Why We Need School
Posted 5:23 AM

Anyone who plans on sending a child to school or who is engaged in the process of schooling a child should read Ivan Illich's essay Deschooling Society. Of course, only the well-educated will read this essay and will agree with many or most of its arguments. What's more, they will vaccinate their children from the detrimental effects of schooling before sending them by teaching them to respect their own opinions over that of school authority, etc. It is highly unlikely that the people who would benefit the most from reading this essay will be presented with its text.

Labels: education

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Simple Way to Improve the Education System
Posted 10:59 PM

I thought of a way to improve, perhaps greatly, all of the schools in this country with a single action by the Federal government.

It would require approximately $10 million dollars to administrate, a cost of less than $0.50 per student, and it would be a one-time action, or perhaps repeated every 10-20 years. The effects would be an immediate and very long lasting improvement in test scores, a reduction in school violence, an improvement in parent-teacher relationships, and a reduction in overall expenses on schooling, which will more than pay for the cost of the action.

The plan has some hurdles that would difficult to overcome:

1. the entire action would have to be a secret, known only to a few people and of course to a team of acknowledged experts in education, who would be sworn to secrecy.
   
   
2. it would also require unwavering participation of the U.S. Dept of Education. It cannot be done on a trial basis with a smaller group.
   
   
3. it will be very controversial, involving political risk
   

Fortunately, I think it would be trivial to convince top sociologists and educators of the efficacy, but I think the hardest part to overcome is the political risk.

What I'm wondering, hearing about this can you *guess* what it is that I'm planning, because if you *can* than it would make the plan unworkable, since if it's easy to guess, it implicitly violates provision 1. I'll tell you if you're right.

Labels: education

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