accuracy and spelling and grammar. Three subjects. They might have to write an essay on what they are learning just after they have learned it. Etc.
In essence, the student is taking several classes at the same time! No human teacher can match that.
But the very best part is that his computer that is running the educational block is attuned to him as an individual. It tracks their personal efficiency, giving extra emphasis on slow areas, but also permitting digressions to more advanced information when the student is very interested and “on a roll”.
Optimally, if a student is fascinated by a subject, they might be able to track it up to college level, if they are interested and can keep up. This lets the brilliant student, even momentary brilliance, take the student wherever they can go, totally apart from what other students are doing.
Conversely, all students will eventually have a slump in one or more subjects. Because theirs is an individually tailored progression, the computer can take its time until it is certain that the student knows the subject, before advancing, and without holding everybody else back. Thus there are no huge “missing pieces” to their learning that will haunt them.
Student time is never wasted, in fact, it is optimized.
And be assured, this will not mean less need for teachers, but far more challenge for them, as they spend far less time on disjointed, vaguely linear memorization, and far more on the higher levels of learning.
I agree, and this is why this article, while possible and maybe even eventual, is still not imminent, because its not a technological problem. The government schools exists to build support for its own policies, it will fight any breakup of its near monopoly. The last thing it wants is ideological multiculturalism in education.
However, there is one more trend that is coming quickly which will help, the coming fiscal crisis and bankruptcy of many local governments. They will need to sell assets to survive, and schools may finally be one of them.
ping
Exactly.
IMHO, the "searchability" revolution in education is just another excuse not to teach the hard stuff.
That sounds about right to me. My dad is a teacher and I think he'd agree too. He's especially concerned that corners are being cut in how math is being taught these days, and his school is a pretty good school. Math is the ultimate "hard stuff" subject. There's just no escaping the fact that it's hard - and probably impervious to the notion of searching. If you say to math that you are a good searcher, math will not be impressed.
Even if you have very high self-esteem?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.