5 ms·

This is encouraging. I strongly believe that public schools at all levels should (as in, morally ought to) use freely available coursework. Not only does it rem

This is encouraging. I strongly believe that public schools at all levels should (as in, morally ought to) use freely available coursework. Not only does it remove one more way in which kids are sorted by economic class, but it also teaches them something about the "system" in a meta way that could be as useful as any other particular subject, in itself. But I can see the major roadblock to this, which is just that it is damned hard to create a curriculum in any subject that will meet all internal and state requirements.

snarf21 9y ago
I think that is actually the answer. If you look at the cost to pay some huge companies to create a curriculum and how much money all the publishers and their sales people make, it seems pretty clear why it is so expensive. Why not just have the Department of Education of each state create a curriculum that is free for all schools in the state to use? All books would be sold at cost to schools in that state (plus the state could make them digital). Each school would be allowed to buy alternate books and do their own curriculum but at their own costs. School boards will take this easy road to cost savings. There is also no reason it can't be done at the federal level too and states can pick and choose which parts they want of the federal curriculum to save costs. The problem with universities is that the $50K price tag means the costs of books isn't that relevant overall. Additionally, lots of professors use books they wrote because it is about publishing not teaching. Universities want to point to all of their faculty who are "known" and "published" so they are not incentivized to cut this cost. Also, they want to be different and unique to justify their fees. The only schools who can afford to give away curriculum are the Ivy Leagues that have so much endowments they don't even need the money. Plus it helps their reputation for the (mostly) online schools that use their classes.
- zekevermillion 9y ago
  Yes, two different scenarios state primary/secondary, and university. Regarding state universities, while true many subsist on tuition there are some notable exceptions -- for example, the UT system has one of the largest endowments of any university (public or private). I would argue however, that it's the small and modestly endowed schools that can take the lead here. If one doesn't care too much about cracking the elite rankings of the Ivies etc, then it's not so much publish or perish. The schools can afford to hire teachers as well as more commercially successful researches who attract grant money. For example, I took freshman calculus at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY. The professors at the time primarily used a weekly photocopied handout to teach calculus, and it worked quite well. I later attended Columbia ($$$) which had some great researches but did a terrible job teaching calculus (b/c the teacher was not interested in teaching) and used a shiny textbook plus a half-assed "lab" that mostly involved fixing typos in Matlab programs under severe time pressure.
  - snarf21 9y ago
    I had a similar experience. I had an ex-MIT professor at a branch campus of a state school and other faculty with 10 year old handouts on Ada. One other problem we have here is that there is sooooo many more people who want to be faculty than positions that they can get Ivy grads to teach freshman comp at state schools. Makes me sad... We need some kind of schools that care about learning and not maximizing cash. We also need a lot more trade schools and more apprentice style learning.

snarf21 9y ago

I think that is actually the answer. If you look at the cost to pay some huge companies to create a curriculum and how much money all the publishers and their sales people make, it seems pretty clear why it is so expensive. Why not just have the Department of Education of each state create a curriculum that is free for all schools in the state to use? All books would be sold at cost to schools in that state (plus the state could make them digital). Each school would be allowed to buy alternate books and do their own curriculum but at their own costs. School boards will take this easy road to cost savings. There is also no reason it can't be done at the federal level too and states can pick and choose which parts they want of the federal curriculum to save costs. The problem with universities is that the $50K price tag means the costs of books isn't that relevant overall. Additionally, lots of professors use books they wrote because it is about publishing not teaching. Universities want to point to all of their faculty who are "known" and "published" so they are not incentivized to cut this cost. Also, they want to be different and unique to justify their fees. The only schools who can afford to give away curriculum are the Ivy Leagues that have so much endowments they don't even need the money. Plus it helps their reputation for the (mostly) online schools that use their classes.

zekevermillion 9y ago
Yes, two different scenarios state primary/secondary, and university. Regarding state universities, while true many subsist on tuition there are some notable exceptions -- for example, the UT system has one of the largest endowments of any university (public or private). I would argue however, that it's the small and modestly endowed schools that can take the lead here. If one doesn't care too much about cracking the elite rankings of the Ivies etc, then it's not so much publish or perish. The schools can afford to hire teachers as well as more commercially successful researches who attract grant money. For example, I took freshman calculus at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY. The professors at the time primarily used a weekly photocopied handout to teach calculus, and it worked quite well. I later attended Columbia ($$$) which had some great researches but did a terrible job teaching calculus (b/c the teacher was not interested in teaching) and used a shiny textbook plus a half-assed "lab" that mostly involved fixing typos in Matlab programs under severe time pressure.
- snarf21 9y ago
  I had a similar experience. I had an ex-MIT professor at a branch campus of a state school and other faculty with 10 year old handouts on Ada. One other problem we have here is that there is sooooo many more people who want to be faculty than positions that they can get Ivy grads to teach freshman comp at state schools. Makes me sad... We need some kind of schools that care about learning and not maximizing cash. We also need a lot more trade schools and more apprentice style learning.