Modern education in the West is mostly pomp and circumstance. Facts are extremely non-discriminatory; people can't help but learn things and absorb the informat

Modern education in the West is mostly pomp and circumstance. Facts are extremely non-discriminatory; people can't help but learn things and absorb the information that's around them. A key to successful education is putting people in environments and circumstances where the information is so well-integrated that it's difficult NOT to absorb it. That basically means giving people something interesting and valuable to do, telling them to do it, and being there to show them how. The magic really kicks in once they begin to show each other. We're focusing on the wrong things. You don't need a $50 million facility and $5 million of payroll per school to teach people stuff, and you don't have to pay everyone's medical bills. You need to have the learners do something of actual utility and value to both themselves and their immediate community so that they are properly engaged, and then you have to be there to communicate the information they need to fill the gap from "no idea" to "some idea", and the rest happens automatically. Virtually anyone who has written a program has followed this process. It's best if the teacher is directly invested in the learners, like a parent or other close family member. They'll care much more about the individual child's success. I plan to home school my kids once they hit 3rd grade or so (I think those first few years of school are important for developing the social baseline). If we actually care about educational quality, we need to get down to basics. As long as the dialogue on education is dominated by pension funds and zoning, it's a losing proposition.