The classroom should be inverted. Each kid should get an ipad or some other tablet, with lessons delivered at home from a marketplace of "best courses" that the schools purchase. Every school day the school could have quizzes to tedt whether the student learned the previous day. If they missed some topics or nuances, they'd get it fixed later that day in smaller classes with more individual attention. If they got everything they can just go home and enjoy the day.
The motivation for kids to learn would be that they won't have to be stuck in school all day (and be accused of having ADD) and they won't miss out playing basketball wrh their friends if they learn everything the night before. It also makes them practice autonomy, self-direction and time management, and lessons by a really good teacher can be delivered to hundreds of thousands of kids instead of 30 -- with multimedia. In addition, kids would be able to paude it, grab lunch with friends, study with friends, etc. And yet they'd still practice being accountable but on a day-by-day basis so the price of "failure" is low.
School should be for social collaboration, remedial help, and practicing. That's where the tutors should be, not at home. Home should be a place of comfort and learning. The internet contains so much information, and by integrating lessons with tablet computers, kids get to develop modern habits of researching stuff online. They might even learn to manage the ADD that comes with being on a million sites at once. If they get restless they can go play basketball or explore and do something physical outside.
Such a school will not happen, sadly, because the goal of schools is to act as a daycare center to keep kids occupied most of the day -- while both parents work. This is what "a good economy" looks like?
This is the kind of school I'd like to send my kids to. Sadly the closest approximation right now is homescholing.
"a marketplace of "best courses" that the schools purchase"
The last thing we need is more attempts to shoehorn market-based approaches to education into our schools. Ignoring the matter of corruption among the school boards that would choose such courses (take a look at how textbooks are purchased for comparison) and the matter of politcally motivated interests that would undermine whatever market you manage to set up, we do not need the sort of close-to-the-margins, race-to-the-bottom, divide-and-conquer-the-customers approach that markets produce in other fields. Markets produce the kind of results that evolution produces -- sometimes beautiful things, sometimes disgusting things.
Higher education has already been undermined by market-based approaches. By focusing on what students are willing to buy, universities have lost sight of their academic mission. You see it in CS departments, where tough courses are watered down, where theoretical topics are pushed aside to make room for vocational training. You see it in humanities departments, assuming you can even locate them. You see it in the money spent trying to make schools look like suburban malls during a time when library hours are being curtailed to "save money."
I would also be wary of creating a monoculture, where the most popular curricula become universal and everyone comes out of school with the exact same way of thinking about the world. There is something to be said for encouraging some amount of diversity in our education system -- which is what happens when teachers develop their own curricula.
What's better, having courses delivered at home which are specifically created because of an incentive (money, wide distribution, etc.) with great production values, or having a huge proportion of the students be exposed to subpar courses delivered en masse in a classroom where everyone takes the same notes, and if they go to the bathroom or skip a class they miss something?
If there's a particular math lesson that was specially designed to teach kids in an awesome way, e.g. by an expert in teaching micro-steps one by one (and possibly be tailored to each kid through interactive features) ... why shouldn't more kids have it? Of course you should videotape it, and distribute it to as many kids as possible. And all this is possible, far more cheaply than paying an army of math teachers -- some worse than others -- to deliver "lectures" to kids sitting still 8 hours a day in class.
The motivation for kids to learn would be that they won't have to be stuck in school all day (and be accused of having ADD) and they won't miss out playing basketball wrh their friends if they learn everything the night before. It also makes them practice autonomy, self-direction and time management, and lessons by a really good teacher can be delivered to hundreds of thousands of kids instead of 30 -- with multimedia. In addition, kids would be able to paude it, grab lunch with friends, study with friends, etc. And yet they'd still practice being accountable but on a day-by-day basis so the price of "failure" is low.
School should be for social collaboration, remedial help, and practicing. That's where the tutors should be, not at home. Home should be a place of comfort and learning. The internet contains so much information, and by integrating lessons with tablet computers, kids get to develop modern habits of researching stuff online. They might even learn to manage the ADD that comes with being on a million sites at once. If they get restless they can go play basketball or explore and do something physical outside.
Such a school will not happen, sadly, because the goal of schools is to act as a daycare center to keep kids occupied most of the day -- while both parents work. This is what "a good economy" looks like?
This is the kind of school I'd like to send my kids to. Sadly the closest approximation right now is homescholing.