I’d like to talk about schools, In particular, I wanted to share with you a completely off-the-wall thought experiment I just had.
Let me begin by saying that I detest waste. Government, the very embodiment of waste, produces inefficiency everywhere it turns. I am reminded of this every time a gigantic bus goes rumbling through Palo Alto, which in spite of being able to carry nearly 100 people, usually has 0, 1, or 2 of them (not counting the overpaid union driver, of course). God willing, one day every one of these buses will be scraped and individuals will be moved from place to place by Robo-taxi, which is vastly more logical and, I am quite confident, more economically sensible.
This leads me to my point about education. The public education system is an utter catastrophe. There are many reasons for this, although if there was one paramount reason for its problems, it would certainly be laid at the feet of this repulsive creature:
The thought experiment I have to offer is nothing more than a fantasy. I believe very strongly that change, especially change in the United States, is nearly impossible about anything meaningful. Our health system is overpriced and inefficient, and it’ll only get worse. Same for our “defense” industry. Same for education. Everything. All we can do as individuals is try to fend the best we can for ourselves and our own families.
So I’m not offering this idea as an actual idea. It is, as I’ve said twice already, just a thought experiment, and one on which I’d be interested to get your feedback. It could be, since this is our little fantasy, implemented in the instance of creating an entirely new nation in which we get to create the rules from scratch.
My idea is based on a few tenets:
- The desire to learn, and the ability to learn, is distributed on a bell curve for children
- As such, some percentage of children are simply uninterested in learning, and never will be. Conversely, another portion of children are naturally intelligent and curious.
- Educational resources are presented mal-distributed because of the wrong-headed assumption that every single child be required to have at least twelve years of education in school.
So in my fantasy nation (Slopeistan? Slopetopia?) here’s how it would go:
(a) Not a single child would be required to go to school, ever. If some children (with the permission of their parents) want to stay home and watch television all day or play video games, that's just fine. Have a nice life.
(b) The children who elect to go to school would have completely flexible access to resources based on their own needs. If some kid is exceptional in math and wants a math tutor, then, bang, they've got a math tutor. If some kid really wants to learn how to read but is struggling, that's fine, we'll get you a specialist. All the matters is desire. If the child actually desires to learn something, be it remedial or very advanced, then they could pursue that. The purpose is to provide knowledge to the child who CHOOSES it.
(c) Everything would be self-paced. In fact, perhaps the entire notion of grades one through twelve would go away. If a child is going college math at the age of 10, God bless 'em, they can continue on at whatever accelerated rate they desire. If some other kid wants to focus on how to repair computers, they are absolutely welcome to do that. There is no homework, no physical education, and no political indoctrination. It is a free-form opportunity to learn whatever you want to learn, and whatever pace you want to learn it, and if at any point during the day you've had enough, there's the door.
I remember so vividly in the 5th and 6th grades that the reading education was done by way of these big pieces of laminated cardboard with written passages on them and some kind of quiz on the back to make sure you understood it. The huge box was supposed to take the entire year, but you could go at your own pace, so I had the whole thing done in a month. I forgot what I did after that, but it was very satisfying not to be ambling along at whatever languorous pace the slowest kid in the class required. Even as a little kid, the experience of that box made a strong impression on me that lasts to this day.
Well what about all the kids who don’t want to go to school but whose parents don’t want them around the house either? Well, yeah, we have to do something with those lil’ shits, don’t we? So I would propose a safe, supervised play environment in which they can run around and be ignorant goofballs all day long. If any of them decides that screwing around is a mistake and they’d rather have an education, super, the school is right over there. No problem. But the parents brought kids into the world that they cannot, for whatever reason, look after, we’ll make sure it’s unlikely they are harmed or killed.
The key, thing, is flexibility, nothing mandatory, and on-demand resources. Perhaps the biggest tenet I have of all, not listed above, is that who we are is well-established the moment we are born. I seriously doubt anyone enters school as a witless kid and then discovers they have a passion for learning. The desire to learn is innate and present right from the get-go. I’ve never seen a laggard become a star.
Quite the fantasy, right? What are your thoughts? Not that it matters, neither my idea nor your reaction, but I think it’s useful to play with these ideas, just for the hell of it.
