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All this talk about how "we" need to redesign education hints at a major problem with our current system: it is a democratic institution and not a market. There

All this talk about how "we" need to redesign education hints at a major problem with our current system: it is a democratic institution and not a market. Therefore, "I" cannot decide on a change in the way "my" child is educated, rather "we" must decide on changes in the way "our" children are educated. Group decision making is a phenomenally slow and stupid process, filled with all sorts of interest groups with all kinds of different incentives. The slowness and stupidity of this process is why education feels like it is stuck in the past. This is also why school choice advocates are so passionate about their issue. A school choice program would allow each parent to pursue educational choices which he thinks would be best for his child. He could choose some new educational model without first asking permission from the rest of society to do so. Technology is great. It is making real change on the margin. However, it can only do so much good while children are inmates in a system designed by a public bureaucracy for 40 hours a week.

greendestiny 18y ago
I think you have a strong predilection for solutions that advocate the complete rearrangement of society - with no path to achieve it and no guarantee that it will provide any benefits until the transformation is complete. While they might provide you with a certain feeling of righteousness they seem to be useless. Children already spend a large amount of time on optional education activities that do exist in a market. If we improve these it might just provide a path to better education within the public system. I'd like to see the ways we train people in music, sports and with special needs extended to the core subjects like maths. In those cases a specialist in the learning of that subject will see the child perhaps once a week but oversee and dictate the practice that child undertakes.
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- Prrometheus 18y ago
  I have a strong predilection for systems with incentives to make a good product. This is especially true when the product is as important as education. Maybe you are right and our time would be best spent on developing ways to educate people by working around the public school system rather than trying to change it. For example, you could pay a tutor in the marketplace to provide the service you mentioned in your last paragraph instead of convincing all the voters in your school district that it is a good idea. I do think the benefit of these optional activities will be limited as long as the 30-40 prime hours spent in school each week are of such low value. And in general I am opposed to such waste. Politics does require a lot of work to make any useful changes. However, I don't think ending the public monopoly would be impossible. Voters managed to do it in Sweden and the Netherlands. My purpose was more to point out a relevant fact about our current educational system than to encourage everyone to drop their startups and start lobbying their state Congress.
  - greendestiny 18y ago
    My point is that many advances can be had without getting rid of public education, those advances are not of only marginal utility and they do not compete with changing public education. You frame everything in terms of libertarianism unnecessarily and dismissing positives because they don't advance your ideology seems unwise.
    - Prrometheus 18y ago
      I think we both have valid points. If the internet were as developed when I was in school as it is today, I would have still been bored in school but I would have learned a lot more after I got home from school. On net, I probably would have been better educated. We CAN still improve education while the 30-40 hours spent at school each week are a complete write-off. I still think we would have a better world if that were not the case.
      - greendestiny 18y ago
        I agree, especially since I support voucher systems. In truth though, I think technological and other improvements in education will lead to the education freedom we both want, rather than the other way round. Innovations in learning could render the whole public education system outdated, whereas at the moment alternatives don't impress me.
DaniFong 18y ago
There's also just homeschooling, or dropping out.

greendestiny 18y ago

I think you have a strong predilection for solutions that advocate the complete rearrangement of society - with no path to achieve it and no guarantee that it will provide any benefits until the transformation is complete. While they might provide you with a certain feeling of righteousness they seem to be useless. Children already spend a large amount of time on optional education activities that do exist in a market. If we improve these it might just provide a path to better education within the public system. I'd like to see the ways we train people in music, sports and with special needs extended to the core subjects like maths. In those cases a specialist in the learning of that subject will see the child perhaps once a week but oversee and dictate the practice that child undertakes.

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Prrometheus 18y ago
I have a strong predilection for systems with incentives to make a good product. This is especially true when the product is as important as education. Maybe you are right and our time would be best spent on developing ways to educate people by working around the public school system rather than trying to change it. For example, you could pay a tutor in the marketplace to provide the service you mentioned in your last paragraph instead of convincing all the voters in your school district that it is a good idea. I do think the benefit of these optional activities will be limited as long as the 30-40 prime hours spent in school each week are of such low value. And in general I am opposed to such waste. Politics does require a lot of work to make any useful changes. However, I don't think ending the public monopoly would be impossible. Voters managed to do it in Sweden and the Netherlands. My purpose was more to point out a relevant fact about our current educational system than to encourage everyone to drop their startups and start lobbying their state Congress.
- greendestiny 18y ago
  My point is that many advances can be had without getting rid of public education, those advances are not of only marginal utility and they do not compete with changing public education. You frame everything in terms of libertarianism unnecessarily and dismissing positives because they don't advance your ideology seems unwise.
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    I think we both have valid points. If the internet were as developed when I was in school as it is today, I would have still been bored in school but I would have learned a lot more after I got home from school. On net, I probably would have been better educated. We CAN still improve education while the 30-40 hours spent at school each week are a complete write-off. I still think we would have a better world if that were not the case.
    - greendestiny 18y ago
      I agree, especially since I support voucher systems. In truth though, I think technological and other improvements in education will lead to the education freedom we both want, rather than the other way round. Innovations in learning could render the whole public education system outdated, whereas at the moment alternatives don't impress me.

DaniFong 18y ago

There's also just homeschooling, or dropping out.