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How Can Tech Help Fight Education Costs?
http101 asks: "With the ever-rising costs of fuel, we seem to forget those that are truly having problems affording it. No, not the homeless, but our own kids. 'Kids,' you ask? Yes, because being driven to school on the 'Yellow Dog' or the 'Edu-Express' better known as a school bus, is costing your state more money than ever before. In my neighborhood, we have a plethora of home connected by fiber and at least high-speed internet. So my question is, how can technology be better-implemented to ensure a student's studies and also lower the costs of fuel for the districts?"
I've noticed that children who are homeschooled have better social skills when it comes to dealing with adults. Usually when I visit the home of a family who homeschools the kids will actually enter into conversation with visiting adults. Kids who aren't homeschooled generally shy away from interacting with adults. Not a huge sample, but very noticable.
Also: often homeschoolers will do classes together with other homeschoolers for subjects like art and music - say you don't know anything about music, but another homeschooling parent you know is a musician. You make an arrangement to take your kids to the mucician's place for music classes and they bring their kids to your place for Ruby Programming classes. These types of arrangements are fairly common among homeschoolers thus negating the 'lack of socialization' arguments.
And the kids still don't learn a damn thing. The quality of education in this country is plummeting... rapidly. All they are doing is babysitting until they're old enough to take their rightful place at Wal-Mart or McDonald's.
You get what you pay for. Look at the starting salary for teachers in many states...considering it requires, at minimum, a 4-year degree, are you surprised that Education programs at universities aren't attracting the best and the brightest? Add to that the sheer number of teachers we need, and you end up with large numbers of poor-quality teachers.
Not all teachers are bad, of course...my wife is a teacher, and I'd like to think she's one of the better ones. But I met some of her classmates, and saw her curriculum. I wouldn't trust half the kids in the average university's Education department to watch my house over the weekend, let alone trust them with my kids.
Of course, if teaching paid more, it would attract more qualified people, and in turn Education programs would become more competitive, and quality would increase. If lawyers made what teachers made, do you think that law school would be hard to get into? Would it be very demanding? A large number of graduates from teaching programs across the country are just one notch above those that end up at McDonald's. Some aren't even THAT intelligent or qualified*. So is it any wonder that that is what our schools are preparing kids for?
Again, you get what you pay for. In the US, it seems most people are willing to pay just enough to give them a place to send their kids while they go to work, and if they're lucky teach them to read at a decent level.
Of course, to an extent, that is all many people in the US CAN afford. Which is why school funding is always such an issue. I've seen the difference between schools in a fairly wealthy suburban area and a decidedly poor urban area. It isn't pretty.
* - The average teacher is, of course, much better qualified to teach than the average employee at McDonald's. However, if you were to take many employees of Mickey-D's, pay for them to go through college, I think you'd find that many of them would be as qualified, if not more, to teach as many teachers. Teachers are often smarter than fry cooks because of education, not necessarily intelligence.