Mal Education - System Design - Should Be VS Is

<b>LB: Some true innovation is happening in charter schools and in home schools. But not very many people can afford to pay TWICE for the education of their kids, so things like this provide limited help.</b>

Are we talking here about the <u>cost of education</u> or how to <u>appropriately educate</u> the next generation (as a society) or our own descendents (as in MY family)?

IMHO the cost of effective, appropriate education is <u>as nothing</u> compared to the cost of mal-education.

Yes, the cost of the old, obsolete educational system must be borne by those who lack the courage to change it (us), but the operating cost (in both time and money) of a new, effective, self-managed, online, home-based educational system should be much less than what we have today. So we are not really paying TWICE.

<b>LB: And of course some of the monopoly schools are actually good. </b>

Agreed - a result of having a local system the hires teachers who CARE and provides the flexibility to let them do their job.

<b>LB: The main thing that has to happen is to get the hands of the cronies/politicians out of the parents pocket book. Just ending that ONE rule is probably enough to solve the whole problem.</b>

Agreed. How can this be done?

Another major problem is the <u>babysitter function</u> of the present system.

How does a young family afford to provide an appropriate education for their children while earning enough to pay for it? IMHO this is the REAL problem with delivery.

The cost of child-care outside the present educational system is generally <u>unaffordable</u> for most families. Most home-schooling practitioners keep the mom at home doing both - child care and educational service.

The cost is the missing earnings that the mom could generate from working.

So even if an effective, online educational system were available, most families would not be able to afford it - even if it were free!

<b>[shando] "How can this be done?"</b>

No pusssy-footing around, huh? Straight to the hard questions.

OK, lets give it a try. The title for this thread is 'System Design' afterall. Here is a possible executive level block diagram.

(This is A way to do it, not THE way to do it. I'll give it the project name of "Hyper School")

<ul>1) Create a set of web sites called
<ul>"Hyper Elementary School"</ul><ul>"Hyper Junior High School"</ul><ul>"Hyper High School"</ul><ul>"Hyper College"</ul><ul>(or maybe something else ...)</ul>
2) Create a series of short "lecture videos"[1] that teach a specific subject. Typical length will probably be around 5 or 10 minutes, but could be seconds or hours.

3) Repeat step 2 for each subject ususally taught in the BEST elemenatry schools and/or by the BEST teachers, and use them to populate the data bases of the Hyper Elemenatry School site.

4) Repeate steps 2 and 3 for the other three web sites, and populate them.

5) Devise a protocol for updating the lecutre videos as needed.

6) Devise a protocol for meshing this system with the existing monopoly school system. (The goal here is to actually teach the kids, independent of what the monopoly system goal is. Where data this system presents conflicts with data presented by the monopoly system, the kids should be made aware of this additional fact.)

<ul>This protocol needs to allow the individual kid to skip around as they desire, studying stuff they are interested in and ignoring stuff they dislike.

Part of the meshing protocol is to allow some kids to use this system as an on-line tutor so they can improve ther grades in the monopoly system (so they would study subjects in the same order as the monopoly system).

Another part of the meshing protocol allow kids to blow off the monopopoly schedule (in part or in total), study what they want, and receive a certificate from the Hyper School. (NOTE - there are some legal issues here. And this shows us one of the ways the monopoly system earns the label monopoly system.)

Another part of the meshing protocol would let Hyper School graduates use the existing "work-around" schemes (GED, home-school-testing, etc.) to convert their Hyper School Diploma into "monopoly money" (credits and diplomas and certificates recognized by monopoly schools, colleges and businesses.)</ul>
7) Devise a protocol to allow an independent instructor[2] (or group of instructors) to clone one or more of the web sites, clone one or more of the lecture video sets, modify the sites and/or the videos and or the protocols for updating and meshing, and present their version of the system (the Hyper School) to the world.

<ul>This will be a very complicated protocol. It will need to grant maximum flexibility and creative freedom to the instructor(s) while maintaining high quality and standards. It will need a method for IP rights for any innovations to be shared among the instructor/inventors and the Hyper School.</ul>
<font color="limegreen">suggested by shando, Aug 22
Devise a protocol for measuring and evaluating the performance of any given Hyper School clone.</font id="limegreen">

</ul>
LB



[1] lecture video <ul> this is a nickname I'm using for one <u>or more</u> of:<ul><li>videos</li><li>audios</li><li>images</li><li>applications</li><li>other virtual (or conceptual) resources that can be used to "teach" and to "learn"</li><li>other physical resources that can be used to "teach" and to "learn" (like field trips? or writing competitions? or community service collaborations? or technology competitions? or technology collaborations? or concerts? or recitals? or athletic competitions? and, you know, other physical world stuff ...)</li></ul></ul>
[2] instructor <ul> for the purposes of this discussion the word instructor means 'anyone that believes they can instruct someone else'. No license or certification is (or ever will be) required, but CUSTOMERS are (or rather should be if the politicians would stop breaking things) free to <u><b>not do</u></b> business with an instructor that does not have the credentials that the <u>customer</u> wants them to have.

This is one of the ways you defeat monopolies.

You know, power to the people. <u>For real</u>.

The customer, AKA the people, is in control rather than the credentialing organizations. Credentialing organizations are almost always cronies of one or more politicians.

It should dawn on you soon that an instructor can also be someone who "merely" MANAGES their clone of the Hyper School. If such a mere manager has a talented and/or creative mind, her clone of the Hyper School might perform well above the average (as measured by how his kids perform in the real world decades later). Even if she doesn't change or replace <u>any</u> of the default lecture videos.</ul>

I'm looking for comments and objections and suggestions (for changes or improvements or even complete alternatives) to this idea above. It is a very high level document, with almost all of the details left out, so I don't really want to hear that I left a screw out of the doohicky assembly. But if you need to point that out, go ahead. I have thick skin.

LB

There are some high level parts left out as well. They aren't super obvious, but for those of you who take the time to think about this project the missing parts should begin to stand out after a while.

I do want to hear about these (from your point of view). A few I left out on purpose. Most I left out because I actually didn't think of them.

I can't do this by myself, I need help.

LB

I am still thinking ...

Education is not the learning of facts, but training of the mind to think - Albert Einstein.

This is probably more relevant today than when he said it. I think when he said it, the "learning of facts" was an essential part of education.

Today the "facts" part can be replaced by "how to find factual information", which has become much easier. The "training the mind to think" part continues to be the challenge.

LB, the parts missing from your proposal would seem to be the measurement and evaluation system. You cannot have a contest without umpires - neither can you have an educational system without umpires.