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My wife and I were discussing tonight the hilarity of the Wisconsin teachers union situation, about how everyone involved (and screaming) seemingly misses the p

My wife and I were discussing tonight the hilarity of the Wisconsin teachers union situation, about how everyone involved (and screaming) seemingly misses the point. If society wants public school, that is a school that is administered and funded by the government, then by definition you are choosing to have teachers' salaries decided by politicians and bureaucrats. In order to change salaries, legislation is required. In order to enact legislation, you have to form special interest groups (in this case unions) to represent large swaths of voters, as politicians only listen to votes. Instead, consider the idea of eliminating public school. With all of the money back in the public's pockets instead of in government coffers, the public could choose to fund education in a manner that each individual sees fit. However, the common argument (and legitimate concern) is that poor people would be left out. Poor parents who don't have the money to send their kids to school, let alone GOOD school, are left raising uneducated kids who then end up poor. The idea that charity would solve this problem is not entirely unreasonable, but it seems to be a cop out. This is where I think the Khan Academy has the potential to have a major impact. With individual teachers teaching small classes, you're required to have many hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country, leading to an extremely high production cost for education. If instead you have groups like the Khan Academy producing educational materials that are easy to consume, available across a huge breadth and depth of topics and easy to distribute, the production costs for education go way down. The reason that poor people can't afford private school is because private schools are expensive. Using technology allows organizations like the Khan Academy to produce high quality education at a fraction of the cost. I'd love to see private schools set up to take advantage of this material and educate the public without government involvement and its requisite politician silliness.

jerf 16y ago
The other thing that people tend to have a hard time imagining as their independence has been slowly-but-surely squeezed out of them is that this does not have to mean that the only other schooling option is a kid alone in front of their tablet watching Khan's videos at home. Khan's videos are a tool that can be applied in many ways. Five families can band together to trade off on who is watching what on what days and share questions and answers, or a day care organization can use it to bootstrap themselves into an affordable private school. Online companies can bootstrap into having banks of problems, using that as the content. And of course it doesn't just have to be Khan doing this, anybody can. This doesn't just enable one thing, this and all the things that will happen enable an amazing multiplicity of ways to approach the problem of teaching. (And I started to say "teaching children" but even that is being too specific.) (This is just one example, there's a lot of others. Too often people think the choice is "government run service" or "people scrabbling for scraps in the street as the wolves howl in the distance", but that's not how it works. Government-run services may not always be a bad idea but they do have a strong tendency to freeze in The One True Approach for decades after they are no longer optimal. 19th-century-style schooling's days are numbered, no matter how much the unions protest in the early 21st.)
- apotheon 16y ago
  Wow, it is really refreshing to see intelligent discussion of education here after mostly seeing little more than vacuous bloviating about it on reddit.
- stralep 16y ago
  Completely agree, but I believe that change can come only by example. Majority of people plays safe. There is nothing wrong in that. If someone can show them better choice, not by talking, but by creating better private school for underprivileged kids, they will start sending their kids in such schools. When some percentage of people accepts that there are more options, I believe that more intelligent debate will emerge.
vl 16y ago
You assume that the primary role of the regular schools is to educate children, it may very well be that the primary role is to keep children busy so parents have time to work. Even if teaching as a role is replaced, there is still a cost for monitoring children while parents are working.
aik 16y ago
Being that Khan Academy isn't necessarily a complete learning experience/solution on its own makes this difficult. The most important one: Having a mentor or guide to assist when a student runs into problems or doesn't understand or is misunderstanding.
- fourspace 16y ago
  Of course not; I never meant to imply that the Khan Academy style videos would ever be a drop-in replacement for school. Rather, if the traditional role of teacher is played by someone like Sal Khan, while professionals in the schools serve as mentors or coaches, you could greatly reduce the staffing requirements (and therefore costs) of educational facilities.
  - weichi 16y ago
    Are you seriously suggesting that the average elementary or middle school could "greatly reduce" it's staffing requirements? As someone else pointed out, teachers aren't just there to teach; they also serve as childcare providers. There's probably scope for reducing staff at high schools, but don't kid yourself that technology is going to provide some magic reduction in the cost of primary education. Edited to add: I think that making high school more like college in terms of giving kids autonomy and opportunities to do real-world types of activities outside of school would be a great idea, and conceivably could both lower the cost of running schools and increase the value of schools. But this requires much more than technology to enact, there is also an huge cultural and societal component to deal with.
    - fourspace 16y ago
      You're right, and to be honest I have little knowledge of staffing requirements for an elementary school. That said, I can't imagine that transitioning from staffing teachers to staffing childcare providers would not result in fewer staff and lower costs. At the end of the day I just see things like the Khan Academy introducing a paradigm shift in education, allowing us to think about entirely new institutions for educating young children. The idea that we need to keep 19th century education styles in the 21st century is just mind boggling to me.
trafficlight 16y ago
Don't forget that the text book companies and other curriculum development companies have a of money and profit tied up in the status quo. They, too, will fight tooth and nail to prevent something like the Khan Academy's widespread use in public institutions.
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jayzee 16y ago
Interesting but what about poor people who cannot afford good quality education. A better way I think would be for people to keep paying what they do in taxes for education but then giving them vouchers for that amount that they could spend at any school. Socially fair as well as building a competitive marketplace for schooling
- fourspace 16y ago
  Did you read my post? My point is that organizations like the Khan Academy drastically reduce the cost of education while keeping quality high, perhaps even higher than what's in many school classrooms today. Doing so allows more people to afford a good education. The current public school program is essentially mandatory "education insurance". We as a society want an educated public, so we force everyone to pay for it. The problem is that it's administered by the government, so politicians and bureaucrats decide what's good for children instead of their parents. The entire situation in Wisconsin would not exist if public school didn't exist and private school was affordable. I think things like the Khan Academy help move us towards that end.
  - jayzee 16y ago
    I did read your post. And I think that the Khan academy is doing wonderful things. Both by presenting content in novel ways and also at incredibly low cost. Thats great. But you seem to be tossing the baby out with the bathwater when you suggest that we put all of the money back in the public's pockets instead of in government coffers. I don't have a problem paying to improve the average level of education. I am just against inefficiency and waste, which is why I suggested vouchers directly back to families. I guess I would get less than what I put in but thats ok with me.
    - fourspace 16y ago
      Just because you "don't have a problem paying" doesn't mean I should be forced to. Public school is not a choice; it's force. And, as we're all too familiar, it's quite often not a very good education, especially in lower income areas. I have a child and there's no way I'm sending him to government school. I want him to learn everything he can get his hands on, not just what some bureaucrat decides he should learn. I don't want his education focused on passing tests that somehow measure a school's effectiveness; I want him focused on learning. Vouchers are an admission that public school is broken and that competition is needed. The system is funded by force, not by the market. Instead, I propose that we stop trying to fix a broken system and instead replace it with one that works and isn't governed by politicians.
lotusleaf1987 16y ago
And why not sell our national parks and community parks to say Disney and Chuck E Cheese? Imagine! We could pay whenever we want to take a slide or go for a hike!

jerf 16y ago

The other thing that people tend to have a hard time imagining as their independence has been slowly-but-surely squeezed out of them is that this does not have to mean that the only other schooling option is a kid alone in front of their tablet watching Khan's videos at home. Khan's videos are a tool that can be applied in many ways. Five families can band together to trade off on who is watching what on what days and share questions and answers, or a day care organization can use it to bootstrap themselves into an affordable private school. Online companies can bootstrap into having banks of problems, using that as the content. And of course it doesn't just have to be Khan doing this, anybody can. This doesn't just enable one thing, this and all the things that will happen enable an amazing multiplicity of ways to approach the problem of teaching. (And I started to say "teaching children" but even that is being too specific.) (This is just one example, there's a lot of others. Too often people think the choice is "government run service" or "people scrabbling for scraps in the street as the wolves howl in the distance", but that's not how it works. Government-run services may not always be a bad idea but they do have a strong tendency to freeze in The One True Approach for decades after they are no longer optimal. 19th-century-style schooling's days are numbered, no matter how much the unions protest in the early 21st.)

apotheon 16y ago
Wow, it is really refreshing to see intelligent discussion of education here after mostly seeing little more than vacuous bloviating about it on reddit.
stralep 16y ago
Completely agree, but I believe that change can come only by example. Majority of people plays safe. There is nothing wrong in that. If someone can show them better choice, not by talking, but by creating better private school for underprivileged kids, they will start sending their kids in such schools. When some percentage of people accepts that there are more options, I believe that more intelligent debate will emerge.

vl 16y ago

You assume that the primary role of the regular schools is to educate children, it may very well be that the primary role is to keep children busy so parents have time to work. Even if teaching as a role is replaced, there is still a cost for monitoring children while parents are working.

aik 16y ago

Being that Khan Academy isn't necessarily a complete learning experience/solution on its own makes this difficult. The most important one: Having a mentor or guide to assist when a student runs into problems or doesn't understand or is misunderstanding.

fourspace 16y ago
Of course not; I never meant to imply that the Khan Academy style videos would ever be a drop-in replacement for school. Rather, if the traditional role of teacher is played by someone like Sal Khan, while professionals in the schools serve as mentors or coaches, you could greatly reduce the staffing requirements (and therefore costs) of educational facilities.
- weichi 16y ago
  Are you seriously suggesting that the average elementary or middle school could "greatly reduce" it's staffing requirements? As someone else pointed out, teachers aren't just there to teach; they also serve as childcare providers. There's probably scope for reducing staff at high schools, but don't kid yourself that technology is going to provide some magic reduction in the cost of primary education. Edited to add: I think that making high school more like college in terms of giving kids autonomy and opportunities to do real-world types of activities outside of school would be a great idea, and conceivably could both lower the cost of running schools and increase the value of schools. But this requires much more than technology to enact, there is also an huge cultural and societal component to deal with.
  - fourspace 16y ago
    You're right, and to be honest I have little knowledge of staffing requirements for an elementary school. That said, I can't imagine that transitioning from staffing teachers to staffing childcare providers would not result in fewer staff and lower costs. At the end of the day I just see things like the Khan Academy introducing a paradigm shift in education, allowing us to think about entirely new institutions for educating young children. The idea that we need to keep 19th century education styles in the 21st century is just mind boggling to me.

trafficlight 16y ago

Don't forget that the text book companies and other curriculum development companies have a of money and profit tied up in the status quo. They, too, will fight tooth and nail to prevent something like the Khan Academy's widespread use in public institutions.

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jayzee 16y ago

Interesting but what about poor people who cannot afford good quality education. A better way I think would be for people to keep paying what they do in taxes for education but then giving them vouchers for that amount that they could spend at any school. Socially fair as well as building a competitive marketplace for schooling

fourspace 16y ago
Did you read my post? My point is that organizations like the Khan Academy drastically reduce the cost of education while keeping quality high, perhaps even higher than what's in many school classrooms today. Doing so allows more people to afford a good education. The current public school program is essentially mandatory "education insurance". We as a society want an educated public, so we force everyone to pay for it. The problem is that it's administered by the government, so politicians and bureaucrats decide what's good for children instead of their parents. The entire situation in Wisconsin would not exist if public school didn't exist and private school was affordable. I think things like the Khan Academy help move us towards that end.
- jayzee 16y ago
  I did read your post. And I think that the Khan academy is doing wonderful things. Both by presenting content in novel ways and also at incredibly low cost. Thats great. But you seem to be tossing the baby out with the bathwater when you suggest that we put all of the money back in the public's pockets instead of in government coffers. I don't have a problem paying to improve the average level of education. I am just against inefficiency and waste, which is why I suggested vouchers directly back to families. I guess I would get less than what I put in but thats ok with me.
  - fourspace 16y ago
    Just because you "don't have a problem paying" doesn't mean I should be forced to. Public school is not a choice; it's force. And, as we're all too familiar, it's quite often not a very good education, especially in lower income areas. I have a child and there's no way I'm sending him to government school. I want him to learn everything he can get his hands on, not just what some bureaucrat decides he should learn. I don't want his education focused on passing tests that somehow measure a school's effectiveness; I want him focused on learning. Vouchers are an admission that public school is broken and that competition is needed. The system is funded by force, not by the market. Instead, I propose that we stop trying to fix a broken system and instead replace it with one that works and isn't governed by politicians.

lotusleaf1987 16y ago

And why not sell our national parks and community parks to say Disney and Chuck E Cheese? Imagine! We could pay whenever we want to take a slide or go for a hike!