Design your own ideal education system

[aneeshm]

I've noticed that when discussing education systems, the focus is always on a system which works for everyone. The discussion is shaped by the goals of a public education system whose job it is to educate every citizen.

Though this is a worthwhile discussion in itself, it doesn't account for the tremendous personal variation in how people learn. The constraints which exist at this "universal" level often leave no scope for exploring the more individualised educational preferences of the participants in the discussion.

So, being curious, I'm opening this thread so that people may post their opinions of how their ideal system would work. Now when I say ideal system, I don't mean ideal for educating everyone, or anything like that, I mean ideal for you, the poster. What system would have been your dream to be a part of? In what sort of environment would you have thrived?

Radical changes and completely new educational structures are fine by me. Even if what you say couldn't work for 99% of people, but would work only for you and people like you, I'm fine with it - in fact, that's rather what I'm curious about. Even if what you say couldn't scale up, or, alternatively, could only work in very large groups (and therefore could not scale down), I have no objection.

If scale, structure, required resources, and in general feasibility were no bar, and the sole objective was educating you in the best possible way, what would your ideal look like? This doesn't mean that you can invent a Matrix-like teaching device which imparts knowledge directly to the brain, of course, or any other outlandish idea, it simply means that you can forget your worries about implementation for the moment.


NOTE: Because I have thought rather a lot about this in the past few months, my thinking may be in a bit of a rut. I don't want anyone to be influenced by the OP itself, so I'll defer posting about my own ideas until the thread has garnered a few responses.

[Darius871]

Dismantle all middle & secondary schools (basically everything after pupils have learned to read independently) and vastly improve technology at public libraries. Children may go to them for free and read as much as they choose to read, and practice their new knowledge on automated programs, in order to eventually complete a highschool-level diploma exam that is fairly difficult but rigidly standardized. If some work hard enough to pass it way early, good for them, if some fail to study and habitually fail or never bother to take it, their mistake.

Teachers have been obsolete for some time.

[GePap]

Yeah in what universe?

Teachers (or mentors, or masters) have always been integral to education. A good teacher is far more important to a child's education development than having access to a mess like the internet, where there is plenty of raw data but little good context.

[Ming]

I agree... the teachers are the most important part of the system. Unfortunately, some of the teachers suck.

[aneeshm]

Yeah in what universe?

Teachers (or mentors, or masters) have always been integral to education. A good teacher is far more important to a child's education development than having access to a mess like the internet, where there is plenty of raw data but little good context.

Just a request to anyone reading this thread:

I know that the viewpoints of many might be controversial, but before engaging in debate or discussion with others, I request that you please give us an idea of what system you would have found most effective for your own education.

Now, Darius may probably have thrived in the system he just described - he may have the ability to "pick up" context from random pieces of information, little clues given here or there. There are people like that.

You, OTOH, may be better suited to something different. Care to share with us what that something may be?

[Darius871]

Yeah in what universe?

In the Information Age to be exact, though the same universe. That live teachers "have always been integral to education" has been more a deterministic product of historical/technological necessity than a pedagogical truism.

A good teacher is far more important to a child's education development than having access to a mess like the internet, where there is plenty of raw data but little good context.

True, but of course I never said anything about just parking a kid in front of google or wiki and saying "have at it". Certainly a standardized curriculum of not only accessible but recommended step-by-step computer lessons (and accompanying sequential textbooks) could provide proper "context" for the "raw data" the students need to know.

The only prerequisite for being sluiced through those programs would be the ability to read, for which primary school teachers would indeed be essential. Once you can read, however, the amount you can learn is merely a function of time and effort.

[BeBMan]

I'm rather suspicious by "read only" stuff. You can learn a lot when exchanging with others (be it teachers or other students), your model seems to isolate individual students.

[Ming]

Also remember that part of school is about learning the social lessons as well... a place for kids to learn how to interact with others.

[Darius871]

I'm rather suspicious by "read only" stuff. You can learn a lot when exchanging with others (be it teachers or other students), your model seems to isolate individual students.

Also remember that part of school is about learning the social lessons as well... a place for kids to learn how to interact with others.

Social interaction is what playgrounds, bikes, competitive sports teams, etc. etc. etc. are for, not to mention active encouragement by parents. Peers might help each other out understanding the material during work as well, or even organize study groups. Nobody said anything about locking each kid in a 10x10' concrete cube with a laptop for 16 hours a day.

[onodera]

Make it free all the way to doctorates, but completely optional, vertically optional, since the very moment the student/pupil can exercise his civil rights, to prevent stupid parents from keeping their children out of school. Of course, everyone should be able to continue their education if they can keep up with the tests. Schools should not be specialized, letting pupils learn a wide gamut of subjects. They shouldn't be optional horizontally. Only higher education institutions should specialize.
Teachers should be paid from the taxes their former students pay.
There should be a safeguard in this system against people who want to study for free more than work, hopping from one university to another. Endlessly climbing upwards would be prevented by stricter testing. For example, as soon as you want to hop horizontally, you should pay the cost of that new course. Your employer can pay for you, or your rich parents can, of course.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

The first thing you must have is a society that actually values (monetarily and ideologically) and respects teachers, so that the best people in that society are drawn to teaching. In Finland and Singapore, teachers tend to come from the top third of college graduates; in the US, teachers tend to come from the bottom third. Finland and Singapore have two of the best education systems in the industrialized world, the US has one of the worst. 'Nuff said.

Second, teaching up through at least 2nd or 3rd grade should be about nothing but skills -- reading, math, art, music, foreign language. Forget content; just build basic right- and left-brain aptitude. And for god's sake, forget all that self-esteem crap. Skills, skills, skills!

(True facts: (1) My daughter actually got through elementary and middle school without knowing her multiplication tables; she survived -- a bunch of 4's and 5's on AP tests, enrollment now at an elite college -- but that's ridiculous; (2) at mid-century, the average American high school grad had a functional vocabulary of ~50,000 words; today, it's ~10,000 words. No wonder my mother, who was a crap student, read and enjoyed Jane Eyre in 7th grade, while by contrast, my wife and I have both had students when we taught at university who literally couldn't understand 19th century prose.)

Third, students need to be tracked, and tracked early. The US has been developing a system which is basically "college prep for everyone," and it's been a disaster. Of course, it would help if we had an economy that could allow high school grads to build meaningful lives without college degrees.

[aneeshm]

Make it free all the way to doctorates, but completely optional, vertically optional, since the very moment the student/pupil can exercise his civil rights, to prevent stupid parents from keeping their children out of school. Of course, everyone should be able to continue their education if they can keep up with the tests. Schools should not be specialized, letting pupils learn a wide gamut of subjects. They shouldn't be optional horizontally. Only higher education institutions should specialize.
Teachers should be paid from the taxes their former students pay.
There should be a safeguard in this system against people who want to study for free more than work, hopping from one university to another. Endlessly climbing upwards would be prevented by stricter testing. For example, as soon as you want to hop horizontally, you should pay the cost of that new course. Your employer can pay for you, or your rich parents can, of course.

What you're describing seems more like a reform of the current system, and deals with current problems.

I apologise if I did not make my meaning clear in the first post. I'm looking for a first-person account of how a system custom-tailored to your individual learning style, and not constrained by implementational feasibility (excepting, of course, outlandish or fantastic ideas), would be like. In your personal (and I mean personal - don't give any consideration to others, for the moment) utopia, how would your education be structured?

[onodera]

What you're describing seems more like a reform of the current system, and deals with current problems.

I apologise if I did not make my meaning clear in the first post. I'm looking for a first-person account of how a system custom-tailored to your individual learning style, and not constrained by implementational feasibility (excepting, of course, outlandish or fantastic ideas), would be like. In your personal (and I mean personal - don't give any consideration to others, for the moment) utopia, how would your education be structured?

I apologise if I did not make my cleaning clear, but that was my personal utopia. Bar knowledge uploading (I know kung-fu!), I see no methods of education that would dramatically improve the existing system. I just want to make it more meritocratic, as this is the only important improvement I can think of.

[Elok]

I don't think there is such a thing as an ideal education system. Any system will be forced to leave some portion of the populace behind, and the larger it is the larger the portion left behind by a generalized system. A system that could account for every individual difference in learning style or ability would be too expensive. Come to think of it, though, that's probably the one economic stimulus package that would have the greatest long-term effect. Anyway, I suppose I'd favor alternatives for the pupils who don't fit the middle of the curve. But implementing such a thing would be equally problematic.

[Arrian]

I think I'd introduce tracking (gifted, normal, vocational), but I could be talked out of it. I don't know. It's easy to say the system sucks, but once you sit down and try to figure out how to fix it, you gain some appreciation for how difficult a task that is.

Garbage in, garbage out. The US system would look a lot better if the students came in caring about education, had good stable home lives with parents who took an interest (and enforced a modicum of respect for the teachers).

-Arrian