OR: Schooling is Still Being Done on the Same Basis as 1900
Bloggers note: There doesn't seem to be an "schools" category so I choose Home and Family because it seemed closest. Sorry for any inconvenence.
The American public school system sprawls out from sea to sea with a design to educate our future citizens in the ways of our society as well as give them skills needed to be self-sufficient in the process. But the system constantly looks to the taxpayer for more and more money and resources to do so. Other possibilities exist, homeschooling and alternative private schools, but enterprise schools have brought little change to the equation of how much we spend or how we spend it. This is ironic because children and teenagers represent one of our biggest marketing pools but the technology in schools seems to treat computers as novelties, isolating them in labs to be visited like exhibits at the zoo.
How long does it take a child to learn their alphabet? 2 hours, 4 hours, 10? How about 30 five year olds in a classroom? Well, a year apparently because kindergardens take that long to do it. Why? Well, because we have a teacher, 30 kids who want to be five year olds and a problem, too many kids, too little teaching.
But wait, you say, can't a child learn on a computer? Doesn't the computer offer the opportunity for children to move at their own pace and through testing, can't we actually use teachers to help stimulate the bright child who wants to move more quickly and give extra help to the child who needs the "human touch" to succeed? Shouldn't we integrate the computer into the process so that all students can actually progress in their own timeframe and use teachers to guide and not lead the process?
No, we must remain stuck in a world where the teacher is the teacher, technology is for....smart people. Computers are in computer labs created to showcase that we don't want students, we want kids. How is this possible? Is the software to teach the alphabet unwritable, the skills to use the computer too highly advanced for the teachers? You mean there isn't money to be made on both sides of the equation (schools spend once for a program that can provide a multitude of skills, computer companies build programming that can handle as much as 90% of the basic educational needs of the students).
When I recently talked to a school board member in my local area he discussed with me how the school district is considering building a windmill in the area for electricity for the school and how it would save the district perhaps as much as $1,000,000 over 8 years. He was so enthusiastic because the installation would be provided by the state and the savings over what they were now paying were guaranteed by the company that built the windmill. I asked him then about use of computers as a cost savings possibility (the companies selling the programming would provide computers) he looked at me like I had 3 heads and was speaking a foreign language. The teachers would never go along with that he said. That was blasphemous to our school system because even if it worked, even if it were better, humans would be downgraded from their status as educators to mere providers of education.
Instead, we will build windmills to save electricity while we incur 3 to 10% increases in taxes to preserve the antiquated system of education that each year becomes more and more vulnerable to the idea that taxpayers will rebel and force change! Well, change the school board to another group of people as instilled with the antiquated system as the previous one. Education, which is the school's function, falls farther and farther behind where it should be because we don't expose children at their "schooling place" to the most dynamic teaching tool we've ever developed. We don't want to lose our incompetent approach to education, after all.
Now, I know someone will shout out that we also need to consider values and discipline and the human part of the equation and how socially children "might" be adversely effected by a system where school children predominantly learned their alphabet, math, spelling, (actually pretty much all of the basics) by computer. What would they become socially? I have confidence, though. Confidence in the kids, the ones who adapt because no one adapts to change better than kids. Kids find ways to do what kids have always done, the species of humanity will be fine and best friends (and worst enemies) will continue. The Bart Simpsons and the Newhouses will continue to provide opportunity and pressure in the classroom.
But for those opposed......is the present state of the school "the best it can get"???