Comments on: People will educate themselves? http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/03/26/people-will-educate-themselves/ Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:26:23 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Dave Bauer http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/03/26/people-will-educate-themselves/#comment-32578 Dave Bauer Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:39:45 +0000 http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/03/26/people-will-educate-themselves/#comment-32578 You said "I wonder myself what would happen if we suddenly stopped making education compulsory in the United States." Then you said " I agree that we need some basic changes in the system, but I think it is naive to think that it would be constructive social policy to stop providing free public educational opportunities for people." It is not necessary that stopping compulsory education also means stopping providing opportunities for learning (as opposed to forced "education" The key here is compulsory. Making everyone learn the same thing in the same way, at the same time, in the same place, is the shortcoming of the system. It seems to me that providing opportunities is what the current compulsory system doesn't do well. My local school system notified me about the "gifted" program a the middle school recently. It is a special program where the top 10% get to do someting they are actually interested in at school. The other 90% have to contiue to be bored with endless reptition. It seems to me that providing the opportunity to everyone would make the rest of the day more bearable, and possibly even keep the kids motivated to learn the rest of the stuff. You said “I wonder myself what would happen if we suddenly stopped making education compulsory in the United States.”

Then you said ” I agree that we need some basic changes in the system, but I think it is naive to think that it would be constructive social policy to stop providing free public educational opportunities for people.”

It is not necessary that stopping compulsory education also means stopping providing opportunities for learning (as opposed to forced “education”

The key here is compulsory. Making everyone learn the same thing in the same way, at the same time, in the same place, is the shortcoming of the system. It seems to me that providing opportunities is what the current compulsory system doesn’t do well.

My local school system notified me about the “gifted” program a the middle school recently. It is a special program where the top 10% get to do someting they are actually interested in at school. The other 90% have to contiue to be bored with endless reptition.

It seems to me that providing the opportunity to everyone would make the rest of the day more bearable, and possibly even keep the kids motivated to learn the rest of the stuff.

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