Mal Education - System Design - Should Be VS Is

Sorry for Chinese Fire Drill. I'm making up a lot of this as I go, so there will probably more side-stepping and back tracking as we dig deeper.

<b>LB: (above) ..Second, what sort of tool or service or protocol (or whatever) might be used to make use of a kid's existing motivation - or alternately to generate motivation where none now exists?</b>

I see the use of this tool being particularly valuable for some kids, post-drop-out, because the following has happened:

<b>LB: (on page 1) Kids are natural learning machines. Public schools are (not seem to be - are) designed to stifle this as soon and as hard as possible.</b>

I may be jumping too far ahead of you here, but I'll try anyway. Let me know if this makes sense to you.

The kids who drop out will be easy to save. It's the kids that don't drop out that are really at risk.

LB

IMO, the public school system in Canada/USA does a decent job with about 70% of the students graduating.

Mal-education occurs with the 20% most intelligent and/or wealthy, and the 10% least intelligent/wealthy (as presently measured).

The drop-outs among the higher 20% will be relatively easy to reach because they drop out. They will be easy to save <b>ONLY IF</b> they can discover their motivation.

The members of the higher 20% who do not drop out will be more difficult to reach. Perhaps the opportunity to discover their most appropriate goals will be the bait that attracts them or their frustrated parents to our utopian system.

So it looks like we will need a protocol to reach out and recruit these endangered individuals.

MOOC update: CBC TV in Canada is running a series of programs on The Education Revolution.
By coincidence, I saw this one last evening: (Warning: you have to endure a short commercial before the program starts.)

Duncan McCue looks at the MOOC, otherwise known as, the Massive Open Online Course. They are changing the way teachers teach and the way students learn because they can fill a classroom with a billion brains. (About 5 minutes)

www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV+Shows/The+National/ID/2382793775/

I found it worth watching.

It looks like the higher education part of our utopian system is being built right now. So the purpose of our system is to equip students to undertake a MOOC based educational program that will enable them to qualify for work in their chosen field.

This brings us to accreditation and certification. I predict that as MOOCs proliferate, organizations wishing to hire "graduates" will have to do their own GMAT, tailored to their specific needs, as part of the hiring process.

<b>[shando] "It looks like the higher education part of our utopian system is being built right now."</b>

"Nothing new under the sun..."

I found one too. Check out the KhanAcademy.org Salman Khan is an Indian American entrepreneur with a product and service (math only, so far as I've seen, but maybe more extensive).

Teachers were afraid of it at first, because they thought it would put them out of a job. But more and more are using it now because it grabs the young mind and leads them to ask for "more".

<b>[shando] "So the purpose of our system is to equip students to undertake a MOOC based educational program that will enable them to qualify for work in their chosen field."</b>

I'm pretty sure Jim would disagree with this particular conclusion.

I'm kind of in agreement, at least for now. What else can we do, for now?

But in the long run (20, 30 years?) I hope to see us move way beyond this kind of crud. More to the kind of situation that Jim seems to be dreaming of. A situation where learning is really the only thing we do in life. And we only learn the things WE think are interesting.

LB