X-Prize Founder Wants Ideas For Fixing Education

An anonymous reader writes "X-Prize Founder Peter Diamandis, speaking at SXSW, says he wants to set up a $10 million prize for fixing education — but he needs help figuring out how to target the problem. From the article: 'He said he has considered multiple directions that an Education X Prize could take, such as coming up with better ways to crowd-source education, or rewarding the creation of "powerful, addictive game" that promotes education. But he isn’t sure which way to go. There’s no shortage of high-tech visionaries and tycoons these days, running around with ideas about how to fix education. Many of them are finding, though, that technology alone isn’t enough. Exciting ideas founder quickly if they don’t sustain motivation in students who perform at widely different levels. Other challenges include the need to engage effectively with school districts, teachers and parents.'"

Comments

Unions

[Nerdfest]

Personally, I think parents and teachers unions are the biggest parts of the problems, or are certainly high on the list.

Re:Unions

[Anonymous Coward]

That's definitely a large part of the problem. I work in public education and on a daily basis see parents who have no interest in their children's education.
Problem is, these parents generally didn't care while they were in school so the "school is boring, there's no need to learn" nonsense is generational, largely caused by the teacher problem.

You have teachers who get tenure, have a job protected by the union and no longer care to even try to do it well.
Ditch the teacher unions and more proactively evaluate teachers based on technology skills, classroom leadership and student involvement in the learning process.
The good teachers aren't always the ones whose students have the best grades( standardized testing I'm pointing at you), they're the ones where the students WANT to be involved in the class process. You teach someone to have a thirst for knowledge you have a productive member of society, you teach them to regurgitate textbooks and they can't think on their own without direct instruction.

Re:Unions

[Nerdfest]

I think a voucher system would go a long way. Teachers unions hate it though.

Re:Unions

[rwa2]

Meh, can't really see much that AI-teacherbots could do that TV-instruction already failed to do in the 70s. Other than just divert resources away from more traditional teaching resources.

Teaching isn't a respected profession in the US (read about how they're treated in Finland). The few teachers that do stick it out pretty much do so on principle until their morale is beat down by administration and lack of resources. They face strict quotas on pencils and copier paper, and annual fads where everyone and their monkeys drop by to tell them exactly how to do their jobs down to where they write the objective on the board and the minimum number of flyers to have on their bulletin boards. The good teachers I've met are very internally motivated, and usually have very supportive spouses with "real" jobs (incidentally, they also tend to be smokin' hot). The rest eventually burn out and sit back and decide to just give as good as they get, which isn't terribly much. Trying something different is typically punished or at the very least not rewarded.

Every once in a while (actually, all the time, it seems) someone comes around and wants to throw a magic bullet at the problem... "oh, if only every child had textbooks, let's throw all this money at textbook publishers!", "oh, if only every child had TV instruction, let's put VCRs in every classroom!", "oh, let's put computers in every classroom, but not really provide a way to use them productively", "oh, if only no child was left behind, let's make them take a month's worth of standardized testing and threaten to fire everyone if their scores don't show Acceptable Yearly Progress!", "oh, let's buy everyone iPads!" (OK, my teacher wife actually sort of liked the last one, because they actually provided decent training and she can use it as a ridiculously expensive workaround for not having a decent pen & paper quota)

But really, the things that have the greatest impact on the students are the things that are closest to the students: their parents, their teachers, their classmates. Invest in improving those first.

Sure technology could help improve productivity, if they have a decent IT department -- just like any other profession. Technology might enhance, but is not going to effectively replace teaching... it happens to be a very human, social interaction. Sheesh, even the Diamond Age featured a human prostitute/teacher ractive for interaction.

Disclaimer: I support public education; I married a teacher

Re:Unions

[datavirtue]

Trying something different is typically punished or at the very least not rewarded.

You hit the nail on the head. There is a lot of teacher bashing but no one really realizes that they do not have the resources or the power to do what needs done. I'm guessing a lot of parents treat the teachers like a commodity they paid for. Regardless of who has the problem (cough...your kid sucks because of your parenting) they blame the teacher because they are not satisfied customers. As for the administration, they only care about keeping people off their back. New ideas and innovation actually turn them off.

Re:Unions

[Totenglocke]

Teachers unions hate vouchers because vouchers will harm most children.

Bull. Vouchers would allow kids who want to learn but are stuck in a shitty school to move to another school without having to pay all of the extra money for a private school. The teachers unions hate vouchers because it would shift most students into private schools which are non-union and would destroy the union's power.

Re:Unions

[AK Marc]

Bull. Vouchers would allow kids who want to learn but are stuck in a shitty school to move to another school without having to pay all of the extra money for a private school.

Bull. Private schools are very selective. They'll reject anyone who wouldn't otherwise have gone there. It's welfare for the rich, nothing else.

Easy to say. Hard to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. Fuck the union. Make it a system where you can get fired if you don't do well. Base pay on performance, not seniority.

What's that you say? Performance evals might not be fair? Welcome to every other business in America. Deal with it. If the manager doesn't give you good evals, find another company (district). If you move from district to district and keep getting crappy evals, guess what? The problem is YOU.

Likewise, if parents hate your school so much that they are willing to drive 2 hours into another district, guess what? Your school should go "bankrupt", just like companies do. Not your fault you say? Tough place to run a school? Good. Find another district.

So the district has no school, or the school always sucks? Guess what. It's not a problem with the administrators OR the teachers. It's your city. It sucks. There could be any number of reasons your fine city has turned into Crackville. Fix that, and the schools will fix themselves.

These are the problems with schools. Everybody knows what has to be done to fix them. The hard part is forcing them to do it.

Why innovate

[obi1one]

Why are we trying to innovate to fix education? A quick search indicates we are around 15th in reading and science, worse in math. Doesn't that mean there are 15 countries doing it better which we could try to emulate them rather than spending money trying to create something cool and new?

Looking in the wrong places

[luis_a_espinal]

From the article: 'He said he has considered multiple directions that an Education X Prize could take, such as coming up with better ways to crowd-source education, or rewarding the creation of "powerful, addictive game" that promotes education.

This isn't a game or something that is fixed by simply throwing money at. It is a social problem first and foremost. The culture of this country does not appreciate education, and the idea of studying as hard as South Koreans or Japanese is seen as if it were child abuse or something like that.

But he isn’t sure which way to go.

Look at Japan, South Korean, Germany, Finland. Copy, adapt, rinse and repeat. Moreover, for changes specific to our country, I would suggest the following:

1. Get rid of summer school (or provide vouchers for low-income people to put their kids in summer camps.)

2. From that above, increase the number of school hours during the year, like in Japan or Germany, or like in almost any other country, developed and otherwise.

3. Teach kids to stand up when a teacher enters and leaves a room, and teach them, no, put them to clean their own class rooms as part of their daily school day.

4. Give teachers better pay and better training.

5. Don't pass kids to the next grade unless they have actually demonstrated they are capable off. Enough of giving HS degrees to kids who LITERALLY cannot read or add fractions.

6. De-emphasize 4-year college degrees. Instead, emphasize vocational training at the HS and community college level. That is, implement something akin to that the Germans and Japanese have.

7. Increase the number of commercials that laud education. Increase the number of educational programs (.ie. musicals and documentaries) in TV. Compare the number of educational programs and commercials in Japanese TV to ours, and you'll see the difference.

Do that and in a generation you'll see a change, all without throwing the coffers out of the window and without looking for the next e-silver bullet.

You can throw billions at the problem, but if we don't change our culture and the basic nature of our curricula, it ain't gonna count for shit.

Re:Looking in the wrong places

[luis_a_espinal]

You don't need to adopt the asian cram school model. The Finns get better results with far less child abuse.

What child abuse? What is it with this stereotype that the Japanese inflict this barbaric treatment on their students? I've been in Japan, and I haven't seen none of it. You got crazy parents that keep their kids up till the wee hours doing homework, but you have that everywhere. The key difference between Japan and the US is that:

1. Japanese kids go to school more days during the year. Their school day is similar in lengths to ours.

2. Kids aren't allowed to pass grades just so that they don't feel bad. If a kid is having learning problems, special care is taken for them. It's not like us that allow kids to finish HS without knowing how to read or write (literally.)

3. Whether you are working class or upper class, your kid is guaranteed to get decent public education.

4. Teachers are respected.

5. Kids clean their class room (oh no, the horror, the abuse!!!!!)

6. Kids are expected to make up their minds whether they go to college or vocational training (and tailor their HS education accordingly.) No much different from the German model. Man, on my last trip seeing my in-laws a month ago, one of the main blockbuster movies in Japan is one about the construction and launch of the Hayabusa satellite. THAT IS ONE OF THEIR BLOCKBUSTERS!. That tells you everything about the difference between their view of education and ours.

Heck US suburban schools do as well as any schools in the world.

If that gives you comfort, and if that gives comfort to people at large, we are fucked. It doesn't mean anything if you have large swats of working class/ethnic inner cities with schools that are flat lining. Having a few suburban schools that excel means shit. Having schools that, regardless of income class or location, provide decent education on a consistent basis (as the Japanese and Finns do), that's what matters.

It's all about the total environment.

Which Japanese (and Finns) provide... and which we do not. I still want to hear about this (hopefully first hand) account about this so-called child abuse in the Asian cram school model.

To be honest, I don't care if our country adopts (or adapts from) a Japanese or Finn model. Whatever works. But I have a problem with people talking shit about a country, perpetuating stereotypes. Saying that the Japanese use or inflict child abuse to get their kids educated It is no different from the extremist Mullah in a Madrassa saying that all Western women are prostitutes, or saying that all Black people steal or all White people are racist or all Latinas get pregnant by the age of 15. It is a stereotype. It is false. It is dumb. It is bullshit. It has no room in a serious discussion about education.

Re:Looking in the wrong places

[Spodi]

3. Teach kids to stand up when a teacher enters and leaves a room, and teach them, no, put them to clean their own class rooms as part of their daily school day.

Sorry, but if you honestly believe this one, you are quite out of touch with how "bad seeds" behave. Having kids stand up just gives a very easy way for them to disrespect their teachers. Those who don't want to stand up won't. As a result, they will either 1) be reprimanded, which many will just rebel against even more or 2) you do nothing about it, and further distinguish and separate the "good" from the "bad". This is not how you encourage respect between student and teacher. All teachers I liked and got along well with, from early elementary to late college, were ones who treated me as just another person. They didn't force me to do stuff for the sake of "that is what you are supposed to do", and they didn't make me treat them like my superior. Because I liked those teachers and respected them for the way they treated me, I actually felt bad not doing my class work in those classes.

Re:Looking in the wrong places

[MidnightBrewer]

I teach in Japan, so I would not recommend it as a model. As a matter-of-fact, here in Osaka they are lauding the idea of adopting the "No Child Left Behind" model, I kid you not. Education over here is very, very broken. And that's *with* the teeth of the teachers' unions pulled (they're banned from striking), so good luck thinking that union-busting is going to do you any good, either. The only reason that Japan scores higher is the ridiculous amount of money that parents throw away on cram schools, where the real education is done. You could do away with public education altogether in Japan for all the good it does anybody.

By the way, to dispel some of your other misconceptions about Japanese education:

1. Kids here do stand up when the teacher enters or leaves. That has zero impact on anything, including actual respect for the teacher. It just teaches the kids that if they follow certain societal niceties they can get away with anything.

2. Vocational training at Japanese schools is restricted to dedicated vocational schools. They are considered the last place you want to teach because discipline is terrible and student behavior worse.

3. Commercials that laud education on TV in Japan? No such thing. Commercials in Japan are just as rampant as on American television, and just as vapid. There are a couple of channels run by NHK that offer educational programming, but they're dedicated channels; easily avoided by kids who aren't interested.

I don't think this X-Prize nonsense is going to get anywhere, but I don't think that you should be looking to Japan for advice, either. They've attempted to model themselves after the Germans and, failing that, are going after the Americans now. The real problems in the US and Japan are the administrative bureaucrats who haven't actually ever taught, and the fact that people blame teachers for EVERYTHING. You would never blame a PE teacher for your kid being less physically capable than other kids, because bodies are easy to judge. However, trying to make schools crank out grade-A students by tweaking some sort of magical formula that works for everyone is nonsense, too. Some kids are better at certain subjects; some are worse. Some have discipline problems because they don't fit well into rigid systems; some because their parents neglect them, or worse, beat them.

Do you know what the magic bullet is? Tailor-make curriculums for each child based on what he or she can and cannot do. We have the resources and the technology; stop treating everyone like they're cookie-cutter equal, because they're not. The best thing you could do for a kid who is academically challenged is give him more attention, and those who can self-study less; in that way, you're much more likely to bring them up to a similar level in the end, or at least put them in a place where they'll actually learn things that will enable to live a fulfilling life based on their true aptitude.

And stop grading kids on a curve. it only hides the problem and punishes success. Worst idea ever.

Re:Looking in the wrong places

[jejones]

I don't know about child abuse, but... from Mamoru Iga, "Suicide of Japanese Youth" (Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, v.11, Issue 1, pp.17-30): "The uniquely intense stress due to the Examination Hell (shiken jigoku) not only generates a basic drive for Japan's economic success but also contributes to a high rate of young people's suicide."

I disagree.

[khasim]

You're going to have to specify what you mean by "unions" being the problem.

Parents can cause problems by not providing a stable home environment and emphasis on learning. Or parents can help by providing those. So "parents" being a "problem" ... again, you have to specify what you mean.

But first off, someone needs to define the "problem".
What, exactly, needs to be improved?
Are there other countries that are doing better?
If so, what are their approaches?

Re:I disagree.

[nbauman]

Since the teachers in most of the countries whose students are doing better than the U.S. are heavily unionized, such as Finland, Germany and Canada, the problem must be something other than unions.

In fact, within the U.S., students in union states are doing better than students in non-union states.

Re:I disagree.

[TubeSteak]

You're going to have to specify what you mean by "unions" being the problem.

If your solution to the USA's education problem doesn't involve weeding out the bad teachers, then your plan is fucked.
And unions make it exceedingly difficult to get rid of bad teachers.

Re:I disagree.

[phantomfive]

Since the teachers in most of the countries whose students are doing better than the U.S. are heavily unionized, such as Finland, Germany and Canada, the problem must be something other than unions.

I've never been to Finland, but unions in other countries are not the same as unions in the US. For example, in California, a teacher gets tenure after two years. How do you fire a bad teacher after that?

The problem is not having unions, it's the type of unions we have in the US.

Re:I disagree.

[phantomfive]

After a teacher has tenure, the termination process is fairly simple, as with almost any employee working under a contract.

No, it is not fairly simple. It is a long process, and carries with it the high probability of a lawsuit.

Re:I disagree.

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest difference is the process by which you become a teacher in these countries. Entry into teacher preparation is very competitive, e.g. in Korea you must be in the top 10% of your graduating class. And a fair number of those admitted don't make it to graduation.. So the situation is much more like med school. And how do you get the top 10% to become teachers? You keep the tuition cost minimal. You pay them commensurate to this level of skill. Compared to the US where most Ed programs are self selecting and the gateway is paying your tuition and perhaps passing some form of standardized test.

Yes there are bad teachers, just as there are bad police, fireman, secretaries, (your job here), etc. It very popular today to attack teachers and characterized them as lazy leaches on the public teat. For the vast majority of teacher this is a very unfair characterization. They put in long hours, far beyond the typical 7.5 hours or so of the school day. The majority of them take money out their own pockets to have class supplies. And maintaining the license requires continuing education, almost always at their own cost. And the pay is not really that great, the promised retirement benefits help to offset the low pay. Personally I find that money spend on teachers is far less abhorrent than the rather generous salaries paid to various politicians.

  And there has only been one research project that looked at student performance and the strength of teacher unions. And in that research there was a positive between strong unions and higher SAT scores. Of the 5 states that don't have any teacher unions, only Virginia score in the middle in terms of SAT, graduation rates and NEAP score. The other 4 non-union states are clustered at the bottom.

Re:I disagree.

[RogueWarrior65]

Okay, here's a real world example. The New York City public school system has roughly 2000 teachers in what's known as "the rubber room." They have been removed from the classroom for a variety of reasons from poor performance to criminal activity. The union contract requires that they A) keep their job, B) get their full salary and benefits. Mayor Bloomberg wants to fire them but legally can't. Many types of unions have rubber rooms particularly the UAW. And people wonder why GM crashed and burned, was propped up by the taxpayers without them getting a say in the matter, turned over to the union who gets a tax credit for the losses before the bailout and they still can't get profitable.

In New Jersey, the following procedure must be followed in order to fire a teacher. Time involved: 2 to 5 years.
http://www.publicschoolspending.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/New-Jersey-Tenure-chart.pdf

But to be more specific, the union isn't the only problem. Collective bargaining is a bigger problem. Imagine if you wanted to buy eggs but by law you weren't allowed open the carton to make sure none of them were cracked or spoiled. Not only that but you were required to buy a gross of eggs every week but you're a single person. And then to add insult to injury, you were required to save the shells and dispose of them in a government approved landfill for which you had to pay a maintenance fee until the shells completely decompose.

Re:I disagree.

[phantomfive]

The same way you fire anyone else: By firing them. The "tenure" everyone talks about isn't "tenure". The only difference is that after two years, the school has to document a reason for the firing. Before that, they can fire the teacher at any time, for no reason at all.

No, it's not the same way as anyone else. It is really hard to fire a teacher in California. Either you're oblivious to that fact, or you are willfully deceptive. In the first case, it's very hard to get rid of a teacher who can't teach. As long as they don't mess up, they will stay in their position.

Even if they do mess up, say, have a principle has an affair with a teacher and is also found mismanaging the accounting and lying to the schoolboard and teachers, you STILL can't fire him easily. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and can take a year or more. I know this because it happened near where I live.

Here's another good explanation. A good quote from the article, "You're in the position of having to look at 125 kids and just say, 'I'm sorry,' because the process of removal is really difficult. . . . You're looking at these kids and knowing they are going to high school and they're not ready. It is absolutely devastating."

How is that helping kids? It's not. School needs to be about helping kids, even if some teachers get fired without deserving it. That's not the end of the world.

Re:I disagree.

[diaz]

Part of the problem is the administrators. Teachers don't simply get tenure handed to them after a couple of years. The have to be reviewed by administrators. Typically, administrators have a bare minimum of classroom experience and can't tell the difference between a good teacher and a bad one. Yet they are the ones handing out the tenure. Only years later after many parent complaints do they discover that they have a bad teacher. Get better administrators and you'll have fewer bad teachers with tenure. Parents are a part of the problem. You have parents that don't place an emphasis on education. Parents that place an emphasis on education, but do not have the time, education or language to help their kids with their homework. Parents that think little Susie is getting bad grades because the teachers are out to get her because of her dress/race/etc. Parents that think that THEIR child would NEVER misbehave, so the teacher is at fault. Parent's that don't know how to get their kids to study more, but excuse their 16 year old from school to get their driver's license.

Re:I disagree.

[Totenglocke]

Part of their success is that they have qualified teachers in the first place. It's been shown that 50% of teachers in the US graduate in the bottom 1/3 of their class - clearly these are NOT the best and the brightest.

Re:I disagree.

[tbannist]

Why would anyone who qualified as the best or the brightest want to be a teacher in the United States?

Make Academics a Spectator Sport

[Roger W Moore]

The biggest problem I see is the lack of streaming in education. Trying to give everyone the same education is simply stupid. There is no way that you can teach at a level such that the slowest students are keeping up while the top students are stretched - someone, somewhere has to suffer. However the moment you try to stream students there are cries of discrimination and unfairness. Frankly I do not think that education will be fixed until there are governments willing to tackle this politically sensitive issue.

The curious thing is that, somehow, this does not apply to sports. Nobody would think it sensible that footballers, athletes etc. are held back and denied more advanced training because it is discriminatory against those who have less physical ability...but the moment it comes to academics it is a completely different story. I think the key difference is that society can easily see the benefit of a good sports person - they entertain. However the benefit of a good academic - jobs created, industries founded, science discovered etc. - is less clear and being smart is perceived as benefiting the individual only.

So perhaps that X prize should go to the best idea for turning academic subjects into a spectator sport. The moment we have people interested in watching teams of physicists competing there will be no problem in getting a more rigorous education for those who need it.

Re:Easy to say. Hard to do.

[Toam]

So if you're in an area where children aren't "performing" due largely to the attitude of their parents, and your performance evaluation is bad, all the teachers should leave and go somewhere else?

What you're saying is that people who live in an area where most parents don't care about their childrens education (even if they themselves DO care about their childrens education) don't deserve to have a school.

Also, it means that a teacher who lives (works) in an area where parents are move involved in their childrens education will have to work "less hard" for a greater pay cheque than a teacher in a "worse" area would.

Not everything should be run like a business.

Sounds like a good start.

[khasim]

If you're on the high school football team you practice football after school with a coach dedicated to improving your skills.

Where's the after school coach for math? If you have a tutor it is usually to bring you up to the level of the other students. Not to help you become better than the math students in other schools.

Yet someone skilled in moving a ball down a field gets paid a LOT more than someone skilled in math.

I think you have that backwards.

[khasim]

So X (what is wrong with education here) has not been defined ...
Which means that a plan to fix X is sort of impossible at this point ...

But you've already determined that there needs to be a way of "weeding out the bad teachers" in the plan.

Sounds to me that your REAL goal is "weeding out" some teachers. And then basing a "plan" around that.

How about we stick to finding X first?
What, specifically, is WRONG with education today?
Is any other country doing it better? How?

Finland

[oneiros27]

Before someone mods you down, the head of the Finish education system (rated at the top), completely agrees with you -- they specifically avoid the competition aspects of education:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/

With America's manufacturing industries now in decline, the goal of educational policy in the U.S. -- as articulated by most everyone from President Obama on down -- is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind.

It's about cooperation, not competition. They let the teachers judge the progress, not standardized testing from on-high. There are no private schools. There are no fees for education (other than taxes).

Re:Easy to say. Hard to do.

[adamchou]

one of my friends runs the premier english school in taipei and what his philosophy in schooling isn't just educating the students, its educating the parents. he literally has classes that the parents are forced to go to where he teaches them how to parent their children because the majority of parents don't know how to do it right. and his method has been successful. he consistently produces children that score highest in the country and make it into the ivy league schools back here in the states.

A computer game idea

[Michael Woodhams]

Quantum mechanics, special relativity and general relativity are all very hard to learn, in part because they are so counterintuitive. Imagine a computer game which throws you into a universe where SR (or quantum mechanics or GR) have large, easily measurable effects - e.g. the speed of light is about 50m/s. After you've spent enough time zipping around on your relativistic motorcycle shooting zombies (or whatever), you should be able to intuitively understand SR, and the mathematics will become easy. (Well, as easy as Newtonian physics, anyhow.)

Re:Now you've switched again.

[adamchou]

i'm not sure if you're just being a troll or just really stubborn... but isn't it obvious what the problem is? the education our children are getting is substandard, especially when compared to numerous other countries. i don't think anyone bothered "identifying" it to you because it was so obvious, we just assumed you'd know what we're talking about here.

as for the business analogy, you totally missed the point. yes, bankruptcy and not being profitable might be the problem, but firing someone won't solve it. there are so many possibilities and likely many reasons why the business is failing. firing the bad apples is just one part of the solution. just like firing the bad teachers is also just one part of the solution to our problem. there are numerous other problems, however. for instance...

• we have a system where kids only go to school 6 hours a day, 1 of which is physical education and one of which is recess/lunch time. that leaves only 4 hours of actual class time instruction. to top that off, they don't go to school for 2 or 3 weeks during the winter and 3 months during the summer because they need some sort of break. for what?
• the good teachers are not getting compensated enough. the only ones doing a good job are the ones that actually have a passion for just teaching; and there aren't enough of those types of people in the US to educate all our children. all the other smart people are going into the private sector where they're getting paid double or triple what teachers are getting paid.
• although its not really a school system problem, the american culture likes to tag smart people with derogatory terms like geek and nerd and they actually get teased in school.

and i didn't even get into the politics of the education system. i'm not well enough informed about that to speak authoritatively but my friends that are teachers tell me how screwed up it is all the time.

Re:Jobs

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Based on the existing state of the tobacco market, it isn't obvious that the pot would start being any more offshore than it presently is.

I assume you'd have yuppie pot, that you have to go to farmers' markets to get, tended with love by authentic hippies. Below that you'd have Whole Foods pot, given something reasonably approaching the tending of yuppie pot, albeit on a contemporary agrobusiness scale.

Below that you'd have your basic convenience store brands, put together out what whatever mixture of canadian, american, and mexican happens to be cheap and reasonably consistent.

Education for jobs ???

[Taco Cowboy]

If I am not wrong, the one reason we want our children to be educated is to encourage them to think

But ... If the only reason in sending a child to school is to enable him to "find a job", then we might as well get rid of all the school and send that kid to work in the factory straight-away !!

My humble perspective

[Taco Cowboy]

I used to teach undergraduates when I was doing my PhD and this is what I saw, from both being a student, and being an instructor

The whole thing about education has failed miserably

In many schools (from Primary School to High School to University), the curriculum was essentially "copied" from each others

Essentially, everybody has been copying curriculum from everybody else

Like in math --- Why in hell they make calculus a mandatory subject for students who are interested in mathematics ?

Students would surely benefit more from learning statistics than they would from calculus

Look around if you don't believe me --- how many universities put more emphasis on statistics than on calculus ?

Simple Solutions

[catchblue22]

The first step in solving the "education problem" is to realize that there are no simple answers to solving the "education problem". If anybody claims they have a simple solution, they are probably trying to sell something. The problems of education go back many centuries. Plutarch, 2000 years ago said that "a mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled". Aristotle said that "the purpose of education is to teach us to love beauty". Our addiction to simple ideological solutions to our problems is I believe at the heart of much of our modern malaise.