More Thoughts On Education

I spoke the other day about how this so-called emergency could change the way we educate our children.  In that post, I hinted at some of the great things that the internet provides.  Of course, the internet can provide knowledge and facts.  Knowing, for example, the density of various materials is important for calculating the forces on a retaining wall, or the outward force of water on water tank.  But the internet can provide the even more important purpose of receiving an education, learning how to learn, how to evaluate what you read, what you hear, what you see.  In other words, a proper education teaches you how to think, not what to think.

Using the current public school curriculum, students are limited in which texts they can use and in what teaching method to which they are confined.  This in turn limits them in the way they learn and think.  For example, the current curriculum requires what is known as common core mathematics.  But we have also been through various "new" math teaching systems, all of which have, to one degree or another failed to teach our children to work logically with numerical information.  But the truth is that the best way to teach children mathematics was already known centuries ago.  My math books are as useful as any modern book, and more understandable.  But in terms of philosophy, literature, history, political theory, economics, and more, the world provides a wide range of ideas that should be explored.  The current system provides one single idea in each of these areas.

Perhaps even more important, though, is that a parent can seek out the best teachers, the best texts, the best curriculum, and that these classes can be conducted on line.  Homework could be sent to the teacher through email, and receive back corrected assignments.  One would no longer be stuck with whatever teacher happened to be at your public school.  If the best teacher is across the country, that is no obstacle.

Another thing about such teaching is that classes can be customized to the child's own rate of learning.  In a classroom setting, some children learn faster than others.  The slower learners get behind, and feel hopeless and stupid.  Even slower learners, though, often do learn and eventually prove to be even more capable than those who initially take to the subject.

The fact that some teachers are demonstrably better introduces competition into the profession.  The best teachers could command more money for their superior instruction, while the bad ones would have to find more suitable work in another field.

Of course, mathematics is subject that all students must take at some level.  But it is in electives that the idea of on line learning becomes exciting.  In my school, for example, languages taught besides English were French, Spanish, and Latin.  What if you wanted to take German or Russian?  Tough luck.    But with on line learning, you have access to pretty much any language.  Now, some electives probably can not be taught on line entirely.  For example, it is possible to take music classes on line.  Indeed Music and Arts stores now teach instrumental classes online using Zoom.  However, playing with other instruments in a band requires something that so far does not exist.  But bands or orchestras for students could be established.  Similarly, student choirs could be established for vocal students

Sports is another area where we may have to change the way things have been done.  Typically, school have a mascot, under which banner each school plays the other schools in football, baseball, basketball, and sometimes track and field.  In my grand daughters case, because she pole vaults for her school, but they don't have a coach for that, she goes to a private teacher for training in pole vaulting.

But there are other alternatives.  In an article today at the American Thinker Zachery D. Rogers writes in an article entitled Kommisar Bartholet of Harvard Cast Her Jaundiced Eye on Homeschooling:

It is a common misconception that homeschoolers do not have opportunities to socialize with others. They are able to do so by participating in numerous church activities, the local 4-H or Future Business Leaders of America, and the local parks and recreation sports teams. Many homeschoolers join homeschool cooperatives for speech and debate, science and math classes, etc

Bartholet's concern with homeschooled children's exposure to the larger society is not so they may attain a familiarity with how people live on the farms of Kansas and Nebraska, the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia, or the ranches of Big Sky Country. No, she is afraid that parents want to raise their children to have "views and values that are in serious conflict with [the] culture." The views she has in question include looking to the Bible to explain the world, which she invidiously coupled in the same sentence with a disbelief in the scientific method. Perhaps she is unaware that people who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture at the same time think God created a rational universe that operates according to the laws of nature and that these laws are discoverable through man's reason (science). Faith in Scripture does not preclude the use of reason to understand the world around us. Bartholet's view of education is entirely secular and mainstream.

Please note that in comparison to a truly liberal education, the kind that our Founding Fathers enjoyed, and that even was enjoyed by public school students a generation ago.   Bartholet's view is a pinched, withered view that would indoctrinate, rather than educate children. Unfortunately, this is the view of much of the educational elite in this country. They don't want to let go of their charges for fear the little skulls full of much will discover a greater world. However, without being exposed to different ideas, children are unlikely to go looking. After all, why would you go looking for something if a person is unaware there is something to be found?

Of course, you are probably wondering how one is supposed to pay for all this pie in the sky education for our children. Sure, it sounds pretty good, but families' budgets are already stretched thin.  The first thing is that for parents that do not wish to be involved in their children' education, public schools will need to remain, if taking a decidedly lesser role.  Here is North Carolina, we spend $8.8K per student.  A significant amount of that money should be returned to parents as vouchers used for their children's' education.  After all, with more students being homeschooled, there would be less, though not a zero, need for school infrastructure, to include buildings, busses, administrators and so forth.

The Left often creates policies that backfire and create unintended consequences for society.  I suspect that the current house arrest of America is one that gives us the opportunity to take back the education of our children   That is a good thing for society.