No where is the industrial convention stronger than in our education system. All course material is determined by an individual’s age, ending promptly at 18. All schooling takes place between 9am-5pm, Monday-Friday, September-June. Students are judged on a linear point scale that goes from bad to good.
Technology is making this system more and more irrelevant each and everyday. No matter what convention requires, every year more educational material will be consumed by students on Wikiepdia and they will inevitably use increasingly collaborative technologies to complete their projects. These trends should be nurtured, not resisted. We must realize that individuals drop out of school because schooling in this country is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
The education system of the future is impossible to centrally plan: it will be individualized, dynamic, flexible and nonlinear. What we can do is make sure that every American who wants to invest in their own education can do so by providing Americans with vouchers redeemable at accredited institutions.
We can also make sure that every American has access to the internet and that comprehensive education programs exist online for free. Additionally, we can create a scholastic network that provides every individual access to top teachers, professors and experts through the web. Local teachers can focus on interpersonal skills and community specific learning while offering their students the highest quality virtual lecturers on more specialized topics.
Our plan is simple. We need:
- Vouchers for every American.
- Charter schools.
- Free online educational material
- A virtual lecture network.